The meanings of Ḥikmah in Abu-Talib al-Makki’s ‘ilm Al-Qulūb and wisdom in Yoruba worldview: A comparative discourse

Abstract

The background to this study is the plurality of the meaning of the concept of Ḥikmah in Islamic Philosophy. The problem of the study is  to answer the epistemological questions of sources and justifications of wisdom within the context of the meanings of wisdom given by  Al-Makki in his work Ilm al-Qulūb. The study aims at translating and analysing a significant portion of the said work so as to expose its  thought on wisdom to an Islamic Philosophical examination, with a comparative touch from the Yoruba conception of the sources of  wisdom. Historical method was adopted in the paper and the challenges addressed in the paper included elements of translation,  annotation and content analysis. The quintessential finding was that Al-Makki‟s gave six meanings of wisdom that suggest some forms of  acquired knowledge as sources of wisdom and nine meanings that suggest some behavioural justifications of wisdom. On the whole, Al-Makki‟s epistemology is not alien to the African Traditional Religion‟s conception of wisdom in that they both affiliate wisdom to the  Divine. AlMakki‟s thought however gives a more explicit taxonomy, though, his meanings fall short of the consideration of being elderly  as a source of wisdom, whereas, the source is seen as the major epistemological factor in the discussed African Philosophy. The paper  therefore recommends that, for the thoughts of Al-Makki to be applicable in an environment like the Yoruba culture, it becomes  imperative to add elderliness as an epistemological factor, especially since it is not alien to the general Islamic worldview.