Introduction

The scholastic and final phase of Muʿtazilī theology began at the close of the third/ninth century, as Muʿtazilīs turned their efforts toward the consolidation and refinement of their predecessorsʼ pioneering theologies.1 These efforts coincided with additional epistemic challenges to the Muʿtazilīs from within their own ranks, as expressed in the skepticism of Abū l-Ḥusayn Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā b. al-Rāwandī (d. 298/910?),2 and the departure of Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Ismāʿīl b. Isḥāq al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935 or 936) from the Muʿtazilīs.3 Leading this scholastic phase4 was Abū ʿAlī l-Jubbāʾī (d. 303/916), his son and disciple Abū Hāshim (d. 321/933),5 and their counterpart and opponent Abū l-Qāsim al-Balkhī/al-Kaʿbī (d. 319/913) (henceforth referred to as al-Kaʿbī).6 Each of these three figures were tied to the early Muʿtazilīs through lines of discipleship, which were labeled in scholastic writings as the “Basran” and “Baghdadi” schools:7 al-Jubbāʾī and his son Abū Hāshim were tied to the “school

1 Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 1991), 1:viii. This phase is also often referred to as the classical phase of the Muʿtazila, see for example, Richard M. Frank, Beings and Their Attributes: The Teachings of the Basrian School of the Muʿtazila in the Classical Period (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1978), 1; Camila Adang, Sabine Schmidtke, and David Sklare, “Introduction,” in A Common Rationality: Muʿtazilism in Islam and Judaism (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag Würzburg, 2007), 11. 2 van Ess, Theologie, 4:295–346. 3 Richard M. Frank, “Elements in the Development of the Teaching of al-Ashʿarī,” Le Muséon 104 (1991): 141–190. Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarīʼs famous conversion story, namely his abandonment of Muʿtazilī theology under the discipleship of al-Jubbāʾī, cannot be divorced from earlier, proto-Sunnī kalām projects of the third/ninth century, such as those of Ibn Kullāb (d. 241/855) and al-Karābīsī (d. 245/859 or 248/862) (van Ess, Theologie, 4:180–194, and 4:210–214). 4 Another important opponent of the two Jubbāʾīs was Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. ʿAlī l-Ikhshīd (d. 326/938) whose followers were known as the Ikhshīdiyya (see Margaretha Heemskerk, Suffering in the Muʿtazilite Theology, ʿAbd al-Jabbārʼs Teaching on Pain and Divine Justice (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 21–30). One of the more famous members of the Ikhshīdiyya was the grammarian al-Rummānī (d. 384/994) (see J. Flanagan, “al-Rummānī,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition, 8:614–615). 5 van Ess, Theologie, 3:209–291; Sabine Schmidtke, “al-Jobbāʾi,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 14:666–672. 6 I have chosen to refer to our author by the nisba al-Kaʿbī for ease of reference, as many his- torical figures are known by our author’s other nisba, al-Balkhī. 7 This distinction seems to have been first been addressed in modern scholarship with Max Horten, Die philosophischen Probleme der speculativen Theologie im Islam (Bonn: Peter Hanstein, 1910), iii–v, and then by A.S. Tritton, Muslim Theology (London: Luzac & Company, 1947), 83, 95, 140, 157.

2 Introduction of Basra” (Baṣriyyūn, henceforth Basrans), through al-Jubbāʾīʼs studies under Abū Yaʿqūb al-Shaḥḥām,8 a student of the Muʿtazilī pioneer of Basra Abū l-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf (d. 227/841).9 Al-Kaʿbī was tied through his discipleship under Abū l-Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. Muḥammad b. ʿUthmān al-Khayyāṭ (d. c. 300/913)10 to Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir (d. 210/825)11 and the “school of Baghdad” (Baghdādiyyūn, henceforth Baghdadis).12 The scholastic period was largely dominated by the theology of Abū Hāshim.13 Though Abū Hāshim’s theology was influenced by his father, and both perpetuated early Basran views, it was also significantly independent of it. Abū Hāshim’s followers, who came to be known as the Bahshamiyya,14 remained unchallenged except by the theology of Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī (d. 436/1044). The Bahshamiyya were the last dominant Muʿtazilī school of thought;15 they produced some of the most renowned Muʿtazilī luminaries, including al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025)16 and al-Ḥākim al-Jishumī

8 van Ess, Theologie, 4:45–51; al-Jishumī, Sharḥ ʿUyūn al-masāʾil (ms Ṣanʿāʾ, al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr, al-Maktaba al-Gharbiyya, collection of Maurice Pomerantz), vol. 1, fol. 62a. 9 Richard Frank, The Metaphysics of Created Being According to Abū l-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf: A Philosophical Study of the Earliest Kalām (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, 1966). 10 al-Jishumī, Sharḥ ʿUyūn al-masāʾil, vol. 1, fol. 68a; Madelung, “ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. Moḥammad b. ʿOṯmān al-Ḵayyāṭ, Abu ‘l-Ḥosayn,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 1:143–144. 11 van Ess, Theologie, 3:107–130. 12 This line of discipleship is most prominently documented in Muʿtazilī biographical sources. For example, al-Jishumī, Sharḥ ʿUyūn al-masāʾil, vol. 1, fols. 55b–68a; al-Kaʿbī, “Dhikr al-Muʿtazila,” in Faḍl al-iʿtizāl wa-ṭabaqāt al-Muʿtazila, ed. Fuʾād al-Sayyid (Tunis: al-Dār al-Tunisiyya li-l-Nashr, 1973), 72–74. 13 See Schmidtke, “Jobbāʾi,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 14:666–672; see also Hassan Ansari, “Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī et son livre al-Maqālāt,” in A Common Rationality, Muʼtazilism in Islam and Judaism, ed. Camilla Adang, Sabine Schmidtke, and David Sklare (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2007), 21–37; Daniel Gimaret, Une lecture muʿtazilite du Coran: Le “tafsīr” d’Abū ʿAlī al-Djubbāʼī (Leuven: Peeters, 1994). 14 On the Bahshamiyya school, see Heemskerk, Suffering in Muʿtazilite Theology, 13–71. 15 A former student of ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī broke with the Bahshamiyya and introduced systematic philosophical concepts into Muʿtazilī thought. Madelung, “Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three, online edition, published 2007; and Wilferd Madelung and Sabine Schmidtke, Rational Theology in Interfaith Communication: Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī’s Mu‘tazilī Theology among the Karaites in the Fāṭimid Age (Leiden: Brill, 2006). Al-Baṣrī’s followers encountered significant resis- tance on the part of the Bahshamiyya but he was followed widely by famous Khwārizmī Muʿtazilīs a century later, as is evident in the work of Rukn al-Dīn b. al-Malāḥimī (d. 536/1141). 16 Wilferd Madelung, “ʿAbd al-Jabbār,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 1:116–118.