No art of memory

Memory is not an art, nor could it ever be. The arts are Memory's gift to us, but memory itself cannot be taught or attained by any art. It is an advantage that some receive from nature, or the luck of their immortal soul. Without it, humanity would have no connection to eternality, and nothing we learn could ever be taught, if Memory did not dwell within us.

Whether Memory should be called the Mother of Time or its Child, I leave to the poets, who can say what they want. But no one among the truly wise would be dumb enough to throw away their good standing by [claiming to train the memory through mystic arts, and] posing like a juggler in front of little kids—the kind of thing that gives actual pedagogy a bad name.

So how did the students of Dionysius of Miletus all have such prodigious memories? The answer is that his lectures were so enjoyable that his listeners craved to hear them again, and Dionysius, in awareness of his own charisma, was obliged to repeat them many times. They became stamped in the minds of his brightest students, who declaimed them to each other until all had memorized through practice what memory alone could not supply. This is how they came to be called the "Mnemonic School," and were credited with turning memory into an art. It's also why people say the declamations of Dionysius are a piecemeal corpus, augmented in different places by different individuals where Dionysius himself had been succint.

From Lives of the Sophists by Flavius Philostratus

Ahmad of the Seventh Day II.1

According to Abu Bakr ibn Abi 'l-Tayyib [as reported in the Book of Strangers of al-Ajurri], ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Faraj the ascetic told the story like this:

I needed a day laborer to do some work in my house, and went to market to look them over. At the end of the row was a sallow-faced youth dressed all in wool, with a big basket and a shovel in his hands. "Ready for work?" I asked him. "Yes," he said, and when I asked his fee he said, "A dirham and a daniq." "Let's get to work," I said.
     "On one condition," he said. "What's that?" I asked. "At the call to mid-day prayer, I'll perform my ablutions and go pray at the congregational mosque, and when it's time for afternoon prayer I'll do the same." "That's fine," I said.
      We went back to my house and came to terms on all that needed doing in each area, and he cinched up his waist and got to work. He didn't speak a word to me until the call to mid-day prayer, when he said, "O ‘Abd Allah, the muezzin calls." "You're free to go," I said. He went off to pray, then returned to his task, which he did expertly until the call to afternoon prayer, when he said again, "O ‘Abd Allah, the muezzin calls." "You're free," I said, and off he went to pray. He then came back and worked without stopping until the end of the day, when I counted out his wage and he went away.

Some days later, we needed more work done, and my wife said, "Seek out that young one, whose heart was in his work." So I went to market, where I didn't see him. When I asked around, they said: "You mean that sallow-faced unfortunate? We only see him on Saturdays. Always he sits at the very end of the row."
       I stayed away from the market until that Saturday, when I came upon him right away. "Ready to work?" I asked him. "You already know my wage and my conditions," he said.
     "And on God I rely for guidance, Exalted be He," I said.
      The man came and worked as he had before. When I counted out his wage, I added something extra, but he refused to accept, and when I pressed it on him he became irate and took off. I was pained at this, and followed after him, cajoling him until he accepted his stated wage and nothing more.

After a while, we needed work done again, and I went back on a Saturday but could not find him. "He's sick," they told me when I asked around. "He used to come on Saturdays and work for a dirham and a daniq. The rest of the week he lived on one daniq a day. But now he isn't well."
      I asked for his address, and was led to a room kept by an old woman. "Is this where the young day laborer lives?" I asked her. "He's sick," she said. "Has been for days."
      The state I found him in upset me. His head was resting on a brick of clay. I bid him peace, and asked if there was anything he needed. "Yes," he said, "if you accept my conditions."
     "If God wills," I said to him, "that's what I'll do. [Continued.]

From Characters of Integrity by Ibn al-Jawzi

Avant Abraham

"My opinion is that Adam never worshiped idols, but that he did worship planets, approximating through this form of devotion to what is higher than the planets and stronger than they." If you contemplate this statement by Yanbushad, you'll find that it excludes idolatry as a means of approaching the living, speaking gods. You'll also notice it's expressed as Yanbushad's opinion, and not a categorical declaration, even though he knew for a certainty that Adam was no idolater.

There is evidence for all I'm saying—to wit, that Yanbushad did not countenance idolatry, nor even perhaps the worship of the sun and moon—in his book On the seasons, where he says: "The earthly consequences of the seasons' rotation are not the work of a visible mover, but a Mover too subtle to be perceived with the senses." The passage ends in what seems like a barrage of digressions, deliberately interspersed with enigmas and double meanings, and this is how his beliefs are often stated, becoming clear only after diligent contemplation of the text.

[And sometimes his beliefs went unstated.] "Oh sage," Yanbushad was once asked, "why do you spend your life in waterless desert wastes, instead of attending the festivals of your people and observing their devotions?" He said, "If their form of worship were agreeable to me, I would not be averse to what they practice in their temples, and I would follow their path."
     "May your lord have mercy on you," the asker said. "Let us know exactly where their path goes wrong, and we will follow yours." Yanbushad remained silent, and gave no answer. The man repeated his question several times, at which Yanbushad fixed his gaze on him without speaking, until the asker turned away, crying, "Yanbushad is mad! Mad, I tell you!"

There is further evidence for Yanbushad's beliefs in his conformity with the Book of Agriculture of Anuha, whose views he upheld against those of Tamithra the Canaanite. Against Tamithra, who propagated the worship of idols, and ruled that abstainers should be imprisoned and flogged, Yanbushad was sharply critical, and wholly uncritical of Anuha, the famous rebel against the idolatry of his people who was subjected to corporal punishment and imprisoned for his beliefs. When Yanbushad told the story of Anuha's maltreatment by the people of his city, he took relish in narrating their destruction, and how their own god sent a rainstorm to their country and drowned the place, along with the territories of the numerous Greek and Chaldaean nations. Anuha alone was saved, and sought refuge in Egypt, and when the Egyptians drove him away they too were destroyed by a terrible famine.

From Nabataean Agriculture by Ibn Wahshiyya