NOTE ON TRANSLATION OF ARABIC PASSAGES. Unless otherwise indicated, the translation of Arabic excerpts is the work of the author. The system of transliteration of Arabic terms and proper names adopted in this book is, with slight modifications, that of the Encyclopaedia of Islam.

Introduction

Islamic philosophy is the product of a complex intellectual process in which Syrians, Arabs, Persians, Turks, Berbers, and others took an active part. The Arab element is so preponderant, however, that it might be conveniently termed Arabic philosophy. The medium in which writers, hailing from such distant countries as Khurasan and Andalusia, chose to express their thoughts from the eighth to the seventeenth centuries was Arabic. The racial element that provided the cohesive force in this cosmopolitan endeavor and determined its form and direction, at least in the early stages, was Arabic; without the Arabs’ enlightened interest in ancient learning, hardly any intellectual progress could have been made or maintained. Moreover, it was the Arabs who, while they assimilated the customs, manners, and learning of their subject peoples, contributed the one universal element in the whole complex of Muslim culture, i.e., the Islamic religion.

As we proceed we shall note the role of each racial group in the development of Islamic philosophy. We observe here that the intellectual history of the Arabs, to whom the development of philosophy and science in the Near East owed so much, virtually begins with the rise of Islam. The chief cultural monuments of the Arabs, before the rise of Islam, were poetry and literary traditions that were transmitted orally and embody a record of the social, political, religious, and moral aspects of Arab life. However, this record was primitive, regional, and fragmentary. Islam not only provided the Arabs with a coherent and bold world-view, which sought to transcend the narrow confines of their tribal existence, but thrust them almost forcibly upon the cultural stage of the ancient world and set before them its dazzling scientific and cultural treasures.

The pivot round which the whole of Muslim life turns is, of course, the Qur’an. Revealed to Muhammad by God between 610 and 632 from an eternal codex (the Preserved Tablet), according to Muslim doctrine, the Qur’an embodies the full range of principles and precepts by which the believer should order his life. The Qur’an is supplemented, however, by a mass of utterances attributed to Muhammad and constituting, together with circumstantial reports of the actions and decisions of the Prophet, the general body of Muhammadan Traditions, properly designated in Muslim usage as the Prophetic “Way” (al-Sunnah).

Overwhelmed by the awesome sacredness of the divine Word (kalam) and the Prophetic Way, the first generation of Muslim scholars dedicated themselves wholly to the fixing of the sacred canon, commenting upon it and drawing the legal or moral corollaries implicit in it. Thus arose the sciences of reading (‘ilm al-qira’at), exegesis (tafsir), and jurisprudence (fiqh), the only basic sciences the nascent community needed in order to assimilate or live by the divinely revealed ordinances of the Qur’an. From these sciences, however, there soon stemmed the whole body of subsidiary disciplines, collectively referred to as the linguistic or traditional sciences, as distinct from the rational or philosophical sciences.[1] Grammar, rhetoric, and the allied studies were developed during the first two centuries of the Muslim era, chiefly as a means of adequately interpreting or justifying the linguistic usages of the Qur’an and the Traditions. Even study of literature, and particularly pre-Islamic poetry, appears to have been stimulated by the desire to find a venerable basis in ancient usage for the many unfamiliar terms or idioms in the Qur’an and the Traditions.

The canonical text of the Qur’an was finally fixed during the reign of the third caliph, Uthman (644-656), and in honor of him the authorized version of the Qur’an ever since has been called “Musaf Uthman”.[2] A few minor refinements of a purely grammatical and orthographic nature were made in the tenth century. The Traditions, on the other hand, circulated orally for almost two centuries, and in consequence a vast amount of apocryphal material was added to what must have been the original core. By the middle of the ninth century, however, elaborate criteria for sifting this material were developed and compilations of “sound” or canonical Traditions were made, the best known and most authoritative of which is that of al-Bukhari (d. 870).[3]

As one might expect, the greatest scholars of the early period were primarily linguists or exegetes who addressed themselves to the study and analysis of the texts of the Qur’an and the Traditions, on the one hand, or the interpretation of the juridical aspects of Scripture and their application to concrete cases, on the other. The first function was discharged by the commentators and Traditionists, and the second by the jurisconsults (fuqaha’), upon whom also devolved, in the absence of an organized teaching authority in Islam, the task of doctrinal definition as well.

The criteria for settling juridical or even doctrinal problems by the early jurisconsults were often purely linguistic or textual. However, there soon arose a class of scholars who were willing to permit the use of analogy (qiyas) or independent judgment (ra’y) in doubtful matters, especially when a specific textual basis for a decision could not be found in Scripture. Of the four major legal schools into which Muslim jurisprudence eventually crystallized, the school of Abu Hanifah (d. 767) and that of al-Shafi’i (d. 820) were much more liberal than the two rival schools of Malik b. Anas (d. 795) and Ahmad b. Hanbal (d. 855).

The implications of this bipolarity for the subsequent development of scholastic theology (Kalam) are not far to seek. The conservative “people of Tradition,” as the Malikites and the Hanbalites are generally called, tended to repudiate the use of any deductive method. Their position is best epitomized by the comment of Malik on the Qur’anic reference to God’s “sitting upon the throne” (Qur’an 7:54 and 20:5). “The sitting,” he is reported to have said, “is known, its modality is unknown. Belief in it is an obligation and raising questions regarding it is a heresy [bid‘ah].”4[4]

This somewhat narrow approach to the questions raised by the study of Qur’anic texts could not long withstand the pressures of the times. There was first the inevitable confrontation of Islam with paganism and Christianity, both at Damascus and at Baghdad, and the numerous tensions it generated. Second, there were the moral and legal questions raised by the gloomy picture of God’s overwhelming supremacy in the world as depicted in the Qur’an, and its bearing on the responsibility of human agents. And there was finally the necessity of safeguarding what one may call the unity of the Islamic view of life, which could not be achieved without a systematic attempt to bring the conflicting data of revelation (in the Qur’an and the Traditions) into some internal harmony.

The attempt to grapple with these complex problems is at the basis of the rise and development of Islamic scholastic theology. A good deal of the work of the earliest theologians consisted in the rebuttal of the arguments leveled at Islam by pagans, Christians, and Jews. Significantly, the early Mu‘tazilite doctors are often commended for their defense of Islam against the attacks of the Materialists (al-Dahriyah) and the Manichaeans.[5] Indeed, heresiographers explicitly state that scholastic theology arose as a means of buttressing Islamic beliefs by logical arguments and defending them against attack.[6]

Within the confines of Islam itself, discussion began to center by the seventh century around the questions of divine justice and human responsibility. Authorities report that a cluster of early theologians engaged in the discussion of the problem of free will and predestination (qadar), an issue generally recognized as the first major one broached by the early theologians. The Mu‘tazilah, who continued this line of speculation, asserted the freedom of the individual on the one hand and the justice of God on the other. And although they naturally supported their positions by quotations from the Qur’an, their general tendency was to advance arguments of a strictly ethical or rational character in support of these positions.

Moreover, the anthropomorphic passages in which the Qur’an abounded made it imperative to resort to some process of allegorical interpretation in order to safeguard the immateriality and transcendence of God. Here again the Mu‘tazilah were undoubted pioneers. The Qur’anic references to God’s “sitting upon the throne,” as well as the possibility of seeing Him on the Last Day,” (Qur’an 75:22, etc.), are interpreted as allegories for the divine attributes of majesty or royalty on the one hand, or the possibility; of contemplating Him mystically on the other.[7]

The proper prosecution of discussions of this kind naturally called for a high degree of sophistication, which, prior to the introduction of Greek philosophy and logic, was rather difficult, if not impossible. Scholastic theology therefore gave the Muslims, as it had (given the Christians of Egypt and Syria centuries earlier, the incentive to pursue the study of Greek philosophy.

Not much progress was made in that direction during the Umayyad period (661-750). The Umayyad caliphs, especially during the first few decades of their rule, were concerned primarily with the consolidation of their political power and the solution of the numerous economic and administrative problems which governing a vast empire raised.

However, souls thirsting after knowledge were not altogether wanting even during this period. We might mention, as a striking instance, the Umayyad prince Khalid b. Yazid (d. 704), who appears to have sought consolation in alchemy and astrology for his disappointed claims to the caliphate. According to our most ancient sources, Khalid provided for the first translations of scientific works (medical, astrological, and alchemical) into Arabic. Nevertheless, the development of philosophy and theology in Islam is bound up with the advent of the ‘Abbasid dynasty in the middle of the eighth century. Interest in science and philosophy grew during this period to such an extent that scientific and philosophical output was no longer a matter of individual effort or initiative. Before long, the state took an active part in its promotion and the intellectual repercussions of this activity acquired much greater scope. Theological divisions, growing out of philosophical controversy or inquiry racked the whole of the Muslim community. Caliphs upheld one theological view against another and demanded adherence to it on political grounds, with the inevitable result that theology soon became the handmaid of politics. As a consequence, freedom of thought and conscience was seriously jeopardized.

A fundamental cause of this development is, of course, the close correlation in Islam between principle and law, the realm of the temporal and the realm of the spiritual. But such a development required the challenge of foreign ideas and a release from the shackles of dogma. This is precisely the role played by the of Greek ideas and the Greek spirit of intellectual curiosity, which generated a bipolar reaction of the utmost importance for the understanding of Islam. The most radical division caused by the introduction of Greek thought was between the progressive element, which sought earnestly to subject the data of revelation to the scrutiny of philosophical thought, and the conservative element, which disassociated itself altogether from philosophy on the ground that it was either impious or suspiciously foreign. This division continued to reappear throughout Islamic history as a kind of geological fault, sundering the whole of Islam. As a result, throughout Muslim history reform movements have not been marked by a great degree of release from authority or dogma or a quest for the reinterpretation or reexamination of fundamental presuppositions in the realms of social organization, theological discussion, or legal thought. Instead, like the reform of al-Ash‘ari (d. 935) in the tenth century, that of Ibn Taymiya (d. 1327) in the fourteenth century, or that of Muhammad ‘Abdu (d. 1905) in the nineteenth century, they were marked by a deliberate attempt to vindicate the old, Traditionist concepts and assumptions of the earliest protagonists of Muslim dogma, the so-called good forebears, (al-salaf al-salih) of the Muslim community.

One lasting consequence of the introduction of Greek philosophy and the Greek spirit of inquiry, however, was that the “Traditionism” of early theologians and jurists, such as Malik b. Anas, was no longer tenable in its pure or original form. The great Ash‘arite “reformers” committed, as they were to the defense of orthodoxy against heretics and free thinkers, could no longer do so without recourse to the weapons which their rationalist opponents had borrowed from the Greeks. It was as though most of Greek dialectic could no longer be exorcised without recourse to the formula of exorcism which it had itself enunciated in the first place.

Moreover, the, varying degrees of allegiance to Greek philosophy and logic not only gave rise to the diverse theological schools of thought, but generated the more distinctly, Hellenic current of ideas, which we shall designate as the Islamic philosophical school.

The rise and development of this school is the primary concern of the present history. Scholastic theology will be discussed only in so far as it absorbed, reacted to, or by-passed Islamic philosophy. To theology might be added another movement whose relation to philosophy has also fluctuated between the two poles of total endorsement or total disavowal-mysticism or Sufism. Mysticism is ultimately rooted in the original matrix of religious experience, which grows in turn out of man’s overwhelming awareness of God and his sense of nothingness without Him, and of the urgent need to subordinate reason and emotion to this experience. The mystical experience, it is often claimed, is distinct from the rational or the philosophical, and, less often, it is said to be contrary to it. But, whether it is distinct or not, it can hardly be irrelevant to man’s rational or philosophical aspirations; since it allegedly leads to the very object which reason seeks, namely, the total and supreme apprehension of reality. In fact, the history of Muslim mysticism is more closely bound up with that of philosophy than other forms of mysticism have been. The mysticism of some of the great Sufis such as Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240 ), culminated in a grandiose cosmological and metaphysical world-scheme, which is of decisive philosophical significance. Conversely, the philosophical preoccupations of some philosophers, such as Ibn Bajjah (d. 1138) and Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185), led logically and inevitably to the conception of mystical experience (designated “illumination”) as the crowning of the process of reasoning.

The beginnings of the Islamic philosophical school coincide with the first translations of the works of the Greek masters into Arabic from Syriac or Greek. We might accept as credible the traditional account that scientific and medical texts were the earliest works to be translated into Arabic. The Arabs, as well as the Persians, who contributed so abundantly to the scientific and philosophical enlightenment in Islam, are a practical-minded people. Their interest in the more abstract aspects of Greek thought must have been a subsequent development. Even the Christian Syrians, who paved the way for the introduction of the Greek heritage into the Near East shortly before the Arab conquest in the seventh century, were interested primarily in Aristotelian logic and Greek philosophy as a prelude to the study of theological texts. These were not only written originally in Greek, but also were rich in logical and philosophical terms that previously had been unknown to the Semites. In addition to scientific and medical works, collections of moral aphorisms ascribed to Socrates, Solon, Hermes, Pythagoras, Luqman, and similar real or fictitious personages appear to have been among the earliest texts to be translated into Arabic. The Arab accounts of Greek philosophy abound in such apocryphal literature, whose exact origin is sometimes difficult to ascertain. It might be assumed that it was the affinity of these writings to belles lettres (adab) and their literary excellence which insured their early vogue among the elite. Translators had naturally to depend upon the generosity of their aristocratic or wealthy patrons, who, even when they affected interest in other than the purely practical disciplines of astrology or medicine at all, were content with this species of ethical and religious literature, which was cherished and disseminated partly as a matter of social refinement and partly as a matter of moral edification. Interest in the more abstract forms of ancient, especially Greek, learning was bound to follow in due course, however. First, the translators themselves, having mastered skills required for translating into Arabic more practical works, proceeded next to tackle works of a greater speculative interest, and eventually to induce their patrons to provide for their translation. Secondly, the theological controversies had reached such a point of sophistication by the end of the eighth century that the old weapons were no longer sufficient for the defense of orthodoxy, which had now been given the authority of the state. Abstract philosophy was further popularized through the personal idiosyncrasies of such men as the Umayyad prince Khalid b. Yazid, the ‘Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun (d. 833), and the Persian vizier Ja‘far the Barmakid (d. 805), who, had acquired more than a conventional zeal for ancient learning in its Persian, Indian, and Babylonian forms in general, and its Greek and Hellenistic forms in particular.

The greater translators, most of whom were Syriac-speaking Christians, of the unorthodox Nestorian and Monophysite communions, were, not mere translators or servile imitators of Greek or other foreign authors. Some of them, such as Hunain (d. 873) and Yahia b. ‘Adi (d. 974), are credited with a series of important scientific and philosophical works. Hunain’s interests seem to have been chiefly medical and scientific, whereas Yahia seems to have been more interested in theological and philosophical questions. To a famous pupil of his, Ibn al-Khammar (d. 940), is ascribed a treatise on the Agreement of the Opinions of the Philosophers and the Christians, which belongs to the same literary lineage as the parallel treatise of the Muslim philosophers (such as Ibn Rushd, d. 1198) who dealt systematically with the questions of reason and revelation in their works.

The works of those early translators were on the whole compilations which lacked originality. They contained ideas that had been gleaned at random from the works they had translated. The first genuine philosopher to write in Arabic was al-Kindi (d. ca. 866), a contemporary of the great Hunain.’Like the rest of the Arab philosophers and expositors, he differed from the Christian translators in two important particulars: his religion and his total ignorance of Syriac or Greek, the two chief languages of the times, besides Arabic. It is surprising that even the greatest admirers of Greek philosophy such as Averroes, lacked even a perfunctory knowledge of Greek. The chief reason appears to have been the contempt of the Arabs for all foreign tongues, which, seems to have spread like an infection, even to non-Arabs of the most bigoted type. Some philosophers, it is true, chose to write in their native tongues, in addition to writing in Arabic, as is illustrated by Ibn Sina’s and al-Ghazali’s Persian writings. This was probably a gesture of nationalist loyalty, not the manifestation of a genuine desire for a polyglot erudition or distinction.

As a result of their total ignorance of Greek, those philosophers tended to be less slavish in their interpretation of Greek texts, if a trifle less exact, than the early Greek commentators, such as Themistius and Alexander. Being Muslims by faith, they were naturally anxious to justify their interest in the pagan philosophers of antiquity. Indeed, almost from the beginning it was standard for the orthodox to reproach all those who “looked into the books of the [Greek] philosophers”[8] -even presumably when they did not understand them. Such theological preoccupation was a distinctive feature of the development of Islamic philosophy. Al-Kindi, the first genuine philosopher, was more than a philosopher with a theological bent; he was to some extent a theologian with an interest in philosophy. We might say that al-Kindi still stands on the borderline of philosophy and theology, which the later philosophers tried more boldly, perhaps, to cross. How far they succeeded in so doing and how far it was possible for them to span the distance separating Islamic belief from Greek speculative thought will be seen in later chapters. But it might be mentioned at this stage that al-Kindi’s theological interests did act as a safeguard against the total submersion of religious belief in the current of abstract philosophical thought, and the total subordination of the supernatural light of faith to the light of reason -a devastating temptation which Islamic philosophy could not ultimately resist. For the subsequent “illuminationist” trend in the history of Islamic philosophy amounted precisely to this: the vindication of the right of reason to scale the heights of knowledge unaided and to lift the veil of mystery which shrouded the innermost recesses of reality. The ultimate goal of reason, according to Ibn Bajjah, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Tufayl, and others, is “contact” or “conjunction” (ittisal) with the universal mind or active intellect, not the enlightenment which the visio Dei promises, by admitting the soul graciously into the company of the elect, who are blessed with understanding. In this respect, it is clear that the Islamic philosophers remain true to the Greek ideal, in its exaltation of man and its faith in his boundless intellectual prowess and his ability to dispense altogether with any supernatural light.

This is the sense in which Islamic philosophy can be said to have followed a distinctive line of development which gave it that unity of form which is a characteristic of the great intellectual movements in history. We should, however, guard against the illusion that the course of its development was perfectly straight. Some of the most fascinating Muslim thinkers, such as al-Nazzam (d. 845), al-Razi (d. 925), and al-Ma‘arri (d. 1057), fall outside the mainstream of thought in Islam. Their dissident voices lend a discordant note to an otherwise monotonous symphony. The difficulty of expounding their thought with any degree of completeness is bound up with its very nonconformist character. Islam did generate such dissentient and solitary souls, but it could not tolerate or accept them in the end. The historian of Islamic thought cannot overlook them, however, without distorting the total picture.

Chapter Seven

The Interaction of Philosophy and Dogma

I The Eclipse of Theological Rationalism

As we mentioned earlier, the rise of Scholastic theology in the middle of the eighth century was the outcome of a new spirit of inquiry, which the introduction of Greek philosophy in the Muslim world had sparked. In some cases, however, the interaction of philosophy and dogma resulted in a gradual cleavage between the two. The systematic philosophers, like al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, tried hard to lessen the effect of such cleavage by emphasizing the areas of agreement and the common concerns of philosophy and dogma. Some, such as al-Kindi, went so far as to espouse the cause of dogma almost unconditionally and sought to erect a compact intellectual edifice on the foundation of dogma.

A gradual reaction to rationalism in theology, championed originally by the Mu‘tazilah, was to set in less than a century after the death of the founder of that school, Wasil b. ‘Ata’. We have already discussed the role which the great theologian and jurist Ahmad b. Hanbal, as well as the ‘Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil, played in the reversal of the pro-Mu‘tazilite policies of al-Ma’mun in the middle of the ninth century.[1] However, the theological influence of the Mu’tazilah did not cease altogether as a result of al-Mutawakkil’s policy of repression. Despite the virtual triumph of the Hanbali and Traditionist party, the spirit of theological inquiry was not completely snuffed out. In its pure form, the primitive traditionalism of the early jurists and exegetes was gone forever. The new Traditionism or orthodoxy was a qualified one that stemmed from the Mu‘tazilite movement itself. Its rise is associated with the name of Abu’l Hasan al-Ash‘ari (d.935), who, according to the traditional account, studied theology with al-Juba’i, head of the Basra branch of the Mu‘tazilite school but broke away from that school at the age of forty.[2] The Prophet appeared to him in a dream and urged him to “take charge” of the Muslim community, whereupon al-Ash‘ari ascended the pulpit at the mosque of Basra and proclaimed his recantation and his determination to make public “the scandals and follies” of the Mu‘tazilah.

A debate with his master, al-juba’i, concerning God’s justice and man’s worthiness brings out vividly his original anti-Mu‘tazilite sympathies.[3] Whether historical or not, this debate is significant in so far as it illustrates one of the cardinal issues on which al-Ash‘ari broke with the Mu‘tazilah. The pupil asks his master: What will be the fate in the after-life of three brothers, one of whom dies in a state of grace, one in a state of sin, and one in a state of innocence (i.e., before he comes of age)? The righteous brother, answers al-juba’i, will be consigned to paradise, the sinner to hell, and the third to an intermediate position.[4] Al-Ash‘ari then asks: What if the third brother were to ask to be allowed to join his more fortunate brother? This privilege, replies al-juba’i, would be denied him on the ground that the first brother was admitted to paradise on the strength of his good works. If the third brother were to protest that if he had been given a long life he would have lived righteously, God would have replied: I foresaw that you would not and therefore chose to spare you everlasting damnation in hell. At this, the brother Who had died in sin exclaims: Surely, Lord, you foresaw my own plight, as well. Why, then, did you not deal with me as mercifully as you have dealt with my other brother?

We are told that al-juba’i was unable to say what God’s possible answer to such protestations might be, on the Mu‘tazilite assumption of the unqualified justice of God. The corollaries drawn by al-Ash‘ari constitute the substance of his view of God’s absolute omnipotence and sovereignty in the world and the finality of his moral and religious decrees. These decrees are entirely independent of any conditions, moral or other, apart from God’s absolute fiat. To Him it belongs to order human life as He pleases, and to the “servant” to obey without question. Contrary to the contention of the Mu‘tazilah, the human agent plays no part in the drama of choosing or doing and reaps none of the moral or religious fruits accruing from such initiative. In their desire to stress man’s moral freedom and responsibility, the Mu‘tazilah had described him, somewhat extravagantly, as “the creator of his deeds.” To al-Ash‘ari, such blasphemous language was tantamount to the denial of God’s uniqueness as the sole Creator and Sovereign of the world, and consequently implied the recognition of two creators, in the manner of the Manichaeans (Majus).[5]

The vindication of God’s absolute power and sovereignty in the world had certain moral implications, which al-Ash‘ari was quick to draw. To deny man’s role in the drama of moral action and decision and to impute the responsibility for his deeds and volitions to God involved the repudiation of God’s justice. However, the claim that man’s deeds are the result of God’s “decree and preordination” did not necessarily imply, according to him, the nullification of His justice. Injustice can only denote the transgression of what has been prescribed by a superior, or the perpetration of what falls outside the domain of the doer. In both cases, injustice cannot be imputed to God, Who is the undisputed master and lawgiver of the universe and Who owes no allegiance to anyone whatsoever.[6]

On the question of the attributes of God and the creation of the Qur’an, the position of al-Ash‘ari was equally at variance with that of his Mu‘tazilite master, on the one hand, and that of the crude anthropomorphists or literalists, on the other. Moved by the desire to retain the Concept of the full-blooded Creator-God of the Qur’an, he opposed the Mu‘tazilite tendency to divest God of His positive attributes, and argued, according to a twelfth-century historiographer and fellow-Ash‘arite, al-Shahrastani, that the essential divine attributes of knowledge, power, and life are eternal and subsist in God’s essence.[7] They cannot, however, be said to be either identical with this essence, as the Mu‘tazilah claimed, or not identical with it. For this would mean that God’s knowledge, power, or life is the same as God, So that one could address one’s petitions to God’s knowledge, power, or life instead of to God Himself,[8] which is absurd.

The rationalization of the inherence of the attributes in God which the Mu‘tazilah attempted is not fully worked out by al-Ash’ari or his followers. How these attributes are to be distinguished from God’s essence, in which they inhere and yet introduce no plurality into it, al-Ash’ari just refused to say. In this respect he is content to revert to the position of the early Traditionists, such as Malik b. Anas, who is reported to have argued, in the matter of God’s “sitting upon the throne,” that the “sitting is known, whereas its mode is unknown. Belief in its truth is a duty, and its questioning a heresy .”[9]

In his polemical works, however, al-Ash’ari is as concerned to refute the views of the “negators of the attributes,” i.e., the Mu‘tazilah, as he is to refute the position of the literalists and anthropomorphists. In their deference to Scripture, the latter had gone so far as to attribute corporeity to God, chiefly on the grounds that the text of the Qur’an undeniably stipulated it. Thus Qur’an 75:22-23 speak of the ability of the faithful to perceive God on the Last Day, and 7:54, and 20:5 speak of His sitting upon the throne. The anthropomorphists, such as Hisham b. al-Hakam, ‘Abdullah b. Karram, and their followers in the ninth century, had not hesitated to draw from such Qur’anic passages their full logical consequences and to conceive of God, as Ibn Rushd will say later, simply as an “eternal man” endowed with gross corporeal qualities.

The use of logical argument in matters of theology , and its permissibility, Should first be justified satisfactorily, however. Al-Ash‘ari’s position, though reactionary by the standards of the philosophers and thoroughgoing rationalists, is certainly nuancé. Against the literalists and Traditionists, who questioned the permissibility of deduction or analogy, al-Ash’ari invokes the authority of the Qur’an, which recognizes the principle of analogy and employs it effectively in numerous passages.[10] In a tract devoted to the systematic discussion of this question and entitled Vindication of the Use of Theological Proof (Kalam), this ex-Mu‘tazilite doctor’s anti-Traditionist views on an issue which split the ranks of tenth-century theologians are clearly exhibited. The use of analogy, as indeed the whole method of dialectic or deduction, is repudiated by the Traditionists on the ground that the Prophet, who had dealt with every aspect of religion or morals essential to salvation, has not touched on the question of dialectic (Kalam) at all. Hence recourse to it constitutes an heretical departure (bid‘ah) from what is traditionally and authoritatively received.

This argument from silence is artfully turned by al-Ash‘ari against the Traditionists, who, by the same token, are just as heretical themselves, since their claim has no basis in the pronouncements or sayings of the Prophet either. More important still is the fact that the Prophet was fully conversant with the questions of motion and rest, accident and body, divine attributes, and so on, with which theology is concerned. However, they are referred to in the Traditions and the Qur’an in general terms only, and it is on such references that the whole of theology is based.[11]

Finally, the silence of the Qur’an and the Traditions on those questions that were subsequently dealt with by the theologians or the jurists is easily justified. The Muslim community was not faced with the difficulties or doubts which eventually led to them, or else the Prophet would have laid down explicitly the principles for solving them. As a result, the jurists and theologians in attempting to solve them had no other recourse than to draw analogies with what was explicitly laid down in Scripture. For it is the duty of every “reasonable Muslim” in such matters, al-Ash‘ari argues, “to refer them to the body of principles consecrated by reason, sense-experience, and common sense.”[12]

In applying this qualified rationalism to the cardinal questions debated in theological circles at the time, al-Ash‘ari, though in fundamental disagreement with the Mu‘tazilah, is nonetheless anxious to justify his opposition to them on rational grounds. The result is that his method is analogous to that of the Mu‘tazilah, whereas his doctrine is substantially a restatement of Traditionist or Hanbali theses.

If we take the Mu‘tazilite concept of free will as an instance, this dichotomy is clearly brought out. In the Ibanah, al-Ash‘ari describes the arbitrary power of God in terms that leave hardly any scope for human initiative:

We believe that Allah has created everything, by simply bidding it: Be, as He says [in Qur’an 16:42]: “Verily, when we will a thing, our only utterance is: ‘Be’ and it is”; and that there is nothing good or evil on earth, except what Allah has preordained. We hold that everything is through Allah’s will and that no one can do a thing before he actually does it, or do it without Allah’s assistance, or escape Allah’s knowledge. We hold that there is no Creator but Allah, and that the deeds of the creature are created and preordained by Allah, as He said [in Qur’an 37:94]: “He has created you and what you make” ...we hold that Allah helps the faithful to obey Him, favours them, is gracious to them, reforms and guides them; whereas He has led the unfaithful astray, did not guide or favor them with signs, as the impious heretics claim. However, were He to favor and reform them, they would have been righteous, and had He guided them they would have been rightly guided. ...But it was His will that they should be ungodly [singular: kafir], as He foresaw. Accordingly He abandoned them and sealed their hearts. We believe that good and evil are the outcome of Allah’s decree and preordination [qada’ wa qadar]: good or evil, sweet or bitter, and we know that what has missed us could not have hit us, or what has hit us could not have missed us, and that creatures are unable to profit or injure themselves, without Allah.[13]

In this vindication of the omnipotence of God and the powerlessness of the creatures al-Ash‘ari simply reaffirms the Qur’anic Concept of the God-Despot, whose decrees are both irreversible and inscrutable. At the back of this polemic, however, is the view of the Mu‘tazilah that man is the “creator of his deeds,” and consequently a fully free and responsible agent. The Concept of a co-creator with God, according to al-Ash‘ari, amounts to polytheism and involves a radical curtailing of God’s absolute power. Despite these strictures, he does not concur with the Traditionists in their claim that man does not play any part whatsoever in the drama of moral activity. In his doctrine: of al-kasb, or acquisition of the merit or demerit for the deed done, al-Ash‘ari seeks a way out of the moral dilemma of responsibility, without sacrificing the omnipotence of God. Voluntary actions, in his view, are created by God, but acquired by the human agent or imputed to him. Creation differs from acquisition in that the former is the outcome of “eternal power,” whereas the latter is the outcome of the “created power” of the agent, So that the same action is said to be created by the one and acquired by the other. Stated differently, man acquires the credit or discredit for the deed created by God, since it is impossible that God should acquire it in time, while He is its author eternally.[14] In this subtle verbal distinction between what is acquired in time and what is created or predestined eternally, lies according to al-Ash‘ari, the distinction between voluntary and involuntary action, and also that between the merit or demerit which attaches to the latter. Man, as the locus or bearer of “acquired” action, becomes responsible for such action, whereas for involuntary action, such as trembling or falling, etc., he is totally irresponsible. The fundamental relation between the two forms of action, according to al-Ash‘ari and his followers, is that man is intuitively conscious of the difference between the one action and the other.Thus, rather than restore to man the freedom of which the extreme determinists (al-Jabriyah) had robbed him, al-Ash‘ari is content restore to him the consciousness of his subjection to the “eternal power.” Through this subtle distinction, the predestinarian presuppositions of the Traditionists and determinists are not repudiated, but their linguistic sting is removed without surrendering the substance of the predestinarian thesis. The elaboration of this peculiar ethical position, as well as the occasionalist world-view on which it rested, should perhaps be left to a subsequent section, because of the part which the successors of al-Ash‘ari played in developing or refining it.

The historical significance of al-Ash‘ari’s “reform” lies not in the elaborateness of his solutions of the theological problems raised by the Mu‘tazilah, but rather in his willingness to exploit their dialectical method, and, ipso facto, to moderate the claims of the Traditionists and antirationalists to whom he was temperamentally drawn. If his theological position, expressed in the classic formula of bila kaifa (ask not how) must be described as agnostic, it is nonetheless to be clearly distinguished from the blind agnosticism of the religious bigot who will entertain no questions whatsoever. For his was the qualified agnosticism of the earnest seeker who ends up by asserting, rightly or wrongly, the inability of reason to plumb the mystery of man in relation to God, or of God in relation to man.

II The Ash‘arite school and the Formulation of the Occasionalist Metaphysics of Atoms and accidents

The elaboration of the implication of al-Ash‘ari’s new theological outlook was left chiefly to his successors in the tenth and the eleventh centuries. Apart from the substance of their anti-Mu‘tazilite creed, their attention was now centered on two fundamental questions: (1) the nature and limits of rational knowledge in relation to religious truth (‘aql AS. Sam‘), and (2) the metaphysical framework in which the concept of God’s sovereignty and omnipotence should be expressed. Neither of these questions appears to have been discussed with any thoroughness by the founder of Ash‘arite movement himself.

The first major figure in the history of Ash‘arite school was Abu Bakr al-Baqalani (d. 1013), who belongs to the second generation of Ash‘arite doctors. This theologian, who is credited by later authors with refining the methods of Kalam,[15] gives in his al-Tamhid the first systematic statement of the Ash‘arite doctrine and its metaphysical framework.

The book opens with a discussion of the nature of knowledge or science (‘ilm), in a manner which sets the pattern for similar Ash‘arite treatises such as al-Baghdadi’s Usul al-Din and al-Juwayni’s al-Irshad, but it has a distinctly modern ring. Thus, ‘ilm is defined by the author as “the knowledge of the object, as it really is.”[16] The object in question is then shown to include both that which is and that which is not (al-ma‘dum), which the Mu‘tazilah but not the Ash‘arites had declared to be a thing (shay’). Such ‘ilm falls into two major categories: the eternal knowledge of God and the temporal or created knowledge of creatures capable of cognition, such as men, angels, jinn, etc. The latter knowledge is subdivided in turn into necessary (or intuitive) and discursive.

Necessary knowledge is knowledge which can not be doubted. A subsidiary meaning, however, is that which cannot be dispensed with i.e. needful.[17] Discursive knowledge, on the hand is knowledge which is the result of prolonged reflection, or, stated differently, knowledge which rests on necessary or empirical knowledge.

Such necessary knowledge is acquired through one or the other of the five senses and is essentially indubitable. However, there is a type of necessary knowledge which is not a matter of sensation, but is the result of the immediate apprehension of the mind, for instance man’s knowledge of his own existence and his inner states or affections, such as pleasure or pain, love or hate, knowledge or ignorance. To this should also be added the knowledge of the truth or falsity of indicative statements, as well as the second-intention type of knowledge, such as the knowledge of what makes shame shameful, fear fearful, etc.[18]

The third type of necessary knowledge includes, significantly enough, the authoritative accounts of events or facts which are geographically or historically remote, such a the existence of other countries, of historical personages, and of ancient kingdoms. To this type of knowledge belongs a supernatural or extraordinary variety, which God infuses directly into the Soul, without the help of intermediaries or sense organs, which are the normal channels of this type of knowledge.[19]

The distinction between rational and authoritative knowledge was first broached by the Mu‘tazilah,[20] who sought to extend the domain of reason well into regions which so far had been considered the exclusive preserve of revelation or faith. The Ash‘arite doctors, as illustrated in al-Baqalani’s case, recognized the validity of rational knowledge but reacted instinctively against the Mu‘tazilite infringement on the domain of faith. On two fundamental questions of “natural theology” and ethics, namely, whether God can be known rationally, independently of revelation, and whether the knowledge of good and evil is possible prior to revelation, the Ash‘arite theologians took a qualified anti-Mu‘tazilite stand. The existence of God and His unity can be known rationally from the consideration of the createdness (Huduth) of the world and the logical necessity of a creator (muhdith).

To demonstrate this necessity, Ash‘arite doctors argued that the world, which they defined as everything other than God,[21] was composed of atoms and accidents. Now accidents cannot endure for two successive moments, but are continually created by God, who produces and annihilates them at will.[22] Similarly, the atoms in which these accidents inhere are continually created by God and can only endure by virtue of the accident of duration created in them by God.[23] It follows from this premise that the world, being created, must necessarily have a creator.[24]

Al-Baqalani’s version of this argument differs little from the general Ash‘arite argument. He does, however, strengthen this argument by two others in which the “middle term” is different, but not the dialectical structure of the reasoning. In the first, he argues that the priority of certain things in time requires an “agent who made them prior,” who is God. In the second, he introduces the concept of contingency and argues that things, considered in themselves, are susceptible of various forms or qualities. The fact that they actually possess certain forms and no others presupposes a “determinant” who decrees that they should receive these forms and no others, and this determinant is God.[25] The last argument, or argument a contingentia mundi, is more fully developed by later authors, particularly al-Juwayni (d. 1086) in his al-Risalah al-Nizamiyah, and is the argument which, as we have seen,[26] Ibn Sina fully exploited in his Metaphysics. It is noteworthy, however, that the generality of the Ash‘arite theologians showed a distinct predilection for the argument a novitate mundi (huduth) in so far as it harmonized with their concept of a world created in time by an omnipotent God.[27]

On the other major issue of moral theology, the distinction between good and evil, the Ash‘arite doctors were equally in disagreement with the Mu‘tazilah. For, whereas the latter held that man can determine rationally what is good and evil, prior to revelation, the Ash‘arites adhered to a strict voluntarist ethics. Good is what God has prescribed, evil what He has prohibited. In keeping with this voluntarist thesis, they were reluctant to admit that any merit attached to that type of rational knowledge which is attainable through unaided reason.[28] God’s power and sovereignty are such that the very meaning of justice and injustice is bound up with His arbitary decrees. Apart from those decrees, justice and injustice, good and evil, have no meaning whatsoever. Thus God is not compelled, as the Mu‘tazilah had argued, to take note of what is “fitting” in regard to His creatures and to safeguard their moral or religious interests, so to speak, but is entirely free to punish the innocent and remit the sins of the wicked. And had He so desired, He could have created a universe entirely different from the one which He has in fact created, or refrained from creating this universe or any part of it altogether.[29]

The metaphysical implementation of the theological and ethical outlook we have just outlined was the other major philosophical task the Ash‘arite school set itself. In this regard the differences between its major representatives, from al-Baqalani to al-Shahrastani, are minor. Al-Baqalani, however, played a pioneering role in elaborating the metaphysical groundwork of Ash‘arism. Significantly, later authors credit him with the introduction of atomism, which served as the metaphysical prop of Ash‘arite theology.

The introduction of atomism certainly antedates the rise of the Ash‘arite school itself, despite the statement of Ibn Khaldun that al-Baqalani was responsible for the “introduction of the rational premises on which proofs or theories depend, such as the existence of atoms, the void, and the proposition that an accident does not inhere in another accident or endure for two moments.”[30] From the accounts of Islamic atomism contained in the earliest treatise on Islamic “schisms and heresies,” Maqalat al-Islamiyin, written by the founder of the Ash‘arite school himself, it appears that atomism had become firmly established in theological circles by the middle of the ninth century. Thus Dirar b. ‘Amr, a contemporary of wasil b. ‘Ata’ (d. 748) and one of the earliest Mu’tazilite doctors of Basra, seems to have been the first theologian to challenge the generally accepted dualism of substance and accident. Al-Ash‘ari reports that Dirar held that “body is an aggregate of accidents, which once constituted, becomes the bearer of accidents.”[31] Similarly a thoroughgoing Shi’ite materialist who professed an anthropomorphic view of God of the crudest type, Hisham b. al-Hakam, challenged, as we have seen,[32] this orthodox dualism and reduced everything to the notion of body, which according to him was divisible ad infinitum[33] and consequently was not made up of atoms.

By the ninth century, the atomic theory of Kalam began to take definite shape. From al-Ash‘ari’s account, we can infer that Abu’l-Hudhail (d. 841 or 849), al-Iskafi (d. 854-855), al-Juba’i (d. 915), al-Ash‘ari’s own master, Mu‘ammar, a contemporary of Abu’l-Hudhail, as well as two contemporaries of his, Hisham al-Fuwati and ’Abbad b. Sulayman, accepted the atomic theory in one form or another.[34] To take al-Juba’i as an instance, this doctor defined substance or the atom as the bearer or substratum of accidents, which, he added, “was such in itself, and can be conceived as substance prior to its coming-to-be,”[35] presumably in some disembodied Platonic state.

The metaphysical speculation on substance and accident, initiated by the Mu‘tazilah in the eighth century, was continued and refined by post-Mu‘tazilite doctors. The Ash‘arites, engrossed as they were with God’s omnipotence and sovereignty in the world, found in atomism a convenient device for bolstering their theological claims. An Aristotelian world-view, dominated by causal processes that unfolded themselves almost mechanically, was ill-suited to their declared purpose of affirming God’s prerogative to act freely and imperiously in the world. A collocation of atoms which depended, like the accidents inhering in them, on God’s good pleasure, both for their creation and their duration, was more compatible in their view with the notion of God’s arbitrary power .

Against the negators of the accidents, these doctors urged that the motion of a body subsequent to its rest is either due to the body itself or to something other than the body. The first alternative is absurd, since the body remains the same throughout the two successive states of motion and rest. Consequently it can only be due to something other than the body, which we call the accident.[36] Similarly, the existence of a number of strokes inflicted by an agent on a patient, for instance, is distinct from the agent, the patient, or the instrument of striking. Therefore, the number of strokes is something distinct from all those factors, and that is what we understand by accident.

The number of the accidents which the orthodox recognized totals thirty. In a general way, they may be divided into primary and secondary accidents, depending on whether they accompany substance necessarily or not. The first of the primary accidents are the essential modi or states (singular: kaun) such as motion, rest, composition, location. Then come the accidents of color, heat, cold, etc.[37] Al-Ash‘ari is reported by al-Baghdadi as holding that eight of the accidents accompany substance necessarily: motion, color, taste, smell, heat or its opposite, dampness or its opposite, life or its opposite, and finally duration.[38]

The most peculiar variations on the theme of accidents are ascribed to Mu‘tazilite and Ash‘aite doctors. Thus the Mu‘tazilite al-Ka‘bi and his followers are said to have held thlat substance can be divested of all these “primary accidents” save color; and Abu Hashim, al-Juba’i’s son, held that upon its coming into being, an atom can be divested of all accidents save the accident of being (kaun). Another Mu‘tazilite, al-Salihi, went a step further and argued that an atom could exist without any accidents whatsoever .[39]

It is characteristic of these accidents, as al-Baghdadi relates, that they are not susceptible by themselves of any composition, contact, or transmission, since these are characteristics of the body alone. In this regard they were obviously analogous to the atoms, which were said by some theologians to be incapable by themselves of any composition, contact, or motion. However, the two are distinguished somehow, but theoretical difficulties persisted. Thus the

Islamic Philosophy

Second Edition

Majid Fakhry

Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

Introduction

Chapter Seven

The Interaction of Philosophy and Dogma

I The Eclipse of Theological Rationalism

II The Ash‘arite school and the Formulation of the Occasionalist Metaphysics of Atoms and accidents