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Chapter 2

From Speechlessness to Civilization: The Evolution of the Umma

What are nations? Why is humankind divided into them, and what are the consequences, cultural, religious, and political, of this division? These are basic questions that ought to inform any comprehensive discussion of the topic. Yet Alfarabi does not frequently engage in such a discussion. Although the term Umma appears in almost all Alfarabi’s political works, it is often unaccompanied by any obvious explanation of its meaning. Such is the case in the Book of Religion and the Attainment of Happiness, which will be discussed in Chapters 4 through 6. Only two works, the Book of Letters and the Political Regime, give a thematic account of the Umma, its causes, and its character. They therefore constitute the focal point of Alfarabi’s treatment of the Umma. Any attempt to determine the significance of the concept, and apply it to Alfarabi’s oeuvre as a whole, must begin with these two works. In this chapter, I will analyze Alfarabi’s thematic definition of the Umma and contrast it with the presentation of the same theme by some of his most illustrious contemporaries.

The Natural Causes of the Umma, and Its Conventional Character

The starting point of Alfarabi’s account of the Umma is nature. The emphasis on nature is strongest in the Political Regime, where Alfarabi states that “One Umma is distinguished from another by two natural things: natural temperaments and natural states of character” (PR 61.65, Ar. 70.5–6).¹ Alfarabi proceeds to elaborate in some detail the natural causes that give rise to the differences among the Ummas. His emphasis on these differences is so acute that he employs the verb “to differ” (ikhtalaf) and its cognates over thirty times in less than two pages. The different climates produced by the uneven motions of the heavenly bodies and their varying positions vis-à-vis the earth’s surface affect the air, earth, and water in each region, which in turn allow different kinds of animals and plants to thrive in each region. The plants and animals become the nutriments of each Umma, and their effects on the bodies of the people nourished by them are consolidated through breeding and procreation. The result is a habitable world divided into Ummas, each of which occupies a particular spot on the earth’s surface and possesses a fixed and inalienable character (61.65–62.67, Ar. 70.5–71.7).

As Joshua Parens has already detected (Parens 2006a, 88–90), Alfarabi’s rather naive description of the Umma in the Political Regime is not entirely revealing. It suffers from some noteworthy omissions. While the largely physical meaning of “natural temperaments” is clear enough from the emphasis on nutrition and procreation, the meaning of “natural states of character” remains mysterious. Does it point beyond the body toward the soul? Alfarabi also admits that he has not mentioned all the ways in which the heavenly bodies and air influence the character of humans, without elaborating further (PR 62.66, Ar. 71.5–7). This puzzling statement might hint at the passage’s plainly inadequate account of language. Alfarabi mentions language as a distinguishing mark of each Umma: “a third, conventional, thing having some basis in natural things, namely, the tongue—I mean, the language through which expression comes about” (61.65, Ar. 70.6–7).² Yet this single, terse sentence constitutes the sum total of Alfarabi’s treatment of language in the Political Regime. In the Book of Letters, by contrast, Alfarabi’s thorough account of language and its evolution covers many pages.

Conversely, the account of the evolution of the Umma in the Book of Letters is prefaced by a remark that seems to compress the entire discussion of the Umma in the Political Regime into a single sentence. Alfarabi describes the first humans, who have not yet undergone any linguistic development and therefore cannot even speak, as follows: “They are in a specific dwelling place and country, and endowed by nature with a form and constitution in their specific bodies, and their bodies will have specific qualities and mixtures” (BL 134.20–135.1, #114).³ The causes of this condition, such as the heavenly bodies, climate, and nutrition, are not explicitly mentioned here but seem to be presupposed. The Book of Letters thus confirms the assumption of the Political Regime concerning humankind’s primordial dispersal over the surface of the earth. The varied natural features on the surface of the earth create marked bodily differences among humans in different regions even before language begins to evolve within their souls.

In the next clause Alfarabi introduces the soul and its inclination toward knowledge (BL 135.1–2, #114), a theme that was noticeably absent from the comparable discussion in the Political Regime, thus opening the way for a full-blown treatment of language. Language gradually establishes itself in the soul and emerges as the driving force behind the growth and particularity of the Umma in ways largely unaccounted for by the limited scope of the discussion in the Political Regime. In the Book of Letters, language replaces climate as the primary cause of the difference (ikhtilāf) between Ummas (BL 137.1, #118). While language extends beyond physical causes, it also remains rooted in them, as Alfarabi observes in the Political Regime (PR 61.65, Ar. 70.6–7). Yet Alfarabi does not explain the relation between language and physical causes in that work, whose description of the effects of external physical causes on the human body remains so general that it does not mention specific bodily organs. In the Book of Letters, Alfarabi leaves no doubt that the most important of these organs is the tongue. The tongue represents the crucial link between physical nature and language. It is remarkable for the variety of movements and sounds of which it is capable by means of its diverse interactions with adjoining organs, which are described by Alfarabi in unusual detail (BL 136.5–13, #117).⁴ Alfarabi suggests that the movements and sounds first adopted by each Umma are likely to be determined by the natural temperament of the tongues and surrounding organs of its members, who will adopt whichever articulations happen to be easiest for them to make. These articulations vary from one dwelling place to another. As a result, the first consonants of each language differ. This is the “first cause of the difference between the languages of the Ummas” (136.13–137.2, #118).

Alfarabi’s account of the beginnings of Ummas and languages stands in contrast with the view of the Qur’ān, which declares, “What was humankind but one Umma, that later came to differ” (Qur’ān 10.19).⁵ Alfarabi says absolutely nothing about the time of human unity that is supposed to have preceded the subsequent human dispersion. He does not look back beyond what can be posited through our knowledge of our present dispersion and observation of palpable, natural causes. For similar reasons, Alfarabi can ignore the Qur’ānic passage in which God teaches Adam the “the names of all things” (2.31). To the Islamic traditions that speculate freely about Adam’s linguistic skills, one of which attributes seven hundred languages to him (Pedersen 1, 78), Alfarabi might have replied that the first humans in each and every Umma were speechless.⁶

The purely natural causes emphasized in the Political Regime are sufficient to ensure that the primary sounds of the languages, and by extension the languages themselves, will differ from Umma to Umma. But it is the conventional aspect of language that determines the subsequent course of the Umma’s development.⁷ In the Book of Letters, Alfarabi distinguishes between nature and custom by ascribing the actions performed by our original instincts to the former, and the actions established through repetition to the latter (BL 135.11–14, #115). It is hardly surprising that while nature should prevail at the beginning, when humankind does not yet bear the burden of experience, custom should come to dominate subsequently. Indeed, the very act of learning and memorizing a word involves repetition, and therefore custom. The statement that the evolving Umma displays a pronounced movement from nature toward custom will later require some qualification, but for the moment we may accept it as generally true.

Language develops further through an important intermediary, namely, chance agreement (ittifāq).⁸ Alfarabi argues that particular words are fixed by chance agreement, as humans, making use of the sounds that their tongues have formed, begin to speak to one another in a fairly haphazard manner. Whenever two people happen to agree (ittafaq) to use a word in order to designate a certain meaning, they establish a linguistic convention (iṣṭilāḥ), which eventually spreads across a larger community (BL 137.17–21, 138.3–4, #120). Although the words established through these agreements eventually spread far beyond their originators, Alfarabi does not believe that even a long series of such agreements would be sufficient to create all the necessary words, so that a language-giver must arise at some point (138.4–8, #120). It is this language-giver who endows language with its conventional character (cf. PR 61.65, Ar. 70.6).⁹ Convention creates and standardizes what fails to come into being instinctively through nature or haphazardly through chance. Language could never emerge as an effective tool of communication among large groups, even for necessary things (BL 138.7–8, #120), until it becomes standardized and therefore conventional.¹⁰

Alfarabi explains the conventionality of language even more bluntly in his Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle’s “De interpretatione.” The primary sensibles and intelligibles are identical for all humans, experienced in the same way by Arabs and Indians. However, the words used to signify these terms, in writing and in speech, are already entirely conventional. The manifest proof of their conventionality is that they vary from Umma to Umma. Alfarabi goes so far as to compare the giver of utterances (wāḍi‘ al-alfāẓ) to the giver of laws (wāḍi‘ ash-sharī‘a): both are governors who establish pure conventions (CA 12.11–20, Ar. 27.9–18). To return from convention to nature seems quite impossible, at least with regard to language. If the simplest nouns are already conventional, then the thorough development of convention is the only way for language to evolve. Without it all humans would be equally natural, but equally ignorant: our natural faculties for observing the sensible and grasping the intelligible things (BL 135.6–14, #115) would simply remain uncultivated.

The Book of Letters confirms, and develops, this general point about the inherent conventionality of language. As the Umma and its language continue to evolve, they move farther and farther away from their natural origins. The more complex the language becomes, the more its speakers entrench themselves in the linguistic customs that have been standardized by earlier generations and passed down to their descendants (BL 141.16–142.4, #128). The gifts of beauty and refinement that are conferred upon the language by a class of language experts and storytellers serve to enhance its customary character (143.1 ff., 144.6–11, #130). The culmination of the process occurs with the development of linguistic science. Alfarabi explains how the dialect on which this science rests should be taken from the most remote and savage members of the Umma, whose life in the wilderness has protected them from contact with foreigners and left them least inclined to speak or understand utterances different from those to which they have been long accustomed (145.8–146.20, #143–44). Linguistic science, the last of the syllogistic arts developed by the Umma and peculiar to it (cf. 148.14–20, #138),¹¹ is the most inextricably rooted in the arbitrary customs of the Umma to which it belongs. Every Umma is formed by nature, but consummated only by custom, so that by the end of its development the natural elements seem almost to have disappeared. Although the triumph of custom is not the end of this ongoing story, it is certainly an important part of it.

Alfarabi’s Definition of the Umma

I have shown that in Alfarabi’s view the Umma and its language emerge out of nature, but are perfected only through custom and convention. The link between convention and the Umma is not unique to Alfarabi, but implicit in the traditional Arabic meaning of the term. One of the rarer Qur’ānic meanings of Umma is “custom” or “way of life” (Qur’ān 43.22). Alfarabi echoes this Qur’ānic meaning in the Philosophy of Plato, by associating the Umma with a certain way of life (PP 22.18).¹² Yet in the absence of any description of the conventions and ways of life characteristic of the Umma, our discussion is bound to remain vague. What kind of customary institution is the Umma, and how does it come to embody a specific way of life?

We may begin with a process of elimination. Many political matters that are elsewhere of the deepest significance to Alfarabi are not even mentioned in the long account of the evolution of the Umma in the Book of Letters, or in the shorter account of its physical traits in the Political Regime.¹³ The words for “regime” (siyāsa), “city” (madīna), “ruler” (ra’īs), “king” (malik), and “association” (ijtimā‘), which occur frequently in Alfarabi’s political works, do not appear at all.¹⁴ The only discernible allusion to political power comes in the sections describing the establishment of the language, which cannot take place without some kind of binding authority (BL 138.4–8, #120), and the influence of the Umma’s linguistic elite (143.5, #130). In these passages the word “governor” (mudabbar) and its cognates are indeed used. But Alfarabi restricts the governor’s authority to linguistic matters (143.5–6, #130). It seems unlikely that purely linguistic authority could be upheld without the help of some kind of external force, such as a king or a warlord. By saying nothing about political authority, Alfarabi may imply that it does not help or hinder the linguistic development of the Umma as much as one might think. The Greek Umma flourished under a large variety of mixed regimes, mostly in cities, while the Arab Umma flourished under tribalism followed by multinational empire.

While there are some vague references to politics in Alfarabi’s account of the origin of languages and Ummas, there are no references to religion at all. Alfarabi invokes the Arabs once, as a model of the proper method of collecting the words and phrases on which linguistic science is based (BL 145–47), but says nothing about the more famous exploits of their prophet Muhammad and his followers. In Alfarabi’s two thematic accounts of the Umma in the Book of Letters and the Political Regime, no connection between religion and Umma is established. This omission may have helped convince some scholars that Alfarabi ignores the religious Umma (cf. Vajda, 250), an impression that can and will be corrected by considering other passages.

The Umma is therefore reduced to two things: natural, physical traits caused by climate and nutrition, and the mainly conventional trait of language. Of the two sets of qualities, those arising from language are in every way the more dynamic. Although language is passed down from generation to generation, it is not merely a static, inherited trait. In an earlier passage in the Book of Letters, Alfarabi quotes the anonymous opinions of people who designate an Umma according to natural qualities inherited from parents, and moral qualities inculcated by them. These opinions employ the Arabic terms sha‘b and qabīla, frequently translated as “tribe” or “clan,” as synonyms of Umma (BL 98.11–12). The implication is that these people fail to properly distinguish between clan and Umma. By occupying themselves merely with ancestry and the moral upbringing afforded by parents, they are left unable to properly define the Umma (98.9–14, 100.5–7).¹⁵ Alfarabi points out an error that must have been endemic in his genealogy-obsessed age.¹⁶ He reminds his contemporaries that even if parents and ancestry determine the material constituents of the child, they do not fix its form, or moral and intellectual character, any more than strong wood fixes the shape of a bed (99.21–100.5). While education within the home has an undeniable effect on character, it is wrong to assume¹⁷ that all education takes place there (98.17–99.4). Language is learned from elders, but not solely from parents (142.1–2, #128, 143.8–9, #130). The broad, public dissemination of language lends the evolution of the Umma a vitality that could not be sustained within individual families or even small tribes. It allows some members of the Umma to enjoy a much richer education than could ever be provided by their immediate clans.¹⁸

The significance of the link between the Umma and language for Alfarabi is sharpened by comparing his teaching with the views set forth by David Hume in the essay “Of National Characters.” Hume distinguishes between “moral” and “physical causes” of the differences among nations, attributing far greater significance to the former than to the latter (Hume, 198 ff.). Physical causes include “those qualities of air and climate, which are supposed to work insensibly on the temper, by altering the tone and habit of the body and giving a particular complexion.” Moral causes include “the nature of the government, the revolutions of public affairs, the plenty or penury in which the people live” (198). Hume’s understanding of physical causes, and rejection of their importance, resemble Alfarabi’s. Both philosophers agree that air and climate have minimal influence on manners and culture. Hume gives a number of persuasive historical and empirical arguments against reducing any differences in manners and culture to physical causes (204 ff.). But he speaks of moral causes rather than language as the defining feature of the nation. He traces the moral causes of the nation above all to legislation and politics (198, 204). Hume’s political understanding of the nation is ultimately closer to Rousseau’s than Alfarabi’s. We will have occasion to consider this question at greater length in Chapter 7.

For the present discussion, it is most crucial to note that Hume minimizes the connection between linguistic eloquence and cultural sophistication, since language depends less on manners than on the power of the original stock of sounds. Moreover, the perfection of manners tends to fix the language and dull its power. Thus the modern English are more civilized than the Homeric Greeks, even though the Homeric Greeks had a more expressive language (Hume, 209). Alfarabi, in contrast, understands manners as secondary or corollary to language in determining the development of the Umma. It is the eventual perfection of the language and stories told in it that establish the manners (adāb) of a given nation (BL 144.11, #130). Ādāb is the plural of adab, a wide-ranging term that means “literature” and “culture” as well. It also occurs in 98.19–20 of the Book of Letters, in the context of education within families. Both families and Ummas cultivate adab, but Ummas do so on a broader scale. Translated as “upbringing” by Charles Butterworth and “formation of character” by Muhsin Mahdi, adab plays an important role in the political education of both rulers and citizens (see AH 39.12–18, Ar. 78.43–44, SL 146.7–147.8, Ar. 134.7–8). The presence of this term in Alfarabi’s account of the Umma serves as a hint of the Umma’s broader political and religious significance, which will be explored in the ensuing chapters. For now, we restrict ourselves to the claim that the emphasis on language, its advance toward rhetoric, poetry, and linguistic science, and its enduring effects on the cultural sphere are characteristic of Alfarabi and his understanding of the Umma.

If this definition of the Umma is correct, then strict equality among all Ummas can hardly be expected: some Ummas will be linguistically, and therefore culturally, more sophisticated than others. Alfarabi begins to employ the term Umma immediately after the first sounds of a language have been formulated (BL 137.1, #118), indicating that any group possessing a language of its own qualifies in some sense as an Umma. Although Alfarabi describes a gradual progression toward the more sophisticated linguistic arts, such as poetry, rhetoric, and linguistic science, he never presents this progression as natural or inevitable. It appears particularly unpredictable when compared to other phases of intellectual development discussed in the Book of Letters: while the onset of dialectic inevitably leads toward philosophy, and the founding of religion eventually produces jurisprudence and kalām (132.5–8, #110),¹⁹ no comparable necessity determines the development of language. This is indicated by a subtle shift in vocabulary. While the movements from dialectic toward philosophy and from religion toward kalām are described by the verbs taqaddam and ta’ākhar, which signify an ordered progression in time (129.12–13, 130.1–3, 132.5–11, #110),²⁰ the sequence that characterizes the development of the Umma and its language is described only with the words sabaq and ba‘d, which signify anteriority and posteriority in time without any clear reference to causality (134.18, #114; 141.6, #127; 145.1, #132; 150.2, #140). The choice of terms implies a large measure of unpredictability in the evolution of the Umma, and therefore a considerable degree of variation among Ummas with regard to their level of linguistic development. The movement of the Umma toward the full perfection of its linguistic arts is hardly a foregone conclusion.

Nevertheless, it would be fair to say that Alfarabi himself is most interested in the more sophisticated Ummas, as is revealed by a quick glance at the Ummas mentioned in the Book of Letters. Alfarabi cites the Ethiopians, Indians, Persians, Assyrians,²¹ Syrians, and Egyptians as neighbors of the Arabs (BL 147.9–10, #135). He gives linguistic examples from the Persian, Soghdian, Greek, and Syriac languages (111.1–3). With the exception of the speakers of Soghdian, a common language in Alfarabi’s native region, all these peoples constituted major civilizations at some point in history, and some retain that status today. To return to the examples from another region of the world given by Ernest Gellner, Alfarabi would recognize the Czechs and Estonians as Ummas, but restrict his most serious discussion to the Germans and Italians (cf. Gellner 1997, 90–101).

Alfarabi’s definition of the Umma includes what we might call tribes as well as high civilizations. Indeed, the modern term “civilization” expresses the meaning of Alfarabi’s Umma rather well. To avoid confusion, it should be emphasized that Alfarabi does not develop any concept of “civilization” per se, which might be opposed to nomadic life or barbarism. However, most of the particular Ummas of which he speaks would be classified as individual “civilizations” today. We would never, in contemporary English, call ancient Egypt or India “nations,” so that the common translation of Umma as “nation” appears misleading in a crucial respect.

The Book of Letters recounts the coming into being of the world’s most splendid civilizations in considerable detail. The establishment of a separate language is only the first stage in this process. Alfarabi explains how an Umma eventually perfects its language and excels in rhetoric, poetry, oral storytelling, linguistic science, and writing (BL 148.15–20, #138). A major impetus for the development of these arts comes from the occurrence of memorable events that need to be recorded in speech (142.8–9, #129). “The wise men of the Umma,” who emerge even before the advent of writing, seek to preserve recollection of these events, engaging in “the recitation of speeches and the recitation of poems, and the memorization of the reports²² narrated by them” (143.3–5, #130). When the volume of oral material becomes too large, writing is invented, and these bards are to some extent superseded by scribes (144.12–19, #130). Finally, the formal codification of the grammar of the language by means of linguistic science completes the development of the Umma (145–48, #133–37).

For reasons that will become clearer when we turn to the study of the origins of Islam, Alfarabi does not reveal explicitly what kinds of events are recorded in the Umma’s stories. But since he mentions a number of particular Ummas, such as Greece and India, by name, he invites his readers to fill in these blanks. On the basis of his account, we could say that the crowning accomplishment of these Ummas are epic poems such as the Iliad and the Ramayana, which would shape their respective civilizations as long as they endured, and the treatises of their grammarians, which would confer a fixed form upon their language. Yet at first glance the scope of Alfarabi’s account appears unnecessarily limited, since the arts of civilization consist of more than just the spoken and written word. Does not this narrow focus on language and literature, to the detriment of the visual and auditory arts, risk oversimplifying the multifaceted character of the Umma and its civilization? It can certainly be shown that Alfarabi did not overlook so obvious a criticism. To respond to it fully would require a far more careful consideration of Alfarabi’s writings on poetry, rhetoric, art, and music than is possible here, but I can offer some preliminary thoughts.

We cannot ignore the broader context of the Book of Letters, which is primarily a work about language, and not only in the second chapter. The first chapter consists mainly of a definition of philosophic terms (BL 61–130), while the third chapter consists mainly of an explanation of various logical methods and questions (162–226). It is hardly surprising that in a work thus constituted Alfarabi should emphasize the language and literature of the Umma above all else. The absence of music and poetry, as well as the extremely brief mention of the mechanical arts (138.15–17, #131, 150.2–3, #140), represents a conscious abstraction, since Alfarabi displays ample interest in these arts elsewhere. On the basis of these works, we may piece together some of his ideas about the relationship of poetry to the other arts.

Alfarabi devotes a voluminous treatise to music, in which he argues that it, too, is perfected gradually over time. The relatively few details included in these brief passages suggest some intriguing parallels with the development of language. Most notably, both emerge spontaneously from natural human qualities, crystallizing into conventional arts only through the collective efforts of many generations (BM 71, 74–75).²³ Music and poetry also strengthen one another: music becomes more moving when accompanied by words (72–73), while poetic speech becomes more vivid when accompanied by music (67). However, while Alfarabi’s account of the development of poetry ignores the parallel development of music, his account of the development of music pays homage to the power of poetry. It seems that music is more dependent on poetry than poetry is on music. This impression is confirmed by a passage in the Selected Aphorisms where Alfarabi concludes a longer discussion of the kinds of poetry by presenting the kinds of music as derivative from them: “The sorts of melodies and songs following from these sorts of poems and divisions are equivalent to their divisions” (SA 37, #56, Ar. 65.7–8).

Alfarabi speaks less frequently about painting and sculpture: rather than devote entire treatises to the visual arts, he intersperses brief remarks about them in works ostensibly devoted to other topics. There are evident historical grounds for his reticence: unlike poetry and music, painting and sculpture were frowned upon by many Muslims, because of their association with idolatry.²⁴ Nonetheless, Alfarabi manages to draw strong parallels between the visual and auditory arts. While acknowledging that the visual arts have historically been linked to idolatrous worship, as took place among the ancient Greeks and still endures in distant India, Alfarabi suggests that they are in fact quite similar to music and poetry, at least with regard to their capacity to evoke passions and implant images in minds (BM 62–63). In the Epistle on the Canons of Poetry, Alfarabi explains that painting resembles poetry in every respect except its matter, for it imitates in color the same kinds of activities, forms, and aims that poetry imitates in words (EP 278, Ar. 272, cf. SP 183). A similar statement might apply to music, whose matter is not words, but tones (BM 85–86). Even if the matter and technique of each of the imitative arts vary, their form and purpose do not: all move human minds by providing imitations of sensible things.

With these observations in mind, we may understand why the perfection of pre-philosophic language and the stories told by it constitute the foundation of the civilization of the Umma. Since the other arts imitate the same subjects as poetry and even pursue the same goals, they adopt the material that they encounter in the Umma’s poetic stories. A brief survey of the world’s major civilizations should confirm this point. How could we conceive of Greek or Indian sculpture without the inspiration of Greek or Indian mythology? How could we imagine art and music in the Christian world, into the Renaissance and even beyond, without the gospel stories? Painters and musicians render in color and melody the same gods, saints, and heroes whom poets render in verse.

One might object that Alfarabi fails to grapple with the obvious differences between the various art forms and their effects. For example, music and poetry excel at stirring up passions, while painting and sculpture tend to be more meditative and serene.²⁵ I am not sure if Alfarabi attempts to answer such objections.²⁶ His purpose seems to lie more in encouraging all the imitative arts than in distinguishing between them, as I will make clear in Chapter 5.

Alfarabi’s description of the Umma helps account for a phenomenon that should be familiar to visitors to any major world art museum. As we pass from one section to another, we seem to be entering an entirely different world. In the set of rooms devoted to Greece, the sculpted women are beautiful but chaste, while the male figures are muscular and handsome, with noble expressions suggestive of martial valor. The elegant, rectangular temples are mounted on evenly spaced columns. In an adjoining set of rooms devoted to India, the female figures are buxom and erotic, while their male counterparts are graceful, supple, and meditative. The sinuous temples are topped by spires that reach toward the heavens. The splendor of both exhibits resonates across space and time, yet remains entirely characteristic of its respective civilization. No half-trained eye could mistake the art or architecture of one major classical civilization for that of another. Even the very greatest art is decisively shaped by the Umma to which it belongs; this observation reveals, on the highest level, the authority of the Umma as described by Alfarabi.

Debates About the Ummas in Alfarabi’s Era

Alfarabi’s treatment of the Umma offers only a few scattered hints about its historical context, but this context would have been quite familiar to his readers. The ethnic Umma had become a contentious topic in the Islamic world from the eighth century onward. The Islamic empire under which Alfarabi lived ruled over subjects from a vast number of such Ummas, and it was common among Alfarabi’s contemporaries to argue about the relative merits of one or another of them. I make no claim to originality here, but a brief summary of these debates, as known through primary and secondary sources, can shed some light on the distinctiveness and historical significance of Alfarabi’s approach to the Umma.

The vast seventh-century conquests that brought the Islamic world into being entailed not only the triumph of Muslims over infidels, but also the victory of Arabs over non-Arabs. This inevitably gave rise to ethnic pride among the conquering Arabs, and ethnic resentment among the conquered peoples (Norris, 34). A band of desert nomads whom Persians, Romans, and Byzantines had once despised as not even worth conquering suddenly emerged as the master of vast territories that those empires had once ruled. However, the decline of the Arabs was almost as rapid as their rise. While the Umayyad dynasty (661–750) was indeed dominated by Arabs, the Abbasid dynasty that overthrew it drew its core support from the Persian region of Khorasan. By the middle of the ninth century, the Abbasid Caliphs had gradually begun to cede control over the army and the treasury to Turkish and Daylami soldiers.²⁷ This lengthy process culminated in the seizure of power by the Daylamis in 951, a year after Alfarabi’s death, thus establishing the Buyid dynasty.

It is not difficult to imagine, on the basis of these well-known historical facts, that the early centuries of Islam were rife with ethnic tensions, as rival Ummas competed for cultural and social status within the empire as well as for royal power and patronage. The Shu‘ūbiyya movement, powerful during the eighth and ninth centuries, represented the reaction of the non-Arabs against the Arabs. The movement’s name is derived from Qur’ān 49.13, the only verse containing the root sh-‘-b.²⁸ It advanced numerous arguments for Persian equality and, in some cases, Arab inferiority. Scholars have arrived at various opinions about the scope and aims of this movement, which seems to have found some expression in the political, literary, and religious spheres.²⁹ Unfortunately, none of the original Shu‘ūbiyya tracts survive, so the nature of the movement can be reconstructed only through the works of authors who opposed it (Enderwitz, 515). These texts present many of the disputes as serious and others as charmingly frivolous.³⁰ Common themes included rhetorical skill, dexterity with arms, ancient lineage, the antiquity of their civilization, and prophecy, with each group, and especially Persians and Arabs, proclaiming its superiority to its neighbors. These debates did not always take place on a high intellectual level: it does not behoove us, let alone Alfarabi, to discuss whether ancient Arabs ate lizards, or Persians invented the game of chess.³¹ Yet even the most comical charges and countercharges are indicative of genuine tension and jealousy.³² The charged atmosphere of ethnic quarrels under which Alfarabi wrote is surely relevant to understanding his work.

The acrimony of these debates finds forceful expression in the pages of al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 869), one of the founders of classical Arabic prose and a leading opponent of the Shu‘ūbiyya movement. Al-Jāḥiẓ wrote an interesting work titled “On the Virtues of the Turks.”³³ Addressed to a Turkish general who held a high position in the Abbasid court, it attempts to defend the Abbasid policy of employing Turkish soldiers. The addressee has just been exposed to a long and unpleasant harangue by an Abbasid partisan who boasts about the military virtues of the Khorasanis and other founders of the Abbasid dynasty while ignoring the virtues of the Turks (al-Jāḥiẓ 1988, 177–87). The unnamed orator presents the Abbasids as the true heirs to the Arabs, devising some dubious genealogies to prove it (183–84). He takes special delight in the Khorasanis’ military valor and capacity to kill in any number of gruesome ways (185–86).

Al-Jāḥiẓ himself finally steps in, invoking the mercy of God and rebuking the general’s adversary for promoting needless disunity among peoples, a fault all too common among the zealots of the era (al-Jāḥiẓ 1988, 187, cf. 217). If al-Jāḥiẓ were to respond in kind with exaggerated praise of the Turks, he would fall into the same pernicious tendencies as his adversaries. His method is designed to conceal his preferences for one people over another, without depriving his readers of their capacity to develop such a preference for themselves, assuming that they are willing to engage in a long and careful consideration of the relative merits of various peoples (187–88).

Al-Jāḥiẓ does not hesitate to invoke religious arguments against excessive national pride. He argues that national differences, and in fact any kind of human difference whatsoever, must ultimately be traced to God. As al-Jāḥiẓ explains, just as God has the power to create humans male, female, or hermaphrodite, so he has the power to attach them to whatever nation he so pleases. He can create us without parents, as He did Adam and Jesus, and teach us whatever language He pleases: although Ismātīl was not even born an Arab, God granted him the ability to speak clear Arabic without any instruction, and endowed him with the nature³⁴ of Arabs in its loftiest form (al-Jāḥiẓ 1988, 188).³⁵ He has proclaimed Abraham the true father of all believers (cf. Qur’ān 22.78), and Muhammad’s wives their mothers (cf. Qur’ān 33.6), even though the vast majority of Muslims are not literally their descendants. Furthermore, God teaches the believers of all nations³⁶ the language of paradise as soon as they enter (al-Jāḥiẓ 1988, 188–89), a clear indication that the righteous from all peoples are equal in God’s eyes. By reminding his readers of the overwhelming power of God, al-Jāḥiẓ hopes to dissuade them from extravagant boasting about merely human genealogies and qualities. As al-Jāḥiẓ’s own allusions indicate, such equanimity seems to have some basis in the Qur’ān, in which God is presented as the creator of all peoples alike.³⁷

Al-Jāḥiẓ also criticizes national pride from a human point of view, arguing that nations are bound to have different but often complementary virtues and vices. Not even God will imbue an entire nation with a high degree of skill in all areas of human endeavor. The limited human energy and passion of a given people must inevitably be directed toward the cultivation of certain skills at the expense of others (al-Jāḥiẓ 1988, 206). Thus the Greeks excel in wisdom and invention, but are deficient as merchants and artisans (206–7); the Chinese excel in crafts, but not in wisdom (207); the Arabs are brave warriors, instinctive trackers, and eloquent speakers, but generally poor craftsman (207–8); the Turks are outstanding warriors and raiders, but unfamiliar with the civilized arts (208); the Persians, finally, are skilled in government, an ability inherited from their Sassanian ancestors (206, 208).³⁸ Much of the rest of the essay is devoted to recounting Turkish prowess in war (192 ff., 209 ff.). While flattering the addressee, a Turkish military commander, al-Jāḥiẓ also keeps a certain distance from him, attributing much of his praise of the Turks to third parties. Al-Jāḥiẓ transcribes in the speeches of others the partisan, ethnic zeal that was so prevalent in his epoch, but in his own remarks he adopts a far more measured tone. He strongly implies that the Caliph ought to employ not only Turks, but other peoples in their respective capacities as well. Couldn’t Greek inventors and Chinese craftsmen also figure in his military plans? Perhaps it is up to the Caliph himself to decide which nation’s skills ought to be preferred for a given task at a given moment. In doing so, he would still have to distinguish between the general characteristics of a nation and the varied qualities of the individuals that compose it. Al-Jāḥiẓ observes that none of the qualities and skills he mentions characterize every individual within that people, even if they do predominate among the people as a whole (209).

As a critic of the Shu‘ūbiyya, al-Jāḥiẓ is considerably fairer than the partisans whom he quotes. He appears to have a genuine sympathy and appreciation for all peoples. Yet by attaching certain qualities and skills to certain nations, he indulges in what we might call “national stereotyping” in a way Alfarabi does not. His emphasis on the role of divine will and power in the formation of peoples also finds no parallel in Alfarabi, for whom the growth of Ummas may be attributed entirely to human and natural causes.