SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This article explores a previously unknown twelfth-century debate surrounding Avicenna’s theory of matter, in particular his views that, being deprived of actuality, prime matter is non-corporeal, and that body is invested with corporeity by a substantial form impressed into matter known as corporeal form. Avicenna’s main proof of prime matter from body’s susceptibility to division was targeted earlier in the century by Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī and Sharaf al-Dīn al-Masʿūdī, but was later reinterpreted and developed by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, who brought this particular debate to a close. The problem, however, persisted as a puzzle that exercised later Arabic philosophers.