Are animals conscious? Can they think or feel emotions? What makes them different from humans on the one hand and plants on the other? And how should we treat them?
This five year project (2018-2023) funded by the European Research Council has brought to light a rich body of texts written in the Islamic world, which address just such questions about the value and nature of animals. Contrary to common assumptions, such questions were taken seriously in pre-modern thought. Scholars have explored ancient Greek and Indian discussions of animals, but prior to this project little attention had been paid to the contribution of Islamic culture, which produced for instance philosophical and scientific works on animals, moralizing fables featuring animal characters, and treatises on zoology.
Thanks to this ERC-funded initiative, the changing conception of animals revealed in such works is now among the best understood and researched areas of Islamic intellectual history. Our articles, book-length studies, and public outreached initiatives have explored the development of the very concept of “animal” in early Arabic literature, the interrelation of natural philosophy and medicine to generate what can fairly be called a properly “biological” science, and sophisticated ideas about animal minds and animal ethics. Grounds for showing benevolence to animals have been uncovered, with comparison and contrast to modern-day animal ethics.
While the work of the project concerned a huge number of authors, figures especially important in the research were the theologian and litterateur al-Jahiz, the zoologist Ibn Abi Ashʾath, the philosophers Abu Bakr al-Razi, Miskawayh, Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Ibn Bajja, and Averroes (Ibn Rushd), and the theologians al-Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. Innovative and philosophically provocative ideas have been uncovered in all these thinkers, ranging from the development of a new philosophy of mind for animals in Avicenna and Averroes to nuanced arguments for animal ethics in Miskawayh and the rationality of animals in Fakhr al-Din al-Razi.
Because the authors covered were engaged in such a wide range of intellectual disciplines, our work – while being primarily philosophical in nature – has consequences for the study of Islamic religion, history of medicine and science, and even Islamic jurisprudence. It also has broader significance for society insofar as we uncovered ideas about animals, especially animal ethics, that are different from those usually deployed in public and professional discussion of this issue; and insofar as it expands understanding of Islamic culture and its contribution to a question of universal significance.