La Muqābasa 82 di Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī

Abstract

The present paper aims to analyse a lesson, held by the Muslim philosopher Abū Sulaymān al-Siǧistānī (d. 985), about the equivocal term ‘one’ and its definitions as conveyed by the man of letters Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (d. 1023) in his muqābasa 82. In particular, it aims to stress the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic roots of al-Siǧistānī's doctrines and the links they intertwined with the almost contemporary philosophical debates. The muqābasa is organised in two different sections. In the first part, al-Siǧistānī identifies eight different senses of the ‘one’, all linked to the works written by Aristotle or by his late-antique commentators. The second section, instead, concerns which sense is the most suitable to the First Being. By reading it, it is possible to identify in nuce some of the most important doctrines of Arabic Neoplatonism to which al-Siǧistānī seems to adhere to: the three super-sensible principles (i.e. One, Intellect and Soul); the different degrees of participation to causality by the single entities; man as microcosm and his spiritual ascent to the intelligible reality.