20th century AD

UNESCO Courier, Dec, 1991 by Rachid Sabbaghi

The medical doctor, philosopher and jurist Ibn Rushd or Averroes (1126-1198), the greatest Arab commentator or Aristotle, is at home in Cordoba. He is busy writing a philosophical work, the Tabafut-al-Tabafut (Destruction of Destruction) "in which it is maintained, contrary to the Persian ascetic al-Ghazali, author of the Tahafutul-Falasifa (Destruction of Philosophers), that the divinity knows only the general laws of the universe, those pertaining to the species, not to the individual.

"He wrote with slow sureness, from right to left; the effort of forming syllogisms and linking vast paragraphs did not keep him from feeling, like a state of well-being, the cool and deep house surrounding him.

"In the depths of the siesta amorous doves called huskily; from some unseen patio arose the murmur of a fountain; something in Averroes, whose ancestors came from the Arabian deserts, was thankful for the constancy of the water.

"Down below were the gardens, the orchard; down below, the busy Guadalquivir and then the beloved city of Cordoba, no less eminent than Baghdad or Cairo, like a complex and delicate instrument, and all around (this Averroes felt also) stretched out to the limits of the earth the Spanish land, where there are few things, but where each seems to exist in a substantive and eternal way."

The above passage is taken from La busca de Averroes ("Averroes's Search", 1947), by the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). Themes and figures of Arab-Islamic culture are recurrent features of the work of Borges, who once proclaimed that the Thousand and One Nights was the Book of Books. Of all the writings he devoted to Arab-Islamic culture, "Averroes's Search" best represents his special relationship with that culture and, more particularly, with one of its unique facets: the world of al-Andalus.

Al-Andalus as depicted by Borges is the scene of an extraordinary spiritual adventure. It is a place where commentaries are written on Aritotle, "this Greek, fountainhead of all philosophy". Where people "exhaust the pages of Alexander of Aphrodisia". Where scholars proudly examine rare manuscripts collected by princes who are passionate bibliophiles. Where questions of poetry and rhetoric are discussed with fervour. Where an examination of the authenticity of "marvels" can turn into a discussion of the created or uncreated character of the Qur'an.

Great intellectual receptivity, rich and contrasting characters, a profound respect for other people's freedom of opinion, conversation and the exchange of ideas raised to an art: these are the characteristics of the Andalusian elite as described by Borges. Averroes takes issue with another character in the story, Farach the theologian, by refusing to accept that "an excellent variety of the perpetual rose ... is found in the gardens of Hindustan"--a Borgesian theme par excellence--"whose petals, of a blood red, exhibit characters which read: "There is no god but the God, Muhammad is the Apostle of God.'" But this disagreement does not provoke a polemic. The viewpoint of the orthodox theologian, for whom a miracle is the very sign of divinity, can coexist with that of the rationalist.

In the person of Abulcasim the traveller Borges mischievously presents a kind of antithesis to the three other characters in the story--Farach the theologian, Abdalmalik the poet and Averroes himself. A down-to-earth, practical man, Abulcasim, whose "memory was a mirror of intimate cowardices," has a very different experience of the world from that of the men of ideas and convictions. When asked to relate a marvel, he reflects that "the moon of Bengal is not the same as the moon of Yemen, but it may be described in the same words." A prudent man, he never answers directly, but takes the pulse of his audience and softens the asperities of the questions put to him by means of dialectical agility.

Could it be the memory of other, less tolerant lands far from al-Andalus that explain this wariness? Was al-Andalus really the idyllic land Borges describes? Did it not, like any other country, have its share of stupidity and horror as well as its exemplary splendours? The life of Averroes himself seems to confirm that this was so, if any proof were needed. He knew opprobrium as well as glory, suffered repression at the hands of obtuse authorities, was present at the burning of books that had cost him dear in hard work and self-denial, and came to know not just the loyal support of true friends but also the stubborn hatred of mediocrities.

But Borges' al-Andalus is not that of history, nor that of a literary realism that would seek to reconstitute objectively a life, a place, a time. He does not set himself that goal, still less allow himself that illusion. The point of Borges's fiction is quite different. The Spanish title of the story, La busca de Averroes, can be read in two ways, as the quest undertaken by Averroes himself, or as the quest for Averroes--Borges's own attempt to recreate the philosopher and his destiny in the truest manner possible.