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In the Arabic eleventh-century, scholars were intensely preoccupied with the way that language generated truth and beauty. Their work in poetics, logic, theology, and lexicography defined the intellectual space between God and the poets. In Language Between God and the Poets, Alexander Key argues that ar-Raghib al-Isfahani, Ibn Furak, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani shared a conceptual vocabulary based on the words ma‘na and haqiqah. They used this vocabulary to build theories of language, mind, and reality that answered perennial questions: how to structure language and reference, how to describe God, how to construct logical arguments, and how to explain poetic affect.

About the Author

Alexander Key is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at Stanford University.

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Acknowledgments
Note on Translation Practice, Transliterations, and Footnotes
Opening Statement

1. Contexts
The Eleventh Century
The Four Scholars
Ar-Ragib
Ibn Furak
Ibn Sina
Al-G?urg?ani
The Madrasa

2. Precedents
In Translation from Greek
In Book Titles
In the Arabic Dictionary
In the Opening Sentence of the First Arabic Book
In a Work of Lexical Theory
Adherents of laf ?, Adherents of ma?na, and the Pursuit of ?aqiqah
Literary Criticism
Politics and Society
Linguistics
Theology
Theologians (Mu?ammar)

3. Translation
Language Use (Wittgenstein)
Core Conceptual Vocabulary (Kuhn)
Ma?na1, ma?na2, ma?na3, ma?na4
Two Distinct Lexemes
Four General Headings
Intrinsic Causal Determinants
Entities and Entitative Attributes
Divergent Concepts
A Grid of Principles and Contexts
Laf ?1–3 and ma?na1–3
Meaning
The Distraction of the Sign (Saussure)
Homonymy or Polysemy?
Folk Theory or Technical Terminology?

4. The Lexicon
Principles (al-u?ul)
Intent
Name, Named, and Naming (ism, musamma, tasmiyah)
Accuracy and Beyond (?aqiqah and mag?az)

5. Theology
Framing Theology
Islamic Theology (?ilm al-kalam)
Relativism? Words or Things
Theologies Directed at the World
Language in ?Abd al-G?abbar
Atoms, Bodies, and Accidents with Ibn Furak
The World Connected to God
God’s ma?ani
Acquisition (kasb)
God’s Speech
God’s Names
Speech in the Soul (kalam nafsi)
Human Accuracy
Objective Truth
Accurate Language about the World
Accurate Accounts of Literature and Physics
Knowledge Is Everything
Everything Is Knowledge

6. Logic
Ibn Sina between Greece and the West
Greece in the Arabic Eleventh Century
The Arabic Eleventh Century and the West
Translation in Three Directions (Greek, Latin, and Persian)
Mental Contents in Ibn Sina’s Conceptual Vocabulary
Mathematical Origins
Three Existences (triplex status naturae)
Marks on the Soul (al-at_ar allati fi an-nafs)
The Lexicon
Intent
Ibn Sina’s Mental Contents in Action
Being Is Said in Many Ways and pros hen
Attributes (?ifat)
Logical Assent (ta?diq)
First and Second Position (prima et secunda positio)
Aristotelian Philosophy Done with Arabic Conceptual Vocabulary

7. Poetics
What Is Good ma?na?
Self-Consciously Theoretical Answers in Monographs
Poetics from Axes to Zones (aq?ab and aq?ar)
Syntax Time
Lexical Accuracy (?aqiqah)
Syntax (na?m)
Logic and Grammar
The Grammar of Metaphor and Comparison (isti?arah vs. tas?bih)
Essence

8. Conclusion

References
Index

Reviews

"Alexander Key takes four major exponents of eleventh-century Arabic lexicography, theology, logic, and poetics and explores the interconnectedness of their thinking on 'mental content' and its various 'accurate' realizations. His explorations of the conceptual base and vocabulary shared by these thinkers convince. This book, brimming with philological insight, crackles with erudition."—James E. Montgomery, Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic, Fellow of Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge

"This is really an excellent book–well-written, engaging, intellectually exciting, and a great advance in the field. The selection of four scholars, experts in different disciplines, but all talking about language and meaning, is extremely clever. The sophistication and nuance of the argument makes this a work of solid scholarship."—Robert Gleave, Professor of Arabic Studies, University of Exeter

About the Book

About the Author

From Our Blog

Luminos Open Access: Religious Studies Spotlight

Table of Contents

Reviews