foregoing analysis suggests that in Aristotle’s view the ethnē comprise the vast majority of humankind, and even a significant portion of the Greeks. The bulk of Aristotle’s work on politics treats a political form that by his own acknowledgment is quite rare. Aristotle evidently thinks that there is something unique and noble about the vibrant, self-sufficient political life of the polis. The ethnos does have a distinct meaning, but a rather negative one: it is a loosely defined community that cannot be governed in the free, political manner of a city (1326b5). The Greek-barbarian distinction becomes less important than the distinction between potentially free cities and unfree ethnē.44 Aristotle’s exclusion of the ethnē from the blessings of political life attained only in a few cities could even be said to foreshadow a certain Judaeo-Christian usage of the term, according to which a few faithful believers live surrounded by many, almost anonymous, gentiles.
The elevation of the city vis-à-vis the nation constitutes a central theme of Aristotle’s Politics, but it is absent in Alfarabi. And why would Alfarabi have wanted to elevate the city? While the city was rare enough in Aristotle’s time, and limited mainly to Greece, in Alfarabi’s Babylon and neighboring Byzantium its last vestiges had long been engulfed by a series of vast empires and sweeping claims to revelation. The only kind of government known to Alfarabi and his contemporaries was kingly and imperial: this remained true in the Islamic world well into the twentieth century. Praising or even discussing a political form that no longer existed might have appeared hopelessly anachronistic. The absence of independent cities or popular governments in the thought and practice of the medieval Islamic world might be another major reason why the Politics never gained much currency within it. Unfamiliarity with the contents of the Politics would have discouraged translations, and even if translations were made, philosophers might have been leery of publicizing something that would have seemed so preposterous to much of their audience. The political situation in thirteenth-century Europe, in which the Politics publicly resurfaced, was already quite different: republics had emerged in northern Italy, so that thinkers like Marsilius and even Thomas Aquinas felt free to ask the Aristotelian question of whether kings, aristocracies, or popular assemblies should rule.45 The rediscovery of the Politics helped stimulate a centuries-long European debate over which class of people should govern: no comparable debate occurred in the Islamic world until the twentieth century.46 I propose this as a plausible answer to the query with which Brague concludes his article: how do we explain the relative lack of interest in the Politics in the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Muslim worlds (Brague 1993, 432)?
Our analysis of Plato and Aristotle has shown that their treatment of nations does not display simple indifference or contempt. On the contrary, they acknowledge the prevalence and importance of nations for much of humankind. These nations constitute a major obstacle to the realization of the best city and regime, and, in the case of Plato, a useful tool for education. Yet neither philosopher attempts to define them in any strict way. We have seen how loosely Plato employs terms such as ethnos and genos, and how negatively Aristotle defines the ethnos. This means that their discussions of nations are often inconclusive and vague. I contend that Alfarabi goes beyond his classical predecessors in providing a working definition of the Umma. Reflecting on this definition and its various applications will distinguish Alfarabi decisively from Plato and Aristotle and help to clarify some of the problems that have emerged in determining the significance of the nation thus far. It is by establishing this definition that we will commence our analysis of Alfarabi and his concept of the Umma.
Chapter 2
From Speechlessness to Civilization: The Evolution of the Umma
What are nations? Why is humankind divided into them, and what are the consequences, cultural, religious, and political, of this division? These are basic questions that ought to inform any comprehensive discussion of the topic. Yet Alfarabi does not frequently engage in such a discussion. Although the term Umma appears in almost all Alfarabi’s political works, it is often unaccompanied by any obvious explanation of its meaning. Such is the case in the Book of Religion and the Attainment of Happiness, which will be discussed in Chapters 4 through 6. Only two works, the Book of Letters and the Political Regime, give a thematic account of the Umma, its causes, and its character. They therefore constitute the focal point of Alfarabi’s treatment of the Umma. Any attempt to determine the significance of the concept, and apply it to Alfarabi’s oeuvre as a whole, must begin with these two works. In this chapter, I will analyze Alfarabi’s thematic definition of the Umma and contrast it with the presentation of the same theme by some of his most illustrious contemporaries.
The Natural Causes of the Umma, and Its Conventional Character
The starting point of Alfarabi’s account of the Umma is nature. The emphasis on nature is strongest in the Political Regime, where Alfarabi states that “One Umma is distinguished from another by two natural things: natural temperaments and natural states of character” (PR 61.65, Ar. 70.5–6).1 Alfarabi proceeds to elaborate in some detail the natural causes that give rise to the differences among the Ummas. His emphasis on these differences is so acute that he employs the verb “to differ” (ikhtalaf) and its cognates over thirty times in less than two pages. The different climates produced by the uneven motions of the heavenly bodies and their varying positions vis-à-vis the earth’s surface affect the air, earth, and water in each region, which in turn allow different kinds of animals and plants to thrive in each region. The plants and animals become the nutriments of each Umma, and their effects on the bodies of the people nourished by them are consolidated through breeding and procreation. The result is a habitable world divided into Ummas, each of which occupies a particular spot on the earth’s surface and possesses a fixed and inalienable character (61.65–62.67, Ar. 70.5–71.7).
As Joshua Parens has already detected (Parens 2006a, 88–90), Alfarabi’s rather naive description of the Umma in the Political Regime is not entirely revealing. It suffers from some noteworthy omissions. While the largely physical meaning of “natural temperaments” is clear enough from the emphasis on nutrition and procreation, the meaning of “natural states of character” remains mysterious. Does it point beyond the body toward the soul? Alfarabi also admits that he has not mentioned all the ways in which the heavenly bodies and air influence the character of humans, without elaborating further (PR 62.66, Ar. 71.5–7). This puzzling statement might hint at the passage’s plainly inadequate account of language. Alfarabi mentions language as a distinguishing mark of each Umma: “a third, conventional, thing having some basis in natural things, namely, the tongue—I mean, the language through which expression comes about” (61.65, Ar. 70.6–7).2 Yet this single, terse sentence constitutes the sum total of Alfarabi’s treatment of language in the Political Regime. In the Book of Letters, by contrast, Alfarabi’s thorough account of language and its evolution covers many pages.
Conversely, the account of the evolution of the Umma in the Book of Letters is prefaced by a remark that seems to compress the entire discussion of the Umma in the Political Regime into a single sentence. Alfarabi describes the first humans, who have not yet undergone any linguistic development and therefore cannot even speak, as follows: “They are in a specific dwelling place and country, and endowed by nature with a form and constitution in their specific bodies, and their bodies will have specific qualities and mixtures” (BL 134.20–135.1, #114).3 The causes of this condition, such as the heavenly bodies, climate, and nutrition, are not explicitly mentioned here but seem to be presupposed. The Book of Letters thus confirms the assumption of the Political Regime concerning humankind’s primordial dispersal over the surface of the earth. The varied natural features on the surface of the earth create marked bodily differences among humans in
