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

GOTTHARD STROHMAIER man had treated all the prophets as impostors and chose Socrates as his imám instead. Al-BírünT for his part leaves the ultimate judgement to the Almighty himself who knows best how to react.'

5 As regards the basic neoplatonic doctrines of the eternity of the world and of the ontological difference between the heavenly spheres and our earth al-BTrün! meets them with a sound scepticism and takes the side of John Philoponus, the Christian professor at Alexandria, whom Avicenna had attacked on these issues.

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4 It may be that this scepticism earned him the nisba or rather the nickname al-BIrüní. "Al-BTrüniyyün" were in Arabic transcription the Pyrrhonians, the representatives of an exaggerated philosophical scepticism. Galen of Pergamon, whose influence on the Muslim intelligentsia should not be underestimated, uses the word almost as a term of abuse. We know of no other scientist in Islam who could be regarded as a worthy successor of al-Bírüní. His newly founded discipline of Indian studies was not continued. Who was responsible for the fact that the Greek heritage was not developed further in the same way as was later done in Western Europe? Goldziher did not explicitly draw the conclusion that Islamic orthodoxy was to blame for that, but surely many of his readers did. In occidental Christendom there was an analogous and very vociferous orthodoxy as in Islam, but it did not hamper the broad reception of the Greek heritage and, on this basis, of many daring new thoughts. The general social conditions were different in the East and in the West, and what Goldziher called the "Überhandnehmen der Vorherrschaft einer finsteren Orthodoxie"'

5 is only one symptom of a general decline together with other symptoms, as for example the success of Aviccnna's philosophical mysticism and the dominance of his all too systematic medicine and science throughout many centuries. Epitre de Bérúni contenant le repertoire des ouvrages de Muhammad b. Zakariyyä ar-Rází, ed. P. Kraus, Paris 1936, 3-4; German translation in: al-BTrünl, ibid., 146-147 (no. 53). 1

4 Epitre de Bérúni.... 28; al-Bírün! and Ibn Sina, Al-As'ila wa-l-agwiba (Questions and Answers), ed. S. H. Nasr, M. Mohaghegh, Teheran 1972, 12-14, 19

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27, 5

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_54: German translations in: al-BTrünl, ibid., 37 (no. 4), 49-56 (nos 7-8). 1

5 Goldziher, ibid., 4. 254