Classical Islamic Theology: The Ash`arites: Texts and Studies on the Development and History of Kalam, Vol. III (Variorum Collected Studies) 9780860789796, 0860789799

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Publisher's Note
I: Hearing and Saying what was Said
II: The Science of Kālam
III: Moral Obligation in Classical Muslim Theology
IV: Can God do what is Wrong?
V: Attribute, Attribution, and Being: Three Islamic Views
VI: Two Islamic Views of Human Agency
VII: Knowledge and Taqlīzd: The Foundations of Religious Belief in Classical Ash'arism
VIII: The Non-Existent and the Possible in Classical Ash'arite Teaching
IX: The Ash'arite Ontology. I: Primary Entities
X: Bodies and Atoms: the Ash'arite Analysis
XI: Al-Ahkām in Classical Ash'arite Teaching
XII: Notes and Remarks on the ṭabā'i' in the Teaching of Al-Māturīdī
XIII: The Autonomy of the Human Agent in the Teaching of 'Abd Al-Ǧabbār
XIV: AI-Ustādh Abū Isḥāḳ: An 'Aḳīda Together with Selected Fragments
Index

Citation preview

Also in the Variorum Collected Studies Series:

RICHARD M. FRANK (Ed. Dimitri Gutas)

Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism in Medieval Islam Texts and Studies on the Development and History ofKalam, Vol. I

RICHARD M. FRANK (Ed. Dimitri Gutas)

Early Islamic Theology: The Mu'tazilites and al-Ash'ari Texts and Studies on the Development and History ofKalam, Vol. II

PAULE. WALKER

Fatimid History and Ismaili Doctrine

NORMAN CALDER (Eds Jawid Mojaddedi and Andrew Rip pin) Interpretation and Jurisprudence in Medieval Islam

JULES JANSSENS

Ibn Sina and his Influence on the Arabic and Latin World

PATRICIA CRONE

From Kavad to al-Ghazali Religion, Law and Political Thought in the Near East, c.600--c.11 00

MICHAEL COOK

Studies in the Origins of Early Islamic Culture and Tradition

ANDREW RIPPIN

The Qur'an and its Interpretative Tradition

DIMITRI GUTAS

Greek Philosophers in the Arabic Tradition

G.H.A. JUYNBOLL Studies on the Origins and Uses oflslamic Hadith

WILFERD MADELUNG

Religious and Ethnic Movements in Medieval Islam

GEORGE MAKDISI

Religion, Law and Learning in Classical Islam

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES

Classical Islamic Theology: The Ash'arites

Richard M. Frank

Classical Islamic Theology: The Ash'arites

Texts and Studies on the Development and History of Kalam, Vol. III Edited by Dimitri Gutas

~l Routledge ~~

Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2008 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition© 2008 by Richard M. Frank Richard M. Frank has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Frank, Richard M. Texts and studies on the development and history of kalam Vol 3: Classical Islamic theology: the Ash'arites.(Variorum collected studies series ; 835) 1. Islam- Doctrines - History l. Title II. Gutas, Dimitri 297.2'09 ISBN 978-0-8607-8979-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2008927099 ISBN 9780860789796 (hbk)

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS835

CONTENTS Foreword Acknowledgements I

Hearing and saying what was said

vii-viii IX

1-14

Journal ofthe American Oriental Society 116. Ann Arbor, Mf, I996, pp. 611- 6I8

II

The science ofkalam

7-37

Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 2. Cambridge, 1992

III

IV

Moral obligation in classical Muslim theology

Journal of Religious Ethics II. Oxford, I983

Can God do what is wrong?

204- 223 69-79

Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed T. Rudavsky. Boston, MA: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1985

V

Attribute, attribution, and being: three Islamic views

258-278

Philosophies ofExistence, Ancient and Medieval, ed. P Morewedge. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, I982

VI

Two Islamic views ofhuman agency

37-49

La notion de liberte au Moyen Age. Islam, Byzance, Occident, Paris, 1983

VII

Knowledge and taqlzd: the foundations of religious belief in classical Ash'arism

37-62

Journal ofthe American Oriental Society 109. Ann Arbm; Mf, I989

VIII

The non-existent and the possible in classical Ash'arite teaching MIDEO 24. Louvain, 2000

1-37

CONTENTS

VI

IX

The Ash'arite ontology. 1: Primary entities

163-231

Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 9. Cambridge, 1999

X

Bodies and atoms: the Ash'arite analysis Islamic Theology and Philosophy, ed. M Marmura. Albany, NY: State University ofNew York Press, 1984

XI

Al-Ahkiim in classical Ash'arite teaching De Z~non d'Elee aPoincare. Recueil d'etudes en hommage

39-53 and 287-293 753-777

aRoshdi Rashed, eds R. Moreton and A. Hasnawi (Les

Cahiers du MIDEO 1). Louvain: Editions Peeters, 2004

XII

Notes and remarks on the tabii'i' in the teaching of al-Maturidi

137-149

Melanges d'Islamologie, ed. P Salmon. Leiden: E.J Brill, 1974

XIII

The autonomy of the human agent in the teaching of 'Abd al-Gabbar

323-355

Le Museon 95. Louvain, 1982

XIV

AI-Ustadh AbU Isl;a~: An selected fragments

'A~Ida

together with 129-202

MIDEO 19. Louvain, 1989

1-11

Index

This volume contains x + 428 pages

FOREWORD This is the third and final volume reprinting the collected papers on Islamic subjects by Richard M. Frank, professor emeritus at the Catholic University of America. The first was published in 2005 and it contains articles that study the lexical and intellectual context oflslamic theology (kalam) and explore its interactions with philosophy and mysticism.2 The second, published in 2007, brought together studies on early kalam, the Mu'tazilites, and the development ofthe thought ofal-Ash'arl. 3 The present volume on the Ash'arites and the classical Ash'arite tradition brings together articles written in the last two decades of Richard Frank's scholarly activity and represent his mature thought on the main philosophical and doctrinal elements of that tradition. As he says in his Memoir, Ya Kalam, published at the beginning of the first volume (p. 8) and tracing the development of his interests and research, "I had decided that the Ash'arite tradition was obviously of far greater importance to the formation and history of Sunni theology than was that of the Mu'tazila, however philosophically interesting the thought of the latter might be, and it was to the works of the Ash'arites that I should devote my efforts." The results of those efforts are the articles published in this volume, in which Frank studies the physics, metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology of the Ash'arite system in detailed and incisive analyses. They form the vanguard of modem studies on the subject and will repay repeated and prolonged study. The collection is headed by two general articles. The first, a presidential address at the annual meeting of the American Oriental Society, treats of themes of scholarly understanding also touched upon in his Memoir, while the second, on the science of kalam, presents Frank's most profound insights on its very nature 1

1 A complete bibliography ofRichardFrank's publications, compiled by James E. Montgomery and Monica Blanchard, is published in the volume, Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy. From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration ofRichard M. Frank, ed. James E. Montgomery, Peeters: Leuven,2006,pp. 15-24. 2 Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism in Medieval Islam. Texts and Studies on the Development and History ofKalam, Vol. I, ed. Dimitri Gutas, Ashgate: Aldershot, 2005. 3 Early Islamic Theology: The Mu'tazilites and al-Ash'arz. Texts and Studies on the Development and History ofKalam, Vol. 11, ed. Dimitri Gutas, Ashgate: Aldershot, 2007.

viii

FOREWORD

and essence and its substantive and methodological relation to the philosophical tradition in Islam. The question of the development of philosophical thought after Avicenna and its relation to kalam,just like its correlative, the philosophical tum of kalam after al-Ghazall's "Avicennization" of it (as set forth in Frank's pioneering studies), are taking center stage in contemporary research and in all likelihood will occupy it for the rest ofthis century. Frank's studies here collected, and not least this article on kalam, will continue to offer much authoritative material and invaluable methodological orientations in these discussions. At the conclusion of this project in which it has been a privilege to participate, I would like to register my sincere gratitude to all those who made it possible: to Dr John Smedley and Ashgate Publishing Limited for accepting it in the Variorum Collected Studies Series, to the sundry publishers of the original articles for permission to reprint them, to the Viscusi Fund of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University for providing moneys to defray some production expenses, and, for this third volume, to Mr Lukas Muehlethaler for the careful preparation of the Index. But my greatest debt of gratitude, on behalf of all of us, is to Richard Frank himself, for his unparalleled insight, his model scholarship, and his inspiring kalam. DIMITRI GUTAS New Haven, CT January 2008

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following institutions, people, and publishers for their kind permission to reproduce the essays included in this volume: The American Oriental Society (for chapters I, VII); Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (II, IX); Blackwell Publishing, Oxford (III); Springer Science and Business Media (IV); Fordham University Press (V); Les Belles Lettres, Paris (VI); Regis Morelon, Director, Institut Dominicain d'Etudes Orientales, Cairo and Editions Peeters, Leuven (VIII, XI, XIV); The State University ofNew York Press, Albany (X); Brill N.V. (Brill Academic Publishers), Leiden (XII); Le Museon, Revue d' Etudes Orientales, Editions Peeters, Leuven (XIII).

PUBLISHER'S NOTE The articles in this volume, as in all others in the Variorum Collected Studies Series, have not been given a new, continuous pagination. In order to avoid confusion, and to facilitate their use where these same studies have been referred to elsewhere, the original pagination has been maintained wherever possible. Each article has been given a Roman number in order of appearance, as listed in the Contents. This number is repeated on each page and is quoted in the index entries.

I

Hearing and Saying What Was Said1

[611] Several of the brethren were at me lately to say something, concerning language, the one concerning certain features of the work of the Arab grammarians and the other about translating, but 1 was, when they asked, occupied with quite other and for me more accustomed things and was basically disinclined to take up either of the general issues proposed. But even saying nay may go agley and end in schemes unlaid. So I will here talk about language - after a fashion, anyway - and about hearing and understanding and making sense of what one hears (or reads) and so too, or maybe primarily, about translating - I hope in a way that, even if it doesn't seem to make clear and unequivocal sense, may help us to think about some of the most fundamental features of a problem that many of us here have - or maybe ought to have, though not all of us in the same way. That depends on how you hear "have" -but that's a tale for you to tell. So, my topic, in principle, concerns the problems - one problem, anyhow - of translation, specifically of translation from Arabic into a European language. Assuming the appropriate skill in the craft of composing reasonably wrought sentences in one's own language, that one writes clearly and uses words carefully, doesn't speak ambivalcntly by accident, the source of our problems and perplexities resides in the very nature of language itself. What I have to say, though very general in most respects, reflects the peculiar perspective of my own continuing struggles (aywvsr; in several senses) in trying to deal with the classical tradition of Muslim systematic theology commonly dubbed kalam; and it is in terms of this, as an exemplary, even if in some respects peculiar, case, that I shall focus my remarks. Some of you, particularly those who deal chiefly with other forms of discourse, will find there are important issues and aspects of the general problem that 1 fail to mention, but time is limited, and my experience as well. It will be useful, by way of introduction, to say something about how I came to where I am on the question.

Presidential Address, delivered at the 206th meeting of the American Oriental Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 19, 1996 [The text has been reset for the purposes of this reprint; the original page numbers arc noted in square brackets within the text. D.G.l

I 2

Hearing and Saying What WaJ Sazd

A long time ago when the world was young, following a general interest originally fostered at St. Johns College, Annapolis, I was, on and off, working at Muslim philosophical texts. Having its roots in Hellenistic thought, the Muslim philosophical tradition termed Jalsafa historically intersects the intellectual tradition of the Christian West. For scholars and historians whose interest is chiefly or entirely focused on Aristotelian and nco-Platonic philosophy in antiquity and the middle ages, the fallisffa (those who cultivated jalsafa) appear as participants in an ongoing philosophical dialogue in which certain basic questions and issues continued from antiquity, and continue yet, to be posed and discussed, often in much the same terms. The texts are in different languages - Greek, Arabic, Latin - but, in the historical continuities of the discourse, one finds, despite a number of differences and disagreements on important theoretical issues and several fundamental divergences, a more or less similar way of talking and similar or analogous meanings voiced about a core of basic themes. Within this restricted perspective, translations and analyses of the Arabic texts are presented, and for the most part quite appropriately, in much the same language as are those of the Greek or the medieval Latin texts. This, however, is to read the Arabic texts (some of them, at any rate, or certain parts of them) - to hear them and understand their meaning - within a historically and theoretically appropriate context, but one which is nonetheless abstracted from their native Muslim context. My own engagement with the Muslim philosophical texts was focused almost entirely on their relation to the Greek tradition. A t some p oint, however, I got off for a time onto a siding where I read several ka!am works, the m eaning of which I didn't get; I couldn't see where they were coming from or exactly whereto headed. One evening then, I expressed my difficulties and perplexities concerning kallim to a colleague (now deceased) from another university who said in response that in his view this stuff wasn't really meant to make sense. [612] His reply was non-sense. That was plain to see. N o m ajor element of a major culture - of any culture, for that matter- is, on its own terms and in its own context, vacant of serious meaning, even if it may not appear so immediately to the learned observer who views it from a distance and at an oblique angle. And so I was set off down a path I am yet on: trying to make sense of the texts, to uncover their sense and to present it. Uncovering and presenting are here two different activities; you have first to get hold of what it is you would present, and for this reason we shall have first to say something about language and getting hold of another speaker's meanings. And we might note here that, in ordinary usage, the Arabic word kal!lm is originally a noun for speaking, and commonly means speech or talk or discussion and sometimes dispute; and the name for the master of kal!im theology, mutakallim, is, in origin

I Hearing and Saying What WaJ Said

3

and ordinary usage, "one who speaks" - and in grammar designates the first person of the verb, the one to whose speaking the hearer listens. At the time I began, studies concerning ka!dm - most of them, anyhow were of litdc help, as they plainly did not get to the core sense and intention of the texts. The main source of the difficulty was simply that classical kalam docs not conform to the general ways of the usual philosophical and theological thought most of us were brought up on, our household thinkers from Plato to Kant, to Hegel and Nietzsche and so forth. The approach to it, when not simply philological, was mosdy out of ancient and medieval philosophy and in several notable cases with a heavy dose of neo-scholasticism. The notion that kalam ought somehow to conform to the pattern was fostered by the active presence of elements of the late hellenistic tradition in Islam and by the presence in ka!am of a few key words that were also at home in the peripatetic tradition. People who read kalam texts in Arabic heard "familiar" words and expressions - such as jawhar and 'aracj. and wzgud- words that, on the one side, were used in Arabic translations already in the ninth century to represent Greek words and expressions (most often indirecdyvia Syriac) and then later, in Latin translations of Arabic philosophical works, were rendered in most cases by the same Latin words which were employed in translating the same philosophical works direcdy from Greek, so that the Greek, the Arabic, and the Latin words were taken to be equivalent, as in one sense many, if not most of them, are/ were in that particular context. But the lexical "equivalence" of words translated across cultural and historical gaps often obscures semantic distance and intentional difference, especially where they occur in contexts alien to that rep resented in the translation tradition. This would seem fairly obvious. But some scholars and historians heard them - or treated many of them anyhow - as essentially synonymous, and this had some rather serious consequences where ka!am was concerned. So, kalam didn't make proper sense and was declared- and considered by many- to be mere "dialectic": a simply disputational exercise in defense of one or another doctrinal orthodoxy, not a serious theoretical reflection on basic questions of metaphysics and theology. The assumption (not always explicit) that the mutakallimun were not only intellectually, but also religiously, a rather plebeian lot, was simply not questioned. Moving in a quite tidy circle, the adherents of this view had the testimony - a trifle tendentious withal- o f the Muslim peripatetics, al-Hmibi, Avicenna, and Averroes, who were at pains to depict themselves as belonging to an intellectually superior cast. Anyhow, the chief difficulties scholars had in trying to deal with k alam arose primarily because, in setting out to understand the classical texts, they were led by language unawares, that is, by tacit assumptions about words and their meanings and by their various backgrounds in the history of philosophy,

I 4

Hearing and Saying What WaJ Sazd

down the wrong path. They wanted to make sense of the texts, but what they fashioned of what the mutaka!!imun said wouldn't - couldn't- conform to their own notions of how serious thinkers who use this vocabulary talk and what they should say. It was as if the words and many o f their combinations had become somehow misshapen - had got a bad connection with the meanings, the concepts they were supposed to express. Part of the difficulty, to be sure, was that the classical ka!am texts available in print were few, most of them, in fact, mere handbooks composed under the assumption that their readers knew the basic formalities and contextual assumptions or had teachers who would give them adequate instruction - but these were long dead and buried. Then too, the study of kalam was, in some cases, pursued by folks who were hunting for its "sources" before they understood what was being said. But no collection of sources will, by themselves, yield the meaning of serious thinkers, all of whom work, as they must, out of the diverse collections of discourse, past and present, that make up their intellectual inheritance. This is not to say sources aren't a worthwhile historical endeavor. Often they are highly entertaining and in many cases are downright useful for serious historical understanding. But elements taken from the sources are not, in their derived presence in the discourse of those who employ them, the same as they once were in other, earlier contexts. Often they can no longer [613] rightly recall the meaning they once offered in their native habitat. The problem is that in order to understand one has to be still and listen has to listen carefully in order to get what another (the mutakal!im) is saying, and this can be difficult, as when eavesdropping on a conversation at an adjacent table. We miss some words and are too easily distracted by the presence of the talk of the fellows around us -by the active discussion now going on or by the recollection of past talk. In order to say some things I shall try to say about the source of problems I have witl1 my own - and have occasionally with others' - attempts to deal with the language and texts of ka!am (and recall, the word means " speaking"), I shall play, in part, on a famous statement which Heidegger makes in his Letter on Humanism (and which he repeats in several places in subsequent writings). I shall try to avoid fancy language and to use plain English. I do not pretend to represent exactly how he took it or what it does or should mean properly within the larger context of his philosophy. I wish simply to follow the path of a remarkably suggestive saying in a way that might be helpful in what T am trying to say. He says, "die Sprache ist das Haus des Seins; in ihrer Behausung wohnt der Mensch": language is being's house; man is lodged in its domicile. What this says - on one basic level, anyhow - is that our human world is given us through speech, not language in general or just any language, but the

I Hearing and Saying What WaJ Said

5

living speech we use and understand in talking to one another about our shared world, as individually we may, following our individual histories. If you have read Langland and Shakespeare and Burns and Yeats- not to mention Homer and Plato - your sense of language and of the world will be different than if you have not. The same is analogously true with respect to one's knowledge, usc, and understanding of Arabic, be he an Arab or an oricntalist (and that's not a pejorative). This is an important factor in how various scholars hear (and sometimes fail to hear) what is said in the texts, how they take them and interpret them and why - having different senses of, being differently attuned to, the one or the other language or to the both of them and to the topic - often they disagree over meanings and renderings. As human beings we have been defined as talking animals, 1:0 ~qiov A.oyt){OV. (As the phrase was originally coined 'AoylX6v' means capable of rational speech, but taken literally that might be understood to imply that some of our leading politicians belong to another species.) It is through and in historically shared language that the world of our human existence, in which we live and have our being, is there, is there to take hold of, to have and to lmow. And we have nowhere else to live- no otl1er way to be. We have our world - arc ourselves and know ourselves as beings in a world - through speech. It articulates for us the presence, the clements, and characteristics of things - of earth and sky, mortals and gods. It supplies meanings and the potential of meaningfulness and also the potential of meaninglessness, of something's having meaning - some meaning - and of having no meaning, in the manifold of phenomena, both material and human, conventional, institutional, social, scientific and intellectual in which we live and grasp as such the coherent and the logical, and the illogical and the paradoxical. That is, we have others and things and events, and with them have, as well, our own feelings, impressions, thoughts, as in themselves presentable to mind and bring them out to consider and think about or to share with others, by virtue of language. (And this in a couple of ways, but that we don't have to go into.) In thinking and speaking we have and share a world with others of our household. And there's no getting out of the house - one house or another. In the ever ongoing talk and activity, to be sure, things are constantly being rearranged, and at times major remodelling or some kind of serious renovation results. New concepts and new ways of talking and thinking catch on and become important items of the household, but all this is within the house. That's history. Without language - without having meanings and thoughts present in articulate expression - we can't have sense and non-sense as such, can't make sense or commit nonsense. We can't even have ilie inexpressible as such, cannot have it in the sense of having it present to mind as something to

I 6

Hearing and Saying W hat WaJ Sazd

recognize and reflect on, save as something presents itself in its recalcitrance to articulate presentation. Also, we use language to talk about language - to put it out there and so have it as an " object"- to look at it as a fundam ental feature of our existence or as a tool or a human activity in our world. But to think about language we have to present it in language. We talk about things that, in one way or another, are there, present to us - the presence or absence of things within a shared world. You can't get behind or beyond language. And that's why philosophers and linguists can't get a complete hold on it, try as they will to tie it down with lines of discourse and of formalities, carefully conceived - som etimes even insightfully - while some, inclined to logic, retreat into a kind of mathem atical formalization, another room, still under the sam e roof, where a few m ay choose to join the latter-day Platonists who hold colloquy there in a corner of their own. Wittgenstein's [614] talk of language games is itself a parlor game. There's just no leaving the house- not alive, anyway, since we can't stop being what we are: ~e< \ oytxci. We can go visit the people in another house, but any thoughtful conversation must take place within the one or the other. I t might be said that some non-rational states- mysticism , for example- take place out of doors. The potential implications of that might be interesting to pursue, but I would here note simply that however the metaphor might be read out, the mystic starts from within the familial house and returns there in the m orning; the path he follows starts indoors, where the way is proposed and the direction and the local landmarks are indicated, and later, back in the h ouse, the adventure is represented and reflected on in speech, even if in terms whose truth (6:\~8s te ihf. Concerning ictiqiid see below. One distinguishes between at-ta.ydiqu bi-lllih and at-tasdiqu li-lldh. 'Saddaqa bi-lluh' and 'at-taJdiqu bi-lldh' generally

imposes" (qabUlu Saril : > icihi wa-ttibilcu faril :J icjihi), etc. (cL

lO

l-la~diq

. .

~va/-mu'minu

mean "assents to the fact that (holds that) God exists, etc." (cf. Gunya, fol. 228r, cited above and cp. the use of "yusaddiqu bi-dalika" in In,aj, p. 22, 18), while 'saddaqa lliiha' and 'ar-tasdiqu li-1/ah' and 'musaddiqun li-llah' commonly mean "to say (hold) that God speaks truly"; the double definition of at-ta.ydiq as knowledge and as "an interior statement" in part reflects these two uses of ·~·addaqa,

I' tiqdd, p. 115, 20ff.). This interpretation seeks to join the sense of "obedience" to that of Belief ('imdn) while maintaining the latter's lexical equivalence with 'ta~diq'. 11 The possibility of an immediate experience of God in this life on the part of persons other than prophets is scarcely

eve r alluded to in the standard Ash carite texts of this period,

since it does not fall within the formal scope of their theology. Al-Qusayri's Risala and his l£I!il ' if are properly ~ufi texts, even though the author's commitment to the systematic theology of the Ashcarite school is consistently clear in them. 11 'Al-Jabbilr' is ambivalent and al-Maturid'i's use of it here

yu,diqu li-lldh' and 'musaddiqun li-lldh',

is formally inconsistent, even though the sense is clear in the

however, may be ambivalent. Often, as in ai-Bagdfld'i, loc. cit., the tam simply marks the direct object, so that 'mu~ad­

context. The grammarians, that is, will define al-bahar as a class of sentences (sc., statements, assertions) specifically

diqun li-llah' is equivalent to 'yuJaddiqu llaha' and means "holds that God speaks truthfully. " Some, however, distinguish ',vaddaqa bi-lldh' and 'saddaqa li-llah', saying that the former is "to assert His existence and to acknowledge His

characterized by their being subject to affirmation and denial;

"one can say of the person who says it (qii' iluhii) that he speaks truly or falsely" (al-Mubarrad, al-Muqtadab 3 [Cairo, 1386], p. 89 and cf. Ibn Faris, as-Sd/:libi [Beyrouth, 1382/

VII Knowledge and Taql1d: The Foundations of Religious Belief in Classical Ashdr, fol. 60v, 3ff. , translated below. Thus ai-Qusayri, who studied under Ibn Furak, repeatedly states that to use reasoning properly (wa{ia ca n-na;ara maw{iicahU; n.b. the connotational allusion to justice) inevitably leads to knowledge of the truth, e.g. , L.a{o , if3 , p. 84; 4, pp. 10, 170, and 194; 5, p. 28; at 5, p. 109 he gives a double emphasis to the assertion saying, "::! inna man na;ara f;aqqa n-na;ari wa-wa

~ ~

':}

c;1

r.S~

J"

01

~ .JI r--:~ ~- ':11 ..J""j.._,;.

(i.e., since the change is due to the accidents of conjunction and •eparation and accidents require an agent : fd'il; see below and cf. 142, 16 ff.). On the tabd'i' as the source of safah, see below. 2 2 Cf., e.g., 'l'aw., 114, 9ff. (where read al-'amal for al-'ilm in 1. 9); 141 f. and below.

XII 142 Furthermore, "whatever produces a thing simply through the action of its nature (bit-tab') can produce only something of the same kind as itself. 23 Material being is thus essentially determined or constrained in its nature and action (mu¢tarr, maqhur) : it cannot produce other than that which its nature determines (ma yiJ,fjibu t-tab', ma tubi'a 'alayhi) nor can it do other than produce its natural effect 24 nor, finally, can it produce its effect save in that which is by nature disposed to receive it, so that of itself material being is, as such, subject to the power of something that has autonomous power (qudm) and knowledge. 2 5 For al-Maturidi, then, we know thus by information accessible directly to sense 26 that every corporeal being is "encompassed by necessity and constructed of want" of another for its being ;27 material beings are constrained (mug(arr) in their being and action, incapable of the providential ordering (tadbir, olKovofL{a) of their own

23 Taw ., 33, 7 : man kawwana 8.8ay' a bit·tab'i ja.huwa flu naw'in; (the use of the personal man where one would expect the impersonal ma is common enough in Taw.). So also, e.g., al-Ka 'hi (cited in rl'aw., 60, 3), Thumama (in IntiJar, 25, 10f.) and an-Ka~~iim (ibid., 26, 5f. and 30f.). That the agent (fa'il) produces an act (fi'l = 1roi"'fW, mD1JfL