The Philosophical Prophetology of Ismā‘īlism in the Eleventh Century

抄録

The Ismā‘īlīs introduced Neoplatonism into their doctrine between the tenth and eleventh centuries. This resulted in a serious conflict between rational philosophy and revealed religion. The main objective of this study is to examine the conflict between these two positions from the theory of Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. after 1020), who served Fāṭimid Imām al-Ḥākim (d. 1021), by studying the prophetology in his Rāḥa al-‘aql.
 Al-Kirmānī adopted al-Fārābī’s theory on the active intellect (‘aql fa‘‘āl) and his prophetic doctrine explicated by the active intellect regards the nāṭiq as the top of the sublunar world in his philosophical cosmology and thus, justifies the authority of the nāṭiq. Like Fārābī’s philosopher-king, al-Kirmānī’s nāṭiq has conjunction (ittiṣāl) with the active intellect and accepts the illumination from it in the imaginative stage of his soul. However, al-Kirmānī rejected the acceptance of the illumination in the stage of the acquired intellect (‘aql mustafād), the highest level of the human intellect, while al-Fārābī believed that the philosopher-king attained the stage of the acquired intellect before accepting the illumination in his imaginative stage. If al-Kirmānī had allowed human beings other than the nāṭiq to attain the stage of the acquired intellect, an ordinary man could have had the same capacity as the nāṭiq. Therefore, he rejected al-Fārābī’s acquired intellect and the possibility of a philosopher reaching the nāṭiq’s level by himself. However, he used philosophy to justify Ismā‘īlī prophetology. Al-Kirmānī thought that only the nāṭiq reached the transcendental position. Thus, he considered the nāṭiq’s guidance and Ismā‘īlī da‘wa as absolute, and explained his doctrine using rational philosophy.