ARABAH (Hebrew “waste land and uninhabited territory”: as a common noun it is frequent in Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah). — Biblical geographical name (with the article: ha-’árābhāh, or in the plural: ’arbhōth). It designates (in opposition to “the mountain” har, to the “lowland” şēfālāh, to the “south” nēgēbh: Isa 11:16; 12:8) the depression (or stretches of it) extending from the south of Hermon to the Elanitic Gulf (e.g., Isa 8:14; 11:2; 16; 12:1; 3:8; 18:18) along the valley of the Jordan, the Dead Sea, and from there to the Red Sea. Precisely this last stretch (never mentioned in the Bible) is today called wādī el-’Arabah, “valley of the A.”
The present A. is the desert depression that extends for 180 km from the oasis of Ghor es-Safieh on the Dead Sea to the oasis of ’Aqabah on the Red Sea (Elanitic Gulf). It is divided into three successive valleys, today called (from north to south) Wadi el-Ghaib, W. el-Ghamr, and W. el-Gharafi. It is flanked
ARAB PHILOSOPHY. — The Arabs regarded as a *faylasūf*, i.e., a philosopher in the strict sense, not every thinker but only those who concerned themselves with Greek thought and consequently followed in their doctrines of logic, physics, psychology, metaphysics, etc., Greek philosophy, and precisely the philosophy of Aristotle, so that the term “philosopher” became synonymous with a Hellenizing, Aristotelian, and in part also Neoplatonic thinker, since Aristotle was not altogether unknown to the Arabs, although in Neoplatonic guise. Since Greek thought was entirely foreign to the Arab mentality, philosophers were always regarded as alien to the Arab spirit, purveyors of novelty, almost pagans, and thus were always suspect to orthodox theologians. The Arabs, indeed, always held philosophy in high esteem, but Islamic orthodoxy was distrustful of philosophers, some of whom were even persecuted for doctrines entirely irreconcilable with the Muslim faith.
Arab philosophy did not arise among the Arabs themselves from modest indigenous beginnings; it was brought to them already nearly complete, and in its development it did not always depend on the speculative needs of individual philosophers, but its course was often determined by the introduction of new Greek sources into the philosophical life of the time. The introduction of Greek philosophy into Arab culture continued throughout the four centuries of its duration, from 800 to 1200, when it died out completely after the disappearance of Averroes.
Greek philosophy reached the Arabs from the Byzantine Empire in the form that Aristotelianism had assumed in the Byzantine schools, in close connection with Neoplatonism, to which not a few of the commentators of the Stagirite adhered. The Arabs knew Aristotle always through Neoplatonic commentaries, hence in Neoplatonic guise. This circumstance decisively shaped Arab philosophy, giving rise to the Neoplatonic Aristotelianism of the Arabs, a current to which all Arab philosophers adhered, including Averroes, who was the most Aristotelian among them. Some Greek works translated into Arabic reinforced the close union between Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism: the *Liber de causis*, regarded as a genuine work of the Stagirite, contains literal extracts from the *Institutio Theologica* of the Neoplatonist Proclus, and was composed in Arabic by a Muslim author around the year 850; the *Theology of Aristotle*, composed in Greek, contains extracts from the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of the *Enneads* of Plotinus and was translated from Greek into Arabic by a Christian scholar.
We do not know whether Arab philosophers read in translation any of the dialogues of Aristotle, of the earlier Aristotle, closer to Platonic ideas, than the later Aristotle, so well known to Arab philosophers. Through the Neoplatonic commentaries and the two works mentioned, Neoplatonism entered the current of Arab thought, becoming an integral element of II. Arab philosophy can therefore be defined as: Aristotelianism plus certain Platonic currents in Neoplatonic guise.
The Arabs knew Aristotelian doctrines through Arabic translations, since none of the great Arab philosophers had knowledge of the Greek language. Some writings of Plato were also translated. Of pre-Socratic philosophy the Arabs had a certain knowledge through Aristotle himself and the references in the commentaries of the Stagirite. Atomism was particularly well known to the Arabs. The translators of Greek works were for the most part Christian scholars of Syriac tongue, who first translated into Arabic the versions previously made from Greek into Syriac; only later did they execute translations directly from the Greek texts. Such Syriac-Arabic and Greek-Arabic versions embraced, besides philosophy, the other sciences and the Byzantine Greek encyclopedia.
The period of translations begins around the year 800 and extends to 1000. The translations are mostly literal and not always accurate, both because of the poor condition of the manuscripts and because of the double passage from Greek to Syriac and from Syriac to Arabic. Sometimes the translator summarizes the text; or some chapters are translated literally while others are simply summarized. Among others, mention must be made of the Syriac Christian Hunayn ibn Ishaq, who together with his son and a nephew rendered great service to Arab science with numerous translations of Greek and Syriac texts. Later, however, reliance on versions from the Syriac text was no longer sufficient, and new translations of the same texts were made, so that Averroes was sometimes able to compare two versions of the same passage and thus be in a position to give a more secure explanation of Aristotle’s thought. The Syriac versions and Syriac philosophy, which have also preserved writings lost in the original Greek but known to the Arabs through Syriac versions, were thus the intermediaries between Greek thought and that of the Arabs and promoted the spread of Greek philosophy in the East, which through Sicily and Spain returned again to the continent of origin; indeed, not a few Arab philosophical works were treated in Latin, either directly or indirectly through oral versions in Castilian, or through versions in Hebrew made by Jews. In this way Arab philosophy exercised an important influence on Latin scholastic speculation in the Middle Ages, and the names of the major Arab philosophers—Al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Avicenna, al-Ghazali, Ibn Bajjah, Ibn Tufayl, and Averroes—became familiar to Latin philosophers. It is for this reason that knowledge of Arab philosophy is always of great help for an adequate understanding of medieval philosophy.
Among the Arabs, philosophy was not viewed with sympathy by the more rigid orthodoxy, because of the open contrast it entailed with the fundamental concepts of the Islamic religion. Philosophy was seen as a product of pagan and foreign mentality; it was reproached for distracting minds from religion and for seeking to replace sacred science, and ultimately temporal knowledge, with profane science, and in the last analysis with temporal knowledge, which cannot be other than religious knowledge. Some philosophers were therefore persecuted. Nevertheless, a part of Greek philosophy, above all logic, penetrated the theological works of Muslim doctors themselves; indeed, Aristotelianism became almost the basis of the Islamic religious system. Philosophy, however, ultimately succumbed before orthodoxy, and it can therefore be said that after 1200 there was almost no more philosophy among the Arabs.
Yet the doctrines of one of the greatest Arab philosophers, AVERROÈS, contributed to directing European rationalistic speculative thought in an entirely opposite direction, namely toward the doctrine that philosophy is superior to religion and absorbs it within its rational reflection. A deep and tenacious opponent of this conception and, in general, of Greek philosophical doctrines among the Arabs was ALGAZEL, who, however, was ultimately compelled to make use of philosophy himself, precisely in order to refute it from a religious standpoint. Naturally, ALGAZEL was opposed by AVERROÈS, who, in refutation of the *Destruccio philosophiae* of the Muslim theologian, wrote his famous *Destruccio destructionis*.
The originality of the Arab philosophers lies in their effort to reconcile Greek philosophical doctrines—first and foremost those of ARISTOTLE—with the religious and theological concepts of the Qur’an, always giving primacy, however, to philosophy and seeking to devalue religion, regarded as an inferior type of knowledge compared to philosophy, the only one that provides true knowledge of reality. The problem of reconciling philosophy with religion was resolved on the basis of this premise; each philosopher then resolved it according to his own mentality, learning, and temperament. Within this reconciliation, the speculative faculty of the philosophers was exercised, whereas in other fields of philosophy the variations are of lesser importance and more due to external contributions of new doctrines than to inner spiritual travail. It can therefore be affirmed that Arab philosophy does not represent an epoch of original spiritual fervor.
The Arab philosophers were almost all systematic and encyclopedic. Following especially ARISTOTLE, they attempted grand philosophical systems embracing all fields of knowledge. In this respect, however, they did not know the genuine ARISTOTLE but only that of the commentators. They were also influenced by the encyclopedic and systematic philosopher and commentator JOHN PHILOPONUS, known to the Arabs through several of his writings and his numerous and voluminous commentaries. The encyclopedic character of Arab culture contributed to the emergence within it of personalities renowned in other branches of learning as well: AVICENNA was a famous physician, well known even in Western medicine.
Not all of the Aristotelian doctrines of the Arab philosophers can be traced back to the writings of the Stagirite. This is due to the fact that they always drew from the Greek commentaries on ARISTOTLE and thus often accepted doctrines deduced by the commentators from the Aristotelian text and from Greek works of the philosopher that are now lost, especially from those of his early period. The problem of universals, for example—which also preoccupied the minds of the Arab philosophers as well as those of Latin scholasticism—they derived from the Greek commentators.
Some Christian and Jewish philosophers also wrote in Arabic; ALFARABI was of Turkish nationality, and AVICENNA was certainly of Persian origin; AVEMPACE was probably not of Arab origin.
The language in which these philosophers expressed their thought is a highly suitable instrument for conveying the abstract concepts of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophies. Arabic easily renders any philosophical concept. Its facility in forming abstract nouns, even from particles, and the richness of its roots make it a valuable tool for speculative thought. Arab philosophical terminology enriched the vocabulary of Latin scholasticism, since not a few of its terms penetrated, through Latin translations, into medieval philosophy and from there into modern speculation. Some terms, however, underwent such deformations that they became unrecognizable.
The two most illustrious representatives of Arab philosophy are AVICENNA and AVERROÈS, belonging to the two extreme wings of the area of expansion of Arab literature and civilization. AVERROÈS is the pure Aristotelian, who seeks to discover the true doctrine of the Greek master and to explain it, whereas AVICENNA is the type of the encyclopedic philosopher who revives the philosophy of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism and created a grand philosophical system of a type entirely different from the literary-philosophical activity of AVERROÈS, best known to Latin scholasticism above all for his numerous commentaries on the works of the Stagirite.
Arab philosophy was able to exert a great influence on medieval Latin speculation through the numerous translations made of the philosophical writings of the Arabs by Christian and Jewish writers. Translations from Arabic in the field of philosophy were made both in Spain and in Italy. Some of these translations were carried out at the behest of FREDERICK II OF SWABIA. ARISTOTELIANISM presented itself at the threshold of the Western world in the fullness of its doctrines at first under Avicennian and Averroistic guises. AVERROISM (v.) penetrated Europe through Spain and Sicily and had various centers of elaboration and diffusion, the most important of which were Paris and Padua. The last Italian Averroist was IACOPO ZABARELLA (v.), who was a professor at the University of Padua; Arab philosophy thus died out in Italy.