Treatise on Destiny - رسالة القدر ( Risâlet al-Qadr )

Written by Avicenna

This interesting little treatise by Avicenna is one of these mystical texts and enjoys a good reputation , particularly in alchemical circles .

Views of Avicenna on astrology and on the relationship of human responsibility with destiny (1885).

Introduction by the author. Avicenna meets one of his friends who is troubled by philosophical doubts about the traditional doctrine of destiny; sudden appearance of Hay b. Yaqzân.

Returning from the town of Shalambah (1)In Isfahan, Avicenna stopped at a castle belonging to one of his friends, whose soul, troubled by philosophical doubts, regarded dialectics as the sure and only way to arrive at the truth. They began a discussion on destiny, but they only ended in a fruitless quarrel, each persisting in his point of view; his friend doubted the influence of destiny, which seemed to him incompatible with free will and the rewards and punishments which, according to the Koran, are reserved for the actions of men, while Avicenna made every effort to refute him, in the hope of remedying his illness and of somewhat dampening his ardor. Suddenly Avicenna saw the wise old man Hay b. Yaqzân coming from afar; this seemed providential to him, for he hoped that the intervention of this wise man would put an end to the quarrel; for his friend had not been able to reconcile in his thought the doctrine of destiny, as it dominates all our actions, good or bad, serious or frivolous, with the moral responsibility which makes us expect reward and fear punishment. May he be welcome! said he, this Hay b. Yaqzân, to help us in this discussion and bring it to a solution. Then Hay b. Yaqzân, received with all the honors due to him, and initiated into the object of the quarrel, begins by addressing Avicenna, which he finds much changed since the days gone by and deprived of its freshness and vivacity. It is indeed, replies Avicenna, the time which has reached him; he has experienced its vicissitudes until his mind has been strengthened by the understanding of the theoretical and practical doctrine of destiny, for, he says, when analogy proves the truth of a principle and practice supports the analogy, all doubt must be erased, and a complete conviction must enter our hearts; but, he adds, his friend has undergone the influence of Satan in denying destiny; he has consequently been troubled in his soul, because he has lacked the wisdom necessary to find the solution of this question; he has not found the truth, having assimilated God to the creature, and, remaining inaccessible to all admonition, he has been obstinate in his own thoughts. — Avicenna therefore regards this meeting as coming to meet one of his most ardent wishes, and he implores Hay b. Yaqzân, in view of his sagacity and his experience supported here by the help of God, to assume the role of arbiter in this struggle; perhaps the heart of his friend will be brought to repentance, and peace will be restored to him, so that he will not persist in tenaciously clinging to a false doctrine, but abandon it, as soon as the truth illuminates him with the fullness of its light; for passionate strugglers for the truth will always be guided in the right way. Perhaps, after a space of time fixed by Providence, the flower of repentance will open to him; he will abandon the dryness of his reasoning, and his inner struggle will calm down, although he is for the moment reduced to extremity, and the doctor has lost all hope of curing him. In any case, we must come to his aid, even if it were only by virtue of the duty of mutual assistance between friends.

After this introduction, Hav b. Yaqzân takes the floor and, addressing Avicenna, reminds him that God alone is all-powerful, and advises him to be more gentle in his admonitions.

Very gently, my friend! The power and government of spirits do not belong to you, but to him whose wisdom embraced everything before creation, who arranged and combined the contrary elements, who likewise distributed virtues and vices to men. To some he gave heaviness and poverty of spirit, to others vivacity and promptness to grasp intelligible things; to some violence, to others confident perseverance; he shows us the right path and leads us to error; he destines for us happiness and perdition, obedience and obstinacy, gentleness and the spirit of altercation; he knows in advance which party will be the strongest; to him nothing is hidden; he has his orders and decrees carried out; there is nothing that can oppose them. This is why we must yield to destiny; all opposition would only serve to wear out our strength. Therefore, cease your severities towards your friend; do not refute him with violence, but give your advice with gentleness and your reprimands without bitterness; use towards him and his like rather mercy and gentleness, which heal the sick of the soul better than those of the body, and by which you all together will be blessed, and good guidance will be granted to you. It is not to everyone that the continence of Joseph was distributed (2), to whom divine beauty was seen, no more than the chastity of Absal (3), when he was warned by the flash of heavenly light.

Hay b. Yaqzân, addressing the friend of Avicenna, points out that man is determined in his actions, which he nevertheless makes his own, after they have been predestined by the wisdom of God.

And you, my friend, wounded in your soul by promises of reward and threats of punishment, must remember that all this concerns man as his own actions, and not as a being directed and almost determined. If the general welfare formed the basis of belief, man would enter into dispute with us, as we enter into it with him, and he would judge us as we judge him; he would then establish himself a being bearing the name of reason and wisdom, and endowed with the faculty of admitting and defending; consequently, the divine majesty would be exposed to being blamed and to being excused; his initiative and his decree would be subjected to an end, either in accordance with his own motive, or opposed to it, or to an effective cause confirming his design. But how horrible are all his thoughts! The Supreme Being does not question anyone about what he will do, which is evident to the eyes of every person who is profound in the knowledge of God, and initiated into divine things and the mysteries of the supreme wisdom which have been revealed to him. As for the charge which you have entrusted to me, of guiding your friend, much patience must be used in such cases; it is only time and divine assistance which will be able to bring back such a misguided person to the right path, without haste and without that dazzling of the eyes which a too sudden light causes. Let us abandon the present path, which only results in making him suspended in his doubts, where a sure and experienced guide is necessary for a long time, and let us choose another path more convenient and easier, which, if it does not lead us directly to the truth and its contemplation, at least will guide us under its shadow; let us therefore take this surest path to reach our goal.

As for the charge you have entrusted to me, of guiding your friend, much patience must be used in such cases; it is only time and divine assistance that can bring such a misguided person back to the right path, without haste and without that dazzling of the eyes caused by too sudden a light. Let us abandon the present path, which only results in making him suspended in his doubts, where a sure and experienced guide is necessary for a long time, and let us choose another path more convenient and easier, which, if it does not lead us directly to the truth and its contemplation, at least will guide us in its shadow; let us therefore take this surest path to reach our goal.

The majesty of God does not permit us, in order to approach it, to take the road of the lower intelligence, since the divine Creator does not act and is at rest, does not advance and retreat like man for his own interest. By the comparison of his actions with human actions, the expressions will be confused, and deep darkness will envelop you, thicker still than your doubts caused by the reflection on the promises and threats of the reward and punishment of the other life. There will remain for you, in the hope of removing these doubts and of removing this darkness, in fact of an imposed obligation to do good, to excuse the neglect of it, while seeking to escape divine reprimand, only a burden perhaps even heavier than that of your adversary, relating to destiny.

Parable proposed to illustrate the relationship between human freedom and destiny. Man, continually exposed to the attacks of sensual temptations, is not sufficiently guarded by his intellectual faculties; he will have in the end no other resource than to implore the celestial angels destined by God to help him.

If you wish to make a comparison between human actions and those of God, then consider this as the most suitable. Two persons of generous souls intended to raise in a barren desert, infested with brigands and wild animals, and devoid of all resources of nature and of the help of men, but whose crossing was the shortest way to reach the shores of the sea and the ports of communication, an hotel for the comfort of travelers who, after having crossed inaccessible mountains, deep ravines and narrow defiles, hardly accessible to beasts of burden, would find there a safe and well-guarded asylum, gardens, baths, mosques, domes, arcades sheltered against the cold of winter and the heat of summer, wells and canals, with all the possible amenities of travel. Neither of them was actuated by any selfish aim, neither by the hope of gain and praise from his contemporaries, nor by testimonies of gratitude or sympathy; the only thing that distinguished them, consisted in this, that the one was exclusively impelled to complete this work by the innate generosity of the soul, notwithstanding his firm and sure conviction that all would, as usually happens in this world, go against his best intentions; that the castle in the desert, notwithstanding all the warnings given to the surrounding tribes, instead of being an asylum for travellers, would at last become a den of brigands, from which caravans would be attacked and the roads rendered unsafe; that it would be a meeting-place for all the malefactors and debauchees of the country, from whom but a very few honest persons would escape. The other, on the contrary, was convinced of the success of his enterprise, and convinced that he was performing a charitable work, the salutary consequences of which would spread throughout the world by the help of God. — Finally, the castle erected, the fears of the first were realized, while the other persevered in his illusions. Tell me, continues Hay b. Yaqzân, addressing the friend troubled by his ideas concerning destiny, how will your guide of reason, whom you have chosen as supreme judge in the question of human responsibility and destiny, judge these two personages? Perhaps he will accept the excuse of the good intention of the second, because he did not have the power to overcome the difficulties which prevented him from executing his noble design; perhaps he will accuse him of having lacked sagacity in having undertaken a work which ends in becoming the cause of universal troubles and a subject of repentance for himself, since he had not reflected in advance on the consequences of his act. As for the first, his judgment on him leaves no room for doubt; he will be exposed to a host of reproaches, against which he will have no excuse to utter; but nevertheless, which of these two actions is to be assimilated to the action of God,if, however, it is possible to compare the creature with God, and to use for him the qualifications of good and evil, of beautiful and ugly? Would it not be the act of the former insofar as he had, in acting in this way, like God, neither intention, nor aim, nor motive cause?

We see, then, that destiny is the motor of intention and the executor of human action; it is he who, as absolute master, attacks the fragile dwelling of man, by all kinds of artifices [that is to say, the temptations of the sensible world], although the entrance is defended by guardians [that is to say, the intellectual faculties of man]; these assailants have full power to act by all kinds of temptations and means of persuasion, while the defense is entrusted to guardians whose usefulness, however, is not very sure, whose initiative is weak and whose influence often very weak. Salutary thoughts are awakened only by interior voices, which, opposing temptations, drive away the sleep of the unfortunate hesitant, break the envelope of the heart and, by blowing fire into its interior, give hope that it will escape new attacks. But if he hesitates between temptations and admonitions, he will soon be delivered as a prey and sacrificed to his enemies and to perdition. Here is our poor man nailed to his place and subjugated by his passions. He will have no other resource than to address himself only to the tutelary angels, loved by God (4), while the ordinary guardians most frequently refuse to add their assistance. — As to those external and accidental motives which influence the will and human actions, it is generally to be observed, that the imagination as well as the reflection, which provokes thought, are derived from an image in the interior, which always precedes the manifestation of the will. Sometimes this image, which strikes the reflection and awakens it, has its origin in a solid representation, an opinion of lasting force; but sometimes it is a fugitive image, a vague and unsteady breath, deriving from a troubled fancy and too weak, itself, to be retained. The basis of this kind of impressions is usually only a sudden awakening of sensuality or anger, which quickly passes to other sensations provoked by impressions of the same kind, and which are difficult to remember and count. Sometimes we see the flash of a weak will flash after these impressions; but if it were not seconded by other impulses, everything, in truth, would be plunged into torpor, and even if this flash is supposed to be strong enough, the action which results from it, will not exceed that of a dreamer, whose designs are not fixed to anything solid. It is an engine deriving from a spark of fantasy, and extinguishing itself with it, as happens, in a dream, to the sleeper, who, plunged into sleep, is impressed only by a vague and vain image. Just as the latter has not lost sensibility and movement, so thought is accessible to this fleeting flash; it is only the external members which are lulled by sleep, while the interior is awake and reflection is always working, united with the force of desire. Thus man, in general, finds himself between the state of wakefulness and sleep; sometimes it is overexcited by fancy, sometimes by an indecisive opinion, sometimes finally by desire, which, united with the force of intention and seconded by impulses, masters everything at once and produces the movement of action. We therefore consider desire as the principle of all volition and action; but here it must be observed that all human volition and spontaneity has a principle of beginning, which likewise presupposes a real cause, to which the existence of this principle is connected; where this chain does not exist, all causal connection is broken. Sometimes, however, the causal connections are relaxed, and human volitions derive from vague and contradictory motives, which, overcoming all resistance, assail man on all sides and lead him like a piece of cattle tied and deprived of all strength; giving him no respite, they take him away, his tongue rendered mute, unable to call for help, and throw him, filled with horror, into the depths of the abyss. Does this not derive from the vicissitudes of destiny (5)), which lead man away without leaving him the faculty of hearing the admonitions? And if even an objection were presented against our opinion, attributing everything to the will of God, who would be able to fix this will and assimilate it to ours, if not by the name alone, and who, on the other side, would claim that it had its origin in nothing? In any case, only straight and clear paths lead us to the desired goal, without being led astray by thorny and obscure questions. Perhaps those who are guided by divine wisdom will be exempt from this kind of controversy; instructed by it on the will of God, they will defend it against any deviation arising from this opposition. He who renounces taking human intelligence as a guide in the search for truth, goes astray in his confidence of reaching thereby the hospice of security, while the man guided by God, upright and generous, by the elevated and submissive intelligence, will arrive at the final station of his journey. He who prefers the society of the caravan, will not escape except on his mount, but he alone to whom the sanctity of the goal has been manifested, will belong to the travelers who stand on the borders of Islam and salvation (6)).

But let us return from this digression and examine the temptations we have spoken of.

The strength of temptations varies according to their relationship to souls; there is not much difference between the soul carried away by destiny and that which is subjugated by passions. The relationship between human responsibility and destiny is illuminated by a parable. The reward of the other life must not be considered as a salary, but as a free gift of divine grace, and the threats of punishment will be softened and erased by the clemency of God, who knows in advance all that concerns our obedience, or disobedience. Only the crowd wrapped in darkness, full of frivolity and lightness, will be the object to whom divine threats are addressed. We must therefore renounce any comparison made between God, in his promises and threats, and the poor human creature.

The temptations that present themselves to the mind do not act equally on all souls; the degree of affinity existing between them and souls varies constantly; sometimes one soul succumbs, while another overcomes a much stronger temptation; this depends on their diversity of nature, on individual development, on morals, on sagacity or lack of intelligence, on the bold or fearful character. Thus, a motive of sensuality does not captivate the experienced and abstinent man to the same degree as the voluptuous young and frivolous; in the same way, the stimulants coming from anger do not seize the cold temperament as well as the hot, nor the contented man as the despairing; he who is approaching the decline of life is not light as he who is in the flower of youth. Therefore, to given causes are connected other causes, to motives are opposed obstacles, and the steeds of time, in starting their course on the vast hippodrome of the world, are many times turned aside by obstacles and driven in a direction quite opposite to their goal. Sometimes they are suddenly stopped or violently strike an obstacle. From all this it must be concluded that your will is constrained, and that actions follow it; the highest result of your opinion that you could reach would be that your will, if not constrained, should be quasi-constrained, and if the word subjugated were generally used only of an imposed burden, you could equally be considered subjugated or quasi-subjugated. But if you seek an excuse in the omnipotence of God, there is no great difference between the first, the second, and the third steed of the hippodrome, between the invited guest and the one who accompanies the guest; To express the difference, one would find only synonyms. This is the distinction between the constraint caused by fate and that caused by external motives and sensual appetites which seize your free will and master your choice to the point of making it disappear . If the sinner thrown into the abyss by fate is excusable, so is he who has been carried away by his passions, or, in any case, he is almost to the same degree, insofar as both could not have acted otherwise; therefore the generous man would not hesitate to receive their excuses and would cease to reproach them, both the one and the other, the one who has been subjected to fate, as well as the one who has yielded to the temptation of his nature. How could it be otherwise? Will the divine majesty, in truth, carry out the threats of eternal punishment, although God is not comparable to any human being? On the contrary, if you regard God as exalted above all human comparison, where is he who has deprived you of all hope of salvation, and who has sanctioned eternal punishment as a necessity?

As for your opinion on human responsibility and its necessity, it is a question beyond the powers of your reason, but which I will explain to you by a new comparison: A wealthy man, completely independent, and caring neither for praise nor blame, to whom the execution of his orders was no more profitable than disobedience (7)of his servants could not harm him, gathered his family and servants together and gave them this order: Whoever shall clear of this stony ground as much as the measure of a span, shall be paid in gold, diamonds and emeralds, while whoever disobeys my orders, shall be seized and killed after having his eyes gouged out. The servants, some dominated by indolence, others led by their passions, showed themselves disobedient, and although the master had promised the reward in gold and emeralds only as a means of exhortation, and threatened tortures and the cross only to keep them away from evil, he began, in accordance with his true word, to confer the rewards and to impose the punishments. Then he was asked: "Why did you not rather diminish the rewards and mitigate the punishments pronounced on the guilty?" He answered: "After mature reflection, I have determined to increase my benefits and redouble my rewards towards my faithful servant; remembering, after his past misery, my present grace, he will make himself worthy of it by noble intentions and by a high purpose; he will awake from his sleep, and joy will be his portion and not repentance. As it was necessary to excite to good by my promises, it was likewise necessary to inspire fear by my exaggerated threats. Yet, fidelity to my word obliges me to execute both together: to reward the few servants who have been obedient, and to chastise the obstinate, although I knew beforehand what their duties towards me would produce."

Now, after hearing this parable, your reason, which has served as your guide, will probably reproach you for not having reflected enough and for having rushed too quickly, but, perhaps, it will come to repentance and remark: "The excess of the reward will perhaps concern a future action, the reward of which would be a whole mountain of gold and precious stones, and only now must we distinguish between a gift of grace and a remuneration." Finally, if we establish this distinction between remuneration and a gift of grace, would there be here a defect of the proper, or should we therefore depreciate the value of grace? On the contrary, if the aim of the excess of this gift was only to spread everywhere the emulation of good actions, could we suppose greater generosity and a more effective remedy, while the threats of horrible punishments will be far from being carried out, by far exceeding the importance of the situation? Surely you know that the object of these threats will be the ignorant and dark-skinned multitude. "You have sown to all the winds, reap, if you please, and gain - pure loss!" Finally, is our obedience to God, insofar as it merits the reward of the other life, of more value than a grain of sand beside a mountain, or is it more worthy of being taken into consideration than the cramped work of the worker, by the powerful and independent Master of our parable? Would you perhaps expose God to the same reproach as the being obstinate in his actions, blameworthy in his relations, light-minded and stupid? Therefore, abandon this assimilation of the Supreme Being to the creature and do not make him the object of your false opinions and judgments, by establishing impossible analogies between him and man.

Consideration of the omnipotence and omnipotence of God, who followed his own ways in creation, without regard to what appears beautiful or ugly, good or bad, in the eyes of men. He pours out his grace everywhere, without being bound by any obligation.

If beauty and ugliness, good and evil were in the eyes of God what they are in the eyes of men, he would not have created the fearsome lion (8), with dislocated teeth, and crooked legs, whose hunger is satisfied only by eating raw and bloody flesh, not by browsing on herbs and berries; his jaws, his claws, his strong tendons, his imposing neck, his nape, his mane, his ribs and belly, the shape of all his members excite in us astonishment, when we consider that all this is given to him to catch the fugitive cattle, seize them and tear them. Nor would he have created the eagle with hooked claws, with curved beak, with supple and divided wings, his bald skull, his penetrating eyes, his high neck, his legs so robust; and this eagle was not created either to gather berries, or to chew his food and browse on herbs, but to seize and tear his prey. God in creating him did not have the same regard as you for feelings of compassion, nor followed the same principles of intelligence. He did not comply with your advice, which would have been to drive away misfortunes and extinguish the burning flame. In his wisdom, impenetrable to the eyes of our intelligence, he gave his consent, and you would not have the right to demand from him compensation for torn limbs or broken necks. Time makes pains forget, extinguishes vengeance, calms anger and smothers hatred; then, the past is as if it had never existed; afflicting pains and sudden losses are in no way taken into consideration; God makes no distinction between compensation and free gift, between the initiative of his grace and reward; the centuries that pass, the vicissitudes of time erase all causal relationship. Even if a new series of happiness began, man would know nothing of their origin; he would regard them either as compensation for an outrage or a loss, for a failed counsel and an illusion. Scarcely in the course of half a century is it possible for man to speak of restitution and compensation; how could this be in the course of centuries, which will have effaced all the original motions, while others will have already begun to act? Consequently, it is impossible to speak of compensation; God pours out his grace everywhere and has the sole initiative, without being obliged by anything, and without having to discharge any obligation, He who is subject to nothing, and to whom no duty is imposed. - This is the conviction of every man whom he has instructed in his wisdom, and to whom he has communicated his knowledge.

Conclusion of the dissertation. To conclude this discussion on the relationship between human responsibility and destiny, another reason higher than the ordinary would be needed: namely, the supreme intelligence aided by God. However, this dissertation will be able to provide weapons capable of overthrowing the adversary and convincing him that his plea to defend human responsibility is only a useless conversation.

In this exposition of principles, perhaps, you will regard me as a dialectician, coming from the beginning from your school, and then following his own path; - that is why whoever uses the weapons of reason alone is angry at my discourse and seeks to reject what I have advanced; - or as a man who does not know that every opinion can be counterbalanced by another, and that controversy can only be ended by the flash of truth, but, on the contrary, that it is the useless work of struggling against the winds of the desert. Do not take me for such and do not consider it impossible that I could also be the most skillful in launching my arrows towards the target, and the best guide to lead through the errors of an artificial dialectic, to combat the perversity of the doctrine and repel every attack on its part; but it must be observed that all this kind of dispute is useless and ends in nothing, and that the supreme arbiter to whom the decision will belong, is Intelligence, very different from the common reason, which we have made use of up to now; the method to be followed would therefore be quite the opposite. Reason and intelligence are synonymous, but although each of us arrogates to himself either reason or intelligence, and boasts of it, it is only the special and very rare man to whom the divine intelligence provides its aid, by spreading rest in his soul, by dispelling the darkness and by facilitating the distinction between the true and the false appearance; it is only elevated and chosen souls who will arrive at this degree, without being troubled in their speculations, by worldly distractions, by the accidents of time and by the weakness of their thought. But the burden which we have imposed on ourselves, on the basis of reason alone, is very difficult and subject to trouble; it does not lead us to the pure truth and without mixture of darkness; therefore the erring soul is often exposed to repentance, and, if it does not advance with humility, it will never reap good fruits; misled by frivolity and by confidence in its tongue, it will seek in vain the goal, or it will grope as in a sleep, giving itself over to all kinds of hallucinations. Certainly, his adversary, holding to tradition, and attacked by the arguments of common reason, will find the passage encumbered and the escape difficult, but the champion of reason will find himself in an even more precarious situation, from which he will seek to escape as soon as possible, especially if you direct against him some of these arguments that we have used here; then he will begin to give way, with trembling hand and obscured vision, struck by dangerous bites and shaken to the depths of his opinions. Finally, if he gives, after mature reflection, his answer, he will beam with joy and will understand that he has wasted his time in a useless discussion, incapable as he is of drawing sparks from his own flint. Having had neither the key to the door,nor oil in the lamp, nor was he ever gladdened by the shadow of truth, nor refreshed by its fruitful dew, for he never turned to the sublime abode of truth; — he only sought where there was nothing to be found.

Let us now finish, and understand that, in order to reach the goal, we absolutely need help from above. If natural disposition and effort alone were sufficient, everyone would arrogate to themselves the writing of Ibn Moqla (9)and would compose jokes of Nâbigha (10), some of which note the success, others the efforts! In the complication of causes, help from above leads them all astray together, and it is as if a strong rope held them back from the goal which these two persons have attained. Now adapt the analogy of writing and poetry to other subjects of study; observe the limits of your capacity, and then you will arrive at the knowledge of the truth. How true is the adage: " Work always, and each will be favored with the success of everything for which he was created by nature " (11)

This is what happened to me, I am a witness, and " God alone guarantees the word " (12).

Notes by August Mehren

1. On Shalambah, a small canton of Demâvend, 𝕍 Geographical Dictionary of Persia , by Barbier de Meynard, p. 352.

2. The story of Joseph is quite well known. 𝕍 Quran , Sur. XII, v. 23, ss.

3. As for Absâl or Salâmân and Absâl , it is the name of a mystical legend, which was treated by Avicenna and is found in the Index of his writings, composed by Djouzdjânî, although we have searched for it in vain in the manuscripts of Leyden and London. We owe to the famous commentator of the philosophical writings of our author, Naçîr al-Dîn al-Thoûsî, a minute examination of this legend and its various variants; it is found in his commentary on the important work of Avicenna, entitled: Al-Ishârât wa-l-Tanbîhât ; my edition of the last three sections of this treatise, IX namath, p. 10 of the Arabic text and p. 11 of the French translation ( Traités mestiques , IIe Fasc.), Leyden, 1891.

4. Comp. the treatise of Abd al-Razzâq, in the Journ. asiat. , 1873, p. 164, trans. by MS Gujard.

5. Comp. the treatise of Abd al-Razzâq, the, p. 154. 174. 181.

6. In the Arabic text we find the expression of the Koran , Sur. XXII, v 11: ordinarily explained by "at the borders of Islam" (not "at the center").

7. Comp. 'Abd al-Razzaq, the, p. 194.

8. Comp. the same demonstration trick in chaps. XXXIX—XLI of the book of Job.

9. On Ibn Moqla Abou 'Alî Mohammad, born in Baghdad, in 273, died in 32S, of the Heg., 𝕍 Ibu Khaldoûn, Proleg. , trans. by de Slane, t. II, p. 309, n. 5.

10. Al-Nâbigha al-Dhonbyânî, one of the most famous poets before Islam, belongs to the 7th century AD; 𝕍 de Sacy, Chrest. ar. , t. II, p. 410, ss.

11. Tradition of the Prophet; 𝕍 Lisán al-'Arab , t. VII, p. 15S, and the treatise of 'Abd al-Razzâq, lep 148. 193.

12. 𝕍 Cor. , Sour. XII, v. 66.