É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.

STROHMAIER, Gotthard: Ulüm al-awa il and Orthodoxy: a Famous Monograph of Goldziher Revisited

'ULÜM AL-AWÄ'lL AND ORTHODOXY people who rejected only certain tenets of an outspoken pagan character such as black magic or the belief in the power of the stars or the eternity of the world. This sometimes had severe consequences; we hear of auto-da-fés of books containing such matter and the imprisonment of men who possessed them. But these incidents were mostly instigated by some kind of personal intrigue.

7 In 890 A.D. an oath was taken by the professional copyists in Baghdad not to deal with works of philosophy and kalämf But at that time all the production of books was a kind of samizdat, and thorough-going censorship became possible only with the introduction of printing. In the course of time a compromise was reached in the sense that at least Aristotelian logic was regarded as something neutral, like a sword that could be used for the gihäd as well as for robbery ." Others, among them al-GazälT, shared this opinion but warned that the occupation with logic may lure the naive student into the belief that other items as the eternity of the world were of the same stringency.

1" All these statemens regarding the Greek heritage were uttered by very different groups who did not recognize each other as orthodox. A definition of orthodoxy is not given by Goldziher, and one is left with the impression that it was this very hostility which could serve as the common criterion, as it seemed to be self-evident at the beginning of the twentieth century, when a religious fundamentalism in defence of a dogma or authority of a revealed scripture was trying to impede the progress of free thinking. But by the end of the century it became obvious that also an atheist and irreligious ideology was nonetheless able to suppress alternative opinions which in the end proved to be closer to the truth. To make things still more intricate we have to consider another variety of Muslim orthodoxy completely left out by Goldziher, namely an almost enthusiastic openness to the Greeks combined with a defence of the basic tenets of the Koranic revelation. One outstanding representative of this position was al-Bírün! (973-1048), whom Goldziher mentions only briefly when dealing with a notorious incident when Mahmüd of Ghazna accused a foreign ambassador of heresy who had told him about the midnight sun in the far north while al-Bírüní who was present at the meeting demonstrated the correctness of the statement on mathematical grounds." This great scholar claims in his book on India that, in contrast to Hinduism, the Koran is fully compatible with the sciences and therefore not in need of allegorical interpretation like other holy scriptures that had been revealed before.He condemns very sharply the great physician Rhazes (865-925 or 932) because this 7 Goldziher, ibid., 14-16, 27. 8 Goldziher, ibid., 13. " Goldziher, ibid., 37; cf. F. Rosenthal, Das Fortleben der Antike im Islam, Zürich-Stuttgart 1965, 116-117. 1

0 Goldziher, ibid., 18-19. " Goldziher, ibid., 22-23; al-BTrünT, ibid., 21. 1

2 Fi tahqiq mä li-l-Hind, ed. E. Sachau, London 1887, 132; German translation in: al-BTrüni, ibid., 183-184 (no. 66). 253