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Prophecy Between Poetics and Politics from Al-Farabi to Leo Strauss

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Abstract

Judaeo-Arabic prophetology, as developed in the wake of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, was highly attentive to the kind of representational modes produced by divine revelation and their political use—but also their political precarity. By drawing on another corpus, less often discussed in this context, the Arabic commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics and Rhetoric, this study proposes to undertake a close analysis of how the medieval thinkers in question (Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides) understood the poetics of prophecy to function. What emerges is an account of how the political theo-logic of poetics and rhetoric—as developed with respect to terms such as imitation, imagination and visualization—came to play a central role in the theory of prophecy, and how that theory of prophecy in turn gave rise to an understanding of what Leo Strauss once termed the ‘literary character’ of these philosophers' ‘art of writing’.

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Notes

  1. See D. Gutas, ‘Aspects of Literary Form and Genre in Arabic Logical Works’, in Glosses and Commentaries on Aristotelian Logical Texts: The Syriac, Arabic and Medieval Traditions, ed. C. Burnett, London, 1993, pp. 29–76.

  2. For the background of the translations themselves, see O. Schrier, ‘The Syriac and Arabic Versions of Aristotle's Poetics’, in The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism: Studies on the Transmission of Greek Philosophy and Sciences dedicated to H. J. Drossaart Lulofs on His Ninetieth Birthday, ed. G. Endress and R. Kruk, Leiden, 1997, pp. 259–79, and U. Vagelpohl, Aristotle's Rhetoric in the East: The Syriac and Arabic Translation and Commentary Tradition, Leiden, 2008. For the general transmission, see A. Badawi, La transmission de la philosophie grecque au monde arabe, Paris, 1987, and D. Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early 'Abbāsid Society, London and New York, 1998. For an apt summary of the exegetical tradition of late antiquity, see G. Fowden, Before and After Muhammad: The First Millennium Refocused, Princeton, 2014, pp. 127–63.

  3. The definitive study remains R. Walzer, ‘Zur Traditionsgeschichte der aristotelischen Poetik’, in Studi italiani di filologia classica, 1, 1934, pp. 5–14, repr. in id., Greek into Arabic. Essays on Islamic Philosophy, Oxford, 1962, pp. 127–36; but see also D. Gutas, ‘Paul the Persian on the Classification of the Parts of Aristotle's Philosophy: A Milestone between Alexandria and Baghdad’, Der Islam, 60, 1983, pp. 231–67, and the recent overview of T. Kleven, ‘Rhetoric, Poetics, and the Organon’, in The Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy, ed. R. Taylor and L. Xavier López-Farjeat, London, 2016, pp. 82–92.

  4. On phantasia, see M. Schofield, ‘Aristotle on the Imagination’, in Essays on Aristotle's 'De Anima', ed. M. C. Nussbaum and A. O. Rorty, Oxford, 1995, pp. 249–77. On the medieval Islamic theory of the intellect, see, e.g. H. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, & Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, & Theories of Human Intellect, Oxford, 1992.

  5. Averroes on Plato's 'Republic', transl. R. Lerner, Ithaca, 1974, p. 10. On Averroes's understanding of the political use of poetics, see D. Kries, ‘Music, Poetry and Politics in Averroes's Commentary on Plato's 'Republic‘, in Plato's 'Republic' in the Islamic Context: New Perspectives on Averroes's Commentary, ed. A. Orwin, Rochester NY, 2022, pp. 87–109. For the role that the Arabic reception of the Republic was to play in the interpretation of the philosophy–religion–imitation triad here in question, see J. Lameer, Al-Fārābi and Aristotelian Syllogistics: Greek Theory and Islamic Practice, Leiden, 1994, pp. 259–91.

  6. A fact which forms the point of departure for D. Tanguay, Leo Strauss, une biographie intellectuelle, Paris, 2003.

  7. See ‘Leo Strauss's Notes on Averroes's Commentary on Plato's Republic’, published as ‘Appendix A’, in R. Namazi, Leo Strauss and Islamic Political Thought, Cambridge, 2022, pp. 205–15 (208).

  8. A brief word is in order about the terms ‘political theology’ or the modifier ‘politico-theological’. Islamic thinkers may have been committed to political philosophy, but they nevertheless provide an account of political theology. The need to identify one as the ‘true’ choice is misguided, for the former concerns the discussion intra muros as to the relation between the philosophers and the state, while the latter is a means: in our case, political theology concerns a philosophical understanding of how the poetical and rhetorical forms of theological revelation are utilized in order to achieve political effects, and thus, as F. Stella rightly notes, ‘[t]he politico-theological problem is an issue whose development is internal to political philosophy ...’, in ‘Leo Strauss and the Quest for the Other City: Philosophical Speech within the City from Al-Fārābī to Plato’, in Praxis des Philosophierens, Praktiken der Historiographie: Perspektiven von der Spätantike bis zur Moderne, ed. M. Meliadò and S. Negri, Freiburg and Munich, 2018, pp. 248–69 (250). (What's more: the account of prophetology becomes the theoretical pivot by which the ‘politico-theological problem’—Strauss's term, see below n. 122—is included under the rubric of political philosophy.) Stella's comment finds resonance in that of Mahdi and Lerner's: ‘One approach was to consider political theology within the framework of political philosophy. This was the dominant mode among the Muslim political philosophers; it was used by Maimonides in so far as he followed their political teaching’: Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. M. Mahdi and R. Lerner, Glencoe, 1963, p. 8; see their ‘Introduction’ in toto for a (Straussian) account of this distinction. For the debate between political theology and political philosophy, see the respective contributions of M. Campanini and C. E. Butterworth in Islam, the State, and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns, ed. A. Afsaruddin, New York, 2011, pp. 35–52 and 53–74. For further debate around these concepts, see Islamic Political Theology, ed. M. Campanini and M. Di Donato, Lanham, 2021, as well as H. Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, transl. J. Harvey Lomax, Chicago, 1995, and id., Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, transl. M. Brainard, Cambridge, 2006.

  9. A. Sheppard, ‘Preface’, in Takhyīl: The Imaginary in Classical Arabic Poetics, ed. G. J. van Gelder and M. Hammond, Exeter, 2008, (hereafter: Takhyīl), pp. ix–xv (xiv). For a general account of the fate of this triad of terms up to their assumption into the Arabic world, see ead., The Poetics of Phantasia: Imagination in Ancient Aesthetics, London, 2014, pp. 19–47, as well as A. Manieri, L'immagine poetica nella teoria degli antichi: phantasia ed enargeia, Pisa, 1998.

  10. The literature on enargeia is vast, but for some of the most important accounts of its history, see M. W. Bundy, The Theory of Imagination in Classical and Medieval Thought, Urbana, 1927, pp. 105–16; G. Zanker, ‘Enargeia in the Ancient Criticism of Poetry’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 124.3–4, 1981, pp. 297–311; N. Otto, Enargeia: Untersuchung zur Charakteristik alexandrinischer Dichtung, Stuttgart, 2009; R. Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice, Farnham, 2009, esp. pp. 87–106; and H. Plett, Enargeia in Classical Antiquity and the Early Modern Age: The Aesthetics of Evidence, Leiden and Boston, 2012.

  11. R. Walzer, ‘Al-Farabi's Theory of Prophecy and Divination’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 77, 1957, pp. 142–8 (145 n. 25), also cites this passage in a definitive statement on phantasia in the theory of prophecy. K. Kohl, ‘Poetic Universals?’, in Takhyīl, pp. 133–46, relates this passage to the question of ‘poetic universals’, which is crucial in a context that is not thinking of philosophical applicability in cultural or civilizational terms, but in terms of universal validity given its epistemological status as logic.

  12. Proclus the Successor on Poetics and the Homeric Poems: Essays 5 and 6 of his 'Commentary on the Republic of Plato', ed. and transl. R. Lamberton, Atlanta, 2012, p. 232 (163.19–164.7).

  13. The Arabic translation appears not to have transmitted either of the instances of the word in the Poetics; see ad loc. in Poetics: Editio Maior of the Greek Text with Historical Introductions and Philological Commentaries, ed. L. Tarán and D. Gutas, Leiden, 2012, p. 398; for the Arabic, see pp. 119–20. When, at 1462a17, Aristotle notes that tragedy creates the ‘most vivid pleasures’ (‘αἱ ἡδοναὶ συνίστανται ἐναργέστατα’), the Arabic text reads ἐνεργέστατα, as it does in the next sentence: [humma akthara f'alan, FAS 144].

  14. This association had to do, of course, with phantasia's relation to ‘appearance' as well as Aristotle's description of the calling up of images by the phantasia to be like a representation of images before the eyes (De anima, 427b18–19; De memoria 450a, 4). Sheppard also draws important connections between phantasia's image-making power and the representation of the intelligibles; these two senses are not absolutely distinguished (despite Plotinus's sui generis claim at Enneads, IV.3.30–1 about two ‘image-making powers’ (phantastika) which is not found elsewhere). See, e.g. Sheppard, Poetics of Phantasia (n. 9 above), p. 45, to the effect that as the Neoplatonists developed the philosophical edifice of phantasia further afield, they ‘continue to use phantasia in the sense of “visualization”’. The Neoplatonic belief that phantasia could both receive images of sensibilia as well as intelligiblia, the latter specifically in an inspired or prophetic state, will be developed expansively in the Arabic commentaries; see ibid., pp. 71–100 (‘Prophecy, Inspiration and Allegory’).

  15. On the De anima commentaries, see H. J. Blumenthal, Aristotle and Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity: Interpretations of the 'De Anima', London, 1996.

  16. Recent studies of enargeia, in which I would group my own, signal a shift in a direction that considers the ethical and political dimensions of the term as a corrective to the frequent consideration of it from an exclusively aesthetic or cognitive purview. See, e.g. A. Itkin, ‘Bring up the Bodies: The Classical Concept of Poetic Vividness and its Reevaluation in Holocaust Literature’ PLMA, 133.1, 2018, pp. 107–23, and J. Mansky, ‘“Look No More”: Jonson's Catiline and the Politics of Enargeia’, PLMA, 134.2, 2019, pp. 332–50.

  17. Cf. Ibn Rashīq's claim that ‘the best waṣf [description] is a description that represents its object in such a way that the listener almost envisions it with his/her own eyes. Ibn Rashīq further says that some of his contemporary littérateurs (al-muta'akhkhirūn) argue that the most eloquent waṣf is a transformation of hearing (sam') into seeing/vision (baṣar). According to him, the origin of waṣf is ‘revealing’ (kashf) and ‘showing’ (iẓhār), as seen in the statement: “The attire described (wuṣifat) the body underneath it”, cited in A. M. Sumi, Description in Classical Arabic Poetry: Waṣf, Ekphrasis, and Interarts Theory, Leiden and Boston, 2004, p. 8. However, this concept is 1) part of the autochthonous field of literary criticism, not the Greek-inspired Aristotelian commentaries and 2) despite the convergent phrasing, investigating waṣf creates almost an exactly analogous problem as investigating ekphrasis in the context of enargeia.

  18. See W. Heinrichs, ‘Die antike Verknüpfung von phantasia und Dichtung bei den Arabern’, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 128.2, 1978, pp. 252–98, as well as his expansion of this article into his book, id. Arabische Dichtung und Griechische Poetik: Ḥāzim al-Qarṭāǧannīs Grundlegung der Poetik mit Hilfe aristotelischer Begriffe, Beirut, 1969. See also his brief discussion of the term in id., ‘Takhyīl: Make-Believe and Image Creation in Arabic Literary Theory’, in Takhyīl, pp. 1–14.

  19. For the Arabic, see Ibn Rushd, Talkhīs Kitāb Arisṭūṭālīs fī al-Shi’r, ed. S. Sālim, Cairo, 1971. For the English (which I have modified), see Averroes' Middle Commentary on Aristotle's 'Poetics', transl. C. E. Butterworth, Princeton, 1986, pp. 108–9. See the justified criticism of this translation in D. Gutas, “Review: On Translating Averroes’ Commentaries”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 1990, 110.1, pp. 92–101.

  20. Cf. Averroes’s comment on Rhetoric, III.10.6, in his Middle Commentary on Aristotle's 'Rhetoric': ‘He says: On the whole, someone who speaks of something in an eloquent manner, must present the thing he talks about as if it is seen with the eyes (ka’annahu mushāhidun bi-l-baṣar).' See the Arabic edition with French translation, critical introduction and notes of Averroès (Ibn Rušd). Commentaire moyen à la 'Rhétorique' d’Aristote, ed. M. Aouad, Paris, 2002, p. 310.

  21. The Arabic text was printed as an appendix to Ibn Rushd, Talkhīs Kitāb Arisṭūṭālīs fī al-Shi’r (n. 19 above), pp. 171–5. For the English, see Takhyīl, pp. 17–18.

  22. Ibn Rushd, Talkhīs Kitāb Arisṭūṭālīs fī al-Shi’r (n. 19 above), pp. 171–5. For the English, see Takhyīl, pp. 17–18.

  23. For a broad introduction, see W. Heinrichs: ‘Poetik, Rhetorik, Literaturkritik, Metrik, Reimlehre’, in Grundriss der Arabischen Philologie, I, Wiesbaden, 1992, pp. 177–207; and for the most thoroughgoing reconstruction of the entire logical edifice, see D. Black, Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy, Leiden, 1990. L. Harb, Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature, Cambridge, 2020, esp. pp. 75–134 (77), has recently elucidated the ‘shift in philosophical works similar to that found in literary criticism’ and concludes that ‘[t]he idiosyncratic strand of 'Aristotelian' literary theory ... has more in common with the mainstream strand of literary theory spurred by al-Jurjānī than previously acknowledged’. For a thoroughgoing analysis with attention to the political applications of poetry and rhetoric, see S. Kemal, The Philosophical Poetics of Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroës: The Aristotelian Reception, London and New York, 2003.

  24. For the very latest work, see G. Schoeler, ‘The “Poetic Syllogism' Revisited”, Oriens, 41, 2013, pp. 1–26. See also id., ‘Der poetische Syllogismus. Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis der “logischen” Poetik der Araber’, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 133, 1983, pp. 43–92; M. Aouad and G. Schoeler, ‘Le syllogisme poétique selon al-Fārābī: un syllogisme incorrect de la deuxième figure’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 12, 2002, pp. 185–96; M. Aouad, ‘Le Syllogisme poétique selon le Livre de la Poétique d’Ibn Tumlūs’, in Words, Texts and Concepts Cruising the Mediterranean Sea. Studies on the Sources, Contents and Influences of Islamic Civilization and Arabic Philosophy and Science. Dedicated to Gerhard Endress on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. R. Arnzen and J. Tielmann, Leuven, 2004, pp. 259–70.

  25. This is, of course, evocative of the passages in Aristotle's De anima and On Sophistical Refutations in which he notes deceptions concerned with judgements about sense-perceptions using similar examples.

  26. Schoeler, ‘“Poetic Syllogism” Revisited’ (n. 24 above), pp. 7–8. These are, admittedly, different types of syllogism, but for my purposes the types are less important than the general ways in which they function.

  27. English and Arabic in Averroës' Three Short Commentaries on Aristotle's ‘Topics’, Rhetoric’, and ‘Poetics’, ed. and transl. C. E. Butterworth, Albany, 1977, pp. 83–4 and 203–6.

  28. Compare al-Jurjānī’s near-identical comments in Takhyīl, p. 57.

  29. See H. A. Wolfson, ‘The Terms Taṣawwur and Taṣdiq in Arabic Philosophy and Their Greek, Latin, and Hebrew Equivalents’, The Muslim World, 33.2, 1943, pp. 114–28, and Black, Logic (n. 23 above), pp. 52–102 and 180–208.

  30. Schoeler, ‘“Poetic Syllogism” Revisited’ (n. 24 above), p. 8. Cf. Black, Logic (n. 23 above), pp. 229–31.

  31. Black, Logic (n. 23 above), p. 187.

  32. Ibid., p. 10.

  33. The list of the truth value of all five syllogisms is found in Al-Farabi's Iḥṣā’ al-‘ulūm, ed. U. Amin, Cairo, 1968, p. 79. The problem of poetry's falsity both concerned 1) whether it was reproachable per se due to its false nature and 2) the question of how one accounts for comparisons between religious texts and poetry given the falsity of the latter. One of the definitive studies here remains, J. C. Bürgel's ‘“Die beste Dichtung ist die lügenreichste”. Wesen und Bedeutung eines literarischen Streites des arabischen Mittelalters im Lichte komparatistischer Betrachtung’, Oriens, 23–4, 1974, pp. 7–102.

  34. Harb, Arabic Poetics (n. 23 above), p. 47.

  35. Charles Butterworth has devoted a career to the political interpretation of Arabic Aristotelian rhetoric especially. See C. E. Butterworth, ‘Rhetoric and Islamic Political Philosophy’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 3.2, 1972, pp. 187–98; id., ‘Averroes: Politics and Opinion’, in The American Political Science Review, 66.3, 1972, pp. 894–901; id., ‘The Rhetorician and his Relationship to the Community: Three Accounts of Aristotle's Rhetoric’, in Islamic Theology and Philosophy: Studies in Honor of George F. Hourani, Albany, 1984, pp. 111–36; and id., ‘The Political Teaching of Avicenna’ in Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy, 2000, pp. 35–44.

  36. Arabic in Asrār Al-balāgha: The Mysteries of Eloquence of 'Abdalqāhir Al-Jurjānī, ed. H. Ritter, Istanbul, 1954, pp. 278–9. English in Takhyīl, p. 57, my emphasis.

  37. B. Gruendler, ‘Fantastic Aesthetics and Practical Criticism in Ninth-Century Baghdad’, in Takhyīl pp. 196–220 (201); cf. Alexander Key's comments on how ‘al-Ǧurǧānī connected elision to poetic affect’, in his Language between God and the Poets: Ma'na in the Eleventh Century, Oakland, 2018, pp. 218–19.

  38. Al-Farabi, The Political Writings, transl. C. E. Butterworth, II, Ithaca, 2015, p. 32.

  39. Schoeler, ‘“Poetic Syllogism” Revisited’ (n. 24 above), p. 5. Cf. Heinrichs speaking of ‘the creation of a mental image which forces the soul of the listener to accept or reject the assertion in question without a declaration of true or false and to act accordingly’ (my emphasis), in his ‘Takhyīl and Its Traditions’, in Gott ist Schön und er liebt die Schönheit, Berne, 1994, p. 228. Cf. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VI.2.30, on enargeia: ‘imagines prosecuntur ut ... videamur ... nec cogitare sed facere' ('our images haunt us and thus we seem not to be thinking but acting’).

  40. For the Arabic, see Taḥṣīl al-Sa‘āda, ed. J. al Yasin, Beirut, 1987; for the English, see The Attainment of Happiness, in Al-Farabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, transl. M. Mahdi, rev. ed., Glencoe, 1969 (hereafter: AH).

  41. AH, p. 15 (§4).

  42. On this topic, see The Popularization of Philosophy in Medieval Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, ed. M. Abram, Turnhout 2022.

  43. AH, p. 36 (§40); cf. AH, p. 42 (§51).

  44. Falsafat Arisṭūṭālīṣ, ed. M. Mahdi, Beirut, 1961; for the English, see Al-Farabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (n. 40 above), pp. 71–130 (92).

  45. Al-Farabi's work must also be understood against the backdrop of Greek and Syriac late antique rhetorical practice: see J. W. Watt, Rhetoric and Philosophy from Greek into Syriac, Farnham, 2010, and id., The Aristotelian Tradition in Syriac, London, 2019. See also H. Daiber, 'Die Aristotelesrezeption in der syrischen Literatur', in id., From the Greeks to the Arabs and Beyond, 4 vols, Leiden, 2021, I, ch. 8 (all of Daiber's works are cited from this recent edition of his collected writings as vol./chapter).

  46. For Al-Farabi, see Political Regime, pp. 74–5 (§90). For Avicenna, see Al-Isharāt wa-l-tanbīhāt; translation in Takhyīl, p. 25. For Averroes, see Arabic and English in ‘The Book of the Decisive Treatise Determining the Connection between the Law and Wisdom’ and ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, ed. and transl. C. E. Butterworth, Provo, 2001, p. 20.

  47. For one of the very best general studies see G. Schoeler, ‘Poeticher Syllogismus—Bildliche Redeweise—Religion vom Aristotelischen Organon zu al-Farabis Religionstheorie’, in Logik und Theologie: Das Organon im arabischen und lateinischen Mittelalter, ed. D. Peler and U. Rudolph Leiden 2005, pp. 45–58.

  48. AH, p. 44 (§55), italics original; Taḥṣīl al-Sa‘ādah, p. 90; see F. Stella's inquiry into Al-Farabi's lexicon of religion, including millah, in ‘Religion as Law: Meaning and Context of Law in al-Fārābī's Philosophy", Rivista degli Studi Orientali, 2019, pp. 57–71.

  49. Leo Strauss, ‘Farabi's Plato’, in Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume, New York, 1945, pp. 357–93. Cf. Lerner's near-identical comments on Averroes manner of interweaving quotes and assertions in his Averroes on Plato's 'Republic' (n. 5 above), p. xv.

  50. Leo Strauss, ‘Introduction’, in id., Persecution and the Art of Writing, Glencoe, 1952, pp. 7–21. Strauss's inquiry into the falāsifa began as an attempt to philosophically understand the politics of imaginative prophecy, as S. Harvey shows in ‘The Story of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Scholar's Discovery of Plato's Political Philosophy in Tenth-Century Islam: Leo Strauss' Early Interest in the Islamic Falāsifa’, in Modern Jewish Scholarship on Islam in Context: Rationality, European Borders, and the Search for Belonging, ed. O. Fraisse, Berlin and Boston, 2018, pp. 219–44. His relation to Islamic philosophy has been extensively documented in G. Tamer, Islamische Philosophie und die Krise der Moderne: Das Verhältnis von Leo Strauss zu Alfarabi, Avicenna und Averroes, Leiden, 2001.

  51. For which, see J. Janssens, ‘Al-Farabi: La religion comme imitation de la philosophie’, in Orient-Occident: racines spirituelles de l'Europe: enjeux et implications de la ‘translatio studiorum’ dans le judaïsme, le christianisme et l'islam de l'Antiquité à la Renaissance, ed. M. Delgado et al., Paris, 2014, pp. 497–512. An interesting analysis is also found in E. Gannagé, ‘Y a-t-il une pensée politique dans le Kitāb al-ḥurūf d'al-Fārābī?’, Mélanges de l'Université Saint-Joseph, 57, 2004, pp. 121–49.

  52. For an excellent short summary of prophetic visions, see H. Daiber, ‘Ru'yā: In its Philosophical-Mystical Meaning', in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (hereafter: EI2) [= id., From the Greeks to the Arabs (n. 45 above), II, ch. 4]. For an introduction to the theory of prophecy with many excerpted passages in translation, see F. Rahman, Prophecy in Islam: Philosophy and Orthodoxy, London and New York, 2008 [1958], and, for another overview, H. Gaetje, ‘Philosophische Traumlehren im Islam’, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 109, 1959, pp. 258–85. For some of the latest work, see Prophecy and Prophets in the Middle Ages, ed. A. Palazzo and A. Rodolfi, Florence, 2020.

  53. The relation between muḥākāh and prophecy is most definitively stated in Al-Farabi on the Perfect State: Abu Nasr al-Farabi's Mabādi' ārā' ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila, ed. and transl. R. Walzer, Oxford, 1985, pp. 210–27. His use of mimesis has both Platonic and Aristotelian precedents. For the Neoplatonic backdrop of Al-Farabi's theory of prophecy, see Walzer, ‘Al-Farabi's Theory’ (n. 11 above), p. 147; for the Aristotelian backdrop, see H. Daiber, 'Prophetie und Ethik bei Fārābī (258/872–339/950 oder 951)', in id., From the Greeks to the Arabs (n. 45 above), II, ch. 17. Cf. also Lameer's claim: ‘As an alternative to the explanations offered by Walzer and Daiber, it might be worthwhile to consider the possibility that muḥākāh as employed in the context of prophecy and divination has its ultimate basis in the theory of religion as an imitative expression of philosophical truth’, in id., Al-Fārābi and Aristotelian Syllogistics (n. 5 above), pp. 271–2. This seems to me to beg the question. However, see Lameer's crucial study of the relation of syllogistics to politics and religion in ibid., pp. 259–89.

  54. Variable and at times complex, the structure of the internal senses in the Arabic world depends upon a given author. The most essential distinction for our purposes is that the projection of the image of the intelligibles onto the common sense is to be highlighted insofar as it gives the impression of direct sensible perception. In other words, the images of the intelligibles do not appear to the prophet as emerging from a place internal to his mind but rather, by being projecting onto the common sense, seem to visibly appear before him in the external world at the present moment. For a general overview of the doctrine of the internal senses, see R. Harvey, The Inward Wits. Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, London, 1975; more specific to the context of this article, see H. A. Wolfson, ‘The Internal Senses in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew Philosophical Texts’, The Harvard Theological Review, 28.2, 1935, pp. 69–133, and id., ‘Maimonides on the Internal Senses’, The Jewish Quarterly Review, 25.4, 1935, pp. 441–67, both repr. in id., Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, ed. I. Twersky and G. H. Williams, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1973–7, I, pp. 250–314 and 344–70 (note also the important correctives based on new classification of authorship in D. Black, ‘Imagination and Estimation: Arabic Paradigms and Western Transformations’, Topoi, 19, 2000, pp. 59–75); G. Strohmaier, ‘Avicennas Lehre von den «inneren Sinnen» und ihre Voraussetzungen bei Galen’, in Von Demokrit bis Dante: Die Bewahrung antiken Erbes in der arabischen Kultur, Hildesheim, 1996, pp. 330–41; and R. Hansberger, ‘Averroes and the 'Internal Senses', in Interpreting Averroes: Critical Essays, ed. P. Adamson and M. Di Giovanni, Cambridge, 2018, pp. 138–57.

  55. T.-A. Druart, ‘Al-Farabi and Emanationism’, in Studies in Medieval Philosophy, ed. J. F. Wippel, Washington DC, 1987, pp. 23–44.

  56. Cf. Al-Farabi on the Perfect State (n. 53 above), p. 244, and the entry 'Prophet’/'Nabī' in Ilai Alon and Shukri Abed, Al-Fārābī's Philosophical Lexicon [=Qāmūs al-Fārābī al-Falsafī], 2 vols, Cambridge, 2007, I, pp. 465–6 and II, p. 693 (ad loc.).

  57. For which, see W. C. Streetmen, ‘“If it were God who sent them ...”: Aristotle and Al-Fārābī on Prophetic Vision’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 18, 2008, pp. 211–46 (226).

  58. Al-Kindī, ‘Fī Māhiyat an-nawm wa-l-ruʾyā’, in Rasāʾil al-Kindī al-falsafiyya, ed. M. ʿAbd al-Hādī Abū Rīda, 2 vols, Cairo, 1950–3, I, pp. 293–311 (296) [= ‘On the Quiddity of Sleep and Dreams’, in The Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, ed. P. Adamson and P. E. Pormann, Oxford 2012, pp. 122–33 (126)].

  59. For an overview of Maimonides's conception of prophecy, see A. Reines, Maimonides and Abrabanel on Prophecy, Cincinnatti, 1970, pp. xxiii–lxxxi; H. Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy, Amsterdam, 2001; and D. Rabinowitz, ‘The Prophetic Method in the Guide’, in Maimonides' 'Guide of the Perplexed': A Critical Guide, ed. D. Frank and A. Segal, Cambridge, 2021, pp. 161–83. See also, more broadly, C. Sirat, Les théories des visions surnaturelles dans la pensée juive du moyen âge, Leiden, 1969.

  60. For the Judaeo-Arabic, see Maimonides, Le Guide des Égarés: Traité de théologie et de philosophie, 3 vols., ed. and transl. S. Munk Paris: 1856–1866, p. 78 (II.36) (hereafter: Dalālat al-ḥā'irīn) and for the English: id., The Guide of the Perplexed, transl. S. Pines, 2 vols, Chicago, 1963, II pp. 369–70 (hereafter: Guide).

  61. Avicenna, too, follows Al-Farabi in associating muḥākāh with the psychology of visions; see Avicenna's De Anima (Arabic Text): Being the Psychological Part of Kitāb al-Shifā', ed. F. Rahman, London, 1959, p. 177.

  62. Ibid., p. 174. For more on the mode of representation in Avicenna's account of prophecy, notably what she terms ‘necessary truths conveyed through poetical and rhetorical images’, see O. L. Lizzini, ‘Representation and Reality: On the Definition of Imaginative Prophecy in Avicenna’, in The Parva Naturalia in Greek, Arabic and Latin Aristotelianism, ed. B Bydén and F. Radovic, Cham, 2018, pp. 133–53 (140).

  63. R. Hansberger is currently completing an edition of these texts: Kitāb al-Ḥiss wa-l-maḥsūs: The Arabic Version of Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia. Edition, Translation and Study of the Text preserved in MS Rampur 1752, Leiden, forthcoming. She has devoted several essays to the theory of prophecy in these texts; see ead., ‘How Aristotle Came to Believe in God-Given Dreams: The Arabic Version of De divinatione per somnum’, in Dreaming across Boundaries: The Interpretation of Dreams in Islamic Lands, ed. L. Marlow, Boston and Washington DC, 2008, pp. 50–77; ead., ‘Kitāb al-Ḥiss wa-l-maḥsūs: Aristotle’s Parva naturalia in Arabic Guise’, in Les Parva naturalia d’Aristote: Fortune antique et médiévale, ed. C. Grellard and P.-M. Morel, Paris, 2010, pp. 143–62; ead., ‘The Arabic Parva Naturalia’, in Noétique et théorie de la connaissance dans la philosophie arabe du IXe au XIIe siècle: des traductions gréco-arabes aux disciples d'Avicenne, ed. M. Sebti and D. De Smet, Paris, 2019, pp. 45–78. Her work builds on that of S. Pines, ‘The Arabic Recension of the Parva Naturalia and the Philosophical Doctrine concerning Veridical Dreams according to al-Risāla al-Manāmiyya and Other Sources’, Israel Oriental Studies 4, pp. 104–53.

  64. The kind of prophecy under consideration here is the second kind recognized by Al-Farabi and the only kind recognized by Maimonides (with the exception of Moses): when both the imagination and the intellect work in tandem. See the account provided by Strauss in Philosophie und Gesetz: Beiträge zum Verständnis Maimunis und seiner Vorläufer, repr. in id., Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. II: Philosophie und Gesetz–Frühe Schriften, ed. H. Meier, Stuttgart, 1997, pp. 87–124. For the relation between prophecy and noetics, see M. Afifi al-Akiti ‘The Three Properties of Prophethood in Certain Works of Avicenna and al-Gazālī’, in Interpreting Avicenna: Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islam, ed. J. McGinnis with the assistance of D. C. Reisman, Leiden and Boston, 2004, pp. 189–212.

  65. See Black, Logic (n. 23 above), pp. 229–31.

  66. The process of descent through revelation (the Arabic word for which—nuzūl—has the original sense of ‘going down’) and return to the Eternal Intellect through the imagination is a familiar (Neoplatonic) pattern that one can find in both Al-Farabi and Avicenna; see J. Michot, La destinée de l'homme selon Avicenna: Le retour à Dieu (ma'ād) et l'imagination, Leuven, 1986, esp. pp. 118–33.

  67. This is from D. Gutas, ‘Imagination and Transcendental Knowledge in Avicenna’, in Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy. From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank, ed. J. E. Montgomery, Leuven, 2006, pp. 337–54 (344), which is part of a trilogy of articles directly relevant to our discussion: id., ‘The Logic of Theology (Kalām) in Avicenna’, in Logik und Theologie: Das Organon im arabischen und lateinischen Mittelalter, ed. D. Peler and U. Rudolph Leiden 2005, pp. 59–72, and id., ‘Intellect without Limits: The Absence of Mysticism in Avicenna’, in Intellect et imagination dans la philosophie médiévale, ed. M. C. Pachecho and J. F. Meirinhos, I, Turnhout, 2006, pp. 351–72. A similar notion is nicely formulated by F. Zimmermann: ‘Inasmuch as the particular religions share this goal [i.e., the happiness of man and of society] they are, so to speak, vernacular versions of the universal religion of philosophy’, in Al-Farabi's Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle's 'De Interpretatione', ed. F. Zimmerman, Oxford, 1991, p. XLIII n. 2.

  68. Arisṭū ʻinda al-ʻArab: dirāsah wa-nuṣūṣ ghayr manshūrah, ed. A. Badawī, Cairo, 1947; G. Vajda, ‘Les notes d'Avicenne sur la “Théologie d'Aristote”', Revue Thomiste, 51, 1951, pp. 360–1.

  69. Asrār al-Balāgha (n. 36 above), p. 109.

  70. Cf. Key, Language (n. 37 above), p. 198: ‘What al-Ĝurĝānī cared about—and in this he typifies Classical Arabic literary criticism—was the mechanism by which the two images, each taken on its own, produced affect. ... Al-Ĝurĝānī cared about the formal mechanisms that manipulate the cognitive processes of the audience’.

  71. As may be seen in Heinrich's fivefold distinction of the term in Takhyīl, p. 2.

  72. Al-Kashshāf, ed. M. al-Ṣādiq Qamḥāwī, III, Cairo, 1972, pp. 308.6–309.9, cited in Heinrichs ‘Takhyīl and Its Traditions’ (n. 39 above), my emphasis.

  73. Heinrichs, ‘Takhyīl and Its Traditions’ (n. 39 above), pp. 238–9.

  74. Al-Farabi, Political Regime (n. 46 above), p. 74 (§90).

  75. Takhyīl, p. 18.

  76. Arabic thought and culture were persistently confronted with this dichotomy insofar as the Qur’ān was embroiled, from the very moment of its appearance, in a dissension between poets and prophets particular to the Arabic tradition see Poetry and Prophecy: The Beginnings of a Literary Tradition, ed. J. L. Kugel, Ithaca, 1990, pp. 75–119.

  77. Arabic original and Spanish translation in Moses Ibn Ezra, Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wal-mudhākara, ed. and trans. M. A. Mas, 2 vols., Madrid 1985.

  78. Ibid., 12v-14; translation cited in M. Cohen, ‘Words of Eloquence: Rhetoric and Poetics in Jewish Bible Exegesis in Its Muslim and Christian Contexts’, in Interpreting Scripture in Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Overlapping Inquiries, ed. A. Berlin and id., Cambridge, 2016, pp. 266–84 (267). Cohen has published several crucial studies on the relation between the Arabic commentaries on the Organon and the Guide; see id., ‘Moses Ibn Ezra vs. Maimonides: Argument for a Poetic Definition of Metaphor (Isti‘āra)’, Edebiyât: Journal of Middle Eastern and Comparative Literature, 11, 2000, pp. 1–28; id., ‘Logic to Interpretation: Maimonides’ Use of Al-Farabi’s Model of Metaphor’, Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture, 2, 2002, pp. 104–13. In his Three Approaches to Biblical Metaphor: From Abraham Ibn Ezra and Maimonides to David Kimhi, Leiden and Boston, 2003, Cohen offers a substantial analysis of the practices of interpreting mashal as they proceed from the Graeco-Arabic commentaries into the Judaeo-Arabic commentaries, noting that the commentators used this term to refer to both figurative language and allegory, assimilating them under one rubric.

  79. For more on the uses of mathal as well as, generally, one of the very best accounts of the political stakes of mimesis, see P. Vallat, Farabi et l'École d'Alexandrie. Des prémisses de la conaissance à la philosophie politique, Paris, 2004, pp. 275–346. Vallat notes, p. 318, that there has been a neglect of what he terms ‘le but théologico-politique de la poésie, c'est-à-dire son fonction religieuse’, which he defines as the necessary condition ‘que le prédicat commun apparaisse comme une similitude structurelle des deux termes qui soit exprimable dans le vocabulaire politique de la hiérarchie’. See, further, id., ‘Vrai philosophe et faux prophète selon Fārābī. Aspects historiques et théoriques de l'art du symbole’, in Miroir et Savoir. La transmission d'un thème platonicien, des Alexandrins à la philosophie arabo-musulmane, ed. D. De Smet et al., Leuven, 2008, pp. 117–43, which contains useful comments on the political uses of the poetic syllogism.

  80. Arabic: Averrois Cordubensis Compendia librorum Aristotelis qui Parva naturalia vocantur, ed. H. Blumberg, Cambridge, 1972, p. 69; English: Averroes, Epitome of Parva Naturalia, transl. H. Blumberg, Cambridge, 1961, p. 41; Averroes further discusses the ‘imitations present in visions’ (‘al-muḥākāt allati yakūn fī al-ru'yā’), Arabic p. 85, English p. 49. Cf. Avicenna's account of prophetic representation as tamthīl in Avicenna's De Anima (n. 61 above), pp. 170–3.

  81. See the comments in the important study of H. Kahana-Smilansky, ‘The Mental Faculties and the Psychology of Sleep and Dreams’, in Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures, ed. G. Freudenthal, Cambridge, 2012, pp. 230–54 (243–4).

  82. See, e.g. Al-Farabi's discussion of al-tamthīl in his Kitāb al-Khaṭāba, in Deux ouvrages inédits sur la rhétorique, ed. J. Langhade and M. Grignaschi, Beirut, 1971, pp. 118–21, as well as al-Jurjānī's account of tamthīl in ch. 14 of Asrār Al-Balāgha (n. 36 above), p. 221, where, crucially, tamthīl is related to an intellectual ('aqlī) similarity between terms. For a prophetological account of mathal, see the chapter ‘Fī bāb al-mathal wa-l-m'anā’ [‘Concerning Parable and Meaning’] in the Arabic-English edition of al-Rāzī, A'lām al-nubūwwa [The Proofs of Prophecy], ed. and transl. T. Khalidi, Provo, 2011, pp. 77–86.

  83. "Maimonides, Dalālat al-ḥā'irīn (n. 60 above), II, pp. 99–100, (II.47); Guide (n. 60 above), II, pp. 407–8.

  84. Al-Farabi on the Perfect State, (n. 53 above), pp. 278–9.

  85. Averroës' Three Short Commentaries (n. 27 above), p. 203.3–5; English tr., p. 83. The pure pleasure elicited by poetry is not discussed here but forms a central part of Harb, Arabic Poetics (n. 23 above).

  86. See O. L. Lizzini, ‘Le théologico-politique à la lumière de la philosophie. Prophète, Khalīfa et espèce humaine selon Avicenne’, in Le théologico-politique au Moyen Âge, ed. D. Poirel, Paris, 2020, pp. 75–82 (80): ‘La nécessité de la prophétie est donc politique et finalement métaphysique’.

  87. M. Sebti, ‘La dimension éthique et politique de la révélation prophétique chez les falāsifa’, in Presence of the Prophet in Early Modern and Contemporary Islam, I: The Prophet Between Doctrine, Literature and Arts: Historical Legacies and Their Unfolding, ed. D. Gril et al., Leiden and Boston, 2022, pp. 327–48.

  88. As Janssens notes in ‘Al-Farabi: La religion comme imitation’ (n. 51 above), p. 511.

  89. AH, pp. 46–7 (§57–9).

  90. E.g. Philosophy of Plato (n. 40 above), p. 60 (§22); Al-Farabi on the Perfect State (n. 53 above), pp. 277–86. On Al-Farabi's political philosophy, see M. Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy, Chicago, 2001, as well as F. Stella, Politica e conoscenza nella filosofia di al-Farabi, Canterano, 2016.

  91. See O. L. Lizzini, ‘L' Epistola sulle divisioni delle scienze intellettuali di Avicenna: alcune note sulla definizione e la collocazione della profetologia e della psicologia’, in 'Ad Ingenii Acuitionem’. Studies in Honour of Alfonso Maierù, Louvain-la-Neuve, 2006, pp. 221–48, esp. 227, where that organization is laid out.

  92. Translation in Medieval Political Philosophy (n. 8 above), pp. 95–7.

  93. For the importance of this encounter for Strauss, see H. Meier's foreword to Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften (n. 64 above), pp. IX–XVI (XVIII). For an English translation of the foreword see H. Meier, ‘How Strauss became Strauss’, in Reorientation: Leo Strauss in the 1930s, ed. M. Yaffe and R. Ruderman, New York, 2014, pp. 13–32 (17). For another example of the importance of the genre of the classification of sciences, see Strauss's ‘Maimonides' Statement on Political Science’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 22, 1953, pp. 115–30, repr. in What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies, New York, 1959, as well as H. A. Wolfson, ‘The Classification of Sciences in Medieval Jewish Philosophy’, Hebrew Union College Jubilee Volume, Cincinatti: 1925, pp. 263–315, and id., ‘Note on Maimondes' Classification of the Sciences’, Jewish Quarterly Review, 26, 1936, pp. 369–77, both repr. in id., Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, ed. I. Twersky and G. H. Williams, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1973–7, I, pp. 493–545 and 551–60.

  94. See C. Connelly, ‘New Evidence for the Source of Al-Fārābī's Philosophy of Plato’, in A New Work by Apuleius: The Lost Third Book of De Platone, ed. J. Stover, Oxford, 2016, pp. 183–97; S. Harvey, ‘Did Alfarabi Read Plato's Laws?’, Medioevo, 27, 2003, pp. 51–68; and D. Gutas, ‘Fārābī's Knowledge of Plato's Laws’, The International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 4.3, 1998, pp. 405–11.

  95. Strauss cites it in Philosophie und Gesetz (n. 64 above), p. 103 n. 39.

  96. See O. L. Lizzini and J.-B. Brenet's excellent edition with Arabic text, French translation, critical introduction and copious notes: Avicenne (?), Épître sur les prophéties, Paris, 2018. It is translated into English as ‘On the Proof of Prophecies and the Interpretation of the Prophet's Symbols and Metaphors’, in Medieval Political Philosophy (n. 8 above), pp. 112–21.

  97. Épître, 99/ On the Proof, 116.

  98. Arabic text in ‘Le sommaire du livre des ‘Lois’ de Platon (Ǧawāmi̒ Kitāb al-Nawāmīs li-Aflāṭūn) par Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī’, ed. and transl. T.-A. Druart, Bulletin d’Études Orientales 50 (1998): pp. 109–55 (125); English translation as ‘Summary of Plato's Laws’, in Al-Farabi, Political Writings (n. 38 above), pp. 129–74 (130–1). Cf. the similar comments on Plato and allegories (amthāl) in al-Rāzī, A'lām al-nubūwwa (n. 82 above).

  99. Cf. Strauss's essay ‘How Fārābī read Plato's Laws’, in Mélanges Louis Massignon, Damascus, 1957, repr. in id., What Is Political Philosophy? (n. 93 above), pp. 134–54.

  100. Cf. Lizzini's perspicacious comment in ead., ‘Le théologico-politique’ (n. 86 above), p. 82: ‘Cette communication symbolique a d'ailleurs une conséquence précise pour la recherche philosophique: le prophète s'adresse non seulement à ceux qui se contentent de la vérité du symbole, mais aussi à ceux qui dépassent—et doivent dépasser—cette même vérité: les philosophes qui «détectent» les symboles et en comprennent la vérité secrète’.

  101. For the intellectual tradition out of which Maimonides's work emerges, see The Trias of Maimonides: Jewish, Arabic and Ancient Culture of Knowledge, ed. G. Tamer, Berlin and New York, 2005.

  102. Maimonides, Dalālat (n. 60 above) (I.17), I, pp. 23–4; Guide (n. 60 above), pp. 42–3.

  103. Further studies of esotericism worth consulting include M. Halbertal, Esotericism in Jewish Thought and its Philosophical Implications: Concealment and Revelation, transl. J. Feldman, Princeton, 2007, and A. Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing, Chicago, 2014.

  104. Leo Strauss, ‘Quelques remarques sur la science politique de Maïmonide et de Fârâbî’, in id., Gesammelte Schriften (n. 64 above), II, pp. 125–58 (152). The inception and afterlife of Strauss's original views on Al-Farabi have been studied by S. Harvey, ‘Leo Strauss's Developing Interest in Alfarabi and Its Reverberations in the Study of Medieval Islamic Philosophy’, in The Pilgrimage of Philosophy: A Festschrift for Charles E. Butterworth, ed. R. M. Paddags et al., South Bend, 2019, pp. 60–83. Gutas has strongly criticized Strauss's position in a now well-known essay: ‘The Study of Arabic Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: An Essay on the Historiography of Arabic Philosophy’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 29, 2002, pp. 5–25. Gutas's article was subsequently reprinted with a postscript, which addressed the essay's critics; see ‘On the Historiography of Arabic Philosophy. Postscript 2017’, in La philosophie arabe à l'étude: sens, limites et défis d'une discipline moderne, ed. J.-B. Brenet and O. L. Lizzini, Paris, 2019, pp. 37–46. For an overview of these debates, see Namazi, Leo Strauss (n. 7 above), pp. 22–41. Note, however, Gutas's own comments (largely complementary to Strauss's) on the relationship between Greek and Islamic attitudes towards the communication of knowledge, in D. Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, Leiden and New York, 1988, pp. 261–5, something also noted by F. Stella, ‘L'illuminismo esoterico religioso medievale. Leo Strauss interprete di al-Farabi’, in Doctor Virtualis, 13, 2015, pp. 119–33.

  105. See Leo Strauss, ‘The Literary Character of The Guide of the Perplexed’, in Persecution and the Art of Writing, Glencoe, 1952, pp. 38–94; repr. in Leo Strauss on Maimonides: The Complete Writings, ed. K. H. Green, Chicago, 2013, pp. 341–98 (in what follows, I cite from Green's reprint). Arguably the best account of how the discovery of esotericism emerged out of prophetology is offered by Tanguay, Leo Strauss (n. 6 above), pp. 49–98, esp. 68–9.

  106. While many believe that Strauss has exaggerated or overemphasized the extent of such concealments, few today would claim that they are totally absent. See, e.g. W. Z. Harvey, ‘How Leo Strauss Paralyzed the Study of the Guide of the Perplexed in the Twentieth Century’ (Hebrew), Iyyun, 50, 2001, pp. 387–96, and the English abstract in Iyyun, 51, 2002, pp. 107–8; id., ‘Les nœuds du Guide des égarés: une critique de la lecture politique de Leo Strauss’, in Lumières médiévales, ed. G. Roux, Paris, 2009, pp. 163–76, and id., ‘How to Begin to Study Strauss's “How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed”’, in Interpreting Maimonides: Critical Essays, ed. C. Manekin and D. Davies, Cambridge, 2018, pp. 228–46. My interest in Strauss here lies far more in his identification (apropos of prophecy) of the link between the imaginative faculty and the art of writing, than a) in identifying how strictly separate the esoteric and exoteric levels are or b) in what exactly in the philosophers studied should be understood esoterically or exoterically.

  107. The desideratum expressed in Heinrichs's entry on Takhyīl in EI2—‘Whether logical poetics was also used to generate ‘poetic’ texts rather than characterise existing ones needs further investigation’—has in many respects been met by the excellent works of S. Stroumsa, ‘Avicenna's Philosophical Stories: Aristotle's Poetics Reinterpreted’, Arabica, 39.2, 1992, pp. 183–206; P. Heath, Allegory and Philosophy in Avicenna, Philadelphia, 1992; and A. Hughes, The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought, Bloomington, 2004. Cf. J. Morris's claim that these ‘esoteric treatises ... successfully imitated ... prophetic speeches’ in id., ‘The Philosopher-Prophet in Avicenna's Political Philosophy’, in The Political Aspects of Islamic Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Muhsin S. Mahdi, ed. C. E. Butterworth, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 152–98 (165).

  108. Kitāb al-muḥāḍara (n. 77 above), p. 146. Cf. M Cohen, Opening the Gates of Interpretation: Maimonides' Biblical Hermeneutics in Light of his Geonic-Andalusian Heritage and Muslim Milieu, Leiden, 2011, p. 202: ‘The third factor, concealment, reflects a distinct (though related) aspect of Greco-Arabic literary thinking, namely the notion of the parable as a genre used by ancient authors to hide deep philosophical concepts from the masses—as noted by Moses Ibn Ezra as well’; and, ibid., p. 111: ‘It is worth noting the parallels between [Maimonides's] discussion of this genre [i.e., mashal – PM] and Moses Ibn Ezra’s chapter devoted to esoteric writing in his Book of Discussion and Conversation ... ’. See further id., Three Approaches (above n. 78) for the most thoroughgoing discussion of mashal.

  109. See, e.g. the important study of J. Stern, ‘The Maimonidean Parable, the Arabic Poetics, and the Garden of Eden’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 33, 2009, pp. 209-47, and the more recent work in D. L. Roberts-Zauderer, Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought: Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides, and Shem Tov Falquera, Cham, 2019. Stern, developing his theses at greater length in The Matter and Form of Maimonides' 'Guide', Cambridge, 2013, dispassionately notes how literary strategies of concealment and illustration, rather than operating on a strict esoteric/exoteric dichotomy, are part of an intricate, dialogic attempt to present certain intractable theoretical problems in the Guide. See the similar comments in I. Gruenwald, ‘Maimonides' Quest beyond Philosophy and Prophecy’, in Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies, ed. J. Kramer, Oxford, 2020, pp. 141–57, which also doubles as an intelligent discussion of Maimonides's theory of prophecy. For a similar understanding (of the dialectical relationship between levels of meaning) with respect to Al-Farabi's work, see M. Galston, Politics and Excellence: The Political Philosophy of Alfarabi, Princeton, 1990, esp. pp. 22–54 (ch. 1: ‘Alfarabi's Method of Writing’).

  110. Maimonides, Dalālat al-ḥā'irīn (n. 60 above), I, pp. 37–8 (I.33), Guide (n. 60 above), p. 71.

  111. Maimonides, Dalālat al-ḥā'irīn (n. 60 above), II, pp. 99–100, Guide, p. 407 (II.47).

  112. Strauss, ‘The Literary Character’ (n. 105 above), pp. 394–5.

  113. Ibid., p. 370.

  114. Cf. W. Harvey's comment: ‘One of the wonderful characteristics of allegory is that it can be used either to conceal or to reveal’, in ‘On Maimondes' Allegorical Readings of Scripture’, in Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period, ed. J. Whitman, Leiden and Boston 2000, pp. 181–8 (186).

  115. If the concealment of intelligible truth through representation is situated at one extreme, then the impossibility of access to intelligible truth without imagination represents the opposite pole, one intimately related to questions of aniconism; see E. R. Wolfson's magisterial Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism, Princeton, 1994, as well as G. Stone in ‘Dante and the “Falasifa”: Religion as Imagination’, Dante Studies, 125, 2007, pp. 133–56, in which the Latin transmission of these theories of the poetics of prophecy and reception in discourses both philosophical and literary is addressed.

  116. There is a trajectory of sorts within Strauss's own work, which has been reconstructed in D. Janssens, Between Athens and Jerusalem: Philosophy, Prophecy and Politics in Leo Strauss's Early Thought, Albany, 2008.

  117. See his letter of 30 Nov. 1933 to Cyrus Adler: ‘This research...led me from Maimonides to Islamic philosophers, of whom I studied several in Arabic manuscripts–and made me realize that the connection between medieval Jewish and Islamic teaching on prophecy and Plato's Statesman and Laws has not yet been thoroughly evaluated’. Cited in H. Korth, Guide to the Leo Strauss Papers, Chicago, 1978, p. 5. See his near-identical comments in ‘A Giving of Accounts’, in Leo Strauss, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, Albany, 1997, pp. 457–66 (463).

  118. Cf. A. Momigliano's comment that '[Strauss] has proceeded from medieval thought to classical thought, not with the intention of rediscovering the modernity of the classics but of drawing inspiration from their example in order to fight the moderns', in 'Hermeneutics and Classical Political Thought in Leo Strauss', in id., Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism, Chicago, 1994, pp. 178–89 (188).

  119. This process of cultural transfer does not remain limited to the medieval period. Indeed, in the 20th-century scholarly milieu out of which Strauss's work emerged, there are complex dynamics of cultural reception that have been investigated by S. Heschel in her ‘German Jewish Scholarship on Islam as a Tool for De-Orientalizing Judaism’, New German Critique, 117, 2012, pp. 91–107, and ead., ‘Constructions of Jewish Identity through Reflections on Islam’, in Faithful Narratives: Historians, Religions, and the Challenge of Objectivity, ed. A. Sterk and N. Caputo, Ithaca, 2014, pp. 169–84. See also Encountering the Medieval in Modern Jewish Thought, ed. J. Diamond and A. Hughes, Leiden and Boston, 2012.

  120. See Medieval Jewish Philosophy and its Literary Forms, ed. A. Hughes and J. Robinson, Bloomington, 2019.

  121. Rémi Brague has authored some intriguing contributions to these questions. See his ‘Athènes, Jérusalem, La Mecque: L'interprétation 'musulmane' de la philosophie grecque chez Leo Strauss’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 94.3, 1989, pp. 309–36, and id., ‘Leo Strauss et Maïmonide’ in Maimonides and Philosophy: Papers Presented at the Sixth Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, May 1985, ed. S. Pines and Y. Yovel, Dordrecht and Boston, 1986, pp. 246–68, in which he notes, p. 258, apropos of Strauss and Maimonides: ‘Il s'agit de faire de la religion une fiction, au sens juridique du term ... ‘.

  122. Upon the publication of his Spinoza's Critique of Religion, New York, 1965, which originally was published in German in 1930, Strauss appended a foreword in which he wrote, p. 1: ‘This study on Spinoza's Theologico-political Treatise was written during the years 1925–28 in Germany. The author was a young Jew born and raised in Germany who found himself in the grip of the theologico-political predicament’. On the nature of this predicament, see Janssens, Between Athens and Jerusalem (n. 116 above), pp. 1–30.

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Thanks to Alan Itkin, Joe Mansky and Jay Reed, who helped to co-organize the 2021 MLA working group on enargeia where this paper originated; thanks to Lara Harb who offered a generous response at Princeton's Islamic Studies Colloquium in the same year; and thanks finally to Lina Jammal and the IJCT peer reviewers for their manifold comments from which this paper has benefited immeasurably.

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Makhlouf, P. Prophecy Between Poetics and Politics from Al-Farabi to Leo Strauss. Int class trad 31, 1–29 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-022-00632-8

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