Falsafa: Irano-Semitic-Hellenic Humanism

The Hellenization project that followed Alexander the Great's conquests of the Ancient Near East created, over time, a rich blend of intellectual cultures and humanistic practices that would flower in the 9th century CE as "falsafa." Contrary to "the usual portrait of the 'mainstream' of world history" (parodied by J.Z. Smith in his landmark essay "Map Is Not Territory"), falsafa is not a scrambled version of ancient Greek philosophy (produced by unsophisticated Arabs who were incapable of appreciating the subtleties of European intellection); instead, it is Hellenistic philosophy translated into, and interpreted within, an Arabo-Muslim universe of discourse conducted under the auspices of the Persianate cultural sphere. In other words, it is a classical expression of Irano-Semitic-Hellenic humanism.

Falsafa is a uniquely synthetic tradition of thought and practice that simply could not have grown, developed, and flourished in the intellectual atmosphere of Medieval Europe. As the beneficiary of repeated purges of Greek philosophical schools at the instigation of zealous Christian emperors, Muslim civilization was, perhaps, the only historical context in which the genius of Hellenism could not only be preserved but, indeed, remain vital.

Majid Fakhry suggested as much (perhaps without intending to) when he noted that the ignorance of Greek which prevailed among Arab intellectuals in 9th century Iraq was, in fact, an asset and a spur to philosophical creativity because it reduced the tendency to "slavish" interpretation of Greek texts as compared to "early Greek commentators, such as Themistius and Alexander" (Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy, 3rd edition, xxv).

An abundant "harvest of Hellenism" (as Frank Peters termed it) was vouchsafed to "Allah's Commonwealth" (another Peters coinage) during the 'Abbasid caliphate (750 CE to 1258 CE)--a half millennium during which Muslims took center stage in the long and rich articulation of humanistic thought and practice outside of China.