Faris O. Nofal
@iphras.ru
Department of Philosophy of Islamic World
Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciencees
RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS
Arts and Humanities, History, Religious studies, Philosophy
Scopus Publications
Scopus Publications
FARIS O. NOFAL and
Novosibirsk State University (NSU)
The article peers at a problem of attribution in the texts quoted by faylasūf alFārābī in his book ‘The Harmony between Two Sages’. The author proves that regardless of modern Western scholars (P. Adamson, F. Zimmermann) opinion, al-Farabi knew thoroughly vulgate-version of apocrypha ‘Aristotle’s Theology’ well-known to the researchers, used by him while working at the text of ‘The Harmony…’. It also shows that sporadically the thinker referred to the fragments of ‘Elements of Theology’ by Proclus that were included into Arab Aristotle corpus. Separately the article discusses the role of ‘Theology’ by PseudoAristotle in establishment of eastern peripatetics’ mystical teachings.
Faris Nofal and
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (The Kunstkamera)
The article conducts a textual and historiographic analysis of a manuscript dating from the 18th century. The author of the manuscript is a Samaritan historian and theologian Ibrahim al–Danfi al–‘Ayya. The autographical part of the monument stores in the corpus of British Library (Or 2691), and it is presented in four apologetic treatises. From the perspective of studying the manuscript, the author of the article concludes about the dependence between al–‘Ayya's works as well as Samaritan theology in general, contemporary with him, — and Judaic, Muslim sources, both directly and indirectly quoted by representatives of Sikhem religious community. Separately, the article considers the alteration made to the translated text of Samaritan Pentateuch into Arabic. The author of the article claims that the nature of al–‘Ayya's work as an editor is due to symbolic and allegoric exegesis of Muslim Kalām.
Faris Osmanovich Nofal and
Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences
The article reviews Muslim mutakallimūn’s doctrines of VIII–XIII centuries about metaphysic basis of spatiality. Using a huge amount of Mutazili’, Ashari’ and Zaydi’ treatises, the author analyzes three the most significant conceptual blocks of physical theories of Muslim theologists – cosmologic, macro- and microspatial. The study shows, that pre-islamic time’s mythologems, which partially consist in a Muslim mythological corpus texti, specify basic theoretical coordinates of kalām cosmology. The latter, in its turn, bases on general Semitic intuition of hierarchy layout of metaverse. As for indigenous speculation of Mutakalimūn’s about tridimentional microspace, it has found its expression in elaborating the categories of makān and djiha – to denote virtual or real whereabouts of the entity and the void. In the end, Middle-East philosophers-atomists interpreted microspace – hayyiz predicatively connected with the sense of tiny matter particles, as geometrical unexpanse, which serves as ontology base both for one- or two-dimensionality and for three-dimensional complex entities. Separately the article offers original Mutakallimūn’s theories, which refer to the problems of reciprocity between spiritual entities and physical space.
F. O. Nofal
Voprosy Literatury
The article is devoted to the mystical manifesto The Last Day (1963) of the Lebanese novelist, playwright and journalist Mikhail Naimy (1889–1988). The author suggests that Naimy, under the spell of classical Russian literature, attempted an audacious experiment: by successfully combining the totality of concepts of Dostoevsky’s The Dream of a Ridiculous Man [ Son smeshnogo cheloveka] with the traditional mythologemes of Sufi poetry, this graduate of the Poltava theological seminary overcomes mystical imagery, and in doing so postulates human impotence in the face of the Nietzschean ‘eternal recurrence’ and the ineffable nature of true the ophanies. The article demonstrates the innovative character of The Last Day, a novel that stands apart from the works of other Pen League members: while Gibran’s The Prophet seeks to infantilise a religious myth, Naimy’s objective is to bring mythology back into the 20th-c. Middle Eastern literary discourse and reimagine it using the categories of contemporary existential philosophy. The study opens with a short biography, covering Naimy’s Russian and American periods.
Faris O. Nofal and
Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences
The present article reviews the philosophical and religious teaching by Ibn al-Nafis – a prominent doctor and thinker of the 13th century. The study was carried out on the basis of his treatise ‘Kamil’s Message in Prophet’s Sirah’ which is the last classical work written in the genre of a ‘philosophical robinsonade’. The author analyzes the content of the aforementioned work and carries out a detailed research of the connection of ‘Kamil’s Message’ with earlier traditions within the Arabic Muslim thought as well as with the theory of the ‘father of sociology’ Ibn Khaldun, which appeared several decades later. It is shown that Ibn Nafis’s theology matches, on the whole, the traditional Maturidi theological doctrine, while its natural, philosophical, and anthropologic views are a development of the legacy of Mutazilite Mutakallimes and Arabic peripathetics (especially, Ibn Tufayl). Ibn Nafis’s conception of society and the sense of social processes forestalls the concepts by Ibn Khaldun. In particular, Ibn al-Nafis develops the dichotomy of ‘city inhabitants’ and ‘desert inhabitants’, the category of ‘livelihood’ and a theory of the influence that geographical and climate factors have on peoples. Ibn Nafis also explores patterns in historical process and the impact that tyrannical governors and economic relations have on it. The author also discusses Ibn al-Nafis’s eschatological ‘futurology’ according to which the end of the world is approaching in virtue of natural reasons that, in their turn, will come about as the result of the peculiarities of the course of human history.
Faris Nofal
St. Tikhon's Orthodox University
Faris Nofal
St. Tikhon's Orthodox University