Mohammed Abed al-Jabri

Agora

Mohammed Abed al-Jabri

1935–2010

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Arab thought has three ways of knowing – reading texts, mystical insight and logical proof – and only the last, Averroes’ way, can renew it.

Placement

Philosophy in the Islamic World · West Asia & North Africa · Epistemology, Society & History

Moroccan philosopher: his “Critique of Arab Reason” distinguishes three epistemic systems – textual explication, gnosis and demonstration – and sides with the rationalism of Averroes.

Key ideas

Critique of Arab Reason
Bayan, irfan, burhan
Averroist rationalism

Open in the star map

Influence

Influenced by 3

Ibn Rushd (Averroes)

influenced by
Al-Jabri took Averroes as the model of the demonstrative rationalism of the Muslim West and called for its revival in contemporary Arab thought (We and the Heritage, 1980). M. A. al-Jabri, Nahnu wa-l-turath (1980); Arab-Islamic Philosophy: A Contemporary Critique, tr. A. Abbassi (1999)
Evidence: AI draft
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) › 1126–1198
Ibn Khaldun

influenced by
Al-Jabri’s doctoral thesis, published as Ibn Khaldun’s Thought: Asabiyya and the State (1971), read the Muqaddima as a theory of tribal solidarity and state power in Islamic history. M. A. al-Jabri, Fikr Ibn Khaldun: al-asabiyya wa-l-dawla (1971)
Evidence: AI draft
Ibn Khaldun › 1332–1406
Gaston Bachelard

influenced by
Al-Jabri took over Bachelard’s concept of the “epistemological break” for his critique of Arab reason, reading the rationalism of Averroes and the Maghreb as a break with the gnostic reason of the East. M. A. al-Jabri, Nahnu wa-l-turath (1980); Takwin al-‘aql al-‘arabi (1984); J. Kynes, “The Function of Bachelardian Epistemology in the Post-colonial Project of Mohammed ‘Abed al-Jabri”, in Religion in Motion (2020), pp. 221–237
Evidence: AI draft
Gaston Bachelard › 1884–1962

Criticism

Criticized by 1

Taha Abderrahmane

criticised by
Taha Abderrahmane faulted al-Jabri for dissecting the Islamic heritage into rival systems by imported standards, and proposed an integrative reading (Tajdid al-manhaj fi taqwim al-turath). Ṭāhā ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Tajdīd al-manhaj fī taqwīm al-turāth (Casablanca); W. Hallaq, Reforming Modernity, 2019
Evidence: AI draft
Taha Abderrahmane › b. 1944

Criticizes 1

Ibn Sina (Avicenna)

criticised
Al-Jabri cast Avicenna, above all his ‘Oriental philosophy’, as turning Arabic philosophy towards gnostic irrationalism, against the rationalism of Averroes in the Maghreb (Nahnu wa-l-turath, 1980). M. A. al-Jābirī, Naḥnu wa-l-turāth, 1980; Arab-Islamic Philosophy: A Contemporary Critique, tr. 1999
Evidence: AI draft
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) › 980–1037

Works

1984The Formation of Arab Reason
First volume of the Critique of Arab Reason: how three rival systems of knowledge – bayan, irfan and burhan – took shape in classical Islam.

Position

Al-Jabri’s four-volume Critique of Arab Reason asked why Arab thought had stagnated. He distinguished three epistemic systems formed in classical Islam: bayan, the explication of texts in grammar, law and theology; irfan, gnosis claiming direct illumination, as in Sufism, Ismailism and – he argued – Avicenna’s “Oriental philosophy”; and burhan, Aristotelian demonstration. The way forward lay with the rationalism of the Muslim West – Ibn Hazm, Averroes, Ibn Khaldun – rather than with the gnostic East. Arabs should appropriate their heritage critically, neither rejecting nor venerating it. His sharp East–West contrast and verdict on Avicenna drew much criticism, notably in George Tarabishi’s multi-volume “Critique of the Critique of Arab Reason”.

Life & context

Mohammed Abed al-Jabri was born in 1935 (some sources say 1936) in Figuig in eastern Morocco. Active in the nationalist left (UNFP, later USFP), he worked as teacher and journalist and was briefly jailed in the 1960s. He studied philosophy in Damascus and Rabat, earned a doctorate in 1970 with a study of Ibn Khaldun, and taught for decades at Rabat’s Mohammed V University. He died in Casablanca in 2010.