the next clause Alfarabi introduces the soul and its inclination toward knowledge (BL 135.1–2, #114), a theme that was noticeably absent from the comparable discussion in the Political Regime, thus opening the way for a full-blown treatment of language. Language gradually establishes itself in the soul and emerges as the driving force behind the growth and particularity of the Umma in ways largely unaccounted for by the limited scope of the discussion in the Political Regime. In the Book of Letters, language replaces climate as the primary cause of the difference (ikhtilāf) between Ummas (BL 137.1, #118). While language extends beyond physical causes, it also remains rooted in them, as Alfarabi observes in the Political Regime (PR 61.65, Ar. 70.6–7). Yet Alfarabi does not explain the relation between language and physical causes in that work, whose description of the effects of external physical causes on the human body remains so general that it does not mention specific bodily organs. In the Book of Letters, Alfarabi leaves no doubt that the most important of these organs is the tongue. The tongue represents the crucial link between physical nature and language. It is remarkable for the variety of movements and sounds of which it is capable by means of its diverse interactions with adjoining organs, which are described by Alfarabi in unusual detail (BL 136.5–13, #117).4 Alfarabi suggests that the movements and sounds first adopted by each Umma are likely to be determined by the natural temperament of the tongues and surrounding organs of its members, who will adopt whichever articulations happen to be easiest for them to make. These articulations vary from one dwelling place to another. As a result, the first consonants of each language differ. This is the “first cause of the difference between the languages of the Ummas” (136.13–137.2, #118).
Alfarabi’s account of the beginnings of Ummas and languages stands in contrast with the view of the Qur’ān, which declares, “What was humankind but one Umma, that later came to differ” (Qur’ān 10.19).5 Alfarabi says absolutely nothing about the time of human unity that is supposed to have preceded the subsequent human dispersion. He does not look back beyond what can be posited through our knowledge of our present dispersion and observation of palpable, natural causes. For similar reasons, Alfarabi can ignore the Qur’ānic passage in which God teaches Adam the “the names of all things” (2.31). To the Islamic traditions that speculate freely about Adam’s linguistic skills, one of which attributes seven hundred languages to him (Pedersen 1, 78), Alfarabi might have replied that the first humans in each and every Umma were speechless.6
The purely natural causes emphasized in the Political Regime are sufficient to ensure that the primary sounds of the languages, and by extension the languages themselves, will differ from Umma to Umma. But it is the conventional aspect of language that determines the subsequent course of the Umma’s development.7 In the Book of Letters, Alfarabi distinguishes between nature and custom by ascribing the actions performed by our original instincts to the former, and the actions established through repetition to the latter (BL 135.11–14, #115). It is hardly surprising that while nature should prevail at the beginning, when humankind does not yet bear the burden of experience, custom should come to dominate subsequently. Indeed, the very act of learning and memorizing a word involves repetition, and therefore custom. The statement that the evolving Umma displays a pronounced movement from nature toward custom will later require some qualification, but for the moment we may accept it as generally true.
Language develops further through an important intermediary, namely, chance agreement (ittifāq).8 Alfarabi argues that particular words are fixed by chance agreement, as humans, making use of the sounds that their tongues have formed, begin to speak to one another in a fairly haphazard manner. Whenever two people happen to agree (ittafaq) to use a word in order to designate a certain meaning, they establish a linguistic convention (iṣṭilāḥ), which eventually spreads across a larger community (BL 137.17–21, 138.3–4, #120). Although the words established through these agreements eventually spread far beyond their originators, Alfarabi does not believe that even a long series of such agreements would be sufficient to create all the necessary words, so that a language-giver must arise at some point (138.4–8, #120). It is this language-giver who endows language with its conventional character (cf. PR 61.65, Ar. 70.6).9 Convention creates and standardizes what fails to come into being instinctively through nature or haphazardly through chance. Language could never emerge as an effective tool of communication among large groups, even for necessary things (BL 138.7–8, #120), until it becomes standardized and therefore conventional.10
Alfarabi explains the conventionality of language even more bluntly in his Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle’s “De interpretatione.” The primary sensibles and intelligibles are identical for all humans, experienced in the same way by Arabs and Indians. However, the words used to signify these terms, in writing and in speech, are already entirely conventional. The manifest proof of their conventionality is that they vary from Umma to Umma. Alfarabi goes so far as to compare the giver of utterances (wāḍi‘ al-alfāẓ) to the giver of laws (wāḍi‘ ash-sharī‘a): both are governors who establish pure conventions (CA 12.11–20, Ar. 27.9–18). To return from convention to nature seems quite impossible, at least with regard to language. If the simplest nouns are already conventional, then the thorough development of convention is the only way for language to evolve. Without it all humans would be equally natural, but equally ignorant: our natural faculties for observing the sensible and grasping the intelligible things (BL 135.6–14, #115) would simply remain uncultivated.
The Book of Letters confirms, and develops, this general point about the inherent conventionality of language. As the Umma and its language continue to evolve, they move farther and farther away from their natural origins. The more complex the language becomes, the more its speakers entrench themselves in the linguistic customs that have been standardized by earlier generations and passed down to their descendants (BL 141.16–142.4, #128). The gifts of beauty and refinement that are conferred upon the language by a class of language experts and storytellers serve to enhance its customary character (143.1 ff., 144.6–11, #130). The culmination of the process occurs with the development of linguistic science. Alfarabi explains how the dialect on which this science rests should be taken from the most remote and savage members of the Umma, whose life in the wilderness has protected them from contact with foreigners and left them least inclined to speak or understand utterances different from those to which they have been long accustomed (145.8–146.20, #143–44). Linguistic science, the last of the syllogistic arts developed by the Umma and peculiar to it (cf. 148.14–20, #138),11 is the most inextricably rooted in the arbitrary customs of the Umma to which it belongs. Every Umma is formed by nature, but consummated only by custom, so that by the end of its development the natural elements seem almost to have disappeared. Although the triumph of custom is not the end of this ongoing story, it is certainly an important part of it.
Alfarabi’s Definition of the Umma
I have shown that in Alfarabi’s view the Umma and its language emerge out of nature, but are perfected only through custom and convention. The link between convention and the Umma is not unique to Alfarabi, but implicit in the traditional Arabic meaning of the term. One of the rarer Qur’ānic meanings of Umma is “custom” or “way of life” (Qur’ān 43.22). Alfarabi echoes this Qur’ānic meaning in the Philosophy of Plato, by associating the Umma with a certain way of life (PP 22.18).12 Yet in the absence of any description of the conventions and ways of life characteristic of the Umma, our discussion is bound to remain vague. What kind of customary institution is the Umma, and how does it come to embody a specific way of life?
We may begin with a process of elimination. Many political matters that are elsewhere of the deepest significance to Alfarabi are not even mentioned in the long account of the evolution of the Umma in the Book of Letters, or in the shorter account of its physical traits in the Political Regime.13 The words for “regime” (siyāsa), “city” (madīna), “ruler” (ra’īs), “king” (malik), and “association” (ijtimā‘), which occur frequently in Alfarabi’s political works, do not appear at all.14
