1) His Biography:
In present-day Iran’s Khorasan region, Abu’l Hasan Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-‘Amiri was born in Nishapur. Before travelling to Rey and eventually Baghdad, he started his career in Khurasan studying under Abu Zayd al-Balkhi. He first met eminent thinkers from the 10th century in Baghdad such al-Tawhidi and Ibn Miskawayh.
Al ‘Amiri passed away in Nishapur in 992 after retiring in Bukhara, where he had access to the Samani library. He attempted to focus on and build his opinions on both Islam and philosophy because he thought that philosophy did not contradict Islamic teachings. However, a lot of people thought that the philosophical teachings and beliefs were very dissimilar to those of Islam or any other civilization.
Al’Amiri contended that philosophy must yield to revealed truth. His views included the Greeks as well. According to al-‘Amiri, the Greeks lacked a prophet who had the ultimate say in all matters because they did not exist as a civilization. The fundamental objective of al-‘Amiri was to defend Islam against a school of thought that was thought to be independent of revelation.
2) Main Works:
Deliverance of Mankind from the Problem of Predestination and Free Will:
Jabr wa’l-qadar (Deliverance of Mankind from the Problem of Predestination and Free Will). Here, al-‘Amiri makes an attempt to use Aristotelian ideas to resolve the issue of free will.
The Determination of the Various Aspects of Predestination:
Al-Taqrir li-awjuh al-taqdir (The Determination of the Various Aspects of Predestination). In this work al-‘Amiri continues to address the problem of free will.
On the Afterlife:
Kitab al-amad ‘ala’l-abad (On the Afterlife). In his al-Amad ala al-abad, an effort is made to show that philosophy, when properly understood, does not contradict but rather supports and enhances the teachings of Islam. Amiri tackles a particular theological problem—the afterlife—and offers a number of Neoplantonic arguments supporting the soul’s immortality before attempting to rationalise philosophically the need for revelation as a complement to knowledge in this area.
3) Main Themes in his Writings:
Islam and Philosophy:
The primary focus of Al-‘Amiri’s work was the intellectual defence of Islam against a school of thought that was seen as distinct from revelation and from other rival religious traditions. Al-Kindi endeavoured to reconcile philosophy and religion by demonstrating that the actual philosophical results could not be in conflict with the revealed realities of Islam. Al-Amiri, in contrast to his contemporaries like Al-Farabi and Al-Kindi, asserted that revealed truth must be superior to philosophy since it is required for the development of human intellect and serves as the unquestionable standard for moral behaviour. The Greeks had some helpful knowledge, but since they lacked a prophet, they could not be regarded as final authorities.
Al-Amiri was usually tolerant to philosophy, the mutakallimun (theologians), and a wide range of Islamic sects, notwithstanding his attacks on, for instance, the Mu’tazila and the Batiniya esotericists. For instance, in his well-regarded dissertation on Sufism, he reconciled Sufism with more traditional Islam while still offering a logical, Aristotelian understanding of Sufism.
It’s possible that he saw the dangers of sectarianism in Khurasan’s diverse milieu and that he chose to highlight areas of agreement between philosophers and Islamic sects. It’s also possible that Islam had not yet fully established its position in relation to pre-Islamic traditions. He clearly preferred using religious vocabulary over philosophical terms (ruh rather than nafs for the soul, for example), suggesting that his primary audience was the Islamic religious elite.
Moral Superiority of Islam:
Al-Amiri made an effort to rationally defend Islam’s moral superiority to other faiths, especially Zoroastrianism and Manicheism, in An Exposition on the Merits of Islam and Deliverance of Mankind from the Problem of Predestination and Free Will. In the later work, he also made an attempt to apply Aristotelian concepts to the theological problem of free will, a project that he repeated with more intellectual nuance in his The Determination of the Various Aspects of Predestination.
He had to make a distinction between necessary, contingent, and potential entities in order to solve the predestination dilemma. Only God, whose essence is identical to his existence, is necessary existence (wajib al-wujud). Since God is fundamentally a unity, human usage of multiple words for divine characteristics is symbolic. All other existences are contingent and predetermined to the extent that they depend on other existences for support.
However, the relationships between contingent items are of a different order, where personal accountability is feasible. It is significant that only two examples of the phrase wajib al-wujud being used before Ibn Sina, who incorporated it into the core of his ideas, are still in existence (the other is Ibn Miskawayh). According to Al-Amiri’s interpretation of Empedocles, there may have been a pseudo-Empedoclean literature or tradition in use during his lifetime that served as a substantial inspiration for some crucial Avicennan claims.
Empedocles is listed first in Al-Amiri’s enumeration of the five “sages” of Greek philosophy, following Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This is rare. Each was given a way to get in touch with a prophetic tradition in accordance with al-Amiri’s conciliatory approach, despite the fact that they all spoke only from the standpoint of reason. According to legend, Pythagoras studied in Egypt with Solomon’s friends while Empedocles studied with Luqman in Syria. The knowledge of Pythagoras was then refined and safeguarded by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Neoplatonic writings, particularly pseudo-Ammonius, make up the majority of Al-Amiri’s intellectual history.
Afterlife:
For al-Amiri’s Kitab al-amad ‘ala’l-abad (On the Afterlife), in which he made the case for individual immortality and the punishment or reward of the soul, one or more fragmented translations of the Phaedo were particularly significant. His study of the soul is predominantly Neoplatonic, and the reward of the hereafter is based on the actualization of the intellect in this life, principally with the help of righteous deeds that restrain the physical faculties and direct the intellect toward the Divine.
4) His Legacy:
Ibn Sina’s philosophical revolution quickly overshadowed Al-Amiri’s writings. However, his work offers a glimpse into the philosophical and religious arguments that framed that revolution and the sources from which those debaters drew. His emphasis on the value of good action over specifics of doctrine and his synthesising interpretations represent an important attempt to build consensus within Islam during a turbulent, fractious, and creative period in its history, eventhough partisans of various schools may find them problematic.