ABSTRACT
The goal of Ibn Hazm’s book, as suggested by the title, is to make logic more accessible to the general reader. The difficult style of philosophical works, caused mainly by translation, was a common complaint among scholars, including some practitioners of philosophy. A similar attitude toward translation was expressed by the logician Abu Sulaiman al-Sijistani. When he is told that “people have found that ancients made many statements that agree in confirming monotheism which indicates that what stems from the divine law is consistent with what is intimated by the soul,” al-Sijistani agrees, explaining that any imperfections in the comprehension of wisdom that deviate from pure monotheism must arise from the translators’ errors.
