translated as “nation.” The subject of the nation is, in most respects, a highly familiar one. The rise of nationalism has created a modern international community composed of nation-states, in which membership through national self-determination has come to be regarded as an almost sacred right. The terms “nation” and “nationalism” occur daily on the news, and have been the subject of a vast amount of scholarly research.
Yet when we turn to the history of political thought, the significance of the nation becomes somewhat harder to discern. It does not appear to have been a primary subject of concern for most of the major political philosophers. In ancient political thought, exemplified by Aristotle, the nation appears subordinate to the city, while in modern political thought, exemplified by Hobbes, it appears subordinate to the state. This sweeping formulation nevertheless helps capture the relative obscurity of the nation throughout much of the history of political philosophy. The marginalization of the nation changed only with Rousseau, who lived at the threshold of modern nationalism. I will eventually have occasion to discuss both the interest of Rousseau in the nation and the disinterest of some of his predecessors, along with the striking exception presented by Alfarabi. But I wish to begin with a more general question: why do we need to discuss the prenationalist nation at all? It might be argued that an examination of nationalism, through which the nation became an important political entity, is sufficient.
Nationalism and the Pre-Nationalist Nation
An extensive discussion of modern nationalism and the massive body of scholarship devoted to it lies far beyond the scope of this book. However, a brief consideration of three of the most influential scholarly studies of this subject will help to frame, and justify, the ensuing discussion. All three studies trace the origin of the phenomenon to the turn of the nineteenth century. Elie Kedourie ascribes the triumph of nationalism to a new kind of political and intellectual propaganda, which he describes in rather derogatory terms (Kedourie, 20 ff.). Ernest Gellner traces the growth of nationalism to the same epoch, but attributes it to the more general social phenomena of industrialization and literacy (Gellner 1997, 25 ff.; 2006, 38 ff.). Benedict Anderson focuses heavily on print capitalism, and its ability to create a new kind of communal consciousness (Anderson, 37 ff.). These three accounts of the formation of nationalism all emphasize the transformative power of intellectual or historical forces that were completely unknown in premodern times. Yet such transformations might remake existing communities, rather than constitute entirely new ones from scratch. The founders of nationalism were undoubtedly shrewd politicians and propagandists, but did they have the power of magicians, managing to pull a strong national identity out of a completely empty hat? It seems more plausible to assert that they based their new movement on human ties and institutions that had been present for centuries without ever being fully exploited for political ends. One could pose similar questions about industrialization and print capitalism: did they give birth to entirely new communities, or simply reconfigure old ones?
The answers given by each of these three authors to these questions are intelligent, and therefore somewhat ambiguous. As much as Kedourie likes to bring out the sheer fantasy, bordering on madness, that lay behind the spread of nationalist doctrines, he quietly admits that these doctrines “annexed … universally held sentiments” such as patriotism, group loyalty, and xenophobia (Kedourie, 73–74). Kedourie acknowledges the existence of different ethnic groups prior to nationalism, while arguing that nationalism makes their relations worse: empires that granted cultural autonomy to the various ethnic groups subject to them actually provided greater political stability than the nationalist agitators who eventually dissolved these empires (115–17). Gellner, who argues for the modernity of nationalism, nonetheless admits that nations had “navels” on which nationalism was based, some of which were stronger than others (Gellner 1997, 90 ff.). Pre-unification Germany was a stronger nation than pre-independence Czechoslovakia, while pre-nationalist Estonia barely existed at all. Yet even in this extreme case the people who became Estonians had some kind of pre-national name for themselves, thus distinguishing themselves from the Russians and Swedes who also inhabited their territory (96–97). They also, I may add, spoke their own distinct language. Gellner states elsewhere that pre-nationalist peoples are “richly endowed with cultural and hence (potentially and actually) ethnic differences” (Gellner 1994, 35). Anderson notes that the power of print capitalism to create nations is a result of “the primordial fatality of particular languages and their association with particular territorial units” (Anderson, 43). In short, none of these authors go so far as to completely dissociate nationalism from certain pre-nationalist nations that rendered it possible.
While these authors do not reject the existence of pre-nationalist nations, none provide a very compelling account of them. From the point of view of nationalism this approach is understandable: very few of these prenationalist nations had the power or cohesion needed to form independent political units of their own. Yet from a cultural point of view neglect of these early nations appears harder to justify. Most nations that have left a strong imprint on human civilization existed as recognizable entities well before the nationalist era, understood as beginning in the late eighteenth century. This statement applies not merely to the major nations of Western Europe, such as England, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy, but even less ambiguously to the great peoples of antiquity and the Orient, such as the Greeks, Israelites, Arabs, Persians, Indians, and Chinese.
It may seem natural for a scholar seeking to understand the prenationalist nation to turn to the most famous names in the history of political thought. But as I have already indicated, the leading political philosophers tend to discuss this theme rather sparingly. I contend that the most obvious exception to this generalization is Alfarabi. The Umma appears in almost all his major political works, often in a very prominent role. Alfarabi argues for the broad cultural, political, and religious significance of the Umma in an era in which nationalism did not yet have any meaning. This is not to say that Alfarabi’s interest in the Umma lacks any specific historical cause. The Umma, which appears dozens of times in the Qur’ān, had long since become the term of choice for Muslims in defining their own religious community. This religious meaning of Umma may be all too easily forgotten when reading Alfarabi, who appears to employ the term mainly in the ethnic sense. However, I will show that Alfarabi’s understanding of the Umma has an Islamic as well as an ethnic component. His treatment of the Umma sheds light both on a religious problem particular to Muslims, and on a broader issue strangely neglected by the history of political philosophy: what is the ethnic nation, and how does it influence other human institutions and activities, such as philosophy, religion, and politics? My goal in this book is to provide a comprehensive account of Alfarabi’s response to these questions.
Alfarabi: Some Introductory Remarks
Alfarabi was born somewhere in Turkestan around A.D. 870, spent many decades in Baghdad, and died around 950, probably in Damascus. Most of the details of his life are veiled in obscurity, and seem destined to remain so due to lack of reliable historical sources.1 For the purposes of my argument I have assumed, safely I think, that he was a non-Arab who wrote entirely in Arabic, and an immigrant of remote Central Asian origins who spent most of his intellectual career in Baghdad.
Alfarabi enjoyed an extraordinary reputation in the medieval philosophical community. His three most famous successors, Avicenna, Maimonides, and Averroes, all esteemed him as their teacher. Their testimonies of admiration have frequently been cited, but there is no harm in citing them briefly again here. Avicenna recounts in his autobiography how fruitlessly he toiled over Aristotle’s Metaphysics, until a chance encounter with Alfarabi’s short commentary on the work unlocked its secrets for him (Gutas 1988, 28). Maimonides, in a letter to Ibn Tibbon, extols “the wise Abu Nasr Alfarabi” for his writings on logic, as well as his treatise “The Principles of the Beings,” otherwise known as the Political Regime; he even goes so far as to contrast Alfarabi favorably to Avicenna (Maimonides 1987, 552–54). Averroes freely incorporates paraphrases of Alfarabi’s Attainment of Happiness and Political Regime into his commentary on Plato’s Republic, implying that Alfarabi may be no less an authority on political matters than Plato (Averroes 1974, 29.31 ff., 80.17 ff.). These citations are by no means comprehensive, but they suffice to show how highly regarded Alfarabi was among medieval philosophers in fields as diverse as metaphysics, logic, and political science.
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