Abstract
This chapter examines the engagement between seventeenth-century Quaker scholars, twentieth-century Quaker theologian Rufus Jones, and the twelfth-century allegorical text Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (HIY). It argues that HIY was purposely excised from the history of Quaker theological engagement due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the text, which resulted in a complete ignoring of the text by subsequent Quaker theologians, including Rufus Jones. HIY provides an invaluable dialogue partner with Quaker mysticism, which can offer exciting new ways of examining core premises of Quaker mystical theology and practice—human/divine interdependence and the concomitant Quaker balance between contemplative and active mysticism and religious practice—and create opportunities for bringing the different generations of Quaker theology by Robert Barclay and Rufus Jones back into fruitful dialogue.
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Notes
- 1.
Ibn al-Nafīs, The Theologus Autodidactus of Ibn Al-Nafīs, trans., Max Meyerhof and Joseph Schacht (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968).
- 2.
Avner Ben-Zaken Reading Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqzan: a Cross-Cultural History of Autodidacticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).
- 3.
Doyle R. Quiggle, Jr., “Ibn Tufayl’s Ḥayy Ibn Yaqdan in New England: a Spanish-Islamic Tale in Cotton Mather’s Christian Philosopher?” Arizona Quarterly: a Journal of American Literature, Culture and Theory 64, no. 2 (2008): 1–32.
- 4.
Samar Attar, The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment: Ibn Tufayl’s Influence on Modern Western Thought (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007).
- 5.
Nabil I. Matar Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
- 6.
G. A. Russell, The “Arabick” Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 245.
- 7.
See Lawrence I. Conrad, “The World of Ibn Tufayl” in The World of Ibn Ṭufayl, ed. Lawrence Conrad (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), 1–37.
- 8.
Ethyn Williams Kirby, George Keith, 1638–1716 (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1942), 29. It should be noted that Kirby is wildly inaccurate as to the history of Ibn Tufayl’s book.
- 9.
Anne Conway, The Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and Their Friends, 1642–1684, eds. Marjorie Nicolson, Sarah Hutton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 392. See also Antonio Pastor, The Idea of Robinson Crusoe (Watford: Gongora Press, 1930), 191–216.
- 10.
Hourani, George F. “The Principal Subject of Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 15, no. 1 (1956): 40–6.
- 11.
Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, 5th ed. (London: T. Sowle, 1703), 193–194.
- 12.
Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Malik Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Tufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, trans., Lenn Evan Goodman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 163.
- 13.
Avicenna, The Metaphysics of The Healing, trans. Michael E. Marmura (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 2005), 365–6.
- 14.
Ibn Tufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, 165.
- 15.
Barclay, Apology, 193–4.
- 16.
Barclay, Apology, 191.
- 17.
Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Malik Ibn Tufayl, An Account of the Oriental Philosophy, trans. George Keith (London: s.n., 1674), ii.
- 18.
Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 100.
- 19.
John Philip Wragge, The Faith of Robert Barclay (London: Friends Home Service Committee, 1948), 31–4.
- 20.
Keith would later raise a grievance against Barclay, claiming that these “contributions” were more “plagiarism.” See D. Elton Trueblood, Robert Barclay. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 47.
- 21.
Trueblood, Barclay, 67.
- 22.
Trueblood, Barclay, 160–1.
- 23.
It is rather incredible to think that anyone truly considered the book to depict historical reality. The first mention of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān in the British Academic context calls it a “piece of Arabick Fiction.” The most popular English translation, that of Simon Ockley, published in 1708, contains a letter from the bookseller, Edmund Powell, to the reader, wherein he makes it clear that he understands the book to be a work of fiction. See Ibn Tufayl, The Improvement of Human Reason exhibited in the life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan, trans., Simon Ockley (London: Edm. Powell, J. Morphew, 1708), ix. It seems, then, that the translators and early advocates of the Andalusian allegory were aware of its fictive nature, but the ambiguous language and “Enthusiastick Notions” used in “Advertisements” by Pococke, Keith and the Anglican Naturalist George Ashwell may have misled the general populace to think that Ḥayy actually lived for 49 years on a desert island.
- 24.
Trueblood, Barclay, 160–1.
- 25.
Ibn Tufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, 107.
- 26.
Ibn Tufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, 150.
- 27.
Ibn Tufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, 165.
- 28.
Rufus Jones, Social Law in the Spiritual World: Studies in Human and Divine Inter-Relationship (Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Co., 1904), 165.
- 29.
Rufus Jones, “Introduction,” in The Second Period of Quakerism, by William C. Braithwaite (xxiv–xlvii). (London: Macmillan and Co., 1919), xxxiii.
- 30.
Jones, Social Law in the Spiritual World, 174.
- 31.
Jones, Social Law in the Spiritual World, 175.
- 32.
F.B. Tolles, “Quietism versus Enthusiasm: The Philadelphia Quakers and the Great Awakening,” in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 69, 26–49.
- 33.
John Punshon, Patterns of Change: The Quaker Experience and the Challenges of the Contemporary World (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1987).
- 34.
Elaine Pryce “‘Negative to a Marked Degree” or ‘An Intense and Glowing Faith’?: Rufus Jones and Quaker Quietism,” Common Knowledge 16:3 (2010).
- 35.
Pryce, “Negative to a Marked Degree,” 528.
- 36.
Jones, “Introduction,” xli.
- 37.
Rufus Jones, The Testimony of the Soul (New York: The Macmillan Company), 150.
- 38.
Jones, “Introduction,” xli.
- 39.
Jones, Social Law, 176.
- 40.
Jones, Social Law, 176.
- 41.
Rufus Jones, New Studies in Mystical Religion (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927), 174–5.
- 42.
Jones, The Testimony of the Soul, 149.
- 43.
Jones, Social Law, 152.
- 44.
Jones, The Testimony of the Soul, 203.
- 45.
Rufus Jones, Some Exponents of Mystical Religion (New York: The Abingdon Press, 1930), 31.
- 46.
Jones, Social Law, 149.
- 47.
Rufus Jones, The World Within (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1918), 35.
- 48.
Rufus Jones, The New Quest (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928), 51.
- 49.
Jones, The New Quest, 82.
- 50.
Jones, The New Quest, 82.
- 51.
Ibn Tufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, 142–3.
- 52.
Ibn Tufayl., Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, 176.
- 53.
A symbolic stand-in for all humanity, see Ibn Tufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, 71.
- 54.
Ibn Tufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, 152.
- 55.
It is doubtful that Ibn Tufayl literally thought that any soul was capable of perfection given the right environment (see Ibn Tufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, 73). Ḥayy’s soul was Alive and Awake from the beginning, as he was either spontaneously generated from a “perfectly balanced” fermented mass of clay or an outcast royally pedigreed result of an illicit marriage, depending on the origin story (Ibn Tufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, 106). It would be a further exercise to imagine how Barclay might have tested his claims about there being no law for those physically incapable of understanding the law according to their God-ordained nature (Barclay , Proposition 4 paragraph IV) against Ḥayy’s God-ordained perfect capacity for understanding. This is the reason for Barclay’s mentioning of Ibn Tufayl’s work, but only based on Keith’s introduction. Had Barclay read the work he would have likely had a much stronger argument as to why the narrative is useful as an example of virtuous heathens.
- 56.
Ibn Tufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, 73.
- 57.
Again, if Barclay had actually read HIY, he may have changed the trajectory of subsequent commentary on the novel. Many scholars, Keith included, ignore the final act where Ḥayy unsuccessfully evangelizes to the religious crowds and focus only on the climax of the mystical experience. By taking a stand against the antisocial conclusion of HIY, Barclay might have corrected Keith’s elision and kept the whole of the narrative in scope. See Leon Gauthier, Ibn Thofaïl: Sa Vie, Ses Oeuvres (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1909), pp. 63–6.
- 58.
Jon Kershner, John Woolman and the Government of Christ: A Colonial Quaker’s Vision for the British Atlantic World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 30.
- 59.
Jones, New Studies in Mystical Religion, 171.
- 60.
Jones says: “John Woolman… shows the quietist temper in all the aspects of his religious life, both outer and inner.” Rufus Jones, The Later Periods of Quakerism Vol. 1. 2 vols. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1921), 67.
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Randazzo, C., Russell, D. (2019). The Unifying Light of Allah: Ibn Tufayl and Rufus Jones in Dialogue. In: Kershner, J. (eds) Quakers and Mysticism. Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Mysticism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21653-5_9
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