8: Qusta Ibn Luqa, Corrispondenza
8. Ibn al-Munaǧǧim - Qusṭā Ibn Lūqā, Una corrispondenza islamo-cristiana sull'origine divina dell'islam, testo arabo e introduzione dell'Editore a cura di Samir Khalil Samir, introduzione traduzione e note a cura di Ida Zilio-Grandi, indici a cura di Davide Righi, prefazione di Paolo Branca, Torino 2003, 318p, € 30.
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Is it possible to reconcile faith and reason? Can a religious conversion be motivated by logic? Is it possible to induce others to reject their religious beliefs and through the instrument of reason impose the Truth upon them? At the end of the ninth century A.D., in the splen-did Baghdad of the Abbasid Caliphate, the center of science, art, and philosophy, the Muslim Mu‘tazilite Ibn al-Munaǧǧim and the Melkite mathematician and physician Qusṭā Ibn Lūqā, addressed these crucial issues in their correspondence. In his letter the Muslim author tried to demonstrate mathematically (burhān handasi) the truth of Islam and the miracle of the Koran by appeals to reason and aesthetics. In his response Qusṭā Ibn Lūqā refutes his Muslim friend’s argument point by point in a single clear dissertation by appeals to logic and Greek science.
