Logic in the Arabic and Islamic World

Abstract

The Arabic logical tradition emerged from the Graeco-Arabic translation movement from the eighth to the tenth centuries. In its initial stages, it was closely linked to the activity of translating and commenting upon Aristotle’s Organon. By the early tenth century, a circle of Aristotelian scholars had emerged in Baghdad who saw themselves as a continuation of the Alexandrian tradition. Its most prominent representative was undoubtedly Al-Fārābī (d. 950), who wrote esteemed commentaries on Aristotle’s logical works, as well as a number of treatises introducing logic (manṭiq) to an environment that often viewed the Greek sciences with suspicion. The influence of the Baghdad circle eventually reached Islamic Spain, where Aristotelian philosophy and logic flourished in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, culminating in the monumental commentaries on Aristotle by Averroes (d. 1198). In other parts of the Islamic world, however, the influence emanating from Avicenna (d. 1037) eventually superseded that of Aristotle. Avicenna was less concerned with getting the interpretation of Aristotle right and more willing to make radical departures from the Aristotelian tradition. By the thirteenth century, his works had replaced those of Aristotle as the point of reference for most logicians writing in Arabic. The prominent theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) approached the Avicennian tradition with the same irreverence with which Avicenna had himself approached the Aristotelian tradition. He also decisively reoriented the scope of logic toward a focused study of terms, propositions, and syllogisms, rather than the entirety of topics covered in the Organon. A number of thirteenth-century logicians working in the wake of Avicenna and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī produced sophisticated and original summas of formal logic. They also produced a number of condensed handbooks that formed the basis of logical studies at colleges throughout the Islamic world until modern times.