I may forget some things, but I can never forget one particular ascetic, who might have been Jewish, who was facing a wall and addressing it in an audible voice. Among the words I was able to pick out were: "`O Lord, it is of no matter to me if the weather is bright or gloomy, nor do I have any objections to rainfall and the assaults of fate. No, the thing that I would ask You to do is to dispel my despair at the words of those who would distort the Torah and the equivocations of Ibn Maymun."
I felt no real sympathy for or leaning toward those ascetics, people who combined disorder with compulsion. It was just that, when things got bad for them, I understood and forgave them. Riding on the back of flashes of bogus inspiration, they were full of the wildest notions and gestures.
One day I was wandering my way through the Jamal Musa ibn Nusayr gardens with all their natural splendors. I was approaching a particularly beautiful, shady tree when all of a sudden a thought came to me, one that I had no doubt came from the inner core of my missing manuscript. I made use of the words at my disposal to write it down:
"I am not myself an ascetic, nor do I follow their path. The reason is that I am primarily concerned with order and harmony. To the extent possible I make use of image and idea in order to create. I seek to substantiate fantasies and worthy texts and make use of every sinew and resource to establish their significances. I demand all that and much else besides as I seek to traverse the wobbly bridge of life unharmed, without falling off or rolling downhill. Those people who go to great lengths to censure fanciful notions and analogical tropes clearly have no understanding of the synthetic forces and energy generators from which life derives its momentum and invigorating trends."
Early next morning I borrowed 'Abd al-Barr's horse and went to visit Tangier, intending primarily to look at the booksellers' shelves there. No sooner had I reached my destination than I started examining the city's squares and quarters and promising myself that I would come back several times more. I started exploring the city, up hill and down dale, visiting markets and stalls where professional craftsmen were trading their wares. I passed by the port where various ships and barges were anchored, a lot busier than the port in Sabta. From the highest point in the region I could look across the straits and see the Atlantic Ocean stretching away. I remembered the story that the geographer Al-Sharif al-Idrisi* and others told about Alexander's* ("the two-horned one") digging a trench in the straits between Tangier and Spain when it had previously been completely dry. Needless to say, the whole thing was a myth, something with no basis in either intelligent discourse or material possibility. The same kind of tale is told about Alexander's descending in a glass box to the bottom of the sea in order to confront the satanic beasts that, according to the story, had prevented him from building his city of Alexandria. He had made a number of facsimiles of these beasts, which had managed to overpower the actual beasts and expel them. We must seek refuge in God from such utter claptrap, stuff that is entirely the product of an overactive imagination.
Just as I had decided that it was almost time to make my way back to Sabta, I spotted a bookstore. Walking toward its owner, I gave my greetings and started perusing his stock, using both eyes and fingers. All I found were some titles dealing with topics in the Maliki legal system, along with some commentaries by recent scholars on Al-Muwatta,* the work by Malik ibn Anas,* the renowned Meccan legist. When the owner saw that I was disinclined to buy it, he told me that his book collection was very good. He assured me that Malik ibn Anas's book would be really useful to me, and the price was fixed. He went on to say that the other three booksellers in the city only sold frivolous materials, poorly copied at that. I asked him if he had any other books.
"The true believer's eye is never wrong," he said after staring hard at me. "I'm a believer, and I can tell that you're a keeper of secrets, someone who eschews the company of most people. I have in my possession a whole sack of books that a devout jurist advised me to burn. But I could not do such a thing, so I have hidden them from prying eyes; they're inside the box I'm sitting on. If you like, you can take them from me for a very cheap price. If you decide to do that, then take the bag with you and only open it in your own home, not here. So what do you think?"
I gave him double the price he asked. He was so delighted that he proceeded to put all the books in my saddlebags. I then went on my way, the man's prayers following me until I had disappeared from view.
After I had done some twenty-six miles, I decided to take the mountain route in the hope of shortening the remaining ten. I slaked my thirsty anticipation by fingering the precious cargo locked away inside my saddlebags, but a few miles farther on an unforeseen disaster struck. I was waylaid by three highwaymen who, with due threats, robbed me of my horse, everything it was carrying, and all the money I had left. I begged them to at least leave me the bag, whereupon the oldest of them split it open and checked what was inside. He decided to let me have the contents, which he described as a worthless pile of paper that was not worth the bother of carrying away. He told me to pick it up and leave as quickly as possible before he decided to change his mind. So that's exactly what I did.
My only recompense for what had happened was that I managed to get away and save myself. In return I had managed to acquire a load of new intellectual nourishment. I ate something, performed the obligatory prayers, and then sat down on my bed to take a look at what I had acquired, hoping, of course, that it would prove to be a rich set of pickings-all that, needless to say, before I had even broken one of the seals. The entire package consisted of eleven books; at least half of them were in reasonable condition, but the rest were in poor shape. In the first category were the Categories, On Generation and Corruption, and Meteorology, all by Aristotle;* the Isagoge of Porphyry;* an incomplete copy of Ibn Rushd's commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics; al-Farabi's* The Collection of Opinions of the Two Sages, Plato and Aristotle; and Ibn Sina's* Logic of the Orientals. The second category included epistles and texts by the Brethren of Purity,* al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik,* and al-Suhrawardi. I had actually read most of them before, when I was in Murcia, while others were still kept in the boxes of my personal library. After thanking God for providing me with such a cache, I willingly surrendered myself to sleep.
Next morning when I awoke, I felt more than ever before the urge to immerse myself in the intricacies of Aristotle's writings. In studying the works of this divisive genius, my firm intention was not to allow myself to be taken in, something that was clearly the case with most of our peripatetic philosophers. My method would not involve blind, hand-in-glove imitation as was the case with Ibn Rushd [Averroes], nor would I follow Al-Ghazali's path, namely a method that involved cognitive shortcomings, disreputable emendations, and sectarian extremism. No, I would invoke both mind and critical acumen. When matters became tough and risky, I would seek the counsel of my own thinking, experimental self. Had I not told my students on several occasions, "Yes indeed, the person who decides to rely on his own self will find relief!"
That is how I came to spend several days in a virtually non-stop process of pouring over the works of the great Greek sage, coming to terms with their major principles and tracing the gradual processes whereby he reached his conclusions and summaries. It seemed to me that they all followed a fixed pattern and displayed particular logical qualities, whether the worlds that he investigated involved inanimate objects, flora and fauna, or human beings, even to a certain extent the heavens themselves. There was little to find fault with, except in matters of detail, of introduction, or other otiose, randomized, and only partially applicable suppositions. However, when it came to matters of theology, the ideas of the great sage began to go badly awry. Issues were confusingly treated, and both methods and goals were severely impaired. In that realm he went totally astray and led his readers down the same erroneous path.