And a neat trick too, Charlie, since Hallaj was executed by Mutawwakil in
Baghdad in 922 and Avicenna wasn't born until 980. Hallaj, like Servitus was
also burned alive, not hanged.

Apparently despite all the serene comforts of Sufism,  Hallaj did not die
well. There is a lineage out of all of that too -- Christians weren't burned
alive for heresy until after the Crusades were well under way and they got
to see the Muslims execute their heretics that way.

Kind of like the way the Romans admired crucifixion so much they just had to
steal it from the Carthaginians. Borges once suggested that god created the
Punic wars just so the Romans would adopt crucifixion and be his instrument
of suicide some two centuries later -- a narrowing down of the notion that
god created the world just so he'd have a place to kill himself. And if that
ain't heresy, I don't know what is.

GAVIN





on 1/13/06 5:15 AM, Charles Moyer at [log in to unmask] wrote:

 
> Avicenna's main work, PHILOSOPHIA ORIENTALIS, in which he may have clarified
> his rationalizations for big "G" further is lost, probably the last copy was
> used to light the fire that burned Michael Servitus or kicked out from under
> the feet of the hanging Mansur ibn al-Hallaj.