I should like to thank Dr. E. I. J. Rosenthal for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

¹ Strauss, , Leo, , Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, III., 1952), p. 107.Google Scholar

² Keddie, , Nikki, , “Symbol and Sincerity in Islam,” Studia Islamica, 19 (1963).Google Scholar

³ Strauss, , Persecution, p. 36;Google Scholar see also the account that Hourani, G. F. gives of Ibn Sīnā, “Essay on the Secret of Destiny,” Bulletin of the School of African and Asian Studies (1966), 45.Google Scholar

⁴ Hourani, G., Averroes on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy (London, 1961), p. 47.Google Scholar

⁵ See the discussion of the distinction between heresy and disbelief in Ghazālī, , Tahāfut al-falā-sifa. ed. Bouyges, M. (Beirut, 1927).Google Scholar

⁶ See Maimonides's description of the sort of person to whom the Guide for the Perplexed is direcled at the start of that work.

⁷ Fārābī quotes from a letter from Aristotle to Plato, in which Aristotle is supposed to defend his practice of committing his teaching to writing in unenigmatic writing in this way: “If I have written down these sciences and the wisdom contained in them, I have arranged them in such an order that only those qualified for them can attain them.” See his Jam'bayna ra' yay al-hakīmain Aflātūn al-ilāhī wa Aristūtālīs, ed. Nader, A. N. (Beirut, 1960), p. 85.Google Scholar

⁸ Goodman, L. E.Hayy ibn Yaqzān (New York, 1972), pp. 100–103.Google Scholar

⁹ Ibid., p. 100.

¹⁰ Strauss, , Leo, , “Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed,” Persecution, pp. 68–70.Google Scholar There are good grounds for thinking that Strauss wildly overemphasizes this distinction. See in particular Hartman, D., Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest (Philadelphia, 1976).Google Scholar

¹¹ Rosenthal, E. I. J. “Islamic themes,” Studia Semitica, II (Cambridge, England, 1971), 9.Google Scholar

¹² Mahdi, M. ed., Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (New York, 1962), p. 3.Google Scholar

¹³ This is particularly obvious in the refutations Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd offer of philosophical positions that oppose theirs.

¹⁴ Fārābī, , “Against John the Grammarian,” quoted in “Alfarabi against Philoponous,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies (1967), 257.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Butterworth, C. E. ed. and trans., Averroës' Three Short Commentaries on Aristotle's “Topics,” “Rhetoric” and “Poetics,” (SUNY, 1977), p. 25.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Who in any case writes logic in an exciting style?

¹⁷ Butterworth, , Short Commentaries, p. 26.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Strauss, , Persecution, p. 75.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Butterworth, , Short Commentaries, p. 28.Google Scholar

²⁰ Ibid., p. 27.

²¹ Ibid., pp. 66, 72.

²² Ghazālī, , Mīzān al-'Amal (Cairo, AH 1328/1938), p. 160.Google Scholar For an account of how the term jadal was understood in Islamic philosophy, see Van, Ess, “The logical structure of Islamic theology” in Logic in classical Islamic culture, ed. von Grunebaum, G. E. (Wiesbaden, 1970), pp. 21–50.Google Scholar

²³ “The jurisprudent takes the opinions and the actions which the founder of the religion enunciated as given and makes them fundamental principles from which he deduces those things which are necessary corollaries, but the theologian defends the things which the jurisprudent employs as fundamental principles without deriving other things from them,” Fārābī, , Enumeration 5, pp. 75–6,Google Scholar in Alfarabi's Book of Religion and Related Texts, ed. Mahdi, M. (Beirut, 1968).Google Scholar

²⁴ Strauss, , Leo, , “How Farabi Read Plato's Laws,” in Mélanges Louis Massignon (Institut Français de Damas, 1957), p. 322.Google Scholar

²⁵ See n. 7, supra.

²⁶ See n. 11, supra.

²⁷ Strauss, , “How Farabi,” pp. 330–31.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., p. 333.

²⁹ Fārābī, , Compendium Legum Platonis, ed. and trans. Gabrieli, F. (London, 1952), pp. 4, 20–21.Google Scholar

³⁰ Ibid., 42, 20–21.

³¹ Ibid., 11, 5; 21, 5; 27, 18, 32, 3, 22.

³² Strauss, , “How Farabi,” p. 326.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid., p. 338.

³⁴ A significant contribution to understanding this genre is to be found in von Grunebaum, G. E., “The Concept of Plagiarism in Arabic Literary Theory,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies (1944), 234–53.Google Scholar

³⁵ Strauss, , “How Farabi,” p. 325.Google Scholar

³⁶ Mahdi, , Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, p. 66.Google Scholar

³⁷ Mahdi, M., ed., Alfarabi's Book of Letters (Beirut: 1970), p. 131.Google Scholar

³⁸ Strauss, , Leo, , “Farabi's Plato,” in Persecution, passim.Google Scholar

³⁹ Fārābī, , “Against John the Grammarian,” p. 257.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Strauss, , “Literary character”; “How to Begin to Study the Guide for the Perplexed,” in Maimonides, , Guide for the Perplexed, trans. Pines (Chicago, 1963).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Strauss, , “Literary Character,” p. 48. But there are good grounds for thinking, pace Strauss, that the question of permitting or prohibiting the study of philosophy arose only in the wake of the anti-Maimonides controversy.Google Scholar