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Argumentation and Arabic Philosophy of Language

Modalities of Argumentation, Scriptural Reasoning, and the Structural Characteristics of Early Islamic Theological Discourse

Modalités d’argumentation, raisonnement scriptural et caractéristiques structurelles du discours théologique au début de l’ère musulmane
Omer Awass

Résumés

Cette étude de trois textes datant des débuts de la théologie islamique vise à montrer que les pratiques discursives dont ils relèvent au sein de leurs genres naissants respectifs ont un caractère scriptural et herméneutique, leur préoccupation principale étant de déterminer la façon dont il faut comprendre des assertions coraniques données plutôt que de développer de longs arguments sur des bases purement rationnelles. Une analyse formelle des trois écrits sur le déterminisme divin que l’on étudie ici suggère que le contenu coranique non seulement fournit la matière de ces discussions mais oriente également la structure elle-même de leur argumentation et des tournures de raisonnement qui les portent en sous-main. Ce que nous voulons notamment montrer est que le développement de la pensée théologique islamique et les pratiques discursives qui lui sont associées ont reçu leur impulsion de l’intérieur, c’est-à-dire de sources religieuses plutôt qu’être le simple fait d’une évolution liée à la découvertes d’influences extérieures.

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Texte intégral

I want to thank Sarra Tlili for helping with the transliteration of the Arabic terms. I also want to thank Bill Chambers for copy editing an earlier version of this article. I dedicate this article to the memory of Mahmoud Ayoub, teacher and friend, who commented on the first draft of this article.

Introduction

1This paper attempts to identify the methods of argumentation and formal characteristics of early Islamic theological discourse paying special attention to how Quranic discursive practices may have influenced the development of distinct forms of Islamic theological reasoning. This investigation will be carried out through an in-depth structural analysis of excerpts from three early theological texts, highlighting their points of commonality and contrast and demonstrating how these literary and logical features relate to their discursive precursors. Moreover, this exploration will draw distinct conclusions about the relationship between scriptural text and theological thinking in Islam.

2This study is concerned with the structural aspects of early theological discourse and not its content. In other words, I am not examining the actual arguments of the various parties to assess their validity or their theological implications. Instead, I will be examining their formal dimensions to determine the characteristics of this early discourse and the discursive influences that shaped it. This analysis will focus on the convergences and divergences in their modalities of argumentation. Therefore, I am engaging in a meta-analysis of the formal qualities of early Islamic theological thought and I am less concerned with the particular theological positions held by the authors of these texts.

3But why would it be important to outline the formal and logical features of early Islamic theological discourse? This exercise informs us about the trajectory of early Islamic thought and what impact these nascent writings had on subsequent styles of Islamic argumentation. Moreover, looking at early works of Islam may inform us about the early formation and subsequent development of Islamic culture as a whole. To this end, one should consider what influences might have shaped early discourses and the possible impact they may have had on later modes of Islamic thought.

Sample Texts

  • 1 For further details on this point see Nagel Tilman (2000), A History of Islamic Theology: From Muha (...)
  • 2 See Van Ess, Joseph (1975), “The Beginnings of Islamic Theology,” Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publicher.

4The topic addressed by the theological texts chosen as samples for this study revolves around the idea of divine determination and human choice. This was an important theme in Islamic theological debates. The three particular sample texts chosen are from the first century of Islam, and include: Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s treatise on the issue of qadar (predestination); Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s letter to the Umayyad Caliph ʿAbd al-Malik regarding the same issue;1 and the later Umayyad Caliph ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s (ʿUmar II’s) letter against the Qadarites (advocates of free will). According to the late Islamic intellectual historian Josef van Ess, Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s treatise can be dated to 73 AH (c. 692 CE) and Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s letter to Caliph ʿAbd al-Malik no later than 80 AH (c. 699 CE); while Caliph ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s letter against the Qadarites is purported to be written sometime during his reign, between 98 – 101 AH (717-720 CE).2 Although the actual documents for these treatises are no longer extant, they were preserved in later Muslim writings. Furthermore, if these dates are correct, all of the sample texts are from within the first century of Islam.

  • 3 For further details on these points see Tilman Nagel (2000), A History of Islamic Theology, p. 58-6 (...)

5But how much influence would these treatises have had on the early theological debates and the development of later Muslim theology, that I should take them as representative samples for the starting point of my inquiry? Each of the three personalities is known to have played an influential role in the early Islamic intellectual tradition. Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s earlier letter on irjāʾ (postponement of judgment) is purported to have given impetus to a whole theological movement in early Islam known as the murjiʾa (the “postponers”), while it is known that many of the personalities who initiated Muslim theological movements are said to have attended Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s teaching circles in Basra (e.g., ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd, Ghaylān al-Dimashqī, and Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ as precursors to the Muʿtazilī school of theology). Moreover, the Caliph ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz is purported to be one of the main proponents in the development of the Sunnī movement through his support for the collection and dissemination of prophetic traditions, which is demonstrated by his use of such traditions and his statements in support of them in this very treatise we will examine.3

  • 4 For further elaboration of this point see Hodgson, Marshal (1993), “On the determinacy of tradition (...)

6But the best testimony to the influence of these men on early Islamic theology is the fact that later generations of Muslim scholars preserved these very same treatises. Generally speaking, for something to be preserved and incorporated into a tradition, later generations must see the relevance and importance of the writing in question.4 For such efforts to be taken by Muslims to preserve such works, they must have thought that they played an integral part in the development of the early Islamic intellectual tradition.

  • 5 For example, see Mourad’s discussion of the various recensions of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s epistle (Mourad, (...)

7I conclude my introduction of these texts with a caveat. Muslim tradition has preserved several recensions of each of these epistles that differ somewhat in their content.5 Aside from the brief discussion of the provenance of these texts offered in the next section (for the sake of establishing subsequent historical claims), the various recensions of these epistles do not greatly impact the aims of this study, which seeks, rather, to discover the formal dimensions of early Islamic theology and its discursive precursors. In other words, this is not a source-critical study of early Islamic texts wherein comparing the various recensions would be essential. Instead, this examination attempts to broadly outline the character of argument in the early Islamic theological enterprise, a task for which any recension of these treatises would suffice.

The Authenticity of our Sample Early Theological Epistles

  • 6 Van Ess, Joseph (1975), The Beginning of Islamic Theology, p. 92-92.
  • 7 Van Ess, Joseph (1972), “ʿUmar II and His Epistle Against the Qadariya,” Abr-Nahrian 12, p. 20
  • 8 Joseph Van Ess (1975), The Beginning of Islamic Theology, p. 92-92.
  • 9 Van Ess, Joseph (2017), Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra: A Hist (...)

8There are differences among historical critics as to the authenticity and dating of these epistles. Josef Van Ess argues, in two separate articles, for the authenticity of Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s treatise6 while taking a more cautious stance with regard to ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s7. His general argument for such treatises is that the simplicity of the arguments found in them is a sign that they date to a time when the theological discourse was still primitive, thereby indicating that they may be indeed authentic.8 Likewise, Van Ess viewed the authenticity of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s epistle favorably, although he later expressed some reservations, saying: “The authenticity of the document cannot, in fact, be proved beyond doubt9.”

  • 10 Cook, M. A. (1980). “The Origins of Kalam,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (...)
  • 11 M. A. Cook, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, (43)1 (1980), fn. 5, p. 32.
  • 12 M. A. Cook, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, (43)1 (1980), fn. 5, p. 32.

9Arguing against Van Ess’s assertions of authenticity, Michael Cook claims that many of his arguments are questionable because they rest on arguments of silence.10 For example, Van Ess maintains that Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s treatise does not reference the arguments and information of other established (theological) discourses of the early period and hence must precede them. In addition, this silence is an indication of its authenticity presumably because a later forger would not have omitted some of these later ideas. Cook argues that such silences in the texts do not provide definitive proof of their early dating, much less for their ascription to the supposed authors.11 Moreover, Cook contends that Van Ess’s strongest argument for the placing of these early theological texts in the first century AH is the lack of or sparsity of hadith found in them. Yet Cook argues this is also no proof for the early dating of these texts, as statements of hadith would have been difficult to incorporate in the dialectical approach to argumentation found in Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s texts, or perhaps Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya did not recognize the authority of hadith12 and therefore saw no need to include them.

10Cook’s objections certainly raise doubts as to the authenticity and dating of these texts. Nevertheless, I will offer some arguments later in this section that lend credence to their early provenance. But first I will address the historical question of the lack of hadith found in them and what that may entail for their authenticity and character. The number of hadith that address issues of predestination are not great in quantity relative to the hadith literature dealing with other theological and legal topics. In addition, the circulation of such hadith in this early period would have been far more limited than later periods when they were collected and canonized. Moreover, Cook’s assertion of the difficulty of incorporating hadith in this type of argumentation is not at all a given—especially since the atomized nature of hadith discourse, much like the atomized nature of the Quranic verses used in these treatises, seems to argue against any difficulty in including them in the epistles. However, the fact of the relative sparsity of hadith dealing with the issue of predestination (as I will demonstrate in greater detail later in this paper) probably undermines both Van Ess’s and Cook’s assertions about the implications that are drawn from their near absence in these epistles.

  • 13 Suleiman Mourad (2006), Early Islam Between Myth and History, p. 238.

11In an extensive study of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s legacy, Sulayman Mourad undertakes an encompassing analysis of the authenticity of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s epistle on free will. He concludes that the tract is likely a forgery by later theologians who tried to project backward their theological views on an early, revered figure in Islam, so that their theological (Muʿtazilī) positions would gain currency with the Muslim public at the time.13 When examining Mourad’s critique of its authenticity and dating, I find that couching his arguments in the ‘backward projection of tradition’ perspective colors his interpretation of the evidence that he provides. By this perspective, I mean taking any assertion by later generations of the early roots of an idea or treatise and claim that it is an attempt by builders of a tradition or a school of thought to project backward their ideas onto some mythic origin. This perspective may indeed be true for many cases in the formulation of traditions, but when taken as the unspoken but inviolable rule of historiography leads to the framing of historical evidence in ways that support forgone conclusions. Moreover, he primarily relies on external evidence to disprove the authenticity of al-Baṣrī’s epistle, but fails to examine some of the crucial internal evidence of the text (for example, its modes of legal reasoning) that hint at its early, if not first-century, origin.

12Even when Mourad presents internal textual evidence that he claims shows its later authorship, he does so under presumptions that are quite inconclusive. For example, he says that al-Baṣrī employs the notion of the salaf (predecessors) at the beginning of his epistle to say that his theological position is consistent with the position of earlier predecessors. Yet, Mourad says, the concept of the salaf which designates the first three generations of Muslims was only a later development of Islamic tradition, while al-Baṣrī himself was from these earlier generations. Thus, the anachronistic employment of this term at the beginning of the epistle is an indication of its later authorship (Mourad 2006, 199-200). But what Mourad fails to consider is that usage of the term salaf in the text could have been simply its generic linguistic use to designate the earlier generation of Muslims that preceded him (i.e., the contemporaries of the Prophet Muammad) rather than the specialized meaning of the term that it came to connote in the later tradition. Here, Mourad’s argument seems to fall into its own anachronistic back-projection of designations not intended by the text.

  • 14 Suleiman Mourad (2006), Early Islam Between Myth and History, p. 205-207.
  • 15 Suleiman Mourad (2006), Early Islam Between Myth and History, p. 177.

13Some of the more noteworthy external pieces of evidence Mourad offers against an early provenance for al-Baṣrī’s epistle follows, accompanied by my alternative explanations as to why they could be the case without necessarily concluding that the text is a later forgery. For one, Mourad claims that no theologian (Sunnī, Muʿtazilī, or Shīʿī) had mentioned the existence of this epistle before Muʿtazilī theologian Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār in the 4th century AH.14 Mourad is correct in asserting that earlier Muʿtazilīs would have likely mentioned or cited this work of al-Baṣrī because it supports their position on the issue of predestination. But what this argument fails to consider is that most early Muʿtazilī works are no longer extant and it is more than possible some of these may have mentioned the letter. The fact that one 4th century AH scholar and the earliest extant Muʿtazilī biographical work fails to mention the epistle in its entry on Ḥasan al-Baṣrī15 is not overwhelming evidence in itself that the epistle has a later pedigree. Again, like Cook’s critique of Van Ess’s evidence from silence, such evidence can be inconclusive. Moreover, as manuscripts of early Muʿtazilī works are being rediscovered and studied, especially the trove of Muʿtazilī works found in Sana’s Great Mosque in the late 20th century, it may be revealed that there is evidence linked to this epistle of al-Baṣrī or at least showing its early provenance. In sum, the jury is still out on this question.

  • 16 Joseph Van Ess (2017), Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra, p. 54.

14As for its lack of ascription to al-Baṣrī in Sunnī and Shīʿī works, according to Van Ess16 al-Baṣrī’s non-predestinarian (Qadarite) views as expressed in the epistle had been attested to—much earlier than Mourad implies—by ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Sanʿānī (d. 211 AH / 827 CE) in his Muṣannaf. Al-Sanʿānī heard about al-Baṣrī’s views from his teacher Maʿmar ibn Rāshid (d. 154 AH / 770 CE), who prospered in the generation following al-Baṣrī. Although Van Ess does not indicate that ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Sanʿānī attests to the existence of the epistle, his claim indicates that some of the content of al-Baṣrī’s epistle was known to earlier generations dating back at least to the second century AH.

  • 17 For an illustration of this last point, see Suleiman Mourad (2006), Early Islam Between Myth and Hi (...)

15Furthermore, later generations of Sunnīs would not have wanted to link this epistle to al-Baṣrī because he became a revered religious figure in Sunnī Islam and some of its content goes against the established theology of this sect. So, it would have seemed counterproductive for Sunnīs to make such an attribution. As for Shīʿīs, especially in Twelver Shīʿism, al-Baṣrī was neither religiously authoritative nor a revered figure, and they would have seen no reason to even mention him in their works other than to show his fealty to their authorities.17

  • 18 Suleiman Mourad (2006), Early Islam Between Myth and History, p. 222-223. A detailed analysis of th (...)
  • 19 Suleiman Mourad (2006), Early Islam Between Myth and History, p. 224-225.

16Mourad’s other major strategy is to show that exact quotations and arguments from the alleged epistle are cited verbatim in later theological treatises without referencing al-Baṣrī. To illustrate, he shows that the third century AH Zaydī-Muʿtazilī theologian al-Rassī cites the same lines of poetry as al-Baṣrī as evidence supporting his (their) interpretation of the Quranic verse regarding the reasons as to why Pharaoh adopted Moses.18 Essentially, both al-Rassī and al-Baṣrī use the same argument and yet al-Rassī does not attribute this argument to al-Baṣrī. Furthermore, Mourad goes on to show how later fourth and fifth century AH Muʿtazilī theologians like Ibn ʿAbbād and Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār used a similar argument constructed from the same lines of poetry to support their theological interpretation of the same Quranic verse, never crediting al-Baṣrī, and thus implying improbability of the argument (and the epistle itself) going back to al-Baṣrī’s time.19

  • 20 Joseph Van Ess (1975), “The Beginnings of Islamic Theology,” p. 99.

17What Mourad’s argument fails to recognize is that this recurrent argument employed by various Muʿtazilī theologians over many centuries does not necessarily indicate that somehow the epistle that is ascribed to al-Baṣrī is a later forgery. Rather, the recurrence of this or other arguments and/or statements in theological discourses like it may serve as an indication that this argument has become a part of the general repertoire of arguments within the Muʿtazilī theological tradition—what Van Ess has called “a common stock of ideas20”. Theologians in that tradition employ it almost as a motif to support their theological positions. The question might rather be asked: was the epistle ascribed to al-Baṣrī the first discourse to use such an argument and popularize it so that it became a standard part of the Muʿtazilī theological discourse? In other words, instead of assuming the appearance of this argument in later theological works is an indication of its later provenance, and that it has been projected backward to establish a tradition, one can argue that the existence of this argument in this epistle ascribed to al-Baṣrī (and perhaps the entire epistle itself) may have been a catalyst for the formation of distinctive modes of theological reasoning in Muʿtazilī tradition.

18The fact that none of the later Muʿtazilī theologians credit al-Baṣrī for this argument is an indication of how common a part of the common stock that argument became. Moreover, Mourad fails to recognize that pre-modern Islamic discourse did not abide by modern rules requiring the ascription of ideas/statements to their original authors. My extensive experience with working with these classical texts has shown me that entire passages are borrowed verbatim from earlier works without citing these works or authors. In other words, careful attribution of ideas was not a part of their discursive practice. A proof of this point is found in the very argument, outlined above, by which Mourad disputes the authenticity of the epistle. He shows that al-Rassī’s employment of the argument in question is its earliest trace in theological discourse outside of the epistle attributed to al-Baṣrī. According to his presuppositions, then, the later theologians that he cites, like Ṣāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād and Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, who use the same or similar argument, ought to have attributed it to al-Rassī—but they don’t. This not only shows that attributing particular ideas to their original authors was not imperative in their discursive practice, but that such ideas or arguments became so common that no one felt a need to ascribe them to an originator.

  • 21 Obermann, Julian (1935), “Political Theology in Early Islam: Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s Treatise on Qadar,” J (...)

19As for arguments that al-Baṣrī’s epistle is indeed authentic, Julian Obermann has put forward several. The most convincing is his observation that the treatise contains none of the schematization and rationalism that was the hallmark of the Muʿtazilī school of theology (which adopted a free will position).21 In other words, if this was a forged document from a later period it would have shown traces of the substance and structure of later theological thought, but it displays none of it. Moreover, it will become apparent from my analyses of all three treatises that none of them utilize the conceptual categories of later Islamic theological thought. By the middle of the second century AH, terms like jabr (compulsion), kasb (acquisition), and ʿadl (justice) became established conceptual categories that the emerging Islamic theological schools used to frame the predestinarian debate; but these terms are wholly absent from our treatises.

  • 22 Joseph Van Ess (2017), Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra, p. 349.
  • 23 Salem’s (2014, p. 215-217) attempt to read into al-Baṣrī’s epistle the concept of kasb, as develope (...)
  • 24 Blankinship, Khalid (2008), “The Early Creed”, in T. Winter (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Class (...)

20For instance, the proto-Muʿtazilī theologian ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd, who lived in the first half of the second century AH, is alleged to have written a theological tract entitled K. al-Tawḥīd wa al-ʿAdl (The Book of Monotheism and Justice)22 —a title that already reflects the early birth of conceptual categories that were later adopted by theological movements to frame the predestinarian debate. Another such technical concept is the notion of kasb (acquisition of actions),23 employed to reconcile the contradiction between simultaneously believing in divine determination and human responsibility for actions. This term was already employed by Ḍirār ibn ʿAmr, a theologian who was active in the mid to late second century AH.24

  • 25 Khalid Blankinship (2008), “The Early Creed”, p. 46; Montgomery W. Watt (1973), The Formative Perio (...)

21Moreover, the structure of argumentation utilized in all three epistles relies almost completely on the linguistic implications of Quranic content without appeal to purely rational arguments or abstract philosophical concepts. This is also an indication that these treatises represent an embryonic stage of the development of Islamic theological thought. For example, the same Ḍirār ibn ʿAmr employed the abstract philosophical notion of accident (ʿaraḍ) in his theological discourse25 possibly indicating that outside influences were beginning to make themselves felt on Islamic discourse by the middle of the second century of Islam. Yet no such foreign concepts are found in these epistles, which likely indicates their early provenance.

  • 26 Treiger, Alexander (2016), “Origins of Kalām” in Sabine Schmidtke (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Isl (...)
  • 27 Alexander Treiger (2016), “Origins of Kalām”, p. 5.

22I will conclude this section with the more recent discussions on the authenticity of these three epistles found in Alexander Treiger’s chapter on the “Origins of Kalām” in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology26. Essentially, Treiger summarizes the arguments of Van Ess, Cook, Mourad, and a few other authors and concludes that the epistles are of unknown authorship and cannot be dated back to the early period of Islam. Since many of the arguments that he summarizes to support his conclusion have already been covered in my discussion of Cook and Mourad, there is no need to repeat them here. But more germane to my subsequent discussion of these epistles is his assertion that the style of early Islamic theological argumentation can be traced to Syriac disputation literature that was preponderant in Near-Eastern Late Antiquity. He asserts this because of the evident parallels in the structure and modes of speculative reasoning between these religiously distinct types of discourse.27 Although foreign influences on the development of Islamic discourse are not a disputable matter, what such arguments about parallelisms in style fail to demonstrate definitively is a precise historical link between the foreign discourses that are supposedly being modeled and the supposed Muslim authors or discourses who are emulating such foreign discourses.

23An illustration of the speculative nature of the purported historical connection between foreign and early Islamic discourses is when Treiger says:

As Tannous notes, it is precisely these three Arab Christian tribes that are said to have attended one of the earliest Christian–Muslim debates on record: the debate between the Jacobite Patriarch John Sedra and the Hagarene (i.e. Muslim) emir in Syria (probably the governor of Homs ʿUmayr ibn Saʿd al-Anṣārī), which reportedly took place on Sunday, 9 May 644 (Hoyland 1997: 459–65; Penn 2008; Roggema 2009; Bertaina 2011: 87–94; the text of the debate was probably written in the early second/eighth century, see Griffith 2008: 36, 77). Moreover, it is significant that even though the Disputation of Patriarch John and the Emir does not use kalām-style argumentation, the author calls it a ‘conversation’ (mamllā), a Syriac term exactly equivalent to the Arabic term kalām.

  • 28 Alexander Treiger (2016), “Origins of Kalām”, p. 6.

Tannous therefore puts forward what may be termed an ‘Arab Christian hypothesis’. He argues that the Arab Christian (more specifically, it seems, Jacobite) milieu in Syria and Iraq is the most plausible conduit for the transmission of the kalām-style disputation technique to the Muslim community, and more generally ‘for the assimilation of Christian traditions, such as they were, into early Islam’28 (italics are mine).

24Based on a historically verified early theological debate that took place between Near Eastern Christians and early Muslims, this is probably the strongest empirical argument that Treigar evinces in his chapter supporting the thesis of foreign discursive transmissions determining the style, structure, and even content (as he also argues in this chapter), of Islamic theological discourse. Yet even in light of this historical evidence, the arguments that Treiger advances are too tenuous to support such a bold conclusion, as this single historical report does not show that any particular early Muslim learned elite—much less those who have purportedly written the three epistles under investigation—had attended such a debate to be influenced by its methods. More problematic for Teiger’s argument is the fact that, upon closer inspection, the Christian interlocutor in this historical debate never seems to demonstrate the ‘kalam-style disputation’ that is supposedly being transmitted to Muslims through this contact.

25In questioning this assertion, I am not denying the indisputable fact of historical cross-fertilization and dissemination of ideas across cultures and civilizations; nor am I denying the fact that the origins of Islamic discourse and culture have been greatly influenced by their Near Eastern cultural and geographic milieu. But such arguments that are solely focused on the foreign determiners of the Islamic intellectual tradition sometimes miss the obvious that is standing in plain sight: factors internal to that tradition. What I am alluding to here, and what this paper endeavors to make manifest, is the role of Quranic discourse in influencing not only the content of early Islamic theological debates but also their modes of reasoning. What will become clear in this exposition is that structural parallelisms that exist between early Muslim theological discourse and their Near Eastern Christian counterparts also have their antecedents in the scriptural discourse that all three of our epistles make extensive use of.

26For all these factors outlined above, it is reasonable to believe that these epistles reflect the theological contentions of the late first century AH, or perhaps early second century AH at the latest. This is mainly due to the fact that the conceptual categories and style of argumentation that began to pervade the second-century theological discourse are absent in these epistles. As for the authenticity of ascription to their supposed authors, I am not prepared to argue this. But for the sake of this study, it is immaterial whether such epistles were written by their alleged authors, so long as their early authorship is safely determined. Despite being non-committal, however, I will, for the sake of convenience, continue to refer to the epistles by the name of their alleged authors.

Description of our Sample Early Islamic Theological Epistles

Convergences

27There are many features that these treatises share in common and we must establish those that can help us grasp the nature of Islamic theological discourse in that period. The very first striking feature that all three treatises share is their extensive use of the Quran in providing premises for their particular arguments. For instance, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s epistle, which is only about fifteen pages long in Ritter’s edition, quotes the Quran a total of ninety times; while Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s treatise is about twenty-five pages in length in Van Ess’s edition, and quotes the Quran on approximately sixty-two occasions. ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s epistle is the shortest of the three, at about ten pages in length in Van Ess’s edition, but still quotes the Quran about thirty-seven times.

28In fact, these epistles consist of an array of arguments constructed on Quranic verses. These arguments are not protracted and are all intended to prove smaller points that support the main arguments of the author (i.e., either for or against divine predetermination). But they are marshaled one after the other to provide the impression that the smaller arguments independently proven by the authors automatically supported their larger arguments.

29An example of this type of argumentation from al-Baṣrī’s epistle is when he attempts to show that if God determined human action, He would have been pleased with it no matter what its outcome.

  • 29 As translated in Knappert, J. and A. Kippen (1986), Textual Sources for the Study of Islam, Totwa, (...)

God has said …..: do not approach the abominations, outwards and inward (6:151). What God has forbidden is not from Him because he does not approve of what He is displeased with nor is He displeased with what He approves because he has said in Qur’an 39:7: If you disbelieve God has no need of you but he does not approve of disbelief in his servants; if you are grateful, He does approve of it in you. If disbelief was from God’s decree and determination (qadar), He would approve of one who did it. God would not decree something and then disapprove of His own decree.29

This mode of argumentation is quite typical of all three treatises where Quranic verses are used to prove a point, yet little detailed analysis of those verses is undertaken. More often than not, it is just assumed that the implications of those verses are understood—hence proving the points that the authors are trying to make. This leads me to my second observation regarding the features of Islamic theological discourse in these first-century texts: there is an apparent lack of unifying abstract philosophical categories or concepts. For instance, the use of concepts such as attribute/essence and cause/effect which are generally employed in theological discourses are all but absent in these epistles.

30Hence, the discourse is not anchored in universal principles by which the various sides agree or disagree and which tie the whole discussion together. Instead, there are only particular arguments supported by the implications of Quranic statements. It is assumed that the multitude of these discrete arguments naturally points to the general theological position the author is supporting, without the authors having to tie the various strands together into a larger, more cohesive argument. There is little attempt in these epistles to establish a common ground for discussion by pointing to general principles that can act as premises for arguing particular points of view. Instead, their discourse consists of trying to prove specific theological positions that indicate the validity of their overall theology.

31Another general feature of our three treatises is their almost total absence of arguments based strictly on reason. That is, they lack arguments constructed solely on a logical and/or empirical basis, without direct reference to scripture or premises grounded in scriptural assertions. In fact, among the multitude of general points that the authors try to prove there is only one argument in all three epistles that may possibly be considered as purely rational. Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s letter says:

  • 30 al-Baṣrī, Hassan (1933), “Letter to the Caliph ʿAbd al-Malak ibn Marwān” (Arabic), ed. Helmut Ritte (...)

And know O Commander of the Faithful that those who disagree with the command of God, His book, and His justice are people who are lax in the affairs of their religion, and in their ignorance, they slyly attribute this to God’s determination (qadar), yet they will not accept this (qadar) in their worldly matters .…… So when you advise one of them in the affairs of their religion they will say the pens are dry and it has been written on the foreheads who is saved and who is damned [i.e., God has ordained everything]. But if you said to him ‘do not exert yourself in seeking your worldly pursuits by rising early in the cold and heat or by risking yourself on [dangerous] journeys because your sustenance has been determined’, he will object to your assertion……… So he does not accept with regard to his worldly affairs [any course of action] except what is taken with deliberation, caution, and discretion……… yet he neglects his religious affairs and [attributes them] to God’s determination (qadar)…30 (my translation).

32In this illustration, we can see that al-Baṣrī is trying to object, by way of charging analogical inconsistency, that his opponents in the predestinarian camp are not acting in accordance with their theological view. The precise character of the analogy is his opponents’ equivocation between the hypothetical divine predestination of peoples’ religious/ethical actions and of their social actions. If God predestines, as his opponents assert, peoples’ salvation outcomes, then He surely would have determined their worldly affairs as well. But his opponents’ worldly practices are contrary to the theological notions they profess, and according to al-Baṣrī, this speaks to the hypocrisy of their position. Analogical consistency would have required his opponents to treat the outcomes of religious actions equivalently with the outcomes of secular human actions. The fact that they don’t shows that they are not consistent and—even worse—hypocritical.

33Of course, this does not represent a conclusive rational argument against the position of his opponents, as the inconsistent behavior of his opponents does not have a logical bearing on the validity of their truth claims. Nevertheless, whether or not you find al-Baṣrī’s argument by analogy convincing is of less importance for our discussion here, as my objective in this essay is to determine the structures of argumentation used by these theologians rather than determining the validity of their arguments.

34What is of interest to us in this argument is its construction mainly on a logical and empirical basis, unlike all of the other arguments in al-Baṣrī’s epistle, as well as all of the other epistles investigated in this study. The empirical feature lies in the fact that al-Baṣrī refers to the actions of his opponents, which become one of the properties of his analogical argument. Its logical feature, on the other hand, lies in the fact that al-Baṣrī shows the contradiction in the position of predestinarians via the discrepancy between their beliefs and their actions. As I will show later in this essay, there are more dimensions to al-Baṣrī’s rationalistic argument that shed more light on early Islamic theological discourse; but suffice it to say at this point that this purely rational argument exemplifies a rare mode of discourse in the early period.

  • 31 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 73 and Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, Ḥasan Ibn Muḥammad, (1977) (...)
  • 32 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 73.

35One last general feature of these treatises is their lack of definitions for the technical terms used in their arguments. There is perhaps an assumption by the authors that the terms of the arguments are understood by the audience, or that the context in which they appear determine their implications. But there are at least two instances in al-Baṣrī’s letter, and one in Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s treatise, where the authors attempt to clarify the meanings of terms used in their arguments. Interestingly, one of the terms defined in both treatises is idhn.31Al-Baṣrī employs it in the context of his argument about whether God determines a person’s faith, implying that his opponents affirm this belief. Given this background, he defines idhn as meaning permission, or implying “non-interference” (al-takhliyyah), in the context of its usage in the relevant Quranic verse, namely: “No soul (nafs) will believe without the permission (idhn) of God” (Q.10:100). He interprets this to mean that God has allowed the soul to embrace faith without interfering in its capacity to do so.32

  • 33 Ḥasan Ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, (1977), “A Treatise against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 22.

36On the other hand, Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya employs and defines this term idhn in a different ideational context than al-Baṣrī, namely, whether God determines/wills evil deeds, a proposition that his opponents find objectionable. He defines the term in two ways: one meaning implies a command (amr) and the other meaning implies will (irāda).33 Yet he never provides a clear Quranic usage of the term in these two ways to justify his departure from its ordinary linguistic usage as “permission.” It seems instead that his alternative interpretations are a strategy for opening the possibility of allowing God to determine all affairs—including evil deeds—without necessarily attributing evil outcomes to God. In this way, nothing stands outside of God’s determination, a position that Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya advocates, even though one may not attribute evil to God.

  • 34 Ḥasan Ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, (1977), “A Treatise against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 23.

37He achieves this, as noted, by saying that there are two usages of the term idhn by God: one meaning a divine command (amr) which implies a normative proposition, and the other meaning divine will (irāda) indicating that God determines a certain outcome. It is this latter meaning that Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya seems to affirm in his interpretation of the Quranic verse he employs against his opponents: “And what had afflicted you [the believers] when the two groups met, was by the will of God (bi-idhni-llāh)” (Q.3:166). Here he affirms that his opponents must concede that the evil which had afflicted the believers was something God willed, although He did not command the unbelievers to carry out this affliction, which would justify their actions.34 Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya's argument to legitimize his position is not quite clear in the text, yet he does feel the need to redefine Quranic terms that he, and his opponents, employ, in order to justify his theological position. It is in these attempts that there are convergences in the texts.

Contrasts

  • 35 See Joseph Van Ess’s (1975), “The Beginning of Islamic Theology” and the conclusion to his Arabic e (...)

38So far we have spoken about general trends that are found in almost all of these treatises, now I would like to turn the reader’s attention to their more particular and often peculiar forms of discourse. First, Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s treatise makes significant use of certain stylistic and logical forms which, according to some modern thinkers, became integral features of later-day Islamic theology. For instance, Van Ess argues that Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s employing an imaginary opponent and stylistic structure: “if they say….we say” became prominent features of later Islamic theology.35 The following passage from Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s treatise, as translated by Van Ess, will serve as an illustration.

  • 36 As translated by Joseph Van Ess (1975), “The Beginning of Islamic Theology”, p. 91; italics are min (...)

Tell us [Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya addresses his Qadarite opponents] whether God (only) wanted the Good with them (i.e., with mankind) and then later established it (i.e., Hell) for them, or whether He wanted the Evil with them (right from the beginning)!- If they say: “ He wanted the Good with them,” they should be answered: “ How is that, as He created it (Hell) knowing that they would not have any profit from it and that it would only do harm to them?” If they, however, assume that He created it for them in order to do harm to them, their doctrine is refuted.36

This passage clearly demonstrates the features that have been mentioned above: Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya begins the passage with “Tell us” indicating that he is speaking to an opponent (albeit an imaginary one) and also makes use of the form “If they say… They should be answered (or We say)”. These, as Van Ess asserts, become essential features that define the later Islamic theological discourse known as kalām.

  • 37 Gwynne, Rosalind W., (2004), Logic, Rhetoric and Legal Reasoning in the Quran: God’s Arguments, Lon (...)
  • 38 Rosalind W. Gwynne (2004), Logic, Rhetoric and Legal Reasoning in the Quran, p. 184.

39But the illustration above shows a more critical dimension of Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s treatise: namely, the use of an exclusive disjunctive argument37—i.e., that type of logical argument that employs an exclusive disjunction (either A or B, but not both) as its major premise.38 In this type of argument only one of two positions (A or B) can be asserted to be true (since they are contradictories, at least in the dimension that is being argued about), so if you assert one you automatically exclude the other. We can generally see from the passage above how Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya constructs his argument against his opponent precisely in this fashion by placing his opponent’s position (God wished only good) on one side of a disjunctive and his own position (God wished evil) on the other. Then he tries to show that affirming the opponent’s position would go against scriptural proof and, thus, automatically one must affirm the contradictory opinion which is presumed to be what Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya holds.

40Upon closer examination, Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s argument is layered; several logical syllogisms are embedded within one another, rendering the argument more complex than a mere disjunctive syllogism. Within his broader disjunctive argument, he embeds a series of conditional statements that form sub-syllogisms whose consequent affirms the disjunct for the broader disjunctive argument he is making; thereby leading to a conclusion that he believes shows the absurdity of his opponent’s position. More precisely, based on the conditional statements that are embedded in his broader argument, one can actually construct two variant lines of argument employing disjunctive syllogisms with embedded conditional arguments. The consequences of these embedded conditionals affirm or deny the disjuncts of the broader disjunctive argument that lead to a conclusion showing the error of his opponent's position. The first construction is a disjunctive syllogism with an embedded modus ponens argument:

1 - Either God wanted Good (G) or God wanted Evil (E) for humankind.

2 - If he established Hell (H), then He wanted Evil for humankind (E):

3 - He established Hell (H).

4 - Thus, He wanted Evil for them (E).

5 - Therefore, He did not want Good for them (~G).

41This argument can be restated symbolically as follows using the symbols that are assigned to each statement above:

1 - G E

2 - HE

3 - H

4 - E: [Embedded conclusion from lines 2 + 3 (modus ponens). This consequent affirms the disjunct for line 1]

5 - ~G: [Final conclusion from line 1 + 4 (exclusive disjunctive argument)].

In explanation of the above: Statement 1 represents the disjunctive premise. Statements 2 and 3 represent the premises of the embedded conditional syllogism (modus ponens) that lead to its conclusion: statement 4. Statement 4 affirms one of the disjuncts in statement 1, which leads to the conclusion of the broader (exclusive) disjunctive syllogism: statement 5.

42Alternatively, one may construct from Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s words a similar disjunctive argument containing an embedded modus tollens syllogism that similarly serves to deny one of the disjuncts of his larger (exclusive) disjunctive syllogism. This can be constructed as follows:

1 - Either God wanted Good (G) or God wanted Evil (E) for humankind.

2 - If God wanted Good for them (G), then He would not have created Hell (~H).

3 - Yet, God did create Hell (H).

4 - Therefore, God did not want Good for them (~G).

5 - Therefore, God wanted Evil for them (E).

43This can be represented symbolically as follows:

1 - G E

2 - G~H

3 - H

4 - ~G [Embedded conclusion from lines 2 + 3 (modus tollens) – assuming double negation. This consequent denies the disjunct for line 1]

5 - E: [Final conclusion from line 1 + 4 (exclusive disjunctive argument)]

Similarly, in this alternative interpretation: Statement 1 represents the disjunctive premise. Statements 2 and 3 represent the premises of the embedded conditional syllogism (modus tollens) that lead to its conclusion: statement 4. Statement 4 denies one of the disjuncts in statement 1, which leads to the conclusion of the broader (exclusive) disjunctive syllogism: statement 5.

44The conclusions of both formats of his disjunctive argument lead essentially to the same absurd conclusion (God wanted evil or no good) that Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya believes results from the theological position taken by his opponents.

45Again, my point here is not to evaluate the validity of his conclusions, but to show the character of Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s epistle, which is primarily argued in this dialectical fashion by stringing together a series of disjunctive arguments on particular points showing that his opponent’s position is untenable in the light of scriptural evidence. In the latter part of this study, I will point out the significance of his use of disjunctive arguments and the possible discursive origins of this mode of argumentation. But here it suffices to illustrate the formal characteristics of this epistle, allowing us to draw stylistic comparisons with the others.

46In ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s epistle, we see that he is arguing a similar position to that of Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s on divine predestination, yet the style of his arguments varies from that of Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya. While Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s style is to present the argument disjunctively as we have shown above, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s style is to present the opponent’s position first and then proceed to refute it by citing the relevant Quranic verses which support the opposite view. We can see this in his very first argument in the epistle:

  • 39 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, (1977), “Epistle against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), in Josef Van Ess (ed.), (...)

You have mentioned that it has reached you that I say that Allah already knows what [His] servants will do and to what is their end. So you have objected to my position and said that it cannot be that Allah knows [things] until [His] creatures perform the act. So how can it be as you say? And Allah says: “Behold, We are removing the chastisement a little; behold you revert” (44:15) meaning the ones who return to disbelief. He also said: “and even if they were returned, they would commit the very thing they were prohibited; they are liars” (6:28).39

Thus, in the case of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s epistle, the reader is aware of the position that ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz is replying to because he unambiguously states the position of his opponents; while in the case of Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, the reader knows Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s position and that of his opponent by inferring the latter from the disjunct he refutes. Yet both epistles share the feature of rarely presenting their opponents’ Quranic proofs so the reader can see why they might have held such theological positions affirming human free will.

47In this respect, al-Baṣrī’s epistle is remarkably different from the previous two and more sophisticated in its logical presentation and style. For instance, al-Baṣrī not only presents the Quranic verses supporting his theological position of free will but, interestingly, provides further support by hypothesizing what verses ought to have said if they were to support the opposing view of predestination. Take for example the following:

  • 40 As translated in J. Knappert and A. Kippen (1986), Textual Sources for the Study of Islam, p. 117. (...)

O Commander of the Faithful…. God would not openly prohibit people from something and then destine them to do it secretly as the ignorant and the heedless say. If that were so He would not have said… Do what you wish (Q.41:40) but would have said ‘Do what I have destined you to do’. Nor would He have said… Whoever wills shall believe and whomever wills shall disbelieve (Q.18:29) but would have said: ‘Whoever I will [to believe] shall believe and whoever I will [to disbelieve] shall disbelieve’.40

Al-Baṣrī’s point is that since these Quranic verses imply his free-will position, and the hypothetical verses he conjures in support of predestination do not exist, then their determinist position is not substantiated.

48Moreover, his treatise is distinguished from the other two in that it not only presents and rebuts the position of his opponents, but also frequently presents the Quranic verses they use as proofs for their position, then shows how they have misunderstood or misrepresented the implications of these verses. In this regard he says:

  • 41 As translated in J. Knappert and A. Kippen (1986), Textual Sources for the Study of Islam, p. 119. (...)

They quarrel and say that God has said…: He leads astray whoever He wishes and He guides (Q.13:27), but they do not look at what precedes those words and what follows them. They would not have erred if they had observed the verses which come before and after it. God said…: God strengthens those who believe in His lasting word both in this life and the hereafter. He will lead the wrongdoers astray. God does as he pleases (Q.14:27). Therefore among those things He wishes to do is to strengthen those who believe in their belief and their righteousness and to lead astray the wrong-doers in their denial and their enmity. He has also said…: When they went astray, God led their hearts astray (Q.61:5), so it is because they have gone astray that God led their hearts astray. He also said…: He misleads many thereby and guides many by it [Quran], but he only misleads those who are evil-doers…(Q.2:26-7).41

What is interesting about this argument is not only that he presents the proofs of his opponents and then refutes them, but that he engages in contextual interpretations of Quranic statements to show how these seemingly predestinarian verses in the Quran instead fit into the general framework of free will that he is trying to prove. He does this in two ways: either by quoting other verses found elsewhere in the Quran which limit the universal implications of predestinarian verses, or by quoting the verses just previous to those used by his opponents, in order to show the full context and reveal that they do not imply what his opponents claim they do. Here is one such example of this type of contextual interpretation. Speaking about his opponents, al-Baṣrī says:

  • 42 as translated in. Parentheses are mine. J. Knappert and A. Kippen (1986), Textual Sources for the S (...)

They also dispute about… Some of them will be unfortunate, others fortunate (Q.11:105). They interpret this such that God created people in their mothers’ wombs either fortunate or unfortunate…. [….] But the interpretation is other than that which they take from it. God has said…: That this is a day upon which the people are to be gathered, a day of witnessing (Q.11:102) that is the day of resurrection. Then He said…: A day comes; no soul shall speak except with his permission. Some of them will be unfortunate, others fortunate (Q.11:105). The fortunate ones on that day will be those who hold fast to the command of God while the unfortunate will be those who scornfully neglect the command of God about His religion.42

49Notice in this argument that he quotes the Quranic verses that directly precede those used by his opponents, showing that the intent of that Quranic statement is not as his opponents assert once the full context of the passage has been provided. By offering this argument, al-Baṣrī demonstrates that for theological implications to be validly drawn from the Quran, Quranic statements have to be interpreted contextually. As he said: “They would not have erred if they had observed the verses which come before and after it;” or if they had brought to bear other verses found elsewhere in the Quran which shed light on it. This point is clear in the previous argument, wherein al-Baṣrī quotes three verses from varying places in the Quran which he believes shed further light on the issue. This shows that he believes that no Quranic statement should be taken in isolation from what other verses say on the issue because each verse has bearing on the implications of other verses which deal with the same subject.

50Hence, al-Baṣrī views the Quran as an integrated whole whose individual statements should be related to other statements that have bearing on the subject if one wants to attain a definitive understanding of it. There is no other reason he would quote three disparately located Quranic verses limiting the implications of another verse, or quote what comes before and after a verse in question; clearly he believed that various Quranic statements dealing with an issue place conditions on each other and provide a context by which their implications are to be holistically understood.

51This is another example of how al-Baṣrī’s treatise is distinct from the other two epistles, whose authors tend to be satisfied with showing the individual Quranic proofs for their particular theological points without an integrative dealing with other Quranic verses as al-Baṣrī has done. Al-Baṣrī shows the conditionality of Quranic verses that imply divine predestination by making them contingent on others which modify their presumably universalist implications.

  • 43 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (1977), “Epistle against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 44.

52ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, on the other hand, do not display the same type of breadth in their arguments; they very often gather Quranic proofs for an argument which support their positions, while for the most part ignoring other Quranic statements which may speak to the contrary. There is one exception: ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s epistle on one occasion, at the very beginning of the text, displays a similar level of sophistication to al-Baṣrī’s treatise by offering the opponent’s Quranic and then proceeding to show how that verse is conditioned by another found elsewhere in the Quran which provides its true implications43.

53Another example illustrates even more clearly the dichotomies in their hermeneutical approaches to the multitude of verses in the Quran that either support or go against their respective positions. Again, I will translate a passage from al-Baṣrī which tackles particular Quranic verses also used by Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya and ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz to support their position of divine predestination; and then I will compare the methodologies employed by each party when interpreting those verses to arrive at their positions. It is by focusing on the Quranic proofs that they use in common that we are afforded keener insights into their varying approaches to theological issues.

Among the things which they dispute is the Most-High’s (God’s) claim: “We have created (dharaʾnā) for Gehenna (Hell) many Jinn and men; They have hearts, but understand not with them; they have eyes, but perceive not with them; they have ears, but they hear not with them. They are like cattle; nay, rather they are further astray. Those- they are the heedless” (Q.7:179). So they have interpreted (fata’awwalū) this in that God had initiated His creation to make some people Hell-bound who are not capable of carrying out the obedience that He requested of them, while He made some [other] people Heaven-bound who are not capable of carrying out the disobedience that He has forbidden them—in the same way that He has created a short person who is not capable of becoming tall and a black person who is not capable of being white; and [yet] He punishes them on account of their faith (ʿalā an yakūnū muʾminīn). Thus, they have attributed to God the vilest of attributes.

But He has informed [us] they are led to Hell because of their wicked actions, and He likened them [to heedless cattle] with His saying: ‘They have hearts, but understand not with them; they have eyes but perceive not with them….’ This is like the Most-High’s (God’s) claim: ‘So then the folk of Pharaoh picked him [Moses] out to be an enemy and a sorrow to them’ (Q.28:8), but rather they picked him out so he can be a coolness to their eyes [i.e., a source of joy]. Likewise, the Most High claimed: ‘We grant them indulgence only that they may increase in sin’ (Q.3:178); He informed [us] only that they are increasing sinfulness through indulgence by way of their neglectfulness of obedience [to Him]. And God spoke to the Arabs [the first recipients of Quran] only with what they knew of their speech.

  • 44 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 76-77. Translation is mine, apart from Quranic vers (...)

Some wise men among the Arabs said: ‘it is for death that mothers nourish their infants just as it is for time’s deterioration that residences are built’. (This statement) informs us that the final destiny of children is death and that the final destiny of buildings is destruction, but surely infants are nourished for survival and not for death, and residences are built to remain and not to deteriorate. And the Quran, O Leader of the Faithful, is [in] Arabic; God has revealed it to an Arab people, speaking to them in their manner of speech whose meaning they know44.

54I have translated this long passage because it captures many salient features of al-Baṣrī’s style of debate, also serving as a fruitful passage for comparison between the approaches of the other two authors. As noted, he draws on some of the same material to make his point. The very first Quranic verse cited in this passage was also used by Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya; I will translate it here for the sake of comparing the different approaches. Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya says:

  • 45 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (1977), “Epistle against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 28. Translation is min (...)

Tell us about the act of creating through [God’s] Will (irāda), for God surely says: “We have created (dharaʾnā) for Gehenna (Hell) many Jinn and men; they have hearts, but understand not with them; they have eyes, but perceive not with them; they have ears, but they hear not with them. They are like cattle; nay, rather they are further astray. Those- they are the heedless” (Q.7:179). So ask them: ‘Is it possible that they [who are mentioned in the verse] can change what God has created them for (dharaʾahum)?’ If they say ‘Yes,’ then they surely have belied [God’s word] and allege that they are capable of changing their creation and God’s Will (irāda) for them; but if they say ‘No,’ then this contradicts their claim.45

55Now the first thing we notice is Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya takes the term dharaʾnā, “We have created,” in its literal meaning and then proceeds to argue against his opponents, thereby placing them in his either/or dialectic which leaves them either denying the Quran, which would make them heretics, or forcing them to give up their position, because it is in contradiction with the quoted verse’s implications. This method of argumentation and interpretation is very typical of Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s approach: there is no mention of other Quranic verses implying the opposite, nor are there alternative interpretations apart from what he employs in this argument.

56When we compare the approach of Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya with that of al-Baṣrī to the same verse we see remarkable differences. First, as we have pointed out, this verse seems to argue against al-Baṣrī’s position, yet he is not afraid to engage with it and show, despite its appearance, how it accords with his larger argument. This is very typical of his argumentative approach. Second, he proceeds to argue that his opponents have misunderstood the connotations of the verse due to their lack of contextualizing its meaning, whether in the immediate context of the passage or in the larger Quranic context.

57As for the immediate context which he implies his opponents have ignored, it is the part of the verse immediately after ‘We have created for Gehenna many Jinn and men,’ i.e., They have hearts, but understand not with them; they have eyes, but perceive not with them,’ etc. Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya argues that it contextualizes the previous portion of the verse and indicates the reason why God is punishing this group of people, i.e., because of their heedlessness and wicked ways, and not because God haphazardly created some people only to condemn them. As for the larger Quranic context, al-Baṣrī claims that just like this verse which his opponents use in their disputation, there are other verses whose syntactic structures imply a particular thing, but semantically ought to be understood differently and not according to a literal interpretation. He quotes two other verses in that respect: ‘So then the folk of Pharaoh picked him [Moses] out to be an enemy and a sorrow to them’ (Q.28:8) and ‘We grant them indulgence only that they may increase in sin’ (Q.3:178).

58Interestingly, the former is used by ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz to make a point about divine foreknowledge and predestination, while the latter is used by Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya elsewhere to make an argument proving his predestinarian position, similar to what we quoted above. Before explaining how al-Baṣrī employs these two verses, it would facilitate our inter-textual comparison to cite ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s usage of the verse about Pharaoh’s folks. Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s use sheds no new light on his methodology, his argument being almost identical to his passage quoted above; here he merely utilized the same verse as al-Baṣrī for different ends.

59ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s use of this verse, on the other hand, may tell us something new about his approach. Responding to his opponents’ claim that creatures can act freely, counter to God’s foreknowledge, he says:

  • 46 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (1977), “Epistle against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 48. Translation is min (...)

And surely, those who know about God’s [ways], know that God does not will an affair only for it to be transformed by something else before God’s will is realized with regard to [that affair]. And surely He wanted guidance for a people, so no one has misguided them, and Satan wanted misguidance for some people, yet they were guided. So He said to Moses and his brother: “Go forth, both of you, unto Pharaoh: for verily, he has transgressed all bounds of equity! But speak unto him in a mild manner, so that he might bethink [i.e., be mindful of] himself or [at least] be filled with apprehension.” (Q.20:43-44). And in His foreknowledge [He knows] that Moses was to become an enemy and a feeling of sorrow to Pharaoh. [In support of this] He said: “And to show Pharaoh and Haman, and their hosts, what they were dreading from them [i.e., from the Israelites]” (Q.28:6). You say that if Pharaoh had wished it, He would have been a friend and a helper to Moses. Yet God says [that He has destined them] “to be an enemy and a sorrow” (Q.28:8).46

60It is clear from this passage that ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz wants to show that God’s foreknowledge of things cannot be revoked by human will. Rather than content, however, I would like to call attention to some of this argument’s formal features, to serve as a basis for comparison. This particular passage is of interest because he used the same verse as al-Baṣrī (Q.28:8), allowing us to assess similarities and differences in how they approach the same Quranic material. First I would draw attention to ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s direct approach in addressing theological issues. Compared to Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, he is less dialectical; we immediately know his stand on the issue from the unequivocal position he takes at the beginning of his argument. This is a feature shared with al-Baṣrī’s letter. Furthermore, he marshals together the relevant Quranic proof texts that have bearing on his argument, one after another, as premises that support his conclusion. This is in contrast to Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, who makes you aware of his position at the end of his argument in a less direct fashion by refuting the position he opposes through the use of Quranic proof texts arranged as disjuncts.

61This contrast in argument style is probably due to the difference in intended audiences: ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s letter is an actual reply to opponents who had written to him, objecting to his view; Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s treatise is a reply to a hypothetical opponent with the opposing theological position. In other words, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s letter was authored to address real concerns, raised by a particular group of people, which he earnestly wanted to address, while Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s treatise had a more didactic purpose of illustrating how those holding predestinarian positions can reply to those who advocate human choice.

  • 47 Between brackets are my clarifications.

62As for ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s uses of the Quranic verses, and particularly verse 28:8, he seems to take them all literally, as implying that affairs in the world have already been determined by God’s foreknowledge. This is clear from the way he juxtaposes the claim of his opponents: “And you say that if Pharaoh had wished it, he would have been to Moses a friend and a helper” and what God says in the Quran, that: “[Moses is] to be an enemy and a sorrow.47 There is no commentary on various possibilities of how this verse can be interpreted; it is simply understood from its apparent meaning, which counters his opponents’ argument and implies a degree of predestination.

63Having explicated ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s methodology in dealing with Quranic statements and other formal aspects of his theological discourse, let me now return to al-Baṣrī and how he deals with the verses in question. How does his approach differ from ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s, especially with respect to interpreting the verse about Pharaoh’s family? More generally, what is the point he is trying to make by relating these last two verses (Q.28:8; 3:178) to the first verse (7:179) which he cites in the passage translated above?

64Each of the three verses cited by al-Baṣrī contains the Arabic grammatical proposition li-, which, when used in a sentence, conjoins two parts of that sentence and implies something was done for something else. In other words, the segment of the sentence after the proposition li- is the rationale for the segment of the sentence that comes before it. Nowhere in the passage does al-Baṣrī engage in such grammatical analysis, but this is implied by his mentioning these three verses sharing a similar syntactical structure in the same argument, and hence linking them. Given this grammatical consideration, the literal implications of the three verses respectively are: God creates some to send them to Hell (Q.7:179), Pharaoh’s family pick up baby Moses to become an enemy and a sorrow to them (Q.28:8), and God indulges some people to increase them in sin (Q.3:178). These three verses seem to imply some sort of predestination of events and lack of human choice about the results.

65Yet al-Baṣrī claims that this is not the case. Despite syntactical implications and the apparent meaning of the verses, there are other contextual circumstances and linguistic devices that modify its meaning. In terms of context, we have seen how al-Baṣrī modified the full implication of Q.7:179 by showing that these people were destined to Hell because of their disobedience, as implied by the second segment of that very same verse. Moreover, he cites Q.28:8 to show that other verses have similar syntactical structures and implications. Thus, he says that Pharaoh’s family picked Moses out not so that he might be an enemy, as the syntactical and semantical construction of the verse implies, but to be a source of joy (lit. “a coolness to their eyes”).

  • 48 Asad’s translation. Between brackets are my clarifications.

66But how does al-Baṣrī know this to be the case despite the verse’s apparent implications? Although he does not mention the contextual evidence that leads him, it is clear from his choice of words in his alternative interpretation that he arrives at this conclusion by placing Q.28:8 in the context of a subsequent verse indicating Moses was kept in order to be a source of joy. The very next verse explains Pharaoh’s wife’s rationale as to why Moses should be kept: “Now the wife of Pharaoh said: a joy to the eye (qurrat ʿayn) [could this child be] for me and thee” (28:9).48

67Here the expression qurrat ʿayn was used to justify why baby Moses should be kept and not killed, and al-Baṣrī’s alternative interpretation employs that very same expression. By using it he hints that the source of his interpretation lies in the Quran itself, and especially the passages immediately surrounding the verse in question. Quranic verses are not be taken out of context and interpreted in isolation, but it is only in their contexts that their true intent is to be understood. Clearly al-Baṣrī is not following his whims or theological biases to interpret the verses in a manner that agrees with his position; rather, he modifies their literal meanings based on the context in which they are found, using the internal evidence of the Quran to explain what is found in it. The same can be said about the third verse (3:178) he cites.

68Al-Baṣrī does not stop here, however, as he must now explain why such verses are constructed in such a fashion as gives the impression that they contradict his position. He explains that they are constructed as they are because God employs the various manners of Arabic speech the implications of which Arabs versed in their language understand. To prove this point, he quotes a verse of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry wherein this same manner of speech is used, intending something very different from the literal implication. On the surface, the verse implies that mothers nourish their children for death and buildings are made to deteriorate, but we know almost intuitively these cannot be the true intentions behind these human actions. Instead, they are taken for the opposite reasons of the child’s survival and the building’s remaining.

69Al-Baṣrī argues in this way as if to say that this manner of speaking is employed in order to inform the audience that the ultimate end of all things is annihilation, despite the presumed human intent to survive and remain. In other words, even if mothers nourish their infants so they can survive, they will eventually die; and even if we build residences so they can remain, they will eventually deteriorate. Likewise, the cited Quranic verses entail that God knows the end result of things without necessarily predetermining the results. When God says “we have created for Hell…”, he actually means that He knows that the end result of His creating those individuals is that they will go to Hell—not because he intends or destines them to go there, but because of the actions that they will commit.

  • 49 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 77.

70Supporting this interpretation of al-Baṣrī’s is a subsequent passage claiming that the predestinarians have misunderstood the implications of God’s omniscience, and that it does not interfere with human choices despite His awareness of them beforehand. He then proves his point by citing an incident between Moses and Khiḍr, found in the Quran (Sūrat al-Kahf), where Khiḍr undertakes certain actions, much to the bewilderment of Moses, in order to circumvent certain undesired outcomes which God had foretold but about which Moses was unaware.49 Al-Baṣrī’s point, presumably, is that God is aware of the future without necessarily determining the choices people make about it; in the same way that God foretells us the ultimate ends of those things mentioned in the verses without necessarily predetermining their outcome.

71I have spent more time on this passage of al-Baṣrī’s because I think it is very instructive as to how his approach to theological disputation compares and contrasts with his contemporaries. I have already mentioned how it differs from that of Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s. But before proceeding to how it contrasts with ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s, there are certain poignant features I wish point out or reiterate, especially as revealed in his passage cited above, which will facilitate subsequent comparisons and conclusions.

72One thing that stands out in al-Baṣrī’s approach to theological argumentation above is his recognition that there are metaphorical expressions in the Quran that can only be deciphered properly by referencing both internal and external evidence. As for the internal, it requires that one know other verses relevant to those in question, in order to place them in their wider contexts and thus understand the true divine intent behind them. As for the external, it requires that one know the various forms, meanings, and usages of the Arabic language.

73That al-Baṣrī uses both internal and external evidence to bolster his Quranic interpretation, in particular, and his theological view, in general, is further supported by another passage found in his epistle. I will translate it here because it has other dimensions of early Islamic theology I would like to highlight. Al-Baṣrī says, while responding to his opponent’s use of a particular proof text to bolster their theological position:

And they dispute about the story of Noah and when he said: “And my sincere counsel will not profit you, if I desire to counsel you sincerely, if God desires to pervert you (yughwiyakum); He is your lord, and unto Him you shall be returned” (Q.11:34). So, in their ignorance, they interpret that Noah resided amongst his people a thousand minus fifty years calling them to God the Most High and counseling them knowing not whether their response to his call and acceptance of his counsel would really benefit them or not. Moreover, he does not know whether God has made a way for them to accept it [the call] or did not make a way.

But the matter is not as they have interpreted it, rather Noah continued to dispute with his people until they grew weary of his disputation and they said: “Noah, thou has disputed with us and make much disputation with us. Then bring us; that thou promisest us, if thou speakest truly” (Q.11:32). So Noah said to them [in reply]: “God will bring you it if He will; you cannot frustrate Him” (Q.11:33) meaning that they will not find safety from His punishment if it comes to them nor can they prevent it; [it is then that Noah says] “And my sincere counsel will not profit you” at that time “if I desire to counsel you sincerely” (Q.11:34) when the punishment has befallen you. And Noah, peace be upon him, knew that when the punishment descends upon them and when they actually see it befall them, belief [in God] will not benefit them at that time. God, the Most High, has made this [point] clear with the nations that He destroyed when He said: “But their attaining faith after they had beheld our punishment could not possibly benefit them—such being the way of God that has always obtained [i.e., taken course] for His creatures- and so, then and there, lost were they who denied the truth” (Q.40:85). So this is the way of God: He does not accept repentance at the moment that the punishment is observed [by the punished].

  • 50 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 78-79. All Quranic verses found in this passage wer (...)

As for his [Noah’s] claim: “if God desires to pervert (yughwiyakum); He is your lord, and unto him you shall be returned” (Q.11:34)”, He only means by [the term] ghayy, on this particular occasion, the punishment; and that is [corroborated by] the Most High’s saying: “Yet they were succeeded by generations [of people] who lost all [thought] of prayer and followed [but] their own lust, and these in time would meet with utter disillusion (ghayy)” (Q.19:59), that is, a painful punishment. And the Arabs may say [at times] ‘this person has found ghayy today,’ that is, the leader has beaten him severely and punished him painfully.50

Here in this passage the reader can see all of the features that I highlighted in the previous passage, in addition to some others that do not appear there. At the very beginning, he quotes the Quranic verse used by his opponents as a proof text for their position, and then disputes whether theirs is the appropriate interpretation. Then he proves his position by the use of internal Quranic evidence and external literary evidence.

74As for internal evidence, he cites both the immediate and larger contexts of the verse in question (Q.11:34). For the immediate context, he cites the preceding verses (11:32-33) to show that his opponents have misunderstood the intent of Q.11:34, and then argues, using those very same verses, that the implications of Q.11:34 are quite different from what his opponents claim, and are not inconsistent with his own theological position of free will. As for the larger Quranic context, al-Baṣrī cites verses that are from other chapters altogether (40:85; 19:59), yet are related to the topic of Q.11:34, in order to modify its interpretation and better grasp its true aims. This utilization of both immediate and larger Quranic contexts is very much consistent with his earlier-mentioned holistic approach to the Quran, whereby no literal interpretation of an isolated verse should be taken without considering what other related verses have to say.

75As for external evidence, notice once again he cites extra-Quranic sources to corroborate his view. This time it is in the form of a particular Arabic idiom employing the word (ghayy): “And the Arabs may say [at times] ‘this person has found ghayy today,’ that is, the leader has beaten him severely and punished him painfully.” This attempt is crucial for his reinterpretation of the verse in question, and is once again consistent with his overall methodology of using literary analysis, just as in the previous instance of quoting poetry.

76As for those features that are unique to this passage, I would like to point out one in particular: his use of one Quranic verse to define a term in another. In this case, the term is ghayy and its various conjugates that appear in Q.11:34. Al-Baṣrī’s interpretive scheme for that verse, and hence his larger argument, rests on showing that the connotation of its conjugate of the term ghayy—i.e., yughwiyakum—is not normally perversion, as in this context, but rather punishment, which is consistent with the overall implications he is trying to establish (i.e., God is not coercing Noah’s people into misguidance as his opponents are implying). Then, to solidify his argument, he cites a Quranic passage from another chapter (19:59): “Yet they were succeeded by generations [of people] who lost all [thought] of prayer and followed [but] their own lust, and these in time would meet with utter disillusion (ghayy)”. In this translation, it is not immediately clear how this verse proves his point. Most translators have rendered the term ghayy and its conjugates in this passage, and in various other passages, as “perversion”, “deception”, and/or “disillusionment,” which are consistent with its most immediate meaning.

  • 51 Translation is Arberry’s.

77However, when we look at the immediately following verse (which he does not cite but must have had in mind), we can see more clearly how Q.19:59 can be used to interpret the term yughwiyakum in Q.11:34: Excepted, however, shall be those who repent and attain to faith and do righteous deeds: for it is they who will enter paradise and will not be wronged in any way” (Q.19:60).51 Here the behavior and actions of the people will earn them the reward of paradise, contrary to those of the people in Q.19:59, who stopped praying and followed their lusts. It is only logical for al-Baṣrī to conclude that their behavior deserves the opposite of reward (i.e., punishment), since it is contrary to that of the people in Q.19:60. This is how al-Baṣrī must have arrived at his interpretation of the term ghayy and thereby modify the interpretation of its conjugate yughwiyakum in Q.11:34; and in this way, he shows that even usages of the same term in different verses have to be compared with each other to know the broader implications of Quranic statements. Again, this is consistent with his putative view that the Quran is an intertwined text, and that by isolating certain verses and not considering their related cognates, as his adversaries have done, one may arrive at the wrong theological conclusions.

78Overall, al-Baṣrī and ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-Aziz share the same style of presentation, given that their treatises were actual letters composed in response to a particular challenge. At the same time, their usage of Quranic proof texts to back their arguments is something that they also share with Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, except that al-Baṣrī’s usage of these is much more rigorous than that of the other two. Having demonstrated the various repertoires of literary devices and styles employed in these texts, I would like to turn the reader’s attention to the types of formal logical arguments they employ, in order to highlight what they exemplify of rational procedures utilized in early theological discourse.

Modes of Reasoning in Early Islamic Theological Discourse

  • 52 See M. A. Cook (1980), Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (43)1 and Joseph Van (...)

79In the early part of my discussion of the characteristics of our sample texts, I demonstrated how Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya used a disjunctive syllogism along with embedded conditional arguments as a primary mode of argumentation in his treatise. This indicates that, on occasion, early Islamic theological discourses displayed a moderate level of complexity. But what could be the possible sources of this sophistication, given that these literary and logical forms were not employed in Arabic literature even one generation before these writings? Van Ess has noted that these kinds of dialectical approaches, developed by Christian theologians and used by Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, are likely the result of a “common stock of ideas” floating in the milieu that Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya traversed. Yet Cook and Van Ess have also argued that this mode of discourse (imaginary opponent, “if they say…we say,” and disjunctive arguments) shows that there was an early non-Muslim influence on Muslim theologians because these features are found in Christian theological texts of that time and place.52

80Although non-Islamic influences on Islamic thought and civilization are inevitable to some degree, both Cook and Van Ess seem to have missed the obvious in their assessment of the causes that led to the development of this type of argument in Islamic theological discourse. Their explanation does not account for another factor likely to have influenced this style of writing: namely, the literary style of the Quran, as an influential discursive precursor to these theological discussions. Despite the heavy reliance on the Quran exhibited by early theological writings, as I have shown above, both Cook and Van Ess have overlooked its influence.

81This influence should be very apparent from the sheer quantity of references to the Quran made in all three treatises, which implies it may have gone beyond providing substantive theological statements to justify particular theological positions. The Quran was clearly also a source for the development of the literary and logical forms of Islamic discourse. This point will be made clear in the few examples which follow. But I will begin by showing that the same kind of embedded disjunctive arguments that Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya used are also found in the Quran, which might easily be the source of inspiration for their utilization in such discussions. Take the following example, which uses this type of argument while relating the story of a secret believer among Pharaoh’s people who tried to defend Moses:

  • 53 As translated in Rosalind Gwynne (2004), Logic, Rhetoric and Legal Reasoning, p. 190.

“If [Moses] is a liar, his lie will be counted against him; and if he is telling the truth, then some of what he is warning you about will happen to you. God does not guide one who goes too far and lies” (Q.40:28).53

82To illustrate the embeddedness of disjunctions found in this passage, Rosalind Gwynne reconstructs and elaborates the argument as follows:

Either Moses is lying or he is telling the truth.

If he is lying, {either you will follow him or you will not}.

If you will follow him, you will not be punished [sc. All blame will lie upon him].

{If you do not follow him, you will not be punished}.

If he is telling the truth, {either you will follow him or you will not}.

If you will follow him, {you will not be punished}.

  • 54 Rosalind Gwynne (2004), Logic, Rhetoric and Legal Reasoning, p. 190. I have enclosed in brackets th (...)

If you do not follow him, you will be punished54.

As we can see from this reconstruction, the argument found in the Quranic passage contains embedded disjunctions as well as conditional premises in the same fashion as Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s argument above. Given that Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya relies heavily on Quranic statements as substantive evidence to establish his theological position (as do all of the authors examined in this essay), it is only logical to conclude that he (they) may have also been influenced by its style and its methods of argumentation when attempting to construct their own discursive style. Yet, as we will see, the Quran’s influence on early theological discourse goes beyond this particular point.

  • 55 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (1977), “Epistle against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 47. Translation is min (...)

83In some treatises, not disjunctive but conditional syllogisms were the argument of choice. For instance, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz argues: “if there was something [in existence] that was not previously subject to God’s knowledge and power, then there would be a partner in God’s dominion who exercises his will in creation despite God55”. Of course, the argument is not constructed completely since neither the second premise nor the conclusion is explicitly stated, yet both are implicitly understood by the reader. With implicit premise and conclusion made explicit, the argument appears as follows:

  1. If there was something [in existence] that was not previously subject to God’s knowledge and power, then there would be a partner in God’s dominion who exercises his will in creation despite God (= explicit first premise).

  2. We know (as stated in the Quran) that there are no partners with God (= hidden second premise).

  3. Therefore, there is nothing that was not previously subject to God’s knowledge and power (= presumed conclusion).

84Here we have a conditional syllogism in the modus tollens (denying the consequent), and this presentation wherein the second premise and conclusion are not explicitly stated is typical of many arguments made in the Quran. For example, verse 21:22 states:

  • 56 As translated by Rosalind Gwynne (2004), God’s Arguments, p. 176.

If (law) there were gods besides God in them, then both [the heavens and the earth] would have come to ruin.56

If we completed this Quranic argument, it would continue as follows:

they are not in ruin (as empirically attested to), hence there are no gods besides God in them.

This is the same type of conditional argument that ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz uses, further supporting the notion of Quranic influence on early Islamic theological discourse.

85In fact, the authors of our texts employ more completed forms of conditional arguments. Take, for example, the following passage in al-Baṣrī:

  • 57 Translation in J. Knappert and A. Kippen (1986), Textual Sources for the Study of Islam, p. 117. Be (...)

What God has forbidden is not from Him because He does not approve of what He is displeased with nor is He displeased with what He approves because he has said…: If you disbelieve God has no need of you but He does not approve of disbelief in his servants; if you are grateful, He does approve of it in you [Q.39:7]. If disbelief was from God’s decree and determination (qadar), He would approve of one who did it. God would not decree something and then disapprove of His own decree57.

Gwynne has reconstructed the gist of the argument made above in the following syllogistic fashion:

  • 58 Gwynne, Rosalind (1990), “The A Fortiori Argument in Fiqh, Nahw, and Kalam,” in Studies in the Hist (...)

If kufr [disbelief] were from God’s decree, He would accept it; but he does not accept it, as we know from Quran 39/7…. Therefore kufr [disbelief] is not from God’s decree.58

Although this conclusion is not specifically found in al-Baṣrī’s passage, it is nonetheless the overall point he is trying to prove in his treatise and stated explicitly elsewhere.

  • 59 Rosalind Gwynne (2004), God’s Arguments, p. 175.

86Once again, this argument is in the modus tollens—when you negate the consequent of the conditional you also negate its antecedent—and, as pointed out above, this argument type is found in the Quran. In fact, it is found more frequently than the modus ponens: conditional arguments that affirm the antecedent.59 And if we pay close attention to al-Baṣrī’s conditional arguments throughout his epistle, we find that this modus tollens form (denying the consequent) is also employed more often than the modus ponens (affirming the antecedent).

  • 60 Rosalind Gwynne (2004), God’s Arguments, p. 179.

87Moreover, the more favored form of conditional arguments found in the Quran are mixed conditional syllogisms, where “the first premise is a conditional but the second premise and the conclusion are categorical statements,60 as opposed to the pure conditional syllogisms where premises and conclusion are conditional statements. We also find this trend in al-Baṣrī’s arguments; his use of mixed conditional arguments are much more frequent.

88Beyond these points of similarity between Quranic methods of argumentation and the syllogisms employed by our authors is al-Baṣrī’s explicit awareness that, of the various ways arguments are constructed in the Quran, one type employs conditional premises. He says:

  • 61 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 81 ln. 7-9. Translation is mine.

And know, O Leader of the Faithful, God has not determined matters inevitably for His servants, but He has said ‘if you do this, I will do this to you; but if you do that, I will do this to you [instead]’.61

This quote indicates clearly that al-Baṣrī is abstracting from particular Quranic statements a general format of Quranic argumentation—and the format alluded to here is the conditional statement. Thus, al-Baṣrī is explicitly aware of the existence of this logical form in the Quran, and this perhaps had an influence on how he constructed his arguments.

Conclusion: The Character of Early Islamic Theological Discourse

  • 62 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 68, ln. 13-14; p. 70, ln 7-8.
  • 63 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (1977), “Epistle against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 50, ln 29.

89One theme that emerges strongly from this exposition is that early Islamic theological discourse—at least insofar as our three sample texts are concerned—is in large part an exercise in Quranic hermeneutics. All three treatises are inundated with Quranic verses, and these proof texts in many ways represent the main criterion for adjudicating various theological positions. This latter point is even made explicit by authors in their texts. Take, for example, al-Baṣrī’s statements about the Quran and traditions of the prophet(s) acting as the only proofs (ḥujja and burhān).62 Similarly, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz uses the term burhān to mean Quranic proof text when demanding proof from his opponents about their position.63 This all speaks to the centrality of the Quran in early theological discourse, which leads us to ask: given such unanimity on the place of the Quran by all theological parties, why is there such divergence in their views?

90Though all agreed on the primacy of revelation (Quran) as the ultimate criterion for settling theological disputes, there was disagreement on how to make sense of the various statements found within it with their different implications. Various positions were staked, and arguments constructed, based on the linguistic implications of terms found in relevant verses. In this way, theological issues became a matter of hermeneutics, where each party justified their positions by claiming the correct interpretation of scripture. But the ambiguity that is found in scriptural passages often leads to seemingly dichotomous positions, especially when talking about the complex issue of divine determination and human choice. The way out of this quagmire is to give preponderance to some parts of scripture over others through careful hermeneutical maneuvering in support of a particular point of view.

91Turning from scriptural to logical dimensions, one noticeable feature of this early discourse is the absence of formal syllogisms presented formulaically as two premises and a conclusion, in the way we find them in later Islamic theological discourse, once Greek logic became integrated with Islamic thought. As I have noted, many of the arguments in this discourse make use of the formal structures of syllogistic reasoning, yet seldom did the discourse proceed by identifying all parts of the syllogistic argument in the way they are explicated in formal logic. It perhaps would not be expected—given the nature of these treatises as letters written in response to clarifications by other parties, and not formal theological works per se—that such formalism would be displayed. This level of formalism was probably not a feature developed in the early discourse, and had to await the influence of foreign discourses.

92More importantly, early Islamic theological discourse, on the whole, seemed to lack complex and holistic arguments for theological positions. What we see instead is the marshaling of a series of simple arguments on minor points which coalesce to show the soundness of advocated theological positions. Yet one would expect such discourses to be centered on a few major points to be proven, and that these major points would be integrated into a larger argument that would decisively prove the author’s position. This level of systemization hadn’t developed at this early stage in the discourse and it seems to have been sufficient to validate one’s theological position by proving that the arguments or points of one’s opponents were wrong and advancing counter-arguments showing the soundness of one’s own position.

93I would like to conclude by pointing out sources of influence on early Islamic theological discourse and how this discourse might have influenced later developments in Islamic thought, in general, and Islamic theological discourse, in particular. I will restrict my discussion to three basic points:

1.The Centrality of the Quran in the Development of Islamic Thought: Certain Western scholars of Islamic thought have pointed out how the early theological discourse was influenced by foreign elements, but they have failed to recognize and appreciate the extent to which this discourse also received inspiration from the discursive practices of the Quran. I have pointed out several stylistic and logical similarities between the Quranic discourse and these early writings—which is by no means a coincidence, given the fact that these writers relied on the Quran so heavily in their arguments. One cannot presume that they were unaware of the different literary expressions and logical forms used in the Quran. In fact, as we have seen in the case of al-Baṣrī, he explicitly pointed out the conditional format of many Quranic statements. Given their demonstrated familiarity with the Quran, its discursive practices had to impress themselves on these writers, even subconsciously, and in turn influence how they developed their own discourse. The sheer pervasiveness of the Quran in their works ought to point to the fact that the Quran’s content and style must have been a primary influence in the rise of early Islamic discourse.

  • 64 Izutsu, Toshihko (1964), God and Man in the Koran, Tokyo, The Keio Institute of Cultural and Lingui (...)
  • 65 For the details of this argument see Toshihko Izutsu (1964), God and Man in the Koran, p. 45-72.

2.Grounding Islamic Theological Discourse in Revelation and not just Reason: Izutsu was correct in pointing out that Islamic theological discourse is to a large extent colored by the Quranic worldview, and that the material of Islamic theology is “almost wholly Koranic (Quranic)64”. This is in contrast to Muslim Aristotelian philosophy which was on the whole rejected by most Muslim theologians and jurists because of its lack of Quranic coloring.65 How do these treatises comply with the general tenor of this observation?

As I have indicated earlier, their almost complete reliance on elucidating the Quranic position on free will/divine determination to prove their assertions, and lack of reliance on purely rationalistic arguments, must have influenced the trajectory of later Islamic theological discourse. Their impact lies primarily in the fact that they were prototypes for how Muslim theological discourse ought to be conducted, particularly with respect to grounding one’s arguments in Quranic material. Although Islamic theology incorporated syllogistic and other types of logical arguments as a result of influence from Greek and other foreign elements, it has maintained its legitimacy as an Islamic science due to its heavy reliance on the scriptural bases of Islam. The nature of these epistles by Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, al-Baṣrī, and ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz indicate that they played a role at least in reinforcing this commitment, if not a large role in determining its subsequent trajectory.

3.Fostering the Trend Towards Intra-Textual Scriptural Hermeneutics: As we have seen, al-Baṣrī often showed his opponents’ mistakes in their supporting Quranic interpretations by contextualizing their proof verses, modifying their implications, and looking at other relevant verses in order to see the topic in its Quranic totality. This method is known among Muslim exegetes as using the Quran to understand the Quran; and among modern academics it is known as intra-textuality. The fact that al-Baṣrī’s letter employs this method of hermeneutics not only suggests that this early discourse cultivated the science of Quranic exegesis, but implies that the Quran was a self-contained system of ideas that played the central role in constructing the Islamic worldview. This is most clearly seen in al-Baṣrī’s lack of reliance on hadith or purely rational arguments, and his sole reliance on Quranic statements and their contextual and linguistic implications.

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Bibliographie

Al-Baṣrī, Ḥasan (1933), “Letter to the Caliph ʿAbd al-Malak ibn Marwān” (Arabic), ed. Helmut Ritter, Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 67-83.

Blankinship, Khalid (2008), “The Early Creed”, in T. Winter (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 33-54, doi:10.1017/CCOL9780521780582.003

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Salem, Feryal (2014), “Freewill, Qadar, and Kasb in the Epistle of Ḥasan al-Basr ̄ı to ‘Abd al-Malik”, The Muslim World 104(1-2), january/April, https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12039

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Notes

1 For further details on this point see Nagel Tilman (2000), A History of Islamic Theology: From Muhammad to the Present, Princeton, Markus Wiener Publishers, p. 38-41.

2 See Van Ess, Joseph (1975), “The Beginnings of Islamic Theology,” Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publicher.

3 For further details on these points see Tilman Nagel (2000), A History of Islamic Theology, p. 58-62 and p. 67.

4 For further elaboration of this point see Hodgson, Marshal (1993), “On the determinacy of traditions” in Rethinking World History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 85-90 and Jackson, Sherman (2002), “Introduction”, in Abu Hamid Ghazali The Boundaries of Islamic Theological Tolerance, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

5 For example, see Mourad’s discussion of the various recensions of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s epistle (Mourad, Suleiman (2006), Early Islam Between Myth and History, Leiden, Brill, p. 179-187).

6 Van Ess, Joseph (1975), The Beginning of Islamic Theology, p. 92-92.

7 Van Ess, Joseph (1972), “ʿUmar II and His Epistle Against the Qadariya,” Abr-Nahrian 12, p. 20

8 Joseph Van Ess (1975), The Beginning of Islamic Theology, p. 92-92.

9 Van Ess, Joseph (2017), Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra: A History of Religious Thought in Early Islam, Leiden, Brill, p. 53.

10 Cook, M. A. (1980). “The Origins of Kalam,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (43)1, fn. 5, p. 32.

11 M. A. Cook, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, (43)1 (1980), fn. 5, p. 32.

12 M. A. Cook, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, (43)1 (1980), fn. 5, p. 32.

13 Suleiman Mourad (2006), Early Islam Between Myth and History, p. 238.

14 Suleiman Mourad (2006), Early Islam Between Myth and History, p. 205-207.

15 Suleiman Mourad (2006), Early Islam Between Myth and History, p. 177.

16 Joseph Van Ess (2017), Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra, p. 54.

17 For an illustration of this last point, see Suleiman Mourad (2006), Early Islam Between Myth and History, p. 194.

18 Suleiman Mourad (2006), Early Islam Between Myth and History, p. 222-223. A detailed analysis of this particular argument will be undertaken in the latter portion of this investigation to highlight its central aims, but it is briefly cited here to illustrate the historical point being made.

19 Suleiman Mourad (2006), Early Islam Between Myth and History, p. 224-225.

20 Joseph Van Ess (1975), “The Beginnings of Islamic Theology,” p. 99.

21 Obermann, Julian (1935), “Political Theology in Early Islam: Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s Treatise on Qadar,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 55(2), p. 155.

22 Joseph Van Ess (2017), Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra, p. 349.

23 Salem’s (2014, p. 215-217) attempt to read into al-Baṣrī’s epistle the concept of kasb, as developed by later Muslim theologians, amounts to an anachronistic backward projection of a theological technical term into earlier Muslim theological discourse. The evidence she evinces for her assertion is al-Baṣrī’s use of Quranic verses that contain various conjugations of the Arabic radical kasaba (to acquire, to earn) to support his overall argument that people get what they deserve from the actions which they freely choose. This generic linguistic understanding and its usage hardly seem to support Salem’s contention that this was an early rendition and precursor to the technical term kasb as used by later Muslim theologians to signify the idea that God determines the actions of human beings even though humans are responsible for their actions because of their capacity to acquire these divine determinations.

24 Blankinship, Khalid (2008), “The Early Creed”, in T. Winter (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 45-46; Watt, W. Montgomery, (1973), The Formative Period of Islamic Thought, Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh Press, p. 189 and p. 191.

25 Khalid Blankinship (2008), “The Early Creed”, p. 46; Montgomery W. Watt (1973), The Formative Period of Islamic Thought, p. 194.

26 Treiger, Alexander (2016), “Origins of Kalām” in Sabine Schmidtke (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, Oxford Handbooks Online, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

27 Alexander Treiger (2016), “Origins of Kalām”, p. 5.

28 Alexander Treiger (2016), “Origins of Kalām”, p. 6.

29 As translated in Knappert, J. and A. Kippen (1986), Textual Sources for the Study of Islam, Totwa, Bernes & Noble Books, p. 117.

30 al-Baṣrī, Hassan (1933), “Letter to the Caliph ʿAbd al-Malak ibn Marwān” (Arabic), ed. Helmut Ritter, Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 75-76.

31 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 73 and Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, Ḥasan Ibn Muḥammad, (1977), “A Treatise against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), in Josef Van Ess (ed.), Bidāyat ʿIlm al-Kalām fī l Islām, Beirut, The German Institute of Oriental Research in Beirut, p. 22-23.

32 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 73.

33 Ḥasan Ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, (1977), “A Treatise against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 22.

34 Ḥasan Ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, (1977), “A Treatise against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 23.

35 See Joseph Van Ess’s (1975), “The Beginning of Islamic Theology” and the conclusion to his Arabic editions of Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s and ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s epistles on qadar.

36 As translated by Joseph Van Ess (1975), “The Beginning of Islamic Theology”, p. 91; italics are mine, brackets and parentheses belong to Joseph Van Ess.

37 Gwynne, Rosalind W., (2004), Logic, Rhetoric and Legal Reasoning in the Quran: God’s Arguments, London, Routledge Curzon, p. 172.

38 Rosalind W. Gwynne (2004), Logic, Rhetoric and Legal Reasoning in the Quran, p. 184.

39 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, (1977), “Epistle against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), in Josef Van Ess (ed.), Bidayat Ilm Al-Kalam fil Islam, Beirut, The German Institute of Oriental Research in Beirut, p. 44, my translation.

40 As translated in J. Knappert and A. Kippen (1986), Textual Sources for the Study of Islam, p. 117. Content between brackets and parenthesis are my own additions to the translation.

41 As translated in J. Knappert and A. Kippen (1986), Textual Sources for the Study of Islam, p. 119. Parentheses are mine.

42 as translated in. Parentheses are mine. J. Knappert and A. Kippen (1986), Textual Sources for the Study of Islam, p. 120-121.

43 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (1977), “Epistle against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 44.

44 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 76-77. Translation is mine, apart from Quranic verses which belong to Arberry’s The Quran Interpreted. Between brackets are my clarifications.

45 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (1977), “Epistle against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 28. Translation is mine, apart from Quranic verses which belong to Arberry’s The Quran Interpreted. Between brackets are my clarifications.

46 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (1977), “Epistle against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 48. Translation is mine, apart from Quranic verses. Q.20:43-44 were taken from Asad’s translation, while 28:6 and 28:8 were taken from Arberry’s. Between brackets are my clarifications.

47 Between brackets are my clarifications.

48 Asad’s translation. Between brackets are my clarifications.

49 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 77.

50 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 78-79. All Quranic verses found in this passage were taken from Arberry except verses 40:85 and 19:59, which were taken from Asad’s translation; selections were made on the basis of which better suite the purpose of the argument that al-Baṣrī is trying to make. Between brackets are my clarifications.

51 Translation is Arberry’s.

52 See M. A. Cook (1980), Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (43)1 and Joseph Van Ess (1977), Bidayat Ilm Al-Kalam fil Islam.

53 As translated in Rosalind Gwynne (2004), Logic, Rhetoric and Legal Reasoning, p. 190.

54 Rosalind Gwynne (2004), Logic, Rhetoric and Legal Reasoning, p. 190. I have enclosed in brackets those statements which Gwynne includes but which do not appear explicitly in the verse, being instead implied and acting as hidden premises in the argument.

55 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (1977), “Epistle against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 47. Translation is mine.

56 As translated by Rosalind Gwynne (2004), God’s Arguments, p. 176.

57 Translation in J. Knappert and A. Kippen (1986), Textual Sources for the Study of Islam, p. 117. Between brackets are my additions.

58 Gwynne, Rosalind (1990), “The A Fortiori Argument in Fiqh, Nahw, and Kalam,” in Studies in the History of Arabic Grammar II: Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium on the History of Arabic Grammar, Nijmegan, 27 April-1 May 1987, p. 172.

59 Rosalind Gwynne (2004), God’s Arguments, p. 175.

60 Rosalind Gwynne (2004), God’s Arguments, p. 179.

61 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 81 ln. 7-9. Translation is mine.

62 Hassan al-Baṣrī (1933), Der Islam, vol. XXI, p. 68, ln. 13-14; p. 70, ln 7-8.

63 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (1977), “Epistle against the Qadariyya” (Arabic), p. 50, ln 29.

64 Izutsu, Toshihko (1964), God and Man in the Koran, Tokyo, The Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, p. 45.

65 For the details of this argument see Toshihko Izutsu (1964), God and Man in the Koran, p. 45-72.

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Omer Awass, « Modalities of Argumentation, Scriptural Reasoning, and the Structural Characteristics of Early Islamic Theological Discourse »Methodos [En ligne], 22 | 2022, mis en ligne le 01 mai 2022, consulté le 06 juin 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/methodos/8943 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/methodos.8943

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Omer Awass

American Islamic College, Chicago

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