Intellect

• الأدب

In modern Arabic, adab is often associated with “literature” and “politeness.” During the formative period of Arabic literature (second/eighth to third/ninth centuries), however, it denotes a broad concept of ethical erudition. Although one may assume some proximity to “humanism,” “paidea” or “Bildung” in their all-encompassing sense of multidisciplinary education, the authors of adab usually emphasize its relevance for both this world and the hereafter, thus linking it to Islamic conceptions of knowledge production. In more general terms, in the writings attributed to early ʿAbbāsid authors like the state scribe Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and the polymathic theologian al-Jāḥiẓ, adab refers both to teaching the particulars of general morality, which may derive from a variety of sources (e.g., scripture, wise men, former civilizations, sometimes in the plural: ādāb), and to the very relation of these particulars to the human intellect (al-ʿaql), which alone is able to use and assess them. The early theologian al-Muḥāsibī, one of the first Sufi writers on adab, alludes to a similar understanding grounded in a relational definition. In this early stage, adab is typically defined through images, often drawn from the natural world, that express the very interdependence of moral instructions and a “fertile” human faculty of intellection (al-ʿaql), which itself needs to be “nurtured” by adab in order to “grow.” By drawing on the interplay between moral particulars and the human intellectual disposition, adab connects ethics with epistemology, thereby suggesting a universal dimension of literature.