History of Islamic Philosophy

History of Islamic Philosophy

The Apocryphal Pearl: A Critical Re-evaluation of the Authorship of al-Jumānah al-Ilāhiyyah and the Reconstruction of the Corpus of Abū al-Mu’ayyad al-’Antarī

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Institute for Studies in Medical History, Persian and Complementary Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Department of History of Medical Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
10.22034/hpi.2026.569652.1194
Abstract
The philosophical poem al-Jumānah al-Ilāhiyyah fī al-Tawḥīd (The Divine Pearl on Oneness) has long occupied a liminal space in the Avicennian corpus. Attributed to Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 428/1037) in several late manuscripts and modern bibliographies, the text presents a versified summary of Peripatetic metaphysics, psychology, and natural philosophy. This study challenges that attribution through a rigorous application of higher textual criticism, bifurcated into external and internal analyses. Externally, the investigation relies on the bio-bibliographical silence of Avicenna’s direct circle—most notably his student al-Jūzjānī—and the explicit testimony of 6th/12th and 7th/13th-century historians like Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah and al-Ṣafadī, who attribute the work to the physician-philosopher Abū al-Mu’ayyad Muḥammad b. al-Majlī al-’Antarī (d. c. 570/1174). Internally, the article demonstrates irreconcilable doctrinal divergences between the poem and Avicenna’s established metaphysics. These include a distinctively theological (kalām) conceptualization of the Creator-creature distinction (the “builder” analogy), a positive metaphorical invocation of alchemy that contradicts Avicenna’s known scientific skepticism regarding transmutation, and a lack of the syllogistic rigor characteristic of Avicenna’s epistemology. Furthermore, the study contextualizes the misattribution within the popularity of the Urjūzah (didactic poem) genre, utilizing lexicographical definitions to frame the literary environment that facilitated such pseudepigraphy. By reassigning the text to its proper author and analyzing al-’Antarī’s extant poetry, this article not only purifies the Avicennian canon but also recovers a significant pedagogical text of the post-Avicennian period.
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Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 05 February 2026

  • Receive Date 30 December 2025
  • Revise Date 03 February 2026
  • Accept Date 05 February 2026