Abstract

The philosophical system elaborated by the Fatimi Isma$\sp{\rm c}$ili da$\sp{\rm c}$i Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani strongly recalls the scheme of ten separated intellects laid out by his non-Isma$\sp{\rm c}R$iipredecessor, Abu Nasr al-Farabi The resemblance is striking, but not absolute: At a crucial point, al-Kirmani unexpectedly rejects the Farabian model of Neoplatonic emanation and opts for creation ex nihilo. ;This study attempts to explain why he did so. To that end, his chief philosophical work, the Rahat al-$\sp{\rm c}Aql$, is closely compared to al-Farabis al-Madina al-Fadila. Plotinus' Enneads and the pseudepigraphic Theology of Aristotle are also examined, to determine what the doctrines and implications of Neoplatonism are, and just how al-Kirmani does or does not adopt them. Finally, an investigation of certain events in Egypt under al-Hakim attempts to identify politico-historical stimuli which may have encouraged al-Kirmani to reject emanationism. ;Al-Kirmani represents one chapter in the long interaction between two strains of thought--here termed Platonic and Qur'anic--about the relationship between God and man. The Platonic view allowed such a relationship, but denied divine anthropomorphism; the Qur'anic view allowed divine anthropomorphism, but denied any genetic relationship between man and God. As Hellenistic philosophical notions entered the Islamicate world, the Platonic and Qur'anic viewpoints struggled for dominance. ;Among Muslims, Isma$\sp{\rm c}$ilism was precocious in its rejection of anthropomorphism. Within a century of its emergence into public view, however, a sophisticated Neoplatonic doctrine, still anti-anthropomorphic but problematically implying divine-human interrelation, supplanted its early gnostic ideology. That the Neoplatonic chain of being had not only ontological and ethical, but also soteriological implications, created a theological problem for al-Kirmani which grew critical when some of his contemporaries claimed al-Hakim to be divine. ;The present study argues that, by adopting a philosophical theology which simultaneously denied anthropomorphism and severed the Platonic linkage between the human and the divine, al-Kirmani not only perfected an Islamic via negativa but undercut the position of his ideological opponents in the formative Druze movement