ʿAbd al-Jabbar ibn Ahmad

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ʿImād al-Dīn Abū l-Hasan ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn Ahmad al-Hamadhānī ( Arabic عماد الدين ابو الحسن عبد الجبّار بن احمد الهمذاني, DMG ʿImād al-Dīn Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Ǧabbār ibn Aḥmad al-Hamaḏānī ; * between 932 and 937 in Asadābād about 50 km west-southwest of Hamadan ; † 1024 ) was a Muʿtazilite theologian who was head of the Bahshamite branch of this school of theology in his time and from 977 to 995 held the office of chief Qādīs (Qāḍī l-quḍāt) of Rey .

Life

ʿAbd al-Jabbār initially received training in Ashʿarite theology and Shafiite fiqh in Hamadan . In 957 he went to Basra and studied with Abū Ishāq Ibn ʿAiyāsch, a Muʿtazilitischen theologian of the Bahshamite direction. Under his influence he went over to theology of the Muʿtazilite doctrine. After a while he traveled to Baghdad , where he joined Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Basrī (st. 980), the leading theologian of the Bahshamīya. In 970 ʿAbd al-Jabbār began during a stay in Rāmhormoz with the preparation of his main theological work with the title al-Muġnī fī abwāb at-tauḥīd wa-l-ʿadl . Before he could finish this work, he was appointed to the senior kadi of Rey in 977 by the Buyid vizier as-Sāhib ibn ʿAbbād (st. 995), who was a follower of the Muʿtazila. After the death of as-Sāhib ibn ʿAbbād, the Buyid ruler of Rey, Fachr al-Daula (d. 997), dismissed ʿAbd al-Jabbār and confiscated his property. He spent the time leading up to his death teaching and writing books. ʿAbd al-Jabbar had numerous disciples. Among them was the Twelve Shiite theologian al-Sheikh al-Mufid .

Works

ʿAbd al-Jabbār has written more than seventy works on Muʿtazilite dogmatics, Koran exegesis, Hadith , Islamic law and other topics. Most of them are lost. Those works that have received a lot of research attention include:

  • Kitāb al-Uṣūl al-ḫamsa . In this very short work, which has only survived in one manuscript from the Vatican library , ʿAbd al-Jabbār gives an introduction to the five main principles of Muʿtazilite theology in the manner of a confessional script. Between 970 and 990 he wrote his own commentary on this work. However, this work, entitled Šarḥ al-Uṣūl al-ḫamsa, has not survived.
  • al-Muġnī fī abwāb at-tauḥīd wa-l-ʿadl ("Summa on the themes of the creed of unity and justice"), 20-volume dogmatic work that was only rediscovered in a mosque in Sanaa in 1950/51 by a team of Egyptian scholars . The individual volumes - not all of them have survived - are devoted to the following topics: 4. seeing God ( ruʾyat al-bārī ), 5. non-Islamic sects ( al-firaq ġair al-Islāmīya ), 6. divine justice and Injustice ( taʿdīl wa-t-taǧwīr ), the divine will ( al-irāda ), 7. the creation of the Koran ( ḫalq al-Qurʾān ), 8. the created ( al-maḫlūq ), 9. the generation ( taulīd ) of Action by man, 11. the burden ( taklīf ) of man with religious duties, 12. reason-based contemplation and knowledge ( an-naẓar wa-l-maʿārif ), 13. the divine grace ( luṭf ) through which man becomes Good is led, 14. the question of God's commitment to the best ( al-aṣlaḥ ), 15. prophecies and miracles ( tanabbuʾāt wa-muʿǧizāt ), 16. the Iʿjāz ("inimitability, miraculous character") of the Koran , 17. the religious legal provisions ( aš-šarʿīyāt ), 20. the Imamat .
  • Taṯbīt dalāʾil an-nubūwa , a treatise on the evidence of Muhammad's prophethood, written in 995, refuting the arguments of those non-Muslim groups who reject it (Christians, Jews, etc.). The work was edited in Beirut in 1966 by ʿAbd al-Karīm ʿUthmān in two volumes.
  • Faḍl al-iʿtizāl wa-ṭabaqāt al-Muʿtazila wa-mubāyanatu-hum li-sāʾir al-muḫālifīn , treatise on the primacy of the Muʿtazilite doctrine, the classes of the Muʿtazila and the difference between their teaching and deviating doctrines. The work was edited by Fu'ād Saiyid in Tunis in 1974. One of his most important models was the Kitāb al-Masābīh of Muhammad ibn Yazdād.
  • al-Muḥīṭ bi-t-taklīf , treatise on the burden of man with religious duties, which is only known from quotations in later works.

Teaching

ʿAbd al-Jabbār established the Muʿtazilite teaching on five main principles:

  1. at- Tawhīd ("Unity Confession ")
  2. al-ʿAdl ("the righteousness [of God]")
  3. al-Waʿd wa al-waʿīd ("Divine promise of salvation and divine threat of punishment")
  4. al-Manzila baina l-manzilatain ("The intermediate stage [for the mortal sinner]")
  5. al-Amr bi-l maʿrūf wa-n-nahy ʿan al-munkar (Command the right and forbid the reprehensible )

In his opinion, the last three principles can be derived from the first two principles of the Unity Creed and divine justice.

God is defined negatively by ʿAbd al-Jabbār as something that is neither substance nor object, accident or substrate . With regard to the divine attributes, he differentiates between essential and active attributes. He does not regard the active attributes ( ṣifāt al-fiʿl ) such as volition and speech as eternal in the beginning. The very nature of the Koran as specifically divine speech is a central doctrinal conception for him. ʿAbd al-Jabbar, like other Muʿtazilites, negates the possibility of seeing God on the grounds that God is not confined to one place.

For him, the Muʿtazilite principle of divine justice implies that none of God's actions are evil. Pain and suffering that a person experiences in this world are useful for him because they result in a reward in the hereafter. According to ʿAbd al-Jabbār not only people take part in the resurrection, but all living beings who have acquired a right to compensation for their suffering in this world. God imposed religious duties on people so that they would have an opportunity to earn a reward in the hereafter. The believer's motivation to fulfill his duty comes according to his imagination through divine grace ( luṭf ). This doctrinal conception is received by Bishr ibn al-Muʿtamir . ʿAbd al-Jabbar emphasizes the personal responsibility of the human being very strongly. From Bishop ibn al-Muʿtamir, in turn, he took over the doctrine of the "creation" ( taulīd ) of the chains of events through human activity. It implies that humans are also responsible for all indirect consequences of their actions.

ʿAbd al-Jabbār generally affirms the law of causality , but he also knows the principle of divine habit ( ʿāda ) that can change. According to him, illnesses, pain and all other forms of suffering are brought about by just such changing habits of God.

literature

  • Binyamin Abrahamov: ʿAbd al-Jabbār's theory of divine assistance (luṭf). In: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam. Volume 16, 1993, pp. 41-58.
  • Marie Bernand: L 'Iǧmāʿ chez ʿAbd al-Ǧabbār et l'objection d'An-Naẓẓām. In: Studia Islamica. Volume 30, 1969, pp. 27-38.
  • Marie Bernand: The problem of the connaissance d'après le Muġnī du cadi ʿAbd al-Ǧabbār . Algiers 1982.
  • Daniel Gimaret: Les Uṣūl al-ḫamsa du Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Ǧabbār et leurs commentaires. In: Annales Islamologiques. Volume 15, 1979, pp. 47-96.
  • Judith K. Hecker: Some notes on Kitāb al-tawlīd from the Mughnī of the Qādī ʿAbd al-Jabbār. In: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam. Volume 2, 1980, pp. 281-319.
  • Margaretha T. Heemskerk: Suffering in the Muʿtazilite theology. ʿAbd al-Jabbār's teaching on pain and divine justice . Brill, Leiden 2000.
  • Margaretha T. Heemskerk: A Muʿtazilite refutation of Christianity and Judaism. Two fragments from ʿAbd al-Jabbār's al-Mughnī fī abwāb al-tawḥīd wa-'l-ʿadl. In: Barbara Roggema, Marcel Poorthuis, and Pim Valkenberg (Eds.): The three rings. Textual studies in the historical trialogue of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam . Leuven 2005, pp. 183-201.
  • Margaretha T. Heemskerk: Article ʿAbd al-Jabbār b. Aḥmad al-Hamadhānī. In: Gudrun Krämer , Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson (eds.): Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE , accessible via Brill online .
  • George F. Hourani: Islamic rationalism. The ethics of ʿAbd al-Jabbār . Oxford 1971.
  • George F. Hourani: The rationalist ethics of ʿAbd al-Jabbār. In: SM Stern, Albert Hourani and Vivian Brown (eds.): Islamic philosophy and the classical tradition. Essays presented by his friends and pupils to Richard Walzer on his seventieth birthday . Columbia SC 1972. pp. 105-115.
  • Guy Monnot: Penseurs musulmans et religions iraniennes. ʿAbd al-Jabbār et ses devanciers . Paris 1974.
  • JRTM Peters: God's created speech. A study in the speculative theology of the Muʿtazilî Qâḍî l-quḍât Abūl-Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Jabbâr ibn Aḥmad al-Hamadânî . Brill, Leiden 1976.
  • Shlomo Pines : Gospel quotations and cognate topics in ʿAbd al-Jabbār's Tathbīt in relation to early Christian and Judaeo-Christian readings and traditions. In: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam. Volume 9, 1987, pp. 195-278.
  • Yusuf Rahman: The miraculous nature of Muslim scripture. A study of ʿAbd al-Jabbār's Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān. In: Islamic Studies. Volume 35, 1996, pp. 409-424.
  • Gabriel Said Reynolds: A Muslim theologian in the sectarian milieu. ʿAbd al-Jabbār and the critique of Christian origins . Brill, Leiden and Boston 2004.
  • Michael Schwarz: "The qāḍī ʿAbd al-Ǧabbār's refutation of the Ašʿarite doctrine of 'acquisition' ( kasb )" in Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1976) 229-263.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ See Hemskeerk in EI³ .
  2. ↑ See Heemskerk 2000, 36.
  3. ↑ See Heemskerk 2000, 46.
  4. ↑ The Arabic text is reproduced in Gimaret 79-96. Richard C. Martin and Mark W. Woodward provide an English translation in their book Defenders of Reason in Islam. Muʿtazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol . Oxford: Oneworld Publ. 1997. pp. 90-115.
  5. ↑ The alleged edition of ʿAbd al-Karīm ʿUthmān (Cairo: Maktabat al-Wahba 1965) is actually the transcript of a lecture by the Zaidite scholar Mankdīm (st. 1034) on ʿAbd al-Jabbār's commentary, cf. Heemskerk 2000, 3-5.
  6. ↑ See Heemskerk 2000, 2f.
  7. ↑ The digitized version is available here .
  8. ↑ See Josef van Ess: The One and the Other: Observations on Islamic Heresiographic Texts . Vol. I. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 2011. pp. 390–393.
  9. ↑ See the study by Peters.
  10. ↑ Cf. al-Muġnī fī abwāb at-tauḥīd wa-l-ʿadl . 4th vol. Ruʾyat al-bārī . Cairo: Wizārat aṯ-Ṯaqāfa wa-ʾl-Irs̆ād al-Qaumī 1965. p. 42.
  11. ↑ See Hemskeerk in EI³ .
  12. ↑ See Heemskerk 2000.
  13. ↑ See Heemskerk in EI³.
  14. ↑ See the study by Abrahamov.
  15. ↑ See Hecker's essay on this.
  16. ↑ Cf. Ayman Shabana: Custom in Islamic law and theory: the development of the concepts of ʿurf and ʿādah in the Islamic legal tradition . New York 2010. pp. 60-63.
  17. ↑ See Heemskerk in EI³ .
personal data
SURNAME ʿAbd al-Jabbar ibn Ahmad
ALTERNATIVE NAMES ʿImād al-Dīn Abū l-Hasan ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn Ahmad al-Hamadhānī (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Muʿtazilite theologian
DATE OF BIRTH between 932 and 937
PLACE OF BIRTH Asadābād
DATE OF DEATH 1024