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An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines

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This book is for those with "higher" education. Professor Nasr quotes frequently directly from the French, often from the Arabic and occasionally from the German. Without at least passive understanding of French one would miss out on some important information.

In a way the book shows a descent from the Brethren of Purity through Al-Biruni to Ibn Sina. Professor Nasr has faithfully treated an often complex and difficult subject matter without over-simplification but also without getting lost, using Tawhid as a compass.

There are, however, some underlying basic issues that Professor Nasr might have dealt with in more depth. The first one is the symbolic nature of what is called the "physical universe", even more apparent since the middle ages. Without any apologetics, Professor Nasr could compare say Ibn Sina's Weltanschauung with the post-Keplerian or even post-Einsteinian from a pure traditional perspective.

Another welcome topic would have been an interweaving of the development of Islamic cosmology with the cyclical descent of the Iron Age, also known as Kali Yuga. Humans of the Golden Age needed no revealed Books. In this sense, although the traditions with revealed Books, the Islamic tradition being the last of them, close the cycle, they also mark its lowest spiral.

Thus, Professor Nasr seems to lose sight a bit of the Primordial Tradition in favour of the Islamic one but the latter, of course, is the subject matter of the book.

For those interested in profound approaches to the subject of cosmology, an excellent complement to Professor Nasr's work may be found in:

Miscellanea (Guenon, Rene. Works.)

in particular the article entitled "The Conditions of Corporeal Existence" beginning on page 88. Readers should bear in mind that this English version is a translation from the French original.

In his preface to this book Professor H. A. R. Gibb says that it puts forward a comparatively uninvestigated and hence unfamiliar view of Islam, about which a majority of modern Muslim rationalists would doubtless say that it is alien to the real Islam: but this is a mistaken view. In point of fact S. Hossein Nasr has successfully shown that the cosmological doctrines in question, which were developed during the period from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, are neither mere Hellenistic heirlooms outwardly adapted to the Islamic faith nor yet first gropings in the direction of the modern natural sciences and therefore now only fit to be dismissed as obsolete and decrepit. What chiefly comes to light in these doctrines is a spiritually based view of the Universe, one which always endeavours to see the whole in the part because from the point of view of these doctrines the Universe itself amounts ultimately to a reflection of the divine Unity. Cosmology in the true sense of the word moreover can only be that and nothing but that. When one comes to think of it, this is true of the real basis of every science, since even modern natural science, which considers itself to be agnostic, tacitly assumes the existence of a necessary relationship between the laws of the Spirit and those ruling over Nature, failing which there could be no such thing as truth at all. However, modern science takes no notice of this assumption, as if once and for all it had relieved the Cartesian division of reality into "spirit" and "matter" of any further concern for whatever goes beyond matter, whereas the Islamic as well as the Christian cosmology sees through the different levels of reality, as it were, with the result that the quantity of things matters less in its eyes than their quality; and likewise the actual course of natural events signifies less than their permanent archetypes. This also explains why the mode of expression in mediaeval cosmology often baffles the modern reader: he considers it "naive" when really it is profound in its preference for symbols over definitions, and bottomlessly "abstract" when it is merely indicating things which we cannot grasp with our two hands. Mediaeval cosmology can in fact sometimes be described as naive, for how can this be otherwise when it is a question of human thinking? It is never naive however in its essential features. S. Hossein Nasr develops all this exhaustively by means of three celebrated examples: firstly, the Rasā'il (epistles) of the Ikhwān as-Safā, the "Brethren of Purity," an encyclopedia which was published about the year 1,000 by a group of scholars from the region of Basra; secondly, the cosmographical works of al-Bīrūnī (973-1051), the great Persian astronomer and indologist; thirdly, the cosmology of Ibn Sīnā (980-1037), known as Avicenna in Latin, which was also of decisive importance for the development of Christian cosmology: one says "was," yet it could still have this importance to-day in the sense that even modern natural science could find invaluable suggestions within the scheme of ancient cosmology, wherever it is compelled to reach out beyond what can be weighed and counted, as for example in the sphere of psychology or psycho-somatic medicine.

Writing the most Islamic tradition and examines the classical Islamic cosmology and shows how Ikhwan ,al Biruni combined teaching the Quran

Writing the most Islamic tradition and examines the classical Islamic cosmology and shows how Ikhwan ,al Biruni combined teaching the Quran