Mu'tazilah

[Goswin_van_Eyck]

Mu'tazilah

General Information

Doctrines

The Mu'tazilite school of theology emerged out of the question raised by the Kharijites whether works are integral to faith or independent of faith. On the question of the relationship between faith and works, the Mu'tazilites adopted the position that someone who commits a grave sin without repenting occupies a middle state between being a Muslim and not being a Muslim. A second doctrine concerned the nature of God. God is pure Essence and, therefore, without eternal attributes such as hands. Passages in the Qur'an that ascribe human or physical properties to God are to be regarded as metaphorical rather than literal.


The Mu'tazilites also argued that the Qur'an was created and not eternal. The basis of this doctrine was the claim that the eternal coexistence of the Qur'an beside Allah gave the impression of another god beside Allah.

Human acts are free and, therefore, people are entirely responsible for their decisions and actions. Divine predestination is incompatible with God's justice and human responsibility. God, however, must of necessity act justly; it follows from this that the promises of reward that God has made in the Qur'an to righteous people and the punishments he had issued to evildoers must be carried out by him on the day of judgement.

Mu'tazilites are generally seen as responsible for the incorporation of Greek philosophical thought into Islamic theology. This is particularly apparent in their belief that knowledge of God can be acquired through reason as well as revelation.


History

The term Mu'tazilah derives from the Arabic al-mu'tazilah, which means the one who separated. It was applied to the school established in Iraq by Wasil b. 'Ata (699-749), a student of the distinguished scholar Hasn al-Basri (642-728). At the time of the rise of the 'Abbasids in 750 the Mu'tazilites began to become prominent in the Islamic world. In the 9th century the 'Abbasid caliph, al-Ma'mun, raised Mu'tazilah doctrine to the status of the state creed. Openly supported by the caliphate, the Mu'tazilites became increasingly intolerant and began to persecute their opponents. On one occasion the eminent Sunni scholar and founder of one of the four orthodox jurisprudential schools, Ahmad b. Hanbal (d.855), was subjected to flogging and imprisonment for his refusal to subscribe to the Mu'tazilite doctrine that the Qur'an was created in time.

Always unpopular with the ordinary people, the Mu'tazilites' power gradually began to wane. They lost the support of the caliphs and by the 10th century the Traditionist (Sunni majority) opposition to Mu'tazilah found a spokesman in Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari (d.935), who himself had previously been a Mu'tazilite. Al-Ash'ari's new school of theology and the school of Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (d.945) provided the new basis of orthodox Islamic theology, leading to the complete disappearance of the Mu'tazile movement.



Symbols

Mu'tazilah does not identify itself through the use of any symbol system.

Adherents

The school has no contemporary adherents.

Headquarters / Main Centre

When the school was in existence its main centres were in Basra and Baghdad. J.I.McGrath
Overview of World Religions Project


http://mb-soft.com/believe/txw/mutazili.htm

[Goswin_van_Eyck]

Ash'ariyya and Mu'tazila

The Mu'tazila - literally 'those who withdraw themselves' - movement was founded by Wasil bin 'Ata' in the second century ah (eighth century ad). Its members were united in their conviction that it was necessary to give a rationally coherent account of Islamic beliefs. In addition to having an atomistic view of the universe, they generally held to five theological principles, of which the two most important were the unity of God and divine justice. The former led them to deny that the attributes of God were distinct entities or that the Qur'an was eternal, while the latter led them to assert the existence of free will.

Ash'ariyya - named after its founding thinker, al-Ash'ari - was the foremost theological school in Sunni Islam. It had its origin in the reaction against the excessive rationalism of the Mu'tazila. Its members insisted that reason must be subordinate to revelation. They accepted the cosmology of the Mu'tazilites but put forward a nuanced rejection of their theological principles.

1. Historical survey
2. Cosmology
3. The five principles
4. The unity of God
5. Divine justice and human destiny

1. Historical survey

The Mu'tazila originated in Basra at the beginning of the second century ah (eighth century ad). In the following century it became, for a period of some thirty years, the official doctrine of the caliphate in Baghdad. This patronage ceased in ah 238/ad 848 when al-Mutawakkil reversed the edict of al-Ma'mun, which had required officials to publicly profess that the Qur'an was the created word of God. By this time, however, Mu'tazilites were well established in many other centres of Islamic learning, especially in Persia, and had split into two rival factions, the Basran School and the Baghdad School. Although their links with these two cities became increasingly tenuous, both schools flourished until the middle of the fifth century ah (eleventh century ad), and the Basran School only finally disappeared with the Mongol invasions at the beginning of the seventh century ah (thirteenth century ad). After the demise of the Mu'tazila as a distinct movement, Mu'tazilite doctrine - by now regarded as heretical by Sunnis - continued to be influential amongst the Shi'ites in Persia and the Zaydis in the Yemen.

Al-Ash'ari (d. ah 324/ad 935) was a pupil of Abu 'Ali al-Jubba'i (d. ah 303/ad 915), the head of the Basran School. A few years before his master's death, al-Ash'ari announced dramatically that he repented of having been a Mu'tazilite and pledged himself to oppose the Mu'tazila. In taking this step he capitalized on popular discontent with the excessive rationalism of the Mu'tazilites, which had been steadily gaining ground since their loss of official patronage half a century earlier. After his conversion, al-Ash'ari continued to use the dialectic method in theology but insisted that reason must be subservient to revelation. It is not possible to discuss al-Ash'ari's successors in detail here, but it should be noted that from the second half of the sixth century ah (twelfth century ad) onwards, the movement adopted the language and concepts of the Islamic philosophers whose views they sought to refute. The most significant thinkers among these later Ash'arites were al-Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi.

2. Cosmology

Popular accounts of the teaching of the Mu'tazilites usually concentrate on their distinctive theological doctrines. To the philosopher, however, their cosmology, which was accepted by the Ash'ariyya and other theological schools, is a more appropriate starting point.

To the Mu'tazila, the universe appears to consist of bodies with different qualities: some are living while others are inanimate, some are mobile while others are stationary, some are hot and some are cold, and so on. Moreover, one and the same body may take on different qualities at different times. For instance, a stone may be mobile when rolling down a hill but stationary when it reaches the bottom, or hot when left in the sun but cold after a long night. Yet there are some qualities which some bodies cannot acquire; for example, stones are invariably inanimate, never living. How are the differences between bodies, and between one and the same body at different times, to be explained?

The answer given by the Mu'tazilites is that all bodies are composed of identical material substances (jawahir) or atoms (ajza'), on which God bestows various incorporeal accidents (a'rad). This view was first propounded by Dirar ibn 'Amr (d. c.ah 200/ad 815) and elaborated by Abu al-Hudhayl (d. ah 227/ad 841 or later), both of whom were early members of the Basran School. Abu al-Hudhayl held that isolated atoms are invisible mathematical points. The only accidents which they can be given are those which affect their ability to combine with other atoms, such as composition or separation, motion or rest. Conglomerates of atoms, on the other hand, can be given many other accidents such as colours, tastes, odours, sounds, warmth and coldness, which is why we perceive them as different bodies. Some of these accidents are indispensable, hence the differences between bodies, whereas others can be bestowed or withdrawn, thus explaining the differences between one and the same body at different times.

This account of the world gained rapid acceptance amongst Islamic theologians, although to begin with it was rejected by two Mu'tazilites of the Basran School, al-Nazzam (d. ah 221/ad 836) and Abu Bakr al-Asamm (d. ah 201/ad 816?). The former, who was Abu al-Hudhayl's nephew, argued that atoms which were mere mathematical points would not be able to combine with one another and that, rather than being composed of atoms, bodies must therefore be infinitely divisible. Abu al-Hudhayl replied that God's bestowal of the accident of composition on an isolated atom made it three-dimensional and hence capable of combining (see Atomism, ancient). Al-Asamm, on the other hand, objected to the notion of accidents, arguing that since only bodies are visible their qualities cannot have an independent existence. Abu al-Hudhayl retorted that such a view was contrary to divine laws because the legal obligations and penalties for their infringement were not directed at the whole person but at one of his 'accidents', such as his prostration in prayer or his flagellation for adultery.

3. The five principles

According to the Muslim heresiographers, who are our main source of information about the Mu'tazila, members of the movement adhered to five principles, which were clearly enunciated for the first time by Abu al-Hudhayl. These were: (1) the unity of God; (2) divine justice; (3) the promise and the threat; (4) the intermediate position; and (5) the commanding of good and forbidding of evil.

The first and second principles are of major importance and will be discussed in detail below. The third principle is really only an adjunct of the second, and is here treated as such. The fourth principle is a relatively unimportant doctrine which probably only figures in the list because it was thought to have been the reason for the Mu'tazila's emergence as a distinct movement; it is said that when Hasan al-Basri was questioned about the position of the Muslim who committed a grave sin, his pupil Wasil bin 'Ata' said that such a person was neither a believer nor an unbeliever, but occupied an intermediate position. Hasan was displeased and remarked, 'He has withdrawn from us (i'tazila 'anna)', at which Wasil withdrew from his circle and began to propagate his own teaching. The historicity of this story has been questioned on the ground that there are several variants: according to one version the person who withdrew was Wasil's associate 'Amr ibn 'Ubayd (d. ah 141/ad 761), and according to another the decisive break came in the time of Hasan's successor Qatada. Moreover it is noteworthy that at least one influential member of the Basran school, Abu Bakr al-Asamm, rejected the notion of an intermediate position and argued that the grave sinner remained a believer because of his testimony of faith and his previous good deeds. This was also the view of the Ash'arites.

The fifth principle, which is derived from several passages in the Qur'an (for example, Surah 9: 71), and which the Mu'tazilites understood as an obligation incumbent on all Muslims to intervene in the affairs of state, was rarely put into practice. For the Ash'arites, the commanding of good and forbidding of evil was the prerogative of the head of state, who acted on behalf of the Muslim community.

4. The unity of God

The first half of the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, is the testimony that there is no god besides Allah. Thus the numerical unity of God is axiomatic for all Muslims. Nevertheless, although the Qur'an explicitly asserts that God is one, and equally explicitly rejects polytheism and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, it speaks of God's 'hands' (Surah 38: 75), 'eyes' (Surah 54: 14) and 'face' (Surah 55: 27), and of his seating himself on his throne (Surah 20: 5), thus apparently implying that he has a body. Moreover, in describing the radiant faces of believers 'looking towards their Lord' on the Day of Resurrection (Surah 75: 23), it suggests the possibility of a beatific vision.

However, the Mu'tazilites emphatically rejected such notions, insisting that God is not merely numerically one but also that he is a simple essence. This led them to deny that he has a body or any of the characteristics of bodies such as colour, form, movement and localization in space; hence he cannot be seen, in this world or the next. The Mu'tazila therefore interpreted the Qur'anic anthropomorphisms as metaphors - God's 'hands' are his blessing, God's 'eyes' are his knowledge, his 'face' is his essence and his seating himself on his throne is his omnipotence - and argued that, since the Qur'an elsewhere asserts that 'sight cannot reach Him' (Surah 6: 103), the phrase ila rabbiha nazira means 'waiting for their Lord' rather than looking towards him.

Some of the later Ash'arites accepted the Mu'tazilite position on the Qur'anic anthropomorphisms. In al-Ash'ari's own view, however, they are neither to be dismissed in this way nor understood to imply that God has a body like human beings. They are 'revealed attributes', whose existence must be affirmed without seeking to understand how (bi-la kayfa). Furthermore, the possibility of beatific vision depends not on God's embodiment, but on his existence. God can show us everything which exists. Since he exists, he can therefore show us himself. Hence the statement that 'sight cannot reach Him' must apply only to this world, where he impedes our vision.

Much more problematic than the Qur'an's anthropomorphisms are the adjectives which it employs to describe God. He is said, for instance, to be 'living', 'knowing', 'powerful' and 'eternal'. If we deny these qualities to God, we must then attribute to him their opposites, which are imperfections. But God is by definition free from imperfections; therefore God must always have had these qualities. But does this mean that he possesses the attributes of 'life', 'knowledge', 'power' and 'eternity' and that they are distinct from his essence? The Mu'tazilites reasoned that this was impossible because it would imply plurality in the Godhead. When we speak of God as 'living', 'knowing', 'powerful' and 'eternal', we are, in their opinion, merely considering him from different points of view. God's 'attributes of essence' (sifat al-dhat), as they are generally called, are a product of the limitations and the plurality of our own intellectual faculties; in reality, they are identical with God's essence. Thus, according to al-Ash'ari (Maqalat: 484), Abu al-Hudhayl maintained that 'God is knowing by virtue of a knowledge which is His own essence' and that he is likewise powerful, living and eternal by a power, a life and an eternity which are none other than his own essence. Al-Nazzam expressed this even more forcefully when he said, 'If I say that God is knowing, I merely confirm the divine essence and deny in it all ignorance. If I say that God is powerful, living and so forth, I am only confirming the divine essence and denying in it all powerlessness, mortality and so forth' (Maqalat: 484).

Al-Ash'ari himself rejected this reductionist account of the 'attributes of essence' which made them artefacts of human reason, but his arguments for doing so are far from compelling. He alleged that since in the case of human beings knowing implies possessing knowledge as an entity distinct from the knower, the situation with God must be analogous. Hardly more cogent is the claim that if God knew by his essence, he would be knowledge. Finally, al-Ash'ari's assertion that the 'attributes of essence' are neither other than God nor identical with him is simply a retreat into paradox. However, al-Ash'ari was not alone in wishing neither to affirm the independent existence of these attributes nor to deny it outright. Al-Jubba'i's son Abu Hashim (d. ah 321/ad 933) attempted to resolve the problem by introducing the idea of 'state' (hal). A state is not something which exists or which does not exist; it is not a thing and it cannot be known in itself, only with an essence. Nevertheless it has an ontological reality. According to Abu Hashim, there are in God permanent states such as 'his mode of being knowing' (kawnuhu 'aliman), 'his mode of being powerful' and so forth, which give rise to distinct qualicatives. This compromise was accepted by many of Abu Hashim's fellow Mu'tazilites of the Basran school, but was unanimously rejected by those of Baghdad.

In addition to the attributes of essence, the Qur'an employs a whole series of adjectives such as 'providing' and 'forgiving', which describe God in relation to his creatures. It is easy to imagine a time when God did not have these attributes. The Mu'tazilites called these 'attributes of action' (sifat al-fi'l) because they deemed them to come into being when God acts. In their reckoning, God's 'speech' belongs to this category of attributes, for it does not make sense to think of his commandments as existing before the creation of the beings to whom they are addressed. Thus the Qur'an itself, although the Word of God, is temporal and not eternal. It was created initially in the 'guarded tablet' (Surah 85: 22) and subsequently recreated in the hearts of those who memorize it, on the tongues of those who recite it and on the written page. Although not denying the existence of attributes of action, al-Ash'ari insisted that 'speech' - along with 'hearing' and 'vision' - was an attribute of essence. He argued that if God's word were not eternal, it would have had to have been brought into being. Furthermore, since it is an attribute, it could not have been brought into being other than in an essence in which it resides. In which case either God brought it into being in himself, or he brought it into being in another. But if he had brought it into being in himself, he would be the locus of things which come into being, which is impossible. If, on the contrary, he had brought it into being in another, it is the other, and not God, who would have spoken by the word.

5. Divine justice and human destiny

In addition to championing the unity of God, the Mu'tazilites stressed his justice. They held that good and evil are objective and that the moral values of actions are intrinsic to them and can be discerned by human reason. Hence God's justice obliges him to act in accordance with the moral law. For instance, he is thus bound to stand by his promise to reward the righteous with paradise and his threat to punish the wicked with hellfire. More importantly, the reward and punishment which he metes out must be merited by creatures endowed with free will (see Free will). Thus although the Qur'an says that God guides and leads astray those whom he wills (Surah 14: 4), it cannot mean that he predestines them. This and similar texts refer rather to what will happen after the judgement, when the righteous will be guided to paradise and the wicked will be caused to stray far from it. With regard to our acts in this world, God creates in us the power to perform an act but we are free to choose whether or not to perform it.

Many of the Mu'tazilites held that the principle of justice made it requisite for God always to do for people what was to their greatest advantage. Al-Jubba'i went as far as to claim that God is bound to prolong the life of an unbeliever if he knows that the latter will eventually repent. In view of this, al-Ash'ari is alleged to have asked him about the likely fate of three brothers: a believer, an unbeliever and one who died as a child. Al-Jubba'i answered that the first would be rewarded, the second punished and the third neither rewarded nor punished. To the objection that God should have allowed the third to live so that he might have gained paradise, al-Jubba'i replied that God knew that had the child lived he would have become an unbeliever. Al-Ash'ari then silenced him by asking why in that case God did not make the second brother die as a child in order to save him from hellfire!

For al-Ash'ari, divine justice is a matter of faith. We know the difference between good and evil solely because of God's revelation, and not by the exercise of our own reason. God makes the rules and whatever he decrees is just, yet God himself is under no obligation: if he wished, he could punish the righteous and admit the wicked to paradise (see Voluntarism). Moreover, to suppose as the Mu'tazilites did that human beings had free will would be to restrict the sovereign freedom of the creator. On the contrary, God creates in his creature both the power and the choice; then he creates in us the actions which correspond to these. Nevertheless, we are conscious of a difference between some actions, such as the rushing of the blood through our veins, which are involuntary, and others, such as standing up or sitting down, which are in accordance with our own will. Al-Ash'ari argues that by approving of these latter actions, which God created in us, we 'acquire' them and are thus held responsible for them.

See also: Causality and necessity in Islamic thought; Free will; Islam, concept of philosophy in; Islamic theology; Karaism

NEAL ROBINSON
Copyright © 1998, Routledge.
References and further reading

* al-Ash'ari (before 935) Maqalat al-islamiyyin (Islamic Dogmas), ed. H. Ritter, Wiesbaden, 2nd edn, 1963. (Valuable source of information about earlier thinkers.)

Gimaret, D. (1990) La doctrine d'al-Ash'ari (The Doctrine of al-Ash'ari), Paris: Éditions du Cerf. (A systematic and comprehensive treatment of the subject.)

Gimaret, D. (1992) 'Mu'tazila', in Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Vol. VII, fasc. 127-8: 783-93. (Short survey of the topic.)

Hourani, G. (1985) Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Excellent defence of the Mu'tazilite position.)

Leaman, O. (1985) 'Are the Ethics of Religion Objective or Subjective?', in Introduction to Medieval Islamic Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch. 4, 123-65. (Critique of the Mu'tazilite interpretation.)

Nader, A.N. (1984) Le système philosophique des Mu'tazila (The Philosophical System of the Mu'tazila), 2nd edn, Beirut: Dar el-Machreq. (Somewhat outdated; apparently a simple reprint of the first edition of 1956.)

Van Ess, J. (1984) Une lecture à rebours de l'histoire du Mu'tazilisme (A Controversial Reading of the History of Mu'tazilism), Paris: Geuthner. (Brief and lively discussion of the early period.)


http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/H052.htm

[Goswin_van_Eyck]

ABU 'l-HUDHAYL al-'ALLAF

ABU 'l-HUDHAYL al-'ALLAF, Muhammad b. al-Hudhayl b. 'Ubayd Allah b. Makhul,
with the nisba of al-'Abdi (being a mawla of 'Abd al-qays), the first speculative theologian of the
Mu'tazila. He was born in Basra, where he lived in the quarter of the 'allafun, or foragers (whence
his surname); the date of his birth is uncertain: 135/75t-3 or 134/751-t or even 131/748-9. In
t03/818-9 he settled in Baghdad and died, at a great age, in tt6/840-1, or according to
another tradition, in the reign of al-Wathiq (tt7-3t/84t-7), or, on the authority of others, in
t35/849-50, under al-Mutawakkil. He was indirectly a disciple of Wasil b. 'Ata', through the
intermediary of one of Wasil's companions, 'Uthman al-tawil. Like Wasil, he was lettered; his
profound knowledge of poetry was especially celebrated. Some hadiths also are quoted under his
name.

The theology which he inherited from the school of Wasil was still rudimentary. Essentially
polemical, it opposed--in a rather unsystematic fashion, it seems--the anthropomorphism of
popular Islam and of the traditionists, the doctrine of determinism favoured for political reasons
by the Umayyads, and the divinization of 'Ali preached by the extreme Shi'ites. While
continuing this polemic, Abu 'l-Hudhayl was the first to engage in the speculative struggles of
the epoch, a task for which he was exceptionally well equipped by his philosophical mind, his
sagacity and his eloquence. He became the apologist of Islam against other religions and
against the great currents of thought of the preceding epoch:qthe dualists, represented by the
Zoroastrians, the Manichaeans and other Gnostics; the philosophers of Greek inspiration, the
dahriyya, mainly represented by the champions of the natural sciences; finally against the
increasingly numerous Muslims who were influenced by these foreign ideas: crypto-Manichaean
poets like ‘alih b. 'Abd al-quddus, the theologians of the 'modern' type who had adopted
certain gnostic and philosophical doctrines, etc. It seems that it was only at a mature age that
he made himself acquainted with philosophy. On the occasion of his pilgrimage (the date of
which is unknown) he met in Mecca the Shi'ite theologian Hisham b. al-Hakam and disputed
with him concerning his anthropomorphist doctrines, which show a gnostic influence; and it
was only then that he began to study the books of the dahriyya. Later historians observe certain
similarities between his doctrine of the divine attributes and the philosophy of
Pseudo-Empedocles, forged by the Neo-Platonists and natural scientists of late antiquity; in
effect his philosophical sources must have been of such a kind, which are represented in general
by medieval Aristotelianism. These philosophers attracted, as well as repelled, him; while
combatting them, he adopted their methods and their manner of looking at problems. Naive as
a thinker, and having no scholastic tradition, he approached speculative problems with a daring
which did not even recoil from the absurd. Hence all the prematurity and the lack of balance
which characterize his theology, but also the freshness of his attempts. He was the first to set
many of the fundamental problems at which the whole of the later Mu'tazila was to labour.

The unity, the spirituality and the transcendence of God are carried in the theology of Abu
'l-Hudhayl to the highest degree of abstraction. God is one; he does not resemble his creatures in
any respect; he is not a body (against Hisham b. al-Hakam); has no figure (hay'a), form (sura) or
limit. God is knowing with a knowledge, is powerful with a power, alive with a life, eternal with
an eternality, seeing with a faculty of sight, etc. (against the Shi'ites who asserted that God is
knowledge, etc.), but this knowledge, power, etc. are identical with himself (against popular
theology which regarded the divine attributes as entities added to essence): provisional formulas
of compromise which did not satisfy later generations. God is omnipresent in the sense that he
directs everything and his direction is exercised in every place. God is invisible in the other
world; the believers will see him with their hearts. The knowledge of God is unlimited, as to
what concerns his knowledge of himself; as for his knowledge of the world, it is circumscribed by
the limits of his creation, which forms a limited totality (if it were not limited, it would not be
totality). The same applies to the divine power. Abu 'l-Hudhayl strove to reconcile the qur'anic
doctrine of creation ex nihilo with the Aristotelian cosmology, according to which the world, set
in motion by God, is eternal, movement being co-eternal with the prime mover himself. While
accepting movement as the principle of the universal process, he declared it to be created in the
qur'anic sense; in consequence, movement also will reach its end and will cease. This end is
placed by him in the other world, after the last day: movement having ceased, paradise and hell
will come to a standstill and their inhabitants will be fixed in a state of immobility, the blessed
enjoying for eternity the highest pleasures and the damned enduring the most cruel torments.
This bizarreqdoctrine, which, according to tradition, he himself revoked, is unanimously
rejected by all the Muslim theologians, Mu'tazilites or not; nor have its grave consequences for
the doctrine of God's omniscience and omnipotence escaped them. In regard to theodicy, Abu
'l-Hudhayl taught that God has the power to do evil and injustice, but he does not do it, because
of his goodness and wisdom. God admits the evil actions of man, but he is not their author. Man
has the power to commit them, he is responsible for them, and responsible even for the
involuntary consequences resulting from his actions (theory of tawallud, first developed by Abu
'l-Hudhayl). The responsible being is man in his entirety, his ruh together with his visible body. It
was Abu 'l-Hudhayl who introduced into Mu'tazilite speculation the concept of the accidents
(a'rad) of bodies, and that of the atom, which he called dhawhar. These concepts, which originally
had a purely physical relevance, were made by him to serve as the basis for theology proper,
cosmology, anthropology and ethics. This is his most original innovation, as well as the most
heavy with consequences; it was this which gave to Mu'tazili theology its mechanical character.
Life, soul, spirit, the five senses, are accidents and therefore not enduring; even spirit (ruh) will
not endure. Human actions can be divided into two phases, both of them movements: the first is
the approach ('I shall do'), the second the accomplished action ('I have done'). Man having
free will, the first movement can be suspended in the second phase, so that the action remains
unaccomplished; it is only the accomplished action which counts. Divine activity is interpreted
in the light of the doctrine of accidents: the whole process of the world consists in an incessant
creation of accidents, which descend into the bodies. Some accidents, however, are not be found
in a place or in a body; e.g. time and divine will (irada). The latter is identical with the eternal
creating word kun; it is distinct from its object (al-murad) and also from the divine order (amr),
which man can either obey or disobey (while the effect of the creating word kun is absolute: kun
fa-yakunu, qur'an ii, 111, etc.). Those who are not acquainted with the qur'anic revelation, but
have nevertheless accomplished laudable acts prescribed by the qur'an, have obeyed God
without having the intention to do so (theory of ta'a la yuradu'llahu biha, otherwise attributed to the
kharidhites). The qur'an is an accident created by God; being written, recited or committed to
memory, it is at the same time in various places.--In the question of the manzila bayn
al-manzilatayn Abu 'l-Hudhayl took up a position which was in conformity with the political
situation of his time: he did not reject any of the combatants round 'Ali, yet preferred 'Ali to
'Uthman. He enjoyed the favour of al-Ma'mun, who often invited him to the court for
theological disputes.--All the writings of Abu 'l-Hudhayl are lost.

During his long life, Abu 'l-Hudhayl had an enormous influence on the development of theology
and he collected round him a large number of disciples of different generations. The best known
amongst them is al-Nazzam, though he quarrelled with his master because of his destructive
theories concerning the atom; Abu 'l-Hudhayl condemned him and composed several treatises
against him. Among his disciples are named Yahya b. Bishr al-Arradhani, al-Shahham, and others.
His school continued to exist for a long time; even al-Dhubba'i still avowed his indebtedness to
Abu 'l-Hudhayl'sqtheology, in spite of the numerous points on which he differed from
him.--Unfortunately, the theology of Abu 'l-Hudhayl was exposed to the malevolence of a
renegade from Mu'tazilism, the famous Ibn al-Rawandi, who, in his Fadihat al-Mu'tazila grossly
misrepresented it, by submitting it to an often too cheap criticism; this caricature has been
faithfully reproduced by al-Baghdadi in his Farq and often recurs in the resumes of the Mu'tazila.
It is only with the help of al-Intisar, by al-khayyat, the severe critic of Ibn al-Rawandi, that we are
able to unmask the latter's procedure and gain an exact idea of true motives of Abu 'l-Hudhayl's
speculation. Al-Ash'ari, in his Maqalat, reproduced his theses with admirable impartiality, after
the school tradition of the Mu'tazila. Al-Shahrastani based his expose on the later Mu'tazilite
tradition, especially, it seems, on al-Ka'bi.
(H.S. Nyberg)



Bibliography:


al-khatib al-Baghdadi, Ta'rikh Baghdad, iii, 366-70

Mas'udi, Murudh, index

Ibn khallikan, no. 617

Ibn al-Murtada (T. W. Arnold, The Mu'tazila), index

Ibn qutayba, Ta'wil Mukhtalaf al-Hadith, Cairo 13t6, 53-5

khayyat, Intisar (Nyberg), index

Ash'ari, Maqalat (Ritter), index

Baghdadi, Farq, index

Ibn Hazm, Fisal, ii, 193, 487, iv, 83 ff., 19t ff., etc.

Mutahhar al-Maqdisi, al-Bad' wa 'l-Ta'rikh (Huart), index of transl.

Shahrastani, 34-7

‘a'id al-Andalusi, tabaqat al-Umam (Cheikho), t1 f.

Maqrizi, khitat, ii, 346

S. Pines, Beitraege zur islamischen Atomlehre, Berlin 1936

A. S. Tritton, Muslim Theology, London 1947

L. Gardet and M. M. Anawati, Introduction a la theologie musulmane, Paris 1948

A. N. Nadir, Falsafat al-Mu'tazila, Alexandria 1950-1.


http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ei/allaf.htm