Introduction

Adab is commonly understood as “literature” in the sense of belles-lettres in modern Arabic, while also denoting “politeness” and “etiquette.”¹Bonebakker, “Adab and the Concept of Belles-Lettres,” 16; Guth, “Politeness, Höflichkeit, ʾadab,” Mayeur-Jaouen (2020), “Introduction,” 2. The connotation of “belles-lettres” is the result of a development which integrated the classical notion of practical wisdom and erudition into a new disciplinary practice of reading and categorizing texts; ²Allan, In the Shadow of World Literature, chapter 4. in modern times, adab expresses a new relation between text and reality³Al-Bagdadi, Vorgestellte Öffentlichkeit, 38–50.. In this sense, it has become “literature,” and, one can argue, only materialized as a signifier for entire texts and genres during the last decades of the nineteenth century.⁴Hallaq, “Adab e) modern usage.“ See a brief outline of some major semantic shifts in Al-Manasra “Muṣṭalaḥ al-adab ʿinda l-ʿarab.” Aspects of adab in the sense of both belles-lettres and “adab literature” have often been traced back to the formative period of the Arabic literary tradition, in which Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and al-Jāḥiẓ feature as the pioneers of “classical adab,” and in which it was soon used to denote a specific disciplinary or professional conduct.⁵Such as in Ibn Qutayba’s Adab al-kātib (The Ethics of the State Scribe). A general overview of the early meaning is provided in Fähndrich, “Der Begriff ‘adab’ und sein literarischer Niederschlag”. Understanding the term as some genre or connected to literary writing or literary culture, adab has been introduced and/or critically nuanced in several seminal studies, among others by Pellat, “ADAB ii. Adab in Arabic Literature,” and “Variations sur le thème de l’adab,” 21f; the use of adab as writerly culture has been advanced by Toorawa, “Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr and Arabic Writerly Culture,” and as “narrative literature” in contrast to religion by Malti-Douglas, “Playing with the Sacred,“ 52. For a critique of the term “adab literature” see Bonebakker, “Adab and the Concept of Belles-Lettres,” 29f. Mayeur-Jaouen et al., L’adab toujours recommencé, suggest the use of “adab literature”, for “literature” as one central meaning of adab from the beginning see Mayeur-Jaouen (2023), “Introduction,” 20–22, 29 (see note 15 below). However, on the whole, a more explicit connection to speech, writing, and language was a later development.⁶As already established by Nallino, “La littérature arabe des origines à l’époque de la dynastie umayyade.” Notably, Wolfhart Heinrichs hones in on the late formative context, that is after the eleventh century, and adab’s use to denote the “literary sciences.”⁷Heinrichs, “The Classification of the Sciences,” see also Bauer, “Adab c) and Islamic Scholarship after the “Sunnī revival.” Eventually, after signifying knowledge of poetry and language in Ottoman times, it converged with early modern European semantics of “literature” as text–based erudition⁸On the social role of the adīb (the producer of adab) during the Ottoman period of Arabic literature see Elger, “Einige Überlegungen zum adab in der Frühen Neuzeit,” see also the dimension of translating literature/adab in the eighteenth-century Ottoman context examined by Haddad, “Adab into Littérature.” and became the preferred term for translating the French/English concept from the 1850s onwards.

For the initial phase of classical Arabic, partly pre-Islamic times, verb forms to the noun adab (such as addaba) are translated as “to educate” or “’to train’ an animal.”⁹See Bonebakker, “Adab and the Concept of Belles-Lettres,” 18. Many scholars have also pointed to a possible non-Arabic origin of the term.¹⁰See for a comprehensive overview and analysis of etymological approaches to the term Patrizi “From Education to Etiquette.” Moreover, ancient Arab lexicographers always traced the term to maʾduba which means “invitation to a banquet.”¹¹Patrizi “From Education to Etiquette,” 58–62. Although the connection may be significant, as Salah Natij and Nuha Alshaar have recently argued from different perspectives,¹²Natij “Le concept d’adab est-il dérivé du mot daʾb?” and Alshaar, “Introduction,” 6f, 11–16. See also van Gelder, God’s Banquet: Food in Classical Arabic Literature, republished as Of Dishes and Discourse, 39–79.  this derivation has been largely excluded from interpretive attempts in modern scholarship.

This article will not pursue the etymological or lexicographic dimension of adab but rather examine the use of the term among its famous representatives in the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries to prepare critical groundwork for the complicated relation between adab and literature for historical research. The critique of translating adab into literature by early twentieth century scholars, such as Carlo Nallino (himself invested in teaching adab as a historical object and literature) has often been evoked.¹³See e.g. Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period, 93, Kilito, al-Adab wa-l-gharāba, 16–20, and Bin Tyeer, “The Qur’an and the Aesthetics of Premodern Arabic Prose,“ 9; regarding the Persian tradition addressing the same problématique more recently Kia, „Lingering with Adab before Rushing to Literature.“ For instance, Hoda El Shakry disapproves of the historicizing of adab as “literature” in a secular sense.¹⁴El Shakry, “Adab,” 111f and The Literary Qurʾan, 17–19; also see Alshaar, “Introduction,” 6–11; and Ahmed, What is Islam?, 170–175; 223–236. In spite of such valuable critique, however, the hermeneutic modernization of adab, that is, notably adab’s link to writing or its definition as a particular culture in pre-print contexts persists.¹⁵Notably in Malti-Douglas, “Playing with the Sacred,” and Daif, Tārīkh al-adab al-ʿarabī I, 9; see also the recent presentation in Enderwitz, “Adab b) and Islamic Scholarship in the ʿAbbāsid Period;” critiquing the equation of adab with literature, Mayeur-Jaouen (2023), “Introduction,” 17, convincingly critiques the scholarly secularization of adab, yet at the same time states (29): “Adab as a culture has always been connected to literature, to humour, to love.” The concept of culture, albeit in a more specified fashion, features prominently in Natij’s illuminating studies, e.g., in “Place et function de l’expérience dans la culture de l’adab” and in “Trois figures de l’adab,” 177, and in several translations of passages; in some “adab” is simply rendered as “culture.” The tradition of presenting adab from its beginning as a particular realm, genre, or culture, I argue, often reproduces the assumption that adab has always been closely aligned with the modern concept of literature, ostensibly independent of both (Islamic) sciences and religion.

Scrutinizing the writings of three famous authors from the early Abbasid age, who were later prominently associated with adab, I demonstrate that the term was used to express an epistemological conception aiming at ethical instruction for both this world and the hereafter.¹⁶Approaches to the term often tend to list poorly defined Western concepts as attempts to define it, without offering a semantic analysis. More recent studies place adab as a quasi-agent in a complex knowledge system; e.g., in her recent study on the concept, Bin Tyeer, The Well-Rempered Reader, 8, focuses on adab’s relation to hospitality (reflected in murūʾa), and the role it plays in subject formation, producing the “adabized subject.” By explaining that her intention “is not to trace adab’s expansion, constriction, and/or transformation of its meaning […] but rather to investigate the grammar of adab itself,” she pursues a different interest than this article which takes as a starting point the overwhelming shortcomings in tracing early adab definitions and contextualization. Terminological analyses of several of the texts studied in this article have been carried out by Makrem Abbès, “Adab and the Formation of Men”, and Salah Natij, “Place et fonction de l’expérience dans la culture de l’adab,” “La conception ğāḥiẓienne de l’’adab’,” and “Trois figures de l’adab.” As I discuss, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 139/757), al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/869), and, to some extent, al-Muḥāsibī (d. 243/857), the latter’s contemporary, define adab in two ways: first, as the knowledge of particulars concerning morality fundamental for human life; second, as the necessary connection of the teaching of particulars to the human intellect (ʿaql) which is a God-given cognitive instrument present in most human beings.¹⁷The only reconstruction of adab in a similar twofold definition has been put forward by Natij, “Place et fonction de l’expérience dans la culture de l’adab,” 165–168, and with regard to al-Jāḥiẓ in “La conception ğāḥiẓienne de l’’adab’,” 175, and “Trois Figures de l’adab,” 187. Notably, already Gustave von Grunebaum in 1946, Medieval Islam, 250, has introduced adab, broadly, as “originally connoting the discipline of the mind and its training.” See also Bonebakker, Adab and the Concept of Belles-Lettres,” 17. Because of adab’s close link to the human intellect which is to process all relevant experiences for life, the term cannot be essentially defined but within that intrinsic relationality. As al-Jāḥiẓ explains, the interdependence of ʿaql and adab, which is often expressed through images analogous to that relation,¹⁸To my knowledge so far only Abbès, “Adab and the Formation of Men”, 34, had a closer look at the imagery. allows for a continuous recontextualization of particular teachings and opens them to new semantic horizons.

Corpus

The texts containing the term during the second and third centuries of the hijra (eighth/ninth centuries CE) pertain to different genres such as collections of sayings, theological treatises, and instructive epistles. Although produced before the advent of the so-called adab encyclopedia, many of these works have an anthological character in that they explicitly present knowledge from different sources.

For this early stage of adab, I consider the celebrated wisdom book Kalīla and Dimna, prefaced and translated by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ from Middle Persian, and the latter’s own compilation The Comprehensive Adab Book (al-Adab al-kabīr) as well as The Concise Adab Book (al-Adab al-ṣaghīr), which has also been attributed to him.¹⁹See Kristó Nagy, “On the authenticity of Al-Adab al-ṣaġīr attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ” In addition, I discuss the sayings of Ṣāliḥ b. Janāḥ from his treatise Adab and Chivalry (al-Adab wa-l-murūʾa ). Among the works by al-Jāḥiẓ that I examine, the first is titled The Epistle on this World and the Hereafter (Risālat al-Maʿāsh wa-l-maʿād, henceforth: Maʿāsh), a pedagogical letter addressed to the son of a famous judge in Baghdad, the second is The Letter of Teachers (Risālat al-Muʿallimīn) and the third The Epistle of Longing for one’s Homeland (Risālat al-Ḥanīn ilā l-awṭan, henceforth: Ḥanīn), a thematic collection of Arabic verses. Finally, I turn to passages by al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī, a prolific theologian pertinent to the early Baghdad schools of Sufism,²⁰On al-Muḥāsibī and the importance of Baghdad in the formation of Sufism, see Picken, “Al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī and Spiritual Purification.” in his Epistle for the Rightly Guided (Risālat al-mustarshidīn, henceforth: Mustarshidīn) and Understanding the Qurʾān and Its Meanings (Fahm al-Qurʾān wa-maʿānihi)

For the sake of conciseness, I focus on the most prominent authors of adab pertaining to the realms—vaguely defined as “belles lettres” and Sufism. In so doing, I aim to stress the hitherto rarely noticed fundamental relation of adab to intellect (ʿaql) within the imagery of the early Abbasid period.²¹I exclude two noteworthy corpora from Umayyad times that recently have been discussed in research on the early analysis of adab: the translated letters of Alexander to Aristotle, compiled bySālim Abū l-ʿAlāʾ and ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Kātib’s letters (all likely from the early second/eighth century).Doufikar-Aerts, “Adab in Early Wisdom Literature,” and Natij, “Trois figures de l’adab.” I do not include Hadith collections in this study, as they, albeit emerging in the same period, do not offer those adab definitions that heavily lean on figurative language. The precise use of adab in Hadith therefore deserves a separate study.²²On adab in hadith see Sperl, “Man’s ‘Hollow Core‘,“and Alshaar, “Ḥadīth and the Concept of Adab as Moral Education.”

Terminological Analysis and Historical Semantics

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ

Adab is often used in Kalīla wa-Dimna, which is one of the earliest works that contain the term: In the famous edition by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ʿAzzam, in fact, it occurs 37 times and in a derived variant at least 4 times. ²³Addaba or taʾadabba, or adīb as an adjective. Adab occurs in both the introductory chapters (prefaces) and the chapters of moral tales from the alleged Indian nucleus of the work.²⁴For the term Indian nucleus and the structural division of the work see Stephan, “A Sense of No Ending,” 56. More than half of the iterations can be identified in two paratexts: the preface by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and the “Voyage of Burzoy.” In the latter, the wise Burzoy, who is sent by the Sassanian ruler Anushirwan to fetch books of wisdom from India and returns with Kalila and Dimna, is described as having “the best adab.”²⁵Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Kalīla ed. ʿAzzām, 57, ed. Fishbein, 1.9, ed. Gruendler et al., Lv.86.

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ‘s preface contains a passage in which the term is explained as analogies (amthāl) and maxims (ḥikam). For Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, the importance of adab cannot be underestimated; being the essential asset of life, it resides on one level with death itself.²⁶Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Kalīla ed. ʿAzzām, 47, ed. Gruendler et al., Im.40. “Good adab” (al-adab al-ṣāliḥ) is as much needed for a good life as wealth (al-māl) is, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ explains.²⁷Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Kalīla ed. ʿAzzām, 47; ed. Fishbein, 2.5 ,ed. Gruendler et al., Im.39. This qualification reveals that if there is good adab, there is also bad adab; hence, adab is a normative term. By and large, the translator, like the entire Kalīla and Dimna, relates adab to notions that address cognitive and intellectual capacities like eloquence (faṣāḥa), (scientific) knowledge (ʿilm), and above all reason (ʿaql), as can be drawn from the following analogy:

Adab, they say, makes the intellect (ʿaql) apparent in the way that grease increases the brightness of a dim flame.²⁸Adapted from Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Kalīla, trans. Fishbein/Montgomery, 2.5; also ed. ʿAzzām, 47, ed. Gruendler et al., Im.41.

This image is complex, as it unfolds two types of relations: an analogical (adab–flame) and a functional relation (adab–ʿaql). The “Voyage of Burzoy” and the stories in Kalīla and Dimna further portray the relation between cognition or intellect and adab. For instance, in this famous saying in which the relation between adab and ʿaql is compared to another phenomenon from the natural world:²⁹This saying was reused a bit later by multiple authors in their anthologies, among these: Ibn Qutayba,ʿUyūn al-akhbār, ed. Cairo 1925, I, 280 and II, 41; Ibn Abī ʿAwn, al-Tashbīhāt, ed. Khān, 312; al-Dīnawarī,al-Mujālasa wa-jawāhir al-ʿilm , ed Salmān V, 26; Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī, al-Ṣināʿatayn, ed. Bajawī/Ibrāhīm, 244. See also the mention of the quote in Abbès, “Adab and the Formation of Man,” 34.

Adab sobers the wise, but intoxicates the fool—just as daylight sharpens the sight of every creature that can see, but dulls the sight of a bat.³⁰Adapted from Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Kalīla, trans. Fishbein/Montgomery, 4.98; also ed. ʿAzzām, 100.

The point here is not the quality of adab itself but rather adab’s relation to intellect; the saying shows that not every person can (easily) acquire adab, and only the intelligent man can benefit from it. For those with little intellect, adab can then even be dangerous, just as daylight is dangerous for the bat’s sense of direction.³¹This stands in contrast to ʿaql of which one cannot have enough. See Kalīla, ed. Fishbein, 2.5.

The demonstration of adab’s relation to the intellect also appears in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s al-Adab al-kabīr. In it, he instructs the seeker of adab (ṭālib al-adab), covering the same topics as in Kalīla.³²Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, al-Adab al-ṣaghīr wa-l-adab al-kabīr, ed. Fawwāl, 69. This pattern is also found in al-Adab al-ṣaghīr, which is attributed to him. In fact, the preface to the latter is very much in line with his preface to Kalīla in that it draws an image of adab in this case compared to the water that nurtures “the seed buried in the soil” (al-biḏra al-madfūna fī-l-arḍ) which he likens to human intellect, “that is concealed in the socket of the heart.”³³Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, al-Adab al-ṣaghīr wa-l-adab al-kabīr, ed. Fawwāl, 16. Also Bin Tyeer, The Well-Tempered Reader, 26, points to the opening passages inal-Adab al-ṣaghīr.

Another author from the same period, the poet Ṣāliḥ b. Janāḥ al-Lakhmī³⁴See some information on him in Rosenthal, “The History of an Arabic Proverb,” 368, and van Ess, Theology and Society II, 22. He either lived during the time of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ; see ibid. or a bit earlier, see Abbès, “Adab and the Formation of Man,” 33, and Natij, “Murūʾa,” 8. On him and his work also see Bin Tyeer, The Well-Tempered Reader, 20–23 and 25f. foregrounds the centrality of adab and its inherent connection to the intellect.³⁵van Ess, Theology and Society II, 22, mentions the centrality of this relation and compares it to “nature and nurture” (ibid., 138); also note the reading of the same passage by Abbès, “Adab and the Formation of Men,” 33f; and Natij, “Murūʾa,” 242–46. Ṣāliḥ composed lines of poetry on the centrality of adab as intellect’s adornment and compares the relation between adab and ʿaql to that between a ruler and his adviser, as well as that between a sword and its polish.³⁶Ṣāliḥ b. Janāḥ al-Lakhmī, al-Adab wa-l-murūʾa, ed. Tanta, 21, see also ed. Kurd ʿAlī, in Rasāʾil al-bulaghāʾ, 306. He states that the sword would lose its value without the polish; it would be of no use, while the polish exists only for the benefit of the sword and is likewise useless on its own. One may observe that the images discussed thus far (grease–flame; water–seed; ruler–adviser; polish–sword) highlight slightly different forms of mutuality. Notably, the relation between ʿaql and adab in the sword–polish image is stronger in its interdependence than in those images used by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ.³⁷For the use of such analogies see Abbès, “Adab and the Formation of Men,” 34.

Overall, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ emphasizes adab’s centrality to life, its relation to intellect and its different qualifications; bad adab occurs when its relation to intellect is lost. Adab in this case is a human ethical repertoire that is both based on experience and tied to the human intellect and can best be defined through the use of analogies. Another protagonist of early adab, ʿAmr Ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ, comments on the use of analogies in his writings and focuses more on what Gustave von Grunebaum called “the discipline of the mind and its training.”³⁸“Medieval Islam,” 250.

al-Jāḥiẓ

Al-Jāḥiẓ’s al-Maʿāsh contains an often-quoted sentence:³⁹e.g., by H. El Shakry in “Adab,” 110; and Hämeen-Anttila in “Adab a) Arabic, Early Developments”; also Abbès, “Adab and the Formation of Men,” 34; and Natij, “La conception ğāḥiẓienne de l’’adab’,” 175f.

Wise men came to agree that the innate intellect (al-ʿaql al-maṭbūʿ) and the instinctive generosity (al-karam al-gharīzī) reach ultimate completeness only with the help of the acquired intellect (al-ʿaql al-muktasab). And they compared this [relationship] with fire and wood or the lamp and the grease, because the instinctive intellect is an instrument (āla) whereas the acquired [intellect] is a substance (mādda). For adab is the intellect of others which you add to your own intellect (Al-adabu ʿaqlu ghayrika tazīduhū fī ʿaqlik).⁴⁰al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, ed. Harun, I: 96. Hutchins (al-Jāḥiẓ, Nine Essays, 70) translates adab as “literature” in this passage.

It is remarkable how al-Jāḥiz evokes the different images to define adab that are reminiscent of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and Kalīla and Dimna.⁴¹In addition to the passage quoted above see, e.g., Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Kalīla, ed. ʿAzzām, 56, ed. Fishbein, 1.2; Gruendler et al., Lv.9. He then stresses that the nature of the relation between what he conceives as two dimensions of the intellect. The intellect as instrument (āla) is a semi-physical disposition that is both cognitive and, probably, emotive and that can incline humans toward good actions, as the intellect is mentioned together with the instinctive generosity (al-karam al-gharīzī). Human beings, by virtue of their creation by God, the eternal source of goodness, are inclined to do things that have a positive outcome. This tendency toward goodness, namely generosity or magnanimity, must be supported and nurtured, just as the intellect (ʿaql)—“God’s representative (wakīl)”⁴²Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, ed. Harun, I: 92. in his created subject—must be nourished.

This moral disposition, however, can only shine bright—to remain in the figurative language quoted above—if it is fueled through adab, which is the resource for the acquired ʿaql, the substantial dimension (mādda) of the human mind. We can learn from al-Jaḥīẓ’s treatise that all received knowledge in the shape of particulars—that is, individual wisdom sayings, teachings, and lessons from past authorities—has an explicit moral dimension, as it is related to actions.⁴³Already the narrator in the “Voyage of Burozy” speaks of the intellect as both “acquired” (muktasab) and “instinctive” (i.e., gharīza maknūna fī l-insān = an instinct hidden within a human being), Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Kalīla, ed. ʿAzzām, 56, ed. Fishbein, 1.2; Gruendler et al., Lv.9. The adab teachers (ahl al-adab)⁴⁴See the use of this term in ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Kātib’s Risāla ilā l-kuttāb (Patrizi, “From Education to Etiquette,” 81) and in the Novel in Letters sent by Philip to Aristotle (Doufikar-Aerts, “Adab in Early Wisdom Literature,” 294f). transmit this knowledge. They are the learned men who know how to use and convey pieces of wisdom. So, it is only the teacher’s intellect in actu that nurtures the intellect of a student. As a consequence, the ādāb, the plural of adab, constitute a form of situational ethical knowledge and have to be used as instruments (ālāt) for the cultivation of the intellect and ethical conduct in this world and the hereafter.⁴⁵al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, ed. Harun, I: 99.

In line with the notion of instrument, al-Jāḥiẓ states in his Muʿallimīn that adab is both “morals” (khuluq) and “transmission” (riwāya). Riwāya calls to mind both the formal dimension of adab—namely, maxims and teachings—and the social context of a teacher–student relationship.⁴⁶al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, ed. Harun, III: 34. Similar to mine see the interpretation advanced by Natij, “La conception ğāḥiẓienne de l’adab’,” 176f. See also, among others, Pellat, “Variations sur le thème de l’adab,” 23, and Hämeen-Anttila, “Adab a) Arabic, Early Developments.” The teaching of individual ādāb (moral lessons) works through taʾdīb, which al-Jāḥiẓ defines as the provision of affirmative instructions (al-amr) and prohibitions or restraints (al-nahy).⁴⁷al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, ed. Harun, I: 104. See the historical understanding of adab in Kilito, al-Adab wa-l-gharāba, 17, as “un type de discours” in which adab has a pedagogic aim expressed in such form. He adds to this obvious social dimension of a constant re-contextualization of adab, in the opening statement to Ḥanīn. There he explains that it is the task of the “bearers of adab” (ḥamalat al-adab) to always interrelate received snippets of knowledge:

Everything of the essential knowledge (ʿilm), as well as every kind of wisdom (ḥikma) and every type of adab has an occasion (sabab) calling one to compose (taʾlīf) what is dispersed, and something that calls one to gather what is scattered. When the bearers of adab and the people of knowledge ignore the weighing of pieces of knowledge and the deduction from traditions, as well as the activity of joining every precious pearl to its similar form and the combination of every rarity of wisdom to its equal [kind] – then the wisdom is of no use, the essential knowledge is lost, and the adab is killed.⁴⁸al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, ed. Harun, II: 383, also see Natij, “Trois figures de l’adab,” 189–190.

Knowledge and wisdom, such as adab, are meant to be continuously used and, through their application, modified; the bearers of adab have to order and structure them, as al-Jāḥiẓ states and exemplifies in his Maʿāsh.⁴⁹See e.g. al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, ed. Harun, I: 109. In other words, with the help of the human intellect, one reuses and recontextualizes knowledge that would otherwise lost. The very practice of relating the moral instructions to their essential knowledge, their uṣūl (episteme), is what al-Jāḥiẓ finds lacking in previous writers:

I saw most of what they wrote as particulars (furūʿ), without presenting the causes (ʿilal), and the depiction of good qualities without uncovering their reasons (asbāb), as well as praiseworthy matters (umūr maḥmūda) without pointing to their principles (uṣūl).⁵⁰Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, ed. Harun, I: 96; see on this passage also Natij, “Trois figures de l’adab,” 183 and 186. Although it is possible he has authors like ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Kātib and Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ in mind, as Natij, “Trois figures de l’adab,” 187, concludes, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ makes a similar point in his al-Adab al-kabīr (al-Adab al-ṣaghīr wa-l- adab al-kabīr, ed. Fawwal, 79–81).

He therefore decided to compile, as he says, a “writing of adab”⁵¹al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, ed. Harun, I: 95. (kitāban min al-adab) – that does not consist of mere amassed transmitted teachings of morality but

[…] that brings together a lot of essential knowledge concerning the hereafter and the life in this world. I depict in it for you the causes of things (ʿilal al-ashyāʾ), and instruct you about their preconditions (asbāb) and what the best of the communities (maḥāsin al-umam) agree upon.⁵²al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, ed. Harun, I: 95.

All the lessons that are subsumed in the adab communities agreed on count both in this world and the other world. Al-Jāḥiẓ argues that, since human beings can only know this world, they have to assume that things work similarly in the hereafter.⁵³al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, ed. Harun, I: 99. Adab proves to be a concept for the teaching of ethics where morality is not a separable category but rather linked to a cosmological-epistemological view according to which things are connected by their nature and have to be understood as such.

Adab in al-Jāḥiz’s writings can sometimes be replaced with other terms or circumscribed in various ways, because it signifies both ethical knowledge and the mean by which knowledge is transmitted. As a form of knowledge, it is never self-contained but always in relation to action—that is, to past and future experience—and thus remains constantly open to new horizons of meaning. Adab is both instrument (āla)⁵⁴al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, ed. Harun, I: 99. and matter (mādda)⁵⁵al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, ed. Harun, I: 96. and it is both a substance as well as a relational capacity in human beings. In addition, it is moral practice and serves as a link between theory and practice, and between thinking and action. It is grounded in the past, but directed to the future.

Before concluding, I discuss adab in the early Ṣufī context, represented by Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Ḥārith al-Muḥasibī.

al-Muḥāsibī

The use of analogies for the adab–intellect relation continues throughout the history of the premodern literary tradition. Al-Muḥāsibī, one of the most prominent theologians and early Sufi thinkers of the time, includes similar analogies in his Mustarshidīn.⁵⁶Al-Muḥāsibī also wrote the famous Ādāb al-nufūs (ed. Aḥmad ʿAṭāʾ), in which the term only rarely appears, let alone in a syntactic context; see Keeler, “The Concept of adab in Early Sufism,” 68. For an earlier short Sufi treatise written by Shaqīq al-Balkhī (d. 194/810) which uses the term once see Thibon, “Adab et éducation spirituelle (tarbiya) chez les maîtres de Nīshāpūr aux iiie/ixe et ive/xe siècles,” 103 and 103n6. He begins with an analogy of light and blindness reminiscent of the one quoted above from Kalīla and Dimna:

Daylight does not help the blind, as much as only those who fear God can benefit from the light of knowledge (ʿilm). Also, a dead person cannot benefit from a remedy, as much as adab does not serve the people of pretense (ahl al-daʿwā).⁵⁷al-Muḥāsibī, Risālat al-mustarshidīn, ed. Abū Ghudda, 160.

Al-Muḥāsibī seems to think of those contemporaries who claim or feign mystic states (al-daʿwā fī-l-aḥwāl)⁵⁸Note the title to a work by a famous contemporary from the early Baghdad circles of Sufism, Sahl al-Tustārī’s Kitāb al-muʿāraḍa wa-l-radd ʿalā ahl al-firaq wa-ahl al-daʿāwā fī l-aḥwāl. See Keeler, “The Concept of adab in Early Sufism,” 71n53; on al-Muḥāsibī and al-Tustārī also see Basharin, “The Ṣūfī School of Baghdād,” 637–642., while according to his view they lack the knowledge (maʿrifa, ʿilm) to understand divine commands. Or, in other words, they only pretend to be loyal to God and therefore, to remain in the figurative language, cannot be healed through adab. The above image reflects a commitment to pious practice. Like any practice of moral significance or body of knowledge (ʿilm), adab requires a suitable disposition in which it can take root. In contrast to the images quoted above, al-Muḥāsibī uses adab in a context that he specified elsewhere as the ādāb for the lower human souls (ādāb al-nufūs).⁵⁹See al-Muḥāsibī’s work with this title, briefly presented in Keeler, “The Concept of adab in Early Sufism,” 66–68. In this proto-Sufi dimension adab is a disciplining notion that contrasts the lust and desire (hawā) to which the lower soul is inclined.⁶⁰al-Muḥāsibī, Risālat al-mustarshidīn, ed. Abū Ghudda, 79; see also van Ess, Die Gedankenwelt des Ḥariṯ al-Muḥāsibī, 6f and 36–39; and a similar critique of hawā in Ṣāliḥ b. Janāḥ al-Lakhmī, al-Adab wa-l-murūʾa, ed. Tanta, 15; see also ed. Kurd ʿAlī, in Rasāʾil al-bulaghāʾ, 303f. The concept of hawā as an inclination of the lower self is similarly presented in al-Tustārī’s work: Keeler, “The Concept of adab in Early Sufism,” 83f, also eadem, 75 where she picks up a comprehensive definition of adab by Sahl al-Tustārī.

The link of adab to transcendent knowledge is advanced further in his Fahm al-Qurʾān. In one passage, he presents adab as defined by the prophet Muḥammad. In a hadith, Isḥāq b. ʿĪsā reports that the prophet said, “every teacher of adab shall himself observe it; God’s adab is the Qurʾān.”⁶¹al-Muḥāsibī, al-ʿAql wa-Fahm-l-Qurʾān, ed. Quwwatlī, 289. This hadith is later included in the musnad of al-Dārimī. For an alternative reading of the passage in Fahm al-Qurʾān see Metzler, Den Koran verstehen, 50–51, that refers to a different manuscript copy than Abū Ghudda’s edition consulted here.

“God’s adab” was a central motif in early Sufism.⁶²Gril, “Adab et éthique dans le soufisme,” 52–54. Keeler, “The Concept of adab in Early Sufism,” 90–94. It extends beyond the purview of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, who links adab to experience and a human intellect oriented toward the hereafter. Al-Muḥāsibī stresses the need to imitate what God presents in the Qurʾān, by pointing to the intrinsic relation of God to the Qurʾān as His manifestation, His teaching, thus His adab. The Qurʾān being God’s adab is the best and ever-present as well as the generally acknowledged divine action toward mankind. Drawing on the imagery quoted above, God can also be understood as analogous to the intellect al-ʿaql, while the Qurʾān is equivalent to the intellect’s manifestation. In general terms, adab is nothing but the manifestation of one’s intellect in action that every teacher must embody. In the writings of al-Muḥāsibī and his contemporary al-Jāḥiẓ, the term denotes not only for morality or Bildung, but also the relation of knowledge (ʿilm) to action (ʿamal), and of reason (ʿaql) to its best application (adab).

Conclusion

The Sufi tradition of al-Muḥāsibī and the Baghdad schools obviously opens up a whole other set of concepts and questions which cannot be discussed here in more detail. I have briefly introduced al-Muḥāsibī‘s use of the term to underline the shared ground with other thinkers that are recognized as udabāʾ today. In all the presented works, adab has little to do with writing and “good manners” or “etiquette.” It is a concept of comprehensive morality, moral epistemology, and teaching purposes informed by the Muslim context of revelation. It operates on two levels:

First, adab is a term that describes potentially all interrelated and connected, ordered and selected moral and pious teachings of present and previous generations (ādāb). It is an infinite archive of moral knowledge, of knowing what to do in any given situation. In that capacity, it is a pedagogical device, recognizable in the form of maxims and short teachings, which serve as an instrument (āla) for the human intellectual disposition of al-ʿaql.

Second, adab is a term that denotes the necessary relation of human morality to the intellect; morality cannot be simply imitated by application. Rather, morality has to be learned by every individual anew who, through action, embodies it and opens it to new semantic horizons. This involves the activity of the intellect, as a device for receiving, understanding, and reframing moral teachings. With its intrinsic relationality, adab expresses what other terms, such as ḥikma or ʿilm, also represent. The nested and interlinked narrative pieces of Kalīla and Dimna and similar frame narratives convey that entangled dimension of adab. Many larger adab anthologies develop the same tendency, of which al-Jāḥiẓ’s Rasāʾil and, notably, his magnum opus al-Ḥayawān are early examples.⁶³Natij, “Trois Figures de l’adab,” 187, comes to a similar, though differently framed, conclusion which is that in al-Jāḥiẓ’s view “deux perspectives dans l’exercice de l’adab” are at play; the first is of an accumulative nature, the second is an attempt to build a theory from the synthesis of transmitted knowledge.

When understood as a textual notion (i.e., fictional prose) or a clearly defined set of genres, literature is not a fitting counterpart. However, the semantic relation between adab and literature is still worth considering when moving beyond a purely textual and secular understanding of the latter. For one, adab touches upon literature’s relation to practical ethics without any generic constraint: practical ethics can, as in the case of Kalīla and Dimna, essentially stem from any source. Adab, like literature, is a term of knowledge that tackles both mundane dimensions—knowing right from wrong—as well as existential, and transcendental ones. The second point is rather formal: adab, much like literature, is concerned with communicating knowledge through analogies (amthāl) and emphasizes the centrality of human cognition, including the faculty of imagination and the potential of (fictional) narrative to provide new meaning for human life. However, the relation of adab to narrative and fiction deserves further consideration. Third and finally, adab confers a social status: not everyone belongs to the ahl al-adab, and not everyone can possess good adab, although, in theory, everyone can be exposed to it, similar to literacy and erudition.

Further terminological research is needed to better grasp how adab evolved after al-Jāḥiẓ, particularly with the emergence of the so-called adab encyclopedia, where the term acquires a more specified meaning, and in the works of Ṣūfī writers.⁶⁴A semantic shift during the second half of the third/ninth century has been noted in the Sufi discourse by Thibon, “Adab et éducation spirituelle (tarbiya) chez les maîtres de Nīshāpūr aux iiie/ixe et ive/xe siècles,” 104. Furthermore, the embeddedness of adab as a mode of thinking about ethics and cognition in Hadith and in legal thought deserves further elaboration. Finally, the interpretation developed in this article deserves testing in later emerging linguistic traditions, notably Persian and Hindustani.BibliographyPrint Sources