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Nevertheless the subject is felt to have its difficulties and the arguments against free will taken from the causal sequences of natural events and the influence of heredity, environment and motive on the individual will are not ignored. Judah Halevi as well as Abraham Ibn Daud discuss these arguments in detail. But freedom comes out triumphant.
With this important deviation there is not much in this part of the Maimonidean discussion which is not already contained, though less completely, in the "Emunah Ramah" of Abraham Ibn Daud.
The scornful eyes of Daûd glanced on him for a brief moment, while Selîm, in his turn, questioned: "Who is this?" "Is it not the son of one Yâcûb, a muleteer, who sold his soul years ago to the English missionaries. It seems such renegades are well paid, for behold the raiment of this youth. What wouldst thou here, O dog, son of a dog?"
Abraham Ibn Daud is the first Jewish philosopher who shows an intimate knowledge of the works of Aristotle and makes a deliberate effort to harmonize the Aristotelian system with Judaism. To be sure, he too owes his Aristotelian knowledge to the Arabian exponents of the Stagirite, Alfarabi and Avicenna, rather than to the works of Aristotle himself.
He then made the acquaintance of three natives, all of whom assisted him in his linguistic studies, Mirza Ali Akhbar , Mirza Daud, and Mirza Mohammed Musayn. Helped by the last he opened covertly at Karachi several shops with the object, however, not of making profit, but of obtaining intimate knowledge of the people and their secret customs.
I have already stated how the Afghán prince was defeated at Bájhura, midway between Mughalmárí and Jaleswar, and how, pursued to and invested in Cuttack, he had surrendered. The treaty concluded with him provided that he should govern the province of Orissa in the name and on behalf of the Emperor Akbar. It may be added that Dáúd did not keep the faith he plighted on this occasion.
Dáúd was so terrified by this success, and by the evident strength of the besieging army, that he evacuated Patná the same night, and fled across the Púnpún, near its junction with the Ganges at Fatwa.
As soon as this intelligence reached the Mughal governor of Jaunpur, that nobleman, who had been directed by Akbar to keep a sharp eye on the affairs of Behar, and to act as circumstances might dictate, crossed the Karamnásá, and marched on the fortified city of Patná, into which Dáúd, distrustful of meeting the Mughals in the field, had thrown himself.
Add to this that it was superseded by the "Guide of the Perplexed" of Maimonides, published not many years after the "Emunah Ramah," and the neglect of the latter is completely explained. Abraham ibn Daud tells us in the introduction to his book that it was written in response to the question of a friend concerning the problem of free will. The dilemma is this.
Thus God as a Being absolutely unknowable, of whom negations alone are true just because he is the acme of perfection and bears no analogy to the imperfect things of our world; matter in our world as the origin of evil, and the existence of matter in the intelligible world all these ideas will meet us again in Ibn Gabirol, in Ibn Daud, in Maimonides, some in one, some in the other.
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