by M. Styer
Kashshāf li-Muṣṭlaḥāt al-funūn, 1:7
“The perfection (kamāl) of mankind is obtained by knowledge of the things that exist in the world (i.e. extramentally; aʿyān al-mawjūdāt). This includes conceptualising them and having propositional knowledge of their states, as they are in reality, within human ability. Because knowledge of them in an individual manner is impossible and also does not produce a perfection worth considering—due to them and their states constantly changing and altering—[scholars] took the universal concepts which apply truly to them (ṣādiq ʿalayha)—whether these be essential or accidental (ʿaraḍiyyāt)—and they researched their states in as much as they correspond to them in order to convey knowledge of them in a manner which is universal and remaining forever (abad al-dahr). However, because their states are multifarious and specifiying them requires different [methods], varied, and difficult, they considered the essential accidents (ʿawāriḍ dhātiyya; also translated as intrinsic attributes) of the concept of a concept (li-mafhūm mafhūm) and they made them sciences that are set down separately in writing. They termed this concept the subject (mawḍūʿ) of that science because the subjects (mawḍūʿāt; in the logical sense of subject and predicate) ultimately fall under it (rājiʿa ilayhā). “
This timeless grasp of essence occurs most clearly in what al-Jurjānī calls the real sciences (ʿulūm ḥaqīqiyya). Of these sciences, the author of the Kashshāf says, quoting al-Jurjānī, ‘The true sciences (al-ʿulūm al-ḥaqīqiyya): they are the sciences which do not change according to community or religion. Al-Sayyid al-Sanad [al-Jurjānī] said the like of this in Ḥawāshi Sharḥ al-Matāliʿ and that is like the science of kalām—as all the prophets, on them be peace, concurred in their beliefs (iʿtiqādāt)—and like the science of logic, and the various types of philosophy (anwāʿ al- ḥikma). The science of fiqh is not amongst them due to the change that can occur within it through abrogation’, (Kashshāf, 43). This should not concern us greatly, as fiqh is a practical science. The point of practical sciences (even politics, though less directly) is to purify the heart so that it may receive true knowledge.[1]
Many Muslim educators and parents looking for a better model than modern education have opted for trivium-based schooling, and the topic has drawn enough attention that liberal arts colleges have been set up. The venerable Sheikh Amin Kholwadia recently addressed the point that the trivium is a set of what we call auxiliary sciences, or instrumental sciences, in both the Islamic and the classical parlance. That means that they are tools to study something else. So, they do not really make a full curriculum, in the proper sense. We may justifiably infer that their prominence is more of a result of Renaissance humanities ethos than it is a classical, scholastic Christian or Islamic approach.
So, what Sheikh Amin proposed was that we shift from a trivium discourse to a quadrivium discourse, in which the fourth item is the dīn, religion or Islam, or the Sharia. The trivium is a set of tools designed to study it, and that is what is done in the traditional madrasa. That gives an object of study. In other words, in the madrasa, the auxiliary tools are perfected as part of the curriculum, and not strictly grammar, logic, and rhetoric, but also other sciences like conventional linguistic assignment (waḍʿ), and etymology (ṣarf), to derive the exact meaning from the Sharia, which was revealed in the Arabic language.
There is a universal message that we can take away from the classical classification of the sciences, which is that there is something out there that we are studying, and the auxiliary sciences give us the tools to study properly. Logic, for example, is the tool for the production of all the sciences, except for perhaps the mystical sciences, although, even there it can rule out what we call delusion (wahm). So, if we talk about the second category of the sciences that are traditionally studied, they are the theoretical sciences, and immediately here we should recognize that we are moving from treating the Sharia as a source to treating it as a science or a subject.
One can see the same pattern in the Iḥyā ʿUlūm al-Dīn, where in the Kitāb al-ʿIlm, Imam al-Ghazali ranks the sciences in terms of farḍ, maḥmūd, and other ethical categories, whereas in the second half of the Iḥyā, where he turns towards the inner realities, he organizes the sciences in ʿAjāʾib al-Qalb in terms of ontology. He first divides them into the practical and theoretical, something he had also done in Kitāb al-ʿIlm, but then he ranks the sciences in ontological ranks. He repeats this classification in Jawāhir al-Qurʾān where he speaks about the four layers, or the oyster and the three shells around the oyster.
So on this classification, what the Persian scholars called the true sciences which are eternal and unchanging, mentioned in the preceding quotation to this writing, the things which are unchanging and the theoretical sciences are objectively and universally (not just in Islam, but for all humans) three levels of abstraction. These are natural science, which studies bodies in terms of their movement (bodies in matter), and mathematics which studies the quantitative aspect of those bodies at a level of abstraction such that, for instance, a triangle could exist in potentially any matter; but as an idea in the mind, it can exist without any matter.
Then, one moves to kalām, or metaphysical theology, where one studies abstract objects which exist outside of matter, although they can exist embodied in matter. So, causality can exist in matter, whereas things like angels, and Allah (subḥanahu wa-taʿālā) are intrinsically immaterial. And, this higher science is called the universal science in the late curriculum, and it provides an ontology. This is a structure which is set out by Imam al-Ghazali in the al-Mustaṣfa as well, where he calls it the universal science (ʿilm kullī) for the other Sharia sciences.
The practical sciences are traditionally: ethics, politics, and a science between them, home economics, which study the practical usage of goods, which in turn are used to attain attributes of the heart and ultimately the maʿrifa of Allah (subḥanahu wa-taʿālā); ultimately that should be their end. You can see the difference between that notion and modern practical, or social sciences, whatever you want to call them.
While some say, such as al-Maybadhi in the commentary on Hidayat al-Hikma, that in the later period the practical sciences were completely replaced by the Sharia sciences, one can still note that there are individual works devoted to politics that combine a rational and a Sharia basis, devoted to things like al-aḥkām al-ṣulṭāniyya; but also Imam al-Iji writes Risalat al-Akhlaq, a treatise on ethics, and at least three Ottoman scholars of the late period comment on this up until recent times, throughout several centuries. So, it seems that it didn’t completely die out.
And then, importantly, we have the productive sciences, and Ibn Khaldun speaks about how a different part of the human soul is responsible for producing these sciences; but for us they give us a starting point to move towards the theoretical perfections. These are the trades that the majority of Muslims would have taken up as their source of living, and through them they produce the three core needs of any society which are: food, clothing, and shelter. It would also include things like the law and how to govern those other trades, and importantly, they would have an ethos of futuwwa (chivalry), where the gathering or hoarding of wealth is seen as one of the greatest sins. And so, a lot of these people were involved in charities, and they have īthār (meaning to prefer others over oneself) which is nearly the core aspect of futuwwa. So, it makes this spirit of helping others and being active, and not just thinking individualistically of oneself.
The materials from there get fed into the practical sciences about how to organize and manage, because all the practical sciences are about management or tadbīr, not in the modern sense of being practical, but in terms of achieving an end; so arranging one’s means towards one’s ends. And the ultimate end is felicity in the afterlife, which is obtained through the practical of ethics of purifying the heart, polishing the mirror, and then in the theoretical of mirroring the realities in the pure heart and seeing them all as the act and creation, and the realities reflecting Allah’s divine names and power, etc.
The final conclusion is that one can see that there is nothing profane in the whole of the curriculum. Rather, we have to recognize that the profane only exists in the human heart that is cut off from Allah (subhanahu wa-taʿālā); otherwise, everything is sacred because it is in the presence of God. So, splitting the curriculum up into religious studies and secular studies, as a means of classification is the beginning of the end. Therefore, the trivium is important, but it needs to be seen in its full context: as the proper means to the practical and speculative sciences.
[1] Also, fiqh is a science which often operates at the level of opinion because Allah chose to make its scriptural proof open to interpretation, which would produce difference of opinion, and therefore mercy.