A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue: Philosophy and Mysticism in Bahya ibn Paquda's "Duties of the Heart"

By Diana Lobel

Written in Judeo-Arabic in eleventh-century Muslim Spain but quickly translated into Hebrew, Bahya Ibn Paquda's Duties of the Heart is a profound guidebook of Jewish spirituality that has enjoyed tremendous popularity and influence to the present day. Readers who know the book primarily in its Hebrew version have likely lost sight of the work's original Arabic context and its immersion in Islamic mystical literature. In A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue, Diana Lobel explores the full extent to which Duties of the Heart marks the flowering of the "Jewish-Arab symbiosis," the interpenetration of Islamic and Jewish civilizations.

Lobel reveals Bahya as a maverick who integrates abstract negative theology, devotion to the inner life, and an intimate relationship with a personal God. Bahya emerges from her analysis as a figure so steeped in Islamic traditions that an Arabic reader could easily think he was a Muslim, yet the traditional Jewish seeker has always looked to him as a fountainhead of Jewish devotion. Indeed, Bahya represents a genuine bridge between religious cultures. He brings together, as well, a rationalist, philosophical approach and a strain of Sufi mysticism, paving the way for the integration of philosophy and spirituality in the thought of Moses Maimonides.

A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue is the first scholarly book in English about a tremendously influential work of medieval Jewish thought and will be of interest to readers working in comparative literature, philosophy, and religious studies, particularly as reflected in the interplay of the civilizations of the Middle East. Readers will discover an extraordinary time when Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thinkers participated in a common spiritual quest, across traditions and cultural boundaries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780812202656

Diana Lobel

Diana Lobel is Associate Professor of Religion at Boston University. She is the author of Between Mysticism and Philosophy: Sufi Language of Religious Experience in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari (2000), A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue: Philosophy and Mysticism in Baḥya Ibn Paqūda’s Duties of the Heart (2007), The Quest for God and the Good (2011), and Philosophies of Happiness (2017).

Book preview

A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue

JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS

Published in association with the Center for Advanced

Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania

David B. Ruderman, Series Editor

Advisory Board

Richard I. Cohen

Moshe Idel

Alan Mintz

Deborah Dash Moore

Ada Rapoport-Albert

Michael Swartz

A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue

Philosophy and Mysticism in Bahya Ibn Paqūda’s Duties of the Heart

DIANA LOBEL

Copyright © 2007 University of Pennsylvania Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

Published by

University of Pennsylvania Press

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lobel, Diana.

A Sufi-Jewish dialogue : philosophy and mysticism in Baḥya Ibn Paqūda’s Duties of the heart / Diana Lobel.

p. cm.—(Jewish culture and contexts)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8122-3953-9

ISBN-10: 0-8122-3953-9 (alk. paper)

1. Baḥya ben Joseph ibn Pakūda, 11th cent. Hidayāh ilā farā’id al-qulūb. 2. Jewish ethics-Early works to 1800. 3. Baḥya ben Joseph ibn Pakūda, 11th cent.—Knowledge—Sufism. 4. Judaism—Relations—Islam. 5. Sufism. I. Title.

II. Series.

BJ1287.B23H4935 2006

296.3’6—dc22

2006042181

For Reb Moshe Holcer, z"l

And for Albert, Francine, and Janet Lobel

You have taught me—each in a unique way—the meaning of duties of the heart

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Baḥya’s Work in Its Judeo-Arabic Context

1. Philosophical Mysticism in Eleventh-Century Spain: Bahya and Ibn Gabirol

2. On the Lookout: The Exegesis of a Sufi Tale

3. Creation

4. The One

5. Speaking about God: Divine Attributes, Biblical Language, and Biblical Exegesis

6. The Contemplation of Creation (I‘tibār)

7. Wholehearted Devotion (Ikhlāṣ): Purification of Unity (Ikhlāṣ al-Tawḥīd), Purification of Intention in Action (Ikhlāṣ al-‘Amal)

8. Reason, Law, and the Way of the Spirit

9. The Spirituality of the Law

10. Awareness, Love, and Reverence (Murāqaba, Maḥabba, Hayba/Yir’ah)

List of Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Preface

It was told of a pious man [ḥasid] that he met some people returning from a great battle with an enemy. He said to them, You are returning, praised be God, from a smaller battle, carrying your booty. Now prepare yourself for the greater battle. They asked, What is that greater battle? and he answered, The battle against the instinct and its armies.¹

This anecdote about a pious person is quoted by one of the early masters of the Hasidic movement in eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, Rabbi Jacob Joseph of Polonnoy.² Writing in Hebrew, he speaks of the pious person as a ḥasid, portraying him as a model of the new movement of radical piety, Ḥasidut. The source of his anecdote is the Hebrew translation of Baḥya Ibn Paqūda’s Duties of the Heart, written in Arabic—more precisely, in Judeo-Arabic—in eleventh-century Spain, but translated in 1161 into Hebrew and a favorite of Jewish devotion down to this day. What the eighteenth-century Hasidic master no doubt did not realize is that the origin of the anecdote is the Islamic tradition of ḥadīth and that the ḥasid about whom it is told is the founder of Islam, the Prophet Muḥammad. Today’s readers of the work in Hebrew translation might also be surprised that Baḥya’s term for both the external battle and the greater, internal struggle is jihād— which for Baḥya clearly has a much broader connotation than holy war.³

How does a perennially popular manual of Jewish piety come to be quoting Islamic traditions about the Prophet Muḥammad? Muslim Spain of the tenth through twelfth century, known as the Golden Age of Hispano-Jewish poetry and letters, is a time of great convergence and cultural creativity. Jewish courtiers such as Samuel Hanagid are writing wine poetry; erotic Arabic poetry finds its way into the synagogue liturgy, even on the holiest days. Jewish philosophers are reading and writing philosophy in Arabic; Jews are studying with Sufi masters, integrating ascetic practices and mystical thought into their own spiritual creativity.

One of the founders of the contemporary study of religion, W. C. Smith, spoke of rare moments of interreligious creativity in world history that created international communities of discourse. Baghdad in the ninth and tenth century was one, in which the Caliph al-Ma’mūn (813–33) established a school for translation. The Renaissance of Islam saw the translation of Hippocrates, Galen, Plato, and Aristotle into Syriac and Arabic by Hunayn Ibn Isḥāq and his disciples. The intellectual circles of tenth-century Baghdad show the influence of a wide variety of sects and schools: the orthodox school of the Ash‘arite theologians; the Mu‘tazilite theologians—known as the freethinkers of Islam—who introduced allegorical interpretation of Scripture; the Eastern Christian John of Damascus, who was a strong influence on Christian kalām; and a panoply of Christian sects, which were well represented, as were Zoroastrianism, Manichaeanism, and Indian philosophy.⁴ The Muslim historian al-Hum’aydī records the experience of a Spanish theologian, Ibn Sā’dī, visiting Baghdad in the ninth century and attending an assembly of Islamic theology, kalām:

Yes, I attended twice, but I refused to go there for a third time… for this simple reason, which you will appreciate: At the first meeting there were present not only people of various Islamic sects, but also unbelievers, Magians, materialists atheists, Jews and Christians, in short unbelievers of all kinds…. One of the unbelievers rose and said to the assembly: we are meeting here for a discussion. Its conditions are known to all. You, Muslims, are not allowed to argue from your books and prophetic traditions since we deny both. Everybody, therefore, has to limit himself to rational arguments. The whole assembly applauded these words. So you can imagine, Ibn Sā’dī concluded, that after these words I decided to withdraw.⁵

It was during this time of religious cross-fertilization that Sa‘adya Gaon (892–942) wrote his Book of Doctrines and Beliefs to clarify Jewish belief in an age of intellectual ferment. Baḥya Ibn Paqūda comes a century later in Muslim Spain, an era of similar cultural convergence.

We know very little about Baḥya Ibn Paqūda; all we have from him is one manual of inner devotion and several devotional poems. He wrote his Judeo-Arabic classic Guidebook to the Duties of the Heart (al-Hidāya ilā farā’iḍ al-qulūb) in Muslim Spain by 1080 at the latest; it was translated into Hebrew by Judah Ibn Tibbon in 1161 under the title Ḥovot ha-levavot, the first work to be undertaken in the immense project of preserving Judeo-Arabic classics for the community of Provence, which was losing the ability to read Arabic. The Hebrew translation has enjoyed immense popularity down to the present day; few Hebrew books have gone through as many printings. However, the study of this work in translation has often obscured the original Arabic context and sources of the book. The work of A. S. Yahuda,⁶ Georges Vajda,⁷ and the recent pathbreaking discoveries of Amos Goldreich⁸ have decisively established Baḥya’s borrowings from Islamic literature and specifically Sufi texts.

We know that the Sufi movement flourished in Spain from the tenth century on.⁹ However, there are many gaps in our knowledge of Spanish Sufism; for example, we do not even know precisely which texts were circulating in eleventh-century Spain.¹⁰ Thus it is difficult to pinpoint which Sufi texts Baḥya was reading, as he never cites his Arabic sources by name. However, like the classic Sufi manuals, Baḥya’s work is arranged as a guidebook for the inner life. The Hidāya is structured in a series of ten chapters, or gates; each gate represents a duty of the heart, an ideal to be embodied. In the Tenth Gate, Baḥya tells us that each previous gate is a stepping-stone leading the reader toward the goal of spiritual life, true love for God.¹¹ In his own eyes, each duty of the heart is vital to an integrated spiritual path.

It is ironic, then, that there has been a radical split in the image of Baḥya and a corresponding split in scholarship. Scholars have described three Baḥyas: the philosopher, the dialectical theologian, and the Sufi pietist. Scholars have seen the philosopher and the theologian in the First Gate and the Sufi pietist in the remainder of the work. So extreme is this split image that Georges Vajda’s classic study tracing Sufi themes and sources in Baḥya’s work does not address the First Gate at all, whereas David Kaufmann’s philosophical study concentrates solely on the First Gate.¹² In this study, I wish to draw a more complex portrait of Baḥya as an original thinker who defies easy categorization. Baḥya integrates elements from Neoplatonic philosophy, Mu’tazilite theology, rabbinic Judaism, and Sufi mystical piety in a unique and creative synthesis.

Amos Goldreich recently established that a small treatise of Muḥāsibī, Questions Concerning the Actions of the Heart and the Limbs, is quite likely the source of Baḥya’s title and terminology of Duties of the Heart. It is well documented that Muḥāsibī’s work was popular in eleventh-century Spain. I will add new evidence supporting Goldreich’s thesis that Baḥya knew this treatise of Muḥāsibī’s, and provide new analysis establishing a literary connection between Baḥya and other early Sufi works.

Baḥya is unique in both Jewish and Islamic intellectual history in his integration of philosophical method and Sufi devotion. In my search for the sources of Spanish Sufism, I found many Sufi thinkers immersed in the language of theology (kalām) but not in philosophical demonstration. The Islamic figure Ibn Masarra (d. 931) has been looked upon as a Spanish thinker who was both a philosopher and influenced by Sufi trends.¹³ My preliminary study of his Kitāb al-i’tibār did not uncover significant parallels with Baḥya’s project of integrating the inner life; his work certainly calls for further investigation.¹⁴ Another Andalusian figure with parallels to Baḥya is Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyawsï (1052–1127). His Kitāb al-hadā’iq (Book of the Circles) was widely read by medieval Jewish thinkers; we know of three medieval Hebrew translations. Baṭalyawsī is a contemporary of Baḥya, and his philosophical spirituality has an affinity with the Jewish thinker’s. However, while certain mystical themes are present in his work, Baṭalyawsī is not as imbued with the structure and methodology of Sufism as is Baḥya. Baḥya thus represents a unique synthesis: an endeavor to unify and integrate various dimensions of the inner world.¹⁵ My study analyzes the creative integration of philosophy, theology, Sufi mysticism, and rabbinic Judaism in his thought.

My method is thematic and contextual. I have chosen five themes that stand out in Baḥya’s philosophical spirituality and show the thorough integration of these approaches to the spiritual life.

1. In Chapter 1, I discuss the concept of philosophical mysticism and engage in a phenomenological investigation of the philosophical mysticism of Baḥya and Ibn Gabirol.

2. In Chapters 2–5, I explore Baḥya’s four aspects of his discussion of unity (tawḥīd).

3. In Chapter 6, I investigate his Contemplation of Creation (i‘tibār).

4. Chapters 7–9 explore the theme of purification or dedication of action (ikhlāṣ).

5. Chapter 10 investigates the Sufi concept of awareness of God (murāqaba) and its relation to love and reverence (maḥabba, hayba).

In each of these discussions, I offer a close reading of Baḥya’s text and embed his treatment within the Islamic cultural context. I explore the intellectual resources he draws upon—the texts he has read, digested, and creatively shaped. This understanding of textual influences helps us better see the new synthesis he has made. Baḥya’s work is not simply a collage of influences, borrowed and rearranged. He is a synthetic thinker. My task as a scholar of religious thought is to understand the integration of various elements in his thought—the resources he is drawing upon and the distinctive use he makes of them. My work is thus not only archaeological but also literary. I show the way he selectively makes use of these resources to convey a unique vision for Jews of his time.

Throughout the work, I show that for Baḥya, philosophical method and rabbinic and Sufi devotion work hand in hand. I thus bring the two sides of Baḥya together: the philosophical rationalist and the mystical devotee. The dialogue between philosophy and Sufi mysticism is an internal dialogue. However, in Baḥya’s mind, there is no division; the two sides are seamlessly interwoven. For Baḥya, philosophy and mysticism are not in conflict, but rather represent two intertwined aspects of the life of devotion.

This study is important for several reasons. First, Baḥya has been largely neglected by modern scholars of Jewish thought. While scores of studies have been devoted to medieval Jewish thinkers such as Sa‘adya Gaon and Moses Maimonides, little serious work has been done on Baḥya. Baḥya is a complex thinker whose ideas and philosophical method deserve careful analysis.

Second, Baḥya is a key figure in what the great scholar of Genizah literature S. D. Goitein termed the Jewish-Arab symbiosis.¹⁶ Baḥya shows the cross-fertilization of Islamic and Jewish culture at its most creative. While Baḥya does not mention the Sufis by name, his use of sources demonstrates firsthand literary acquaintance with Islamic thought. Baḥya’s synthesis of Jewish and Islamic spirituality is unique and worth detailed study.

Third, Baḥya plays a key role in the development of Judeo-Arabic literature. Baḥya openly acknowledges the strong influence of the works of Sa‘adya Gaon—the maverick Jewish philosopher, Mu‘tazilite theologian, Biblical translator, and commentator. In turn, Baḥya serves as an important link in the transmission of Judeo-Arabic thought, influencing key Judeo-Arabic thinkers, including Judah Halevi and Maimonides.

Fourth, Baḥya’s work had a decisive impact on Jewish intellectual history. One of the first Judeo-Arabic works to be translated into Hebrew, the Hidāya was influential both in its original Islamic milieu and through its Hebrew version (Ḥovot ha-levavot) in Jewish communities down to the present day. Moreover, Baḥya influenced not only ethical and pietistic movements—including the Egyptian pietist circle of Abraham Maimonides and the eighteenth-century Hasidic movement—but rationalist philosophers such as Moses Maimonides as well. Maimonides drew extensively on Baḥya’s presentation of negative theology in the First Gate of the Hidāya, as well as his discussion of love and reverence for God in the Tenth Gate.

As Steven Harvey has recently shown, Maimonides was read as a radical Aristotelian in the West but was given a Sufi reading in the East.¹⁷ His descendants—themselves immersed in Sufi ideas—bring out Sufi terminology and themes in his thought. My study shows that the Sufi dimension of Maimonides’ thought is deeply embedded: the very title of Maimonides’ philosophical magnum opus, Guide of the Perplexed, is drawn from a Sufi aphorism. Among the fruits of this research is a more comprehensive understanding of an important source of Maimonidean religious thought.

Introduction

Baḥya’s Work in Its Judeo-Arabic Context

The Dating of Baḥya’s Hidāya

Baḥya Ibn Paqūda is an enigmatic figure in the history of Jewish thought. We know very little about Baḥya; we have little evidence external to his work itself. The Hidāya was written in Judeo-Arabic around 1080. It was the first work to be translated into Hebrew by Judah Ibn Tibbon, who set out to systematically make the Judeo-Arabic classics available to the Jews of Provence who did not know Arabic.

In his introduction, Ibn Tibbon informs us that Baḥya was a dayyan, a judge of the rabbinical court: "one of the scholars of Spain was our Rabbi [Rabbenu] Baḥya ha-dayyan, son of Joseph. (Based on the words of Ibn Tibbon, the epithet Rabbenu," our rabbi, has remained with Baḥya till this day.) We know that Baḥya lived in Muslim Spain, and it has been confirmed on the basis of a manuscript from 1340 that he lived in Sar-agossa, where the name Baḥya was known (although there is debate as to the correct pronunciation of the name, whether Baḥya or Bahaye).¹

The precise dates that Baḥya lived and worked are not known. For some time, there was debate as to whether he lived in the second half of the eleventh century or the beginning of the twelfth.² A. S. Yahuda, who published an Arabic edition of the Hidāya in 1912, argued for a twelfth-century date for Baḥya based on evidence of precise literary coincidence between Baḥya’s work and a short work of the eleventh-century Islamic pietist al-Ghazālī, al-Ḥikmah fī-makhlūqāt Allāh (The Wisdom in Creation). More recently, David Zvi Baneth showed that Baḥya and Ghazālī in fact drew from a common source, the Kitāb al-dalā’il wa’l-i’tibār ‘alā’l-khalqi wa’l-tadbīr, by the Arabic author Pseudo-Jāḥiẓ, a work belonging to the end of the tenth century and definitely written before 1058. Moreover, we are fortunate now to have an early source that helps us date Baḥya rather precisely. Moses Ibn Ezra’s Maqālat al-ḥadīqa (Treatise of the Garden)—which, until recent Genizah findings, was available only in Hebrew translation—mentions Baḥya as belonging to an earlier generation than Ibn Ezra’s own.³

From this passage, we learn that Moshe Ibn Ezra did not consider Baḥya one of the men of his generation, the beginning of the twelfth century. When speaking of the grammarian Ibn Janāḥ, Ibn Ezra writes, he was followed by the pious and excellent R. Baḥya, which suggests that Baḥya followed directly after Ibn Janāḥ. Ibn Janāḥ’s work the Kitāb al-Tanqīḥ was finished by 1050–55, giving us the earliest dates (terminus ad quem) for Baḥya. The literary activity of Moses Ibn Ezra began around 1080–90, as Ibn Ezra was a pupil of Isaac ibn Ghiyāth, who died in 1089. Since Ibn Ezra locates Baḥya in a generation before his own, we can confidently locate Baḥya’s period of creativity between 1050 and 1090.⁴

Baḥya’s Sources: Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ (Brethren of Purity)

Since we have so little biographical information about Baḥya, one of the ways we can come to know him better as a thinker is by finding other clues to his social and intellectual context. One of the ways scholars have approached this puzzle is by searching for literary sources for Baḥya’s ideas.

In his pioneering study at the turn of the century, David Kaufmann asserted that the tenth-century Muslim encyclopedists known as the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-ṣafā’) were a strong influence on Baḥya. Their monumental encyclopedia is an eclectic blend of science, philosophy, astronomy, logic, mathematics, metaphysics—all the known sciences of the time. It blends Neoplatonism, Pythagorean speculation, and possibly an Ismā‘īlī political message. It is not clear whether the Ikhwān were a real fellowship of Muslim spiritual philosophers, or whether the encyclopedia of the Ikhwān was a historical fiction, a spiritual rubric for the transmission of Islamic philosophy and science. The work was immensely popular and had been brought to Muslim Spain by the eleventh century.⁵

David Kaufmann read the Ikhwān in German translation and noted many conceptual affinities between the Ikhwān and Baḥya; he even quotes certain passages they share. However, the examples Kaufmann brings show that while we can speak of a common intellectual milieu—a cultural storehouse from which medieval Neoplatonists drew—passages that have a common theme do not necessarily point to a literary connection.⁶ I can offer one clear example. Kaufmann notes that the Ikhwān speak of the color of the sky as pointing to God’s providential design.⁷ However, the details of the Ikhwān’s passage do not match those in Baḥya. In fact, this motif is found also in another Arabic source—the Pseudo-Jāḥiẓ text from which Baḥya quotes extensively—in language that Baḥya borrows word for word and at length. Baḥya may know a motif from more than one source; there are topoi that are simply circulating in his milieu. Thus while Kaufmann saw the Ikhwān al-ṣafā’ as Baḥya’s key philosophical source, my research suggests that the Ikhwān represent one among several Neoplatonic sources Baḥya was reading.⁸

Philosophy and Poetry: Baḥya and Ibn Gabirol

TREATISE ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF MORAL QUALITIES (KITĀB IṢLĀḤ AL-AKHLĀQ; SEFER TIKKUN MIDOT HA-NEFESH)

Determining the relationship between Baḥya and the celebrated medieval Hebrew poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol offers more decisive information about Baḥya’s intellectual profile. Ibn Gabirol is the first Jewish philosopher in Spain; he is also the first poet to reflect Sufi themes in his poetry. Although his strictly philosophical treatise, Meqor Ḥayyim (The Fountain of Life)—written in Arabic, translated into Latin and an abridged Hebrew version—was not influential in the history of Jewish philosophy, his religious poetry entered the liturgy early, and he was widely celebrated as one of the greatest medieval Hebrew poets.

The precise extent and nature of Sufi influence on Ibn Gabirol is still debated in the scholarly literature. The focus of that debate has been the precedent Ibn Gabirol set for forms of Jewish liturgical poetry.⁹ For the purpose of my study, what is important is simply Ibn Gabirol’s innovative introduction of Sufi motifs. Ibn Gabirol’s expressions of longing and love have both Sufi and Neoplatonic echoes; Baḥya’s do as well. The two reflect a common cultural milieu, in which Spanish intellectuals demonstrate an openness to both Sufi and philosophical sources.¹⁰

Ibn Gabirol is also the author of a short treatise on ethics, the Treatise on the Improvement of Moral Qualities (Kitāb iṣlāḥ al-akhlāq; Sefer tikkun midot ha-nefesh). Baḥya does not mention the ethical work of Ibn Gabirol in his introduction, but this could be because in his eyes the Iṣlāḥ al-akhlāq did not fit his genre; neither is it a manual of Jewish law nor does it concern duties of the heart. Gabirol’s work is structured around ten pairs of opposite moral qualities (for example, joy and sadness, pride and humility). David Kaufmann notes that these ten pairs are nearly identical to a table of opposites found at the end of Baḥya’s Third Gate. He was convinced that this showed that one author depended on the other. Kaufmann argued that it was Ibn Gabirol who borrowed from Baḥya. Baḥya introduces the pairs in an offhanded way—I will mention those qualities that occur to me—whereas Ibn Gabirol develops his ideas fully and systematically. One is a proposal; the other is a fully developed system. Other scholars argue that the direction of influence is the reverse: that Baḥya distilled the pairs of opposites underlying Ibn Gabirol’s treatise and used the classification in his relatively short passage.¹¹

It may be possible to resolve the issue on the basis of chronology alone. We have narrowed the date of Baḥya’s literary activity to between 1050 and 1090. Ibn Gabirol died in 1057–58. There is a short window of time in which he could have become acquainted with the Hidāya. Moreover, the two figures are thought to have lived in the same city, Saragossa. However, in the current state of scholarship, it is believed that Ibn Gabirol composed the Iṣlāḥ al-akhlāq in 1045, shortly before he left Saragossa. If this generally accepted date of authorship is true, the book predates Baḥya’s Hidāya.¹²

The literary evidence of a direct relationship between the two books is highly suggestive, but not airtight. The two works have no passages in common. What they share is a very similar—though not identical—classification of ten pairs of ethical qualities. Some of the pairs are not described in precisely the same words, and the pairs function in different ways in the two works. Ibn Gabirol’s work is, to a large extent, purely descriptive; he offers a phenomenological analysis of the ways in which ethical qualities function in the human personality. Baḥya, in contrast, offers the pairs as ethical prescriptions. He suggests that each of these ethical qualities should be used in its proper time.

From the external historical data, it is much more likely that Baḥya knew Ibn Gabirol’s work rather than the reverse. From an internal literary analysis, it is very possible but not certain that Baḥya drew from Ibn Gabirol’s treatise. It may well be that the two were drawing upon a classification that was known among Spanish intellectuals. Although Baḥya presents the pairs of opposites as if they are just occurring to him, the pairs themselves have the ring of an inherited scheme. It is certainly striking that both thinkers base their ethical system upon these ten pairs of qualities rather than the four temperaments of Greek medicine, the usual basis for medieval ethics. However, given that the two authors make very different uses of this table, it is just as possible that each is adapting a well-known system to his own purposes.¹³

THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE (MEQOR ḤAYYIM) AND DEVOTIONAL POETRY

What, then, of Baḥya’s relationship to Ibn Gabirol’s philosophical treatise Fountain of Life (Meqor Ḥayyim) and to his poetry? I have not as yet found a decisive borrowing from Meqor Ḥayyim. As for the poetry, given that Ibn Gabirol was among the most renowned Spanish-Jewish poets and that the two flourished in the same city of Saragossa in roughly the same period, it is hard to conceive that Baḥya would not have known Ibn Gabirol’s poetic work. Indeed, two examples strongly suggest that Baḥya had read the poetry of his older contemporary, absorbed important themes and insights, and perhaps also offered his own implicit philosophical critique of Ibn Gabirol’s approach.

The first example is one brought to light by Israel Levin: a highly suggestive parallel between the baqqashah of Baḥya—the liturgical prayer of entreaty appended to Duties of the Heart—and a passage from Ibn Gabirol’s poetic magnum opus Keter Malkhut (Crown of Sovereignty). Keter Malkhut is a penitential poem that has been incorporated into the liturgy of Yom Kippur, but it is not clear that this was its original purpose. The poem is an exquisite expression of metaphysical themes, from divine attributes and negative theology to medieval astrology and cosmology. The passage from Keter Malkhut in which we find a strong parallel to Baḥya reads as follows:

My God, if my sin is too much for me to bear, what will you do for your great name?

And if I cannot hope for your mercy, who can forgive me other than you?

Thus [even] if you slay me, I shall have hope;¹⁴ and if you demand [account] from my sin, I shall flee from you to you [evraḥ mimkha elekha].

I shall hide myself from your anger in your shade

And in the folds of your mercy I shall strengthen myself until you give me mercy

And I shall not let you go until you bless me.¹⁵

Compare this with the passage from Baḥya’s baqqashah:

And if you do not grant me grace and forgive my transgression, to whom shall I lift my eye?

If a master does not have compassion upon his servant and forgive his guilt

To whom can he cry other than his master? …

Whither shall I go away from your spirit, and whither shall I flee?

If I go up to heaven, there you are; if I go down to Sheol, there you are.¹⁶

Therefore, from you to you I shall turn [mimkha elekha asurah]

From before you to you I shall flee [minegdekha ‘alekha evraḥah]

From your judgment to your mercy I run

From your quality of judgment to your quality of mercy I shall take refuge.¹⁷

The similarity between the two poetic utterances is unmistakable: the notion that God alone can forgive sin, that there is no one other than God to whom the sinner can turn, and, above all, the poignant image of fleeing from you to you. Striking, too, is the fact that both poets invoke identification with Cain. In Ibn Gabirol, it is explicit; the poet speaks the words of Cain, my sin is to much for me to bear (Gen. 4:13). In Baḥya, the identification with Cain is implicit. The poet echoes the words of the psalmist, Whither shall I go from your spirit? Or whither shall I flee from your Presence? If I ascend up into heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in hell, you are there (Ps. 139:7–8), expounded in midrashic literature as the words of Cain. The similarities are too strong to ignore: the overlap in motifs and language, the pungent allusion to Cain in both poems. It seems clear that Baḥya read Ibn Gabirol and was deeply influenced by the spirit of his poetry.¹⁸

In fact, the two poems also draw upon a rich Arabic poetic tradition. The following Arabic poem is found in the dīwān of the prominent Arabic poet Abū Nuwās:

Oh, Him from whom I have no protector,¹⁹

With your pardon²⁰ from your punishment I seek protection.

I, the servant, who acknowledges every sin,

You, the forgiving Lord and Master.

If you punish me it is because of the wickedness of my deeds,

And if you forgive me, it is because it befits you.²¹

I flee to you from you,

And where, if not to you, shall one who seeks protection flee from you?²²

Note that Baḥya’s poem shares with that of Abū Nuwās the image of the servant and master, a theme not found in Ibn Gabirol’s poem.²³ This fact is significant: striking motifs, language, and images shared by Ibn Gabirol and Baḥya can indicate both that Baḥya drew from Ibn Gabirol and that the two were drawing from a common storehouse of Arabic poetic images. The motif of fleeing from God to God can be traced even further. Levin notes that it crops up in diverse sources, such as the Persian Abū Miskawayh (d. 1030); in fact, it can be traced all the way back to the Prophet Muhammad. In a well-attested ḥadīth, the Prophet declares, "I flee from you to you [a’udhu bika minka]."²⁴ The statement is oft-quoted in raqā’iq, devotional literature meant to soften the heart of the believer. The epigram emphasizes the unity of the devotee and God, the urgent message that there is nothing outside God to which one could turn. Ibn Gabirol—and Baḥya following him—has tapped into a wellspring of Islamic devotion.

I have discovered an additional significant parallel between Baḥya’s book and Ibn Gabirol’s poem Keter Malkhut, one not previously noted in the literature. The source of Baḥya’s three essential divine attributes—one, eternal, and existent—has always been a mystery. Sa‘adya adduces as God’s essential qualities the standard kalām triad of living, powerful, and knowing. Baḥya borrows from Sa‘adya the argument that the three essential attributes are really one in God; humans simply lack one word to describe all three as they exist simultaneously in the divine. Baḥya’s divine attributes, however, are abstract, philosophical qualities, which do not appear as the three essential attributes in Sa‘adya or in kalām literature. However, they do appear as a triad in Keter Malkhut:

You are God, and there is no distinction between your divinity, your oneness, your eternity, and your existence.

For all is one mystery; although the name for all [three] varies

All refer back to one place.

Baḥya’s view is identical. Baḥya, like Ibn Gabirol, adopts Sa‘adya’s argument that though the words for the three attributes vary, they are one in God’s divinity. However, both Ibn Gabirol and Baḥya revise Sa‘adya’s three attributes of living, powerful, and knowing to one, eternal, and existent. This is the only source I have seen other than Baḥya in which precisely the latter three attributes are presented together as a triad. From a chronological standpoint, it is most likely that Baḥya was reading Keter Malkhut and was inspired by Ibn Gabirol’s philosophical formulation.²⁵

If Baḥya was indeed reading and drawing from Ibn Gabirol, how can we compare the approach of these two thinkers? Each thinker presents a unique blend of philosophy and mysticism. My first chapter will thus engage in a phenomenological comparison between Baḥya and Ibn Gabirol in order to highlight the similarities and differences between these two Sufi-inspired Jewish thinkers in eleventh-century Muslim Spain. This will highlight the distinctiveness of Baḥya’s contribution.

The Ten Gates: An Overview of Baḥya’s Book

An overview of both Baḥya’s book and our study will be useful to orient the reader at the outset. First, an overview of Baḥya’s book.

Baḥya sets forth in his introduction two paradigms of the progression of his book. While he does not in practice follow a strict order of mystical stages and states, he does suggest a progression of gates. Baḥya tells us that the ten gates represent ten root principles, under which we can find all the duties of the heart, whose number is potentially unlimited. Although he does mention in the course of the book duties between human beings, the ten root principles are all devoted to the relationship between human beings and God.

The subject of the First Gate is pure affirmation of the unity of God (ikhlāṣ al-tawḥīd). God is the only being who is essential unity and can be described neither by substance nor by accident. God cannot be known in essence but only by way of action, that is, through the works of creation. The Second Gate is thus devoted to contemplation of the works of creation (i‘tibār), which point to the wisdom of the Creator.²⁶

The unique, sovereign God establishes that creatures are obligated to obey him. The Third Gate is devoted to proving the obligation of obedience to God (iltizāmu ṭā‘ati llāhi; Hebrew, ‘avodat ha-shem). Since this One governs all and is responsible for all reward and punishment, the Fourth Gate argues for absolute reliance on God (tawakkul) and total surrender to him (istislām).

God’s unity also means that all action should be devoted purely to God; the Fifth Gate explicates the duty of purifying intention in action (ikhlāṣ al-‘amal). God’s oneness means that he is deserving of praise, glorification, and absolute abasement or humility (tawāḍu’), the subject of the Sixth Gate.

Given that we human beings are prone to neglect obedience to God, the Seventh Gate discusses repentance (tawba; Hebrew, teshuvah), a way to correct errors and failures. In order to fully realize obligation to God, one must undertake self-examination, calling oneself to account (muḥāsaba) as a way to urge our soul to fulfill its obligation to God. Muḥasaba is the subject of the Eighth Gate. However, pure affirmation of God’s unity cannot be achieved as long as one is still in love with this world. Only by emptying one’s heart of desires of this world can the soul dedicate itself fully to God. Thus asceticism (zuhd) is the subject of the Ninth Gate. Finally, to love and please God is the highest wish and greatest happiness; love (maḥabba) is thus the subject of the Tenth Gate. Baḥya argues that all the duties of the heart are included under these ten root principles.²⁷

As Vajda points out, this list is somewhat artificial; in practice, each of the duties entails the others, and we find abundant intertextual references. While from one point of view, love is the culminating virtue or synthesis of all duties of the heart, it is also true that each duty both entails and mirrors the others.

Philosopher, Theologian, Sufi, and Jew: An Overview of This Study

Baḥya is a synthetic thinker. He absorbs many sources but also reflects deeply on his sources and builds an original, unified argument. In the introduction, he tells us that this book began as an internal meditation; by writing the work, he carries out a project incumbent upon all human beings. Baḥya draws upon many intellectual resources but also gives them an original twist. His unique picture of God and the universe calls all capable persons to philosophical meditation.

For Baḥya, the soul is a spiritual substance, a light from the divine whose task is to serve God. According to Baḥya, the soul is given a sojourn in the material world; our test is to see if we can manage the desires and needs of the body and harness them to serve God. When we forget our purpose and get distracted by the needs of the body, it is reason (‘aql) that comes as a guide to remind us of our task. We then realize that the key to fulfilling our soul’s purpose is to entrust the needs of the body to the Creator. By surrendering to God in absolute reliance, we ensure that the provisions of the body will be cared for and we can serve the Creator with pure love (maḥabba khāliṣa).

Thus philosophy does not distract the soul but helps us fulfill our purpose. Philosophy teaches human beings that God is pure, absolute unity; thus we, too, must become unified and dedicated to one purpose—that of devotion. Each of the gates of Baḥya’s book represents an aspect of the integrated spiritual life. Unification, contemplation, service, reliance, dedication, humility, repentance, asceticism, and love are not so much successive stages on the spiritual path as mirroring aspects of a unified soul.²⁸

Baḥya lived just before the ascendancy of Aristotelian philosophy; like Sa‘adya, he sees no conflict between reason or philosophy and traditional Jewish teaching. In method, he does not exclusively follow any one set school. He draws upon but also revises Sa‘adya’s proofs for the existence of God from the createdness of the world. He adopts certain kalām premises—such as the impossibility of an actual infinite. However, he is drawn to abstract, a priori analysis rather than empirical knowledge of the world through the senses. He ascribes to God the abstract attributes of oneness, eternity, and existence rather than theological attributes that describe God’s relation to this world. Finally, he asserts that even when we describe God philosophically, our purpose is actually to deny the adequacy of all concrete description: God is neither multiple nor created nor nonexistent.

Baḥya’s method thus begins to look much like that of Maimonides. We use the mind to correct its misapprehensions; we deny all attributes of God that are not fitting for the Creator. However, we should not be under the mistaken impression that a conception of the essence of God can reside in the mind. Anything we discover in the mind is other than God.

Philosophy is thus the first foundation of spiritual life. Philosophy enables us to strip away our misconceptions about the divine, making room for the God of experience. Through contemplation of the wisdom in creation—the beauty with which the world is constructed—we discover traces of God everywhere around us. At the same time, we discover a living personal God as a comforter, source of strength, and inner witness.

Philosophy teaches human beings to entrust the affairs of physical life to the divine, knowing that God will take care of one’s material well-being. At the same time, one should dedicate all actions to the service of the divine. The duties of the limbs are outward signs of obedience to and love for God. However, the purpose of external religious duties is to lead to pure duties of the heart. Many commandments combine both dimensions; prayer is a paradigmatic example. Prayer contains an outward face: certain words are recited, accompanied by gestures of the body. However, the outward choreography and formal dimensions of prayer are, like its words, simply vehicles for meaning and intention. Like a musician, who must unite formal mastery with soulful expression, the worshiper’s aim is authentic expression of love, reverence, and gratitude through the traditional forms of Jewish devotion.

While Baḥya draws upon several interlocking intellectual traditions, he is also an independent thinker, willing to critique, revise, and correct the traditions he inherits, as we will see from an overview of each of the gates we will explore.

DIVINE UNITY (TAWḤĪD)

In his contemplation of divine unity, Baḥya draws upon a story found in the Sufi works of Sulamī, Abū Nu‘aym al-Iṣfahānī, and Qushayrī that describes God in Qur’ānic language as on the lookout (bi’l-mirṣād). The Sufi master Yaḥyā Ibn Mu‘ādh teaches that one cannot find God as an answer to the question where. The question seeks an attribute of the created—that is, place—rather than of the Creator. The transcendent Source of all cannot be physically located; the realm of place belongs to created beings alone. Yaḥyā asserts that God is always on the lookout, but this does not lock God into a place. The only attribute we can say of the Creator is that God is aware of creation.

The Sufi story as transmitted by Baḥya includes a playful ambiguity. Where is God to be found? Through one’s looking. On the lookout is not only where God is, but where the seeker is. This ambiguity is suggestive of murāqaba, a Sufi state; indeed, some classical commentators interpret the term mirṣād (on the lookout) using the root of murāqaba (r-q-b). Murāqaba is a state of reflexive awareness, in which the Sufi becomes conscious of God watching him or her. Who is on the lookout? Both God and the seeker.

Baḥya plays with this literary ambiguity: God is to be found through human contemplation of God’s traces in the world. Human beings must remove all images from the imagination and cease thinking that we can apprehend God’s essence. Then the fact of God’s existence will be plainly confirmed. Humans cannot see God’s essence but can perceive God’s actions, God’s work in creation. However, in one passage in the Eighth Gate, Baḥya uses the concept of murāqaba, or attentiveness, to leap across the experiential divide; here he does not remain with the traces of God’s actions alone but points to an experience of God’s presence. Baḥya suggests an intuitive state in which ordinary human faculties are bypassed; the companion’s awareness is guided by God. The Sufi concept of murāqaba reconciles Baḥya’s negative theology in the First Gate with the state of communion he describes in the Eighth. Murāqaba serves as a bridge between the rationalist and the experiential aspects of Baḥya’s thought.

Baḥya uses the precise language of several Sufi masters—transmitted by Dhū’l-Nūn, Junayd, Qushayrī, and others—to express the theme of learned ignorance, the notion that the ultimate level of knowledge is the realization that one does not know. The more one knows of God, the more one is perplexed. Maimonides reflects the language of several of these Sufi sayings, particularly in Guide of the Perplexed 1:59. Baḥya was thus one conduit for Sufi traditions in Maimonides and may have inspired his notion of perplexity.

Baḥya expresses a great debt to Sa‘adya but is willing to revise Sa‘adya as he sees fit. On the subject of divine attributes, Baḥya states that God has three essential attributes and, following Sa‘adya, asserts that the three are distinct in name alone. While human beings cannot but conceive of these attributes as three separate notions, they point to one unified essence of the divine. However, unlike Sa‘adya, Baḥya goes on to say that the three essential attributes are actually negative in meaning; he denies that we can say anything positive about God. The attributes in the Torah are all attributes of action. The correct way to know God is through God’s traces in creation, which he distinguishes from having a conception of God in one’s imagination or intuitive mind.

Baḥya is equally independent when it comes to proving the existence of a Creator God. Of Sa‘adya’s four arguments for creation, Baḥya rejects one; moreover, he changes the order of Sa‘adya’s arguments. While he accepts the standard kalām cosmological proofs for the existence of God, his sensibility steers toward the argument from design. He accepts Sa‘adya’s version of the argument from composition: that while the universe exhibits many features of orderliness, it also features irregularities that can only be the product of a designing intelligence. Baḥya goes so far as to argue that God built irregularities into the cosmic order so that human beings would discern traces of divine wisdom in the world. It is a rational obligation, a duty of the heart, to discern God’s presence within the divine handiwork, to find God’s wisdom in the details of the natural world.

Aristotelians argued for an eternal world order based upon cosmic regularity. For Sa‘adya and Baḥya, in contrast, it is cosmic irregularity that forces one to postulate a designing intelligence. God is like the proverbial Muslim carpet maker who is careful to include a flaw in every carpet in order to heighten our awareness that anything human is imperfect. According to this approach, God went one better: God created a perfectly imperfect world. While an autonomous, mechanical system can be perfect, a flawed system that somehow works perfectly must be divine.

Whereas Sa‘adya grounds his epistemology in the undeniable evidence of the senses, Baḥya prefers more abstract arguments. Rather than build from sense perception, as Sa‘adya does, he begins with a priori premises and later introduces facts from the observable universe. Baḥya’s style of argumentation is similar to that of al-Kindī. In his work On First Philosophy, al-Kindī begins with abstract paradoxes of the one and the many, akin to those of Parmenides; he then goes on to introduce a posteriori evidence from the way the world is in fact constructed. Likewise, Baḥya in 1:5 introduces premises that he establishes through a priori logical proof, while in section 1:6 he turns to observe the way the world is in fact constructed, which attests to a wise designer. Thus while in certain respects he adopts the kalām structure of Sa‘adya’s arguments, Baḥya’s preference for a priori premises reveals a philosophical sensibility akin to that of Maimonides.

Baḥya moves from the kalām perspective to a distinctly philosophical approach in his discussion of divine unity. He accepts a distinction found in al-Kindī between conventional and absolute unity. In both Baḥya and al-Kindī, we find a strong emphasis on a transcendent One who creates this world ex nihilo, a True One beside which all the unities of this world partake of merely accidental oneness.

Baḥya draws two arguments from al-Kindī. From the first argument, Baḥya learns that there is no trace of multiplicity in God. This world, in which unity and multiplicity are intertwined, springs from a God who is unity alone. From the second argument, Baḥya learns that although God is unlike anything in this world, all the things in this world that are in some way one derive their unity from God. Al-Kindī articulates a paradox: God’s oneness transcends the categories of all created beings, yet all created beings participate in some sense in this unity. These ideas are expressed in poetic form by Ibn Gabirol in such poems as Keter Malkhut, Shokhen ‘ad, and Kol Barui and by Baḥya in his baqqashah; they are presented in discursive form by Shahrāstanī in the name of Pythagoras, by the Andalusian philosopher Baṭalyawsī, and by the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-ṣafā’). However, it is al-Kindī who offers Baḥya demonstrative proofs that satisfy his philosophical demand for rational certainty.

Baḥya draws from but also revises Sa‘adya’s approach to divine attributes. Sa‘adya derives from Mu’tazilite kalām the three essential attributes of life, power, and knowledge; he argues that each entails the other and all derive from God’s role as Creator. Baḥya is clearly in dialogue with Sa‘adya’s presentation; he, too, argues that God has three essential attributes, that the three do not add anything to God’s essence, and that each entails the other. However, he is evidently uncomfortable with the essential attributes Sa‘adya has chosen, which derive from God’s status as Creator. For Baḥya, essential attributes belong to God independent of creation; God is eternal whether or not God chooses to create a world. Baḥya thus shifts his focus to the unmanifest God, prior to and independent of creation. Baḥya’s attributes are purely ontological; there is no material content to the attributes existent, eternal, and one. While Baḥya accepts the kalām framework of Sa‘adya’s arguments, he revises them in an abstract, philosophical direction. His formulation accords with that of Ibn Gabirol in Keter Malkhut, who identifies Baḥya’s three attributes—one, eternal, and existent—with God’s divinity.

However, Baḥya goes further: he insists that the function of the three essential attributes is to negate their opposites. The essence of God is unknowable; all we can know are God’s traces in creation. However, while from a philosophical point of view, we cannot make positive statements about the divine, from a theological perspective we are required to do so in order that we have a Deity to love and serve.

Scripture is not being careless when it uses language in an extended sense. If the Torah had used purely abstract language, it would create no conceptual chord with the listener; there would be no image in the mind of the believer. Scripture thus creates an anthropomorphic image that we must slowly refine and demythologize in accord with a Sufi dictum: anything that exists in the imagination or intuitive mind is other than God. Idolatry extends beyond physical images to mental conceptions; the Biblical phrase guard your souls (nishmartem et nafshotekhem) warns against mental idolatry. This point is picked up by Maimonides in Guide 1:50. Baḥya also anticipates Maimonides’ critical, skeptical stance regarding the limitations of knowledge. However, he qualifies this philosophical skepticism with an affirmation of direct religious experience. He suggests in several contexts that if the seeker approaches God in the proper, indirect way, his or her mind will be illumined by wisdom.

CONTEMPLATION OF CREATION (I‘TIBĀR)

In his contemplation of creation, Baḥya makes creative use of material he inherits from the Kitāb al-dalā’il of the Arabic author Pseudo-Jāḥiẓ. For example, he divides a metaphor he derives from the beginning of Kitāb al-dalā’il into two discrete presentations that signal two dimensions to contemplation. I‘tibār has a scientific, philosophical side that seeks demonstrative proof of God’s creation of the universe. It also contains an aesthetic, devotional side; one ponders the expressions of intelligence in creation in order to inspire one to divine service. Both are duties of the heart. Baḥya is both a philosopher who delights in rigorous a priori proof and a theologian who surveys the world empirically, gathering evidence of a designing Creator. God made nature uniform enough that we can see the wisdom of its workings, but diverse enough that we can discern a willing agent designing its order.

Baḥya’s meditation on creation is like a naturalistic version of ta‘ame ha-mitsvot, contemplation of the purpose of the commandments. Every detail in nature is designed for a purpose. Baḥya himself engages little in the standard discipline of ta‘ame ha-mitsvot. His emphasis is on the commandments of the inner realm. The outer created order offers an occasion for inner contemplation.

Baḥya’s attention is ever drawn to the inward. While he borrows extensively in his contemplation of creation from Pseudo-Jāḥiẓ, he diverges from his source to reflect upon the inner, subjective dimension. Baḥya finds traces of God not only in the outer design of the universe but also in inner human experience. He combines scientific contemplation with a Sufi-inspired meditation that sees God’s traces even in one’s own movements. Baḥya also extends i‘tibār from universal contemplation of nature to meditation upon the miracle of Jewish survival in history.

Revising the view that Baḥya drew from Ghazālī, D. Z. Baneth concluded that both Baḥya and Ghazālī drew from Pseudo-Jāḥiẓ, transforming a work of