An Introduction to the History of Islamic Theology

This article is the first lesson of Dr. Hassan Ansari’s lecture course Discussions of Tawḥīd from the Perspective of the Theologians, a longer series built around al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā’s Jumal al-ʿilm wa-l-ʿamal. Before turning to the book itself, Dr. Ansari devotes this opening lesson to a detailed survey of the history of Islamic theology. He traces kalām from its formative era through the classical period to the rise of philosophical kalām with Fakhr al-Rāzī and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī. Because this survey stands on its own, it is published here as a standalone article.

Dr. Ansari introduced the Persian text with the following note:

The first session of the lecture course Discussions of Tawḥīd from the Perspective of the Theologians, which we delivered some time ago based on the book Jumal al-ʿilm wa-l-ʿamal by al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā, was handed over to artificial intelligence, through the kindness and supervision of the esteemed teacher Sayyid Ali Tabatabai Yazdi, to be transcribed, edited, and divided into sections. The result is not bad. If you are interested in reading a twenty-page summary of the history of Muʿtazilī/Shiʿi kalām, this text is recommended.

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بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ وَصَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَى سَيِّدِنَا مُحَمَّدٍ وَآلِهِ الطَّيِّبِينَ الطَّاهِرِينَ

In the Name of God, the All-Beneficent, the All-Merciful. May God bless our master Muhammad and his pure and purified family.

Peace be upon you. Greetings to you and to all the other companions and researchers in this scholarly gathering, both those present and those absent. At the outset, I offer my congratulations to all of you on the blessed anniversary of the birth of the Seal of the Prophets, Muhammad b. ʿAbdillāh (p), and the auspicious birth of the leader of our school, Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (a). The fortunate coincidence of this noble occasion with the start of our series is a true blessing. Our central subject is kalām and Islamic theology, and this field has a close bond with both of these great figures.

On the one hand, the noble Messenger of Islam (p) stands at the head of this faith and is the origin of this divine call. Islamic kalām and theology are, in truth, nothing other than the explanation, commentary, and elaboration of the Prophet’s teachings on divine unity (tawḥīd), knowledge of God, the origin, and the return. On the other hand, our focus is on a theological text from the Imāmī tradition. The foundational and unparalleled role of Imam al-Ṣādiq (a) in the formation of Islamic kalām in general, and Shiʿi kalām in particular, is hidden from no researcher.

Diagnosing the Problems of Historical and Theological Research in Contemporary Society

We have previously had discussions on the intellectual and scholarly legacy of Imam al-Ṣādiq (a). These included a three-session discussion on the Imam’s intellectual role, and a ten-session series on the jurisprudence of the two Imams al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq (a). That series, however, largely remained at an introductory level, and we did not manage to hold its advanced follow-up course.

The reality is that historical research suffers from structural neglect and indifference in the intellectual climate of our society. This problem has several roots. The first is that, because of the dense and unmethodical volume of religious discourse, society has reached a kind of saturation. Whenever religious speech is delivered beyond the bounds of necessity and without economy of words, society’s reaction is rejection. If, however, speech is presented properly, soundly, and free of verbosity, the audience will receive it. Excess in shallow media propaganda, and the unchecked growth of rituals beyond established custom, has upset the balance. We know well that any departure from moderation, whether through excess or deficiency, ends in nothing but social rupture.

The second factor is the dismissive approach of movements that are hostile to religious research as such. They consider these discussions outdated, ill-suited to modern life, and superfluous. This attitude, too, stems from our own scholarly shortcomings. We have failed to grasp that historical self-awareness, knowledge of tradition, and a rereading of the intellectual identity of contemporary society all depend on a deep understanding of these very theoretical traditions. Until we know our intellectual heritage methodically and precisely, we will have no room to produce contemporary thought or redefine our intellectual life. For this reason, historical studies, provided they rest on sound methodology, are among the most vital necessities.

The State of Shiʿi Studies in Western Academia

In Western academia, too, Shiʿi studies have remained very limited, marginal, and inadequate compared with other branches of Islamic studies. For example, the monographs written about Imam al-Ṣādiq (a) in recent years are only first steps; they do not cover the full dimensions of his life and his system of knowledge. In general, little in-depth research has been done on the detailed lives of the Shiʿi Imams (a) and their formative role in founding and spreading the Islamic sciences. Our effort in that earlier series was to explore the historical setting and intellectual contexts of the era of Imams al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq (a), and to shed some light on the contribution of these two great Imams. Pursuing those discussions further requires a separate opportunity.

The Historical Periodization of Kalām: From the Formative Era to the Classical Period

The subject of our present discussions focuses on the “classical period” in the history of Islamic kalām. In contemporary historical studies, which are to some extent influenced by the periodization model of the Christian tradition, the history of Islamic theological thought can be divided into distinct stages.

The first is the “formative and compilation period.” During this stage, the Islamic sciences and the early frameworks of theological thought ripen and take shape, and it extends to the late third century AH. This period is called the initial era of Islamic theology. It begins with the dawn of Islam; doctrinal questions gradually appear, and with the emergence of schools such as the Muʿtazila and the early Shiʿi currents, the first models of systematizing knowledge take form.

The Features and Leading Theologians of the Classical Period

The next stage is the “classical period” of Islamic kalām. Its starting point is set in the late third century AH, and it continues until the era of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī,¹ or a little after him. The main feature of this era is the appearance of comprehensive, extensive, and systematic texts. Thinkers of the various schools composed them to regularize their thought and present all-encompassing intellectual systems. We technically refer to these works as “comprehensive texts of kalām.”

In the Muʿtazilī tradition, the beginning of this classical period is marked by the appearance of thinkers such as Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī² and especially his son Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī,³ and, in the Baghdad school, by Abū al-Qāsim al-Balkhī (al-Kaʿbī).⁴ Among the Ahl al-Sunna wa-l-Jamāʿa, it appears with the founding of Ashʿarī kalām by Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī.⁵ In Imāmī kalām, it begins with the theologians of the Nawbakhtī family, such as Abū Sahl al-Nawbakhtī and Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī.

In Shiʿism, this current culminates in towering figures such as Shaykh al-Ṭūsī.⁶ In Muʿtazilī kalām, it continues until the era of figures such as Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad al-Malāḥimī al-Khwārazmī.⁷ This span of time was thus the setting in which the highest argumentative structures of classical Islamic theology took shape.

The Significance of the Classical Period for the Nature and Destiny of Islamic Theology

Other developments, of course, took place after this period, which we have addressed to some extent in earlier discussions on the history of kalām. In this course, too, I intend to address this subject by way of introduction.

Knowing the classical period is of fundamental importance for understanding the nature and destiny of Islamic theology. It was in this very historical moment that the basic foundations of kalām and Islamic theology were laid and organized in a compiled and systematic form. Here a fundamental question can be raised: What is Islamic philosophy, and how is its relationship with Islamic kalām defined? This holds regardless of whether we accept or reject the term “Islamic philosophy” in the first place. And where, fundamentally, does the distinction between these two fields lie? But before entering the details of the classical period, we must ask: why is it necessary at all to study the history of Islamic theology in this period and become acquainted with its intellectual system?

The Practice-Centered Nature of Islam versus the Philosophical Theology of Christianity

The first point to note is that Islam, as a religion, was at its outset based on “practice” more than anything else. By its very nature, Islam was not a religion that, from the very beginning, placed a complex theological system before its audience as a condition of faith. The formation of such a system was a gradual matter. At the start, Islam offered a very simple account of faith and belief: faith in the One God, faith in the mission of the noble Prophet, and belief in the hereafter:

قُولُوا لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ تُفْلِحُوا

“Say: there is no god but God, and you will prosper.”⁸

The import of this call is that if you bear witness to the oneness of the Lord, you have attained salvation, and this was the entire foundation of early Islam. Within this, belief in the noble Prophet was the distinguishing feature that set Islam apart from the other monotheistic religions and People of the Book, namely Judaism and Christianity. The Prophet’s call rested on this foundation from the beginning, and the gathering of Muslims formed the Islamic umma. That umma was founded on faith in God, affirmation of the Prophet, and a practical sign of belonging to the community: the establishment of congregational prayer.

By uttering the two testimonies of faith and standing in the rows of the congregation, Muslims made their belonging to the Islamic umma manifest. Regarding the essence of the Exalted Creator, bearing witness to His oneness was sufficient. Regarding the Prophet, it was enough to accept that he is God’s messenger and receives revelation. No superhuman status or dimension was ever ascribed to the Prophet such that it would require a philosophical or theological interpretation.

The Fundamental Difference between the Church and the Institution of the Umma in Islam

In fact, it was precisely this need for philosophical interpretation in Christianity that formed the basis of Christian theology. Christianity, especially on the basis of the teachings of the Gospel of John, was founded from the start on the belief that Christ is the Son of God, the divine Word, and the manifestation of the divine (lāhūt) in the human (nāsūt). Following this doctrine, extensive disputes arose. Does the being of Jesus Christ have two distinct natures, or one nature? Is his divine aspect distinct from his human aspect, or do both point to a single reality? And if he has one nature, how is the union of divinity and humanity, and its indwelling in a body of flesh, skin, and blood, possible?

From the start, the Church considered faith in a specific formulation of this belief to be necessary. To prove it, the Church had built a particular philosophical system, and accepting that system was regarded as faith itself. On this basis, Christian faith came to rest on two solid pillars. The first was faith in a theoretical theology to explain the relationship between the human and the divine. The second was acceptance of an official authority to guide this interpretation and define orthodox belief, namely the institution of the Church. In Christian thought, the Church is pictured as the body of Christ and the appearance of the kingdom of heaven on earth, and connection to this institution was considered an inseparable part of faith itself.

The Simplicity of Faith in the Early Islamic Era and the Rejection of Divine Attributes for the Prophet

In contrast, faith in Islam was very simple and free of these complications. Anyone who affirmed the One God and the prophethood of the noble Prophet was recognized as a Muslim and had no obligation to offer complex philosophical or theological explanations on the matter. A general knowledge that the Lord has no partner, and that the Prophet is a messenger who receives divine revelation and does not speak of his own accord, was enough for faith to be realized.

At the same time, Islam insisted from the beginning on the humanity of Muhammad b. ʿAbdillah. The setting in which Islam appeared was exposed to Christian ideas. The Qur’an’s repeated emphasis that the Prophet is a human being like other people, whose only distinction is the descent of revelation upon him, was meant to repel exactly these notions of divinity. Had the prophetic mission appeared in another society, there might have been no need at all to raise such a dispute.

For example, had Islam appeared in Sasanian Iranian society, such an issue would not have become a point of contention. In the Zoroastrian religion, Zoroaster was considered simply the bearer of a book and the bringer of a message. Although, according to Mazdean traditions, a kind of inspiration had reached him from Ahura Mazda, his followers never attributed divinity to him. In the Arabian Peninsula, however, these exaggerated (ghuluww) notions surrounding Christianity were well known.

The Roots of Qur’anic Tawḥīd in the Context of the Peninsula and the Critique of Polytheism

For this reason, faith in Islam was founded exclusively on the oneness of God. The Qur’an’s forceful emphasis on tawḥīd was also a response to the prevailing outlook in the polytheism of the pre-Islamic Arabs. Although the Arabs before Islam believed in the existence of “Allah” as the supreme Creator, they saw Him as a god of gods, and beside Him they turned to the lords of various domains and to idols. The Qur’an challenged this ancient notion and declared that all the forces of the universe are subject to the power of the Lord, not manifestations of independent spirits holding the rank of lesser gods. God is one; He needs no partner or intermediary; He has not begotten a child, nor was He begotten. This passage also contains a clear allusion to Christian beliefs.

At that time, some tribes of the Peninsula had become familiar with Christianity. On the surrounding borders, in the territory of the Ghassanids in Syria and the Lakhmids in al-Ḥīra, there were large Christian communities. The Christians of al-Ḥīra followed the Nestorian church, the form of Christianity common in Sasanian Iranian territory, while the Ghassanids followed the Jacobite church. The Jacobites believed in miaphysitism, that is, the union of the divine and the human in a single nature, and denied any distinction between God and Christ. The Nestorians, by separating the two natures, offered a different account of the Trinity. Without entering into these theoretical debates, the Prophet of Islam invited people to accept pure tawḥīd and to hold fast to noble moral character:

بُعِثْتُ لِأُتَمِّمَ مَكَارِمَ الْأَخْلَاقِ

“I was sent to perfect noble character.”⁹

The Historical Formation of Kalām in Dialectic with Society and Surrounding Ideas

The Prophet sought to build a new society and purify it of the moral vices of the age of ignorance (jāhiliyya). That age, especially in the final century before the Prophet’s mission, had fostered an intense materialism and moral decline because of economic and social changes. For this reason, attachment to the new society took the form of a community of faith, with the slogan of equality in congregational prayer. In Islam, no institution like a church, or an exclusive authority to define doctrine, was established. Rather, participation in communal rites, especially prayer and observing its times, became the clearest symbol of the umma‘s solidarity.

The historical developments of the first two centuries caused kalām to take shape gradually. The text of the Qur’an did not present a compiled system of detailed theological rules, such that being a Muslim would depend on accepting those details. Later, as the needs of debate demanded, the theologians bound the faithful to accept these theoretical explanations.

There is no doubt that these ideas were formed in concrete political and social settings, for thought never takes shape in a vacuum. Yet the historical formation of an idea does not negate its authenticity. If we look in the manner of the philosophy of history of Hegel,¹⁰ thought always unfolds within history, and it is in dialectic with concrete realities that it reveals its hidden possibilities and capacities.

The dynamism of Islamic kalām likewise depended on confronting rival intellectual currents. These ranged from the presence of Jews, Christians, and Manichaeans (the zanādiqa of Quraysh) in the Peninsula to direct encounters with the Byzantine world and the sphere of Syriac thought after the conquest of Syria. In Syria, Muslims encountered the Greek language, Orthodox Christianity, and Jacobite theology. In response to their disputes about predestination and free will and about the divine attributes, Muslims began to theorize.

Citing the three hypostases (knowledge, power, life), Christians raised the objection of multiplicity in the attributes. They challenged the Muslim theologians: how can one speak of distinct attributes such as knowledge and power while holding the essence of the Creator to be simple and one? It was these very disputes that paved the way for the well-known Muʿtazilī division between attributes of the essence and attributes of action, and later for the dispute with the Ashʿarīs over the reported attributes (ṣifāt khabariyya) and whether the attributes are identical to or additional to the essence.

Theological Challenges with Christianity and the Roots of Islamic Kalām in the Byzantine Sphere

These debates gradually led Muslim thinkers to reflect on how to answer the objections so that the principle of tawḥīd and divine unity would remain safe from any harm. Thus, the encounter with Christianity became a fundamental factor in bringing kalām in the Islamic world to its peak, especially on the question of the divine attributes. Muslim theologians benefited greatly from the foundations and formulations of the other side.

Christians in the Byzantine Empire were familiar with Greek, since it was the official language of the Orthodox Church in the Eastern Roman Empire, and even in parts of Syria conquered in the first wave of the Islamic conquests. A long-standing tradition existed in these churches, and they had a long familiarity with the foundations of Greek philosophy. During the reign of Khusraw Anushirvan, some of these philosophers took refuge at the Iranian court and settled in that land, because serious opposition to Greek philosophy had arisen among the Church authorities in Byzantium and the Eastern Roman Empire. Nevertheless, the Byzantine Church always maintained its link with philosophy in its educational traditions.

The situation was the same in the Jacobite and Syriac churches; they formulated their theological views in the terminology of Greek philosophy. Through conversations and scholarly debates with them, Muslim scholars realized that there were particular methods, systems of argument, and conceptual models with which the Islamic doctrine of tawḥīd could be restated in a new and mutually intelligible language.

The Meeting of Philosophical and Theological Ideas in Sasanian Territory and Mesopotamia

In the eastern regions, in the lands of the former Sasanian Empire that joined Islamic territory after the conquests, theological debates were common among Zoroastrian priests (mōbads). This was especially so in the final centuries of that empire, from the time of Khusraw Anushirvan onward, and they too had been influenced to some degree by Greek philosophy. The reflection of these ideas can be seen in the ninth century CE in the Dēnkard,¹¹ which was written in Baghdad in the Islamic period.

In addition, across wide parts of the Islamic lands, especially in Iraq, the Sawād, and regions such as Basra and the south of al-Ḥīra, there were followers of Mani. In the early Islamic period they were referred to as zindīq. For various reasons, this group had become familiar with Greek philosophical ideas. The theologians’ encounters and debates with Manichaean scholars acquainted Muslims more and more with the technical vocabulary and usefulness of Greek philosophy.

Individuals with atheistic and naturalistic tendencies also used the concepts of Greek philosophy to deny religion. So the Muslims’ interlocutors were either movements that used the Greek heritage to prove their own beliefs (whether Christian, Jewish, or Manichaean), or atheists who, lacking religious faith, used these views against the religious law. Islamic kalām grew in the midst of such debates, and the theologians enriched their argumentative system by drawing on proofs for the Necessary Being and the Creator of existence.

The Translation Movement and the Formation of Kalām as an Institution in Baghdad

With the start of the Abbasid era, and especially in the time of al-Maʾmūn, the translation movement gained remarkable speed. Greek philosophical texts, including Aristotelian works, some of Plato’s dialogues, and the roots of the Neoplatonic tradition, were translated first into Syriac and then into Arabic. Those who turned to learning these sciences became known as people of the “ancient sciences” (ʿulūm al-awāʾil), that is, sciences whose origin went back to before Islam, which generally meant Greek learning.

In Baghdad, the circles of the philosophical translators were located near the teaching circles of the theologians. This geographical proximity led to intellectual exchange, the circulation of books, and direct debates between the two groups. The theologians realized that to defend Islam they could not rely solely on the apparent texts of the Qur’an; they had to use these theoretical tools as a defensive weapon. Hence, as Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī¹² stated in his Iḥṣāʾ al-ʿulūm,¹³ kalām is a science whose fundamental mission is the rational defence of religious doctrines and beliefs against objections and opponents.

The Guild of Theologians and How It Differed from the Philosophers

In this period, we encounter many figures among the Muʿtazilī, Jahmī, Shiʿi, Ibāḍī, and other theologians. Despite their sharp doctrinal differences, all of them were known, in terms of scholarly identity, as mutakallims. In fact, they formed a coherent intellectual guild, just like those affiliated with particular universities in post-Renaissance Europe, such as the schools of Cambridge, Oxford, or the Sorbonne, whose graduates share a single method and intellectual framework.

On the other side of this divide stood the people of the ancient sciences, who were generally called mutafalsif (“philosophizer”). The word “philosopher” (faylasūf) was applied exclusively to Aristotle. Thus in sources of the second and third centuries AH, the phrase qāla al-faylasūf (“the Philosopher said”) refers without qualification to Aristotle, and others were considered his students and followers. So much so that al-Fārābī was called the “Second Teacher” in comparison with him.

The dominant philosophical tradition in the Islamic world was a form of the Neoplatonic school. A figure such as Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb b. Isḥāq al-Kindī¹⁴ stood at the head of this school. The translation of the famous work Theologia,¹⁵ which was wrongly attributed to Aristotle and was a recension of Plotinus’ book, was produced by Ibn Nāʿima al-Ḥimṣī, a Christian translator and member of al-Kindī’s circle.

The philosophers of Baghdad essentially defined their role as commentators and translators. Hence later Ibn Rushd¹⁶ faulted Ibn Sīnā for going beyond the role of a commentator and expressing independent views. In contrast, great figures such as Ibn Sīnā and al-Fārābī believed that wisdom (ḥikma) is not confined to Aristotle and Plato, but is a demonstrative system capable of development.

Religious Diversity and Scholarly Lineages in the Baghdad School of Philosophy

In the scholarly community of the Baghdad philosophers, religious affiliation was not the criterion of judgment; adherence to demonstrative foundations was central. In this school there was a thinker such as Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī,¹⁷ one of the famous Imāmī theologians and a member of the illustrious Nawbakhtī family, the same lineage that produced the third special deputy of the Imam of the Age, Ḥusayn b. Rūḥ al-Nawbakhtī. While being a theologian, he had close ties with the translators and supervised the movement to translate philosophical texts.

Some of these philosophers were Sunni, such as Abū al-Ḥasan al-ʿĀmirī,¹⁸ or, like al-Kindī, were certainly not Shiʿi. Al-Fārābī’s school of thought is also veiled in ambiguity. Although he was of Turkic origin from Fārāb, he grew up in an environment influenced by Iranian culture, had a strong command of Persian, and later joined the Shiʿi court of Sayf al-Dawla al-Ḥamdānī. His views on the leadership of the virtuous city and the question of the hidden Imam show clear affinities with the doctrine of the Imamate in the Imāmī school.

Abū ʿAlī Ibn Sīnā was raised in a family with Ismāʿīlī leanings, and in his youth he studied with a Ḥanafī jurist named Ismāʿīl al-Zāhid. Nevertheless, his analyses at the end of the Metaphysics of al-Shifāʾ show great closeness to the foundations of Shiʿism.

An important portion of the translators and commentators of Aristotle in Baghdad were Christians or Sabians. The followers of the Sabian religion living in Ḥarrān had long had a thoroughly Hellenistic character and were considered bearers of the Greek philosophical tradition. They translated works from Greek into Syriac. The famous Ṣābī family, such as Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Hilāl al-Ṣābī (a contemporary of the two Sharīfs, al-Sayyid al-Raḍī and al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā) and his descendants such as Hilāl b. al-Muḥassin al-Ṣābī, came from this community and later embraced Islam.

In the final analysis, one can say that the theologians and the philosophers each formed an independent class and scholarly institution within the structure of Islamic civilization. They were just like the guilds of hadith scholars and jurists, who, regardless of their religious diversity, defined a single professional and methodological identity for themselves.

A Critique of the Notion of Wholesale Borrowing of Kalām from Greek Philosophy, and an Account of the Authenticity of Islamic Thought

The theologian’s intellectual system, his epistemic tools, and the way his thought took shape were organized along these lines. Recently, some have claimed that Islamic kalām is entirely philosophy. Since philosophy is Greek philosophy, and Greece is the cradle of the West, they argue that whatever we have, we have taken from the West, and there is no such thing as Islamic authenticity. Such claims stem from sheer ignorance and a deep unfamiliarity with the history of Islamic thought.

In the field of the history of Islamic thought, there is fundamentally no need for such reductive discussions about formal influence. Thought always takes shape in a historical context, through a kind of dialectical give-and-take, and reaches its maturity through dialogue.

The Theological Works of al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā and Their Readership Beyond the School

The text we are beginning to study is Jumal al-ʿilm wa-l-ʿamal by al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā. Before this, he wrote a work called al-Dhakhīra fī ʿilm al-kalām,¹⁹ which was in fact the completion of an unfinished project called al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī uṣūl al-dīn. That work was left incomplete and was later published. In our English book on the views of al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā, we discussed how he compiled the remaining topics in the form of al-Dhakhīra.

A noteworthy point is that the oldest surviving manuscript of al-Dhakhīra was copied by a Jewish scholar of the Karaite sect. This manuscript was copied in Jerusalem in the fifth century AH, about three or four decades after al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā’s death. It is now kept in the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg. I have examined it myself in person, and the critical edition of the book has been prepared and published on the basis of this very manuscript.

The Karaites are a Jewish sect that rejects the authority of the Talmud and the oral tradition and relies solely on the text of the Torah. That the book of a leading Shiʿi theologian and jurist, one of the pillars of the Shiʿi school, was copied by a Karaite theologian shows something important. Because of their leaning toward Muʿtazilism, they made use of this argumentative structure. The demonstrative apparatus for matters such as proving the createdness of the world or the existence of the Maker was universal, and the author’s different religion did not prevent anyone from using it.

Interconfessional Theological Dialogue and the Role of the Bahshamī School and Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī

These theoretical exchanges also brought about changes in some of their intellectual systems. Some years ago, in collaboration with Wilferd Madelung,²⁰ we published a text containing a refutation and debate between two non-Muslim Karaite theologians. One of the two leaned toward the school of al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā and the Bahshamiyya, and the other was influenced by the views of Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī.²¹

The supporter of the first school argued that tawḥīd requires a commitment to the Bahshamī view, not that of Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī. This is because Abū al-Ḥusayn’s theories on “states” (aḥwāl) and “the thingness of the non-existent” (shayʾiyyat al-maʿdūm), in their logical implications, lead to denying any proof of the Exalted Creator. Therefore, a monotheist must necessarily accept the theological system of al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā or al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār.²²

Such a dynamic intellectual atmosphere prevailed in the Islamic world. Scholars from among the People of the Book attended al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s teaching circle in Rayy, or the gatherings of Muslim theologians in Baghdad. It is reported that Christian and Sabian theologians and philosophers took part in the teaching and debate sessions of Abū Sahl al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī.²³

In light of such a wide-ranging dialogue, reducing this intellectual heritage to the claim that whatever we have, we have taken from the West and Greece is unjustified and almost laughable. A sound conclusion can only be reached by rereading documents, examining old manuscripts of the third and fourth centuries in libraries, and gaining a deep understanding of the relations among scholars.

Islamic Civilization as a Miracle of the Unfolding of the Prophetic Teachings, and the Criterion of Authenticity in Thought

In my view, if the Holy Qur’an is the first miracle of the noble Prophet (p), his second miracle is the founding of the great Islamic civilization. This faith, in less than a few decades, established the greatest civilizational and scholarly empire of its age. All the sciences and fields of knowledge that took shape in this civilization developed around the understanding and elaboration of the Prophet’s teachings. So the issue is not naive borrowing, but an authenticity born in the midst of scholarly dialogue.

Authenticity does not mean saying something unprecedented and outside tradition. An idea has authenticity when it is within tradition and capable of being mutually understood. That is, within a framework with a defined history, a new angle of vision is opened. Until around the year 300 AH, Islamic kalām consolidated the intellectual system and argumentative principles of its schools within this very tradition.

The Methodology of Theological Implications and the Dialectical “If You Say… I Say” Structure

One of the important components in the formation of kalām was the use of the rule of implications (ilzāmāt). To test a claim, the theologians would draw out its entailments. For example, they would say: if someone affirms God’s oneness but formulates the attributes of the essence in a way that entails multiplicity in the essence or the affirmation of several eternal beings, this logical implication leads him to deny pure tawḥīd or to liken the divine essence to the attributes of contingent beings. To free his belief of such corrupt consequences, the theologian had to examine every branch and possibility and sharpen the boundaries of his own thought.

This practice led to the formation, against the views of opponents, of a method of argument based on the science of dialectic (jadal). This method is expressed in the formula:

إِنْ قُلْتَ… قُلْتُ

“If you say… I say….”

Whether facing a real opponent or a hypothetical one, the structure of this method compelled the theologian to state the claim in the first step, present a proof in the second, and refute anticipated objections and doubts in the third. This exchange of ideas led to a remarkable expansion of theological discussions in the early centuries.

The Shift from Scriptural Proofs to Shared Rational Principles, and the Turn toward Aristotelian Logic

The theologians realized that in scholarly dialogue, especially with those of other beliefs, they could not rely on scriptural proofs (samʿiyyāt). Citing the Qur’an carried no weight for a Christian theologian, nor did citing the two Testaments for a Muslim theologian. Even in disputes within the faith, between Shiʿa and Sunnis or the Muʿtazila, relying on transmitted texts became contentious, except for mass-transmitted (mutawātir) hadiths and agreed-upon Sunna. Hence the need arose to create an argumentative system based purely on shared reason, so that both sides could agree on it.

They discovered that Christian scholars also relied on similar rational foundations, rooted in Greek logic and Aristotle’s demonstrative system. Muslim theologians were acquainted with Aristotelian logic in the late second and early third centuries AH. At first, however, they were cautious about fully accepting it, out of wariness toward foreign sciences. Nevertheless, in their debates with Christians and Manichaeans, they made use of those same methods of argument from early on.

Eventually, in later periods, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī²⁴ separated philosophical theology from logic. In al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl, he stated explicitly that logic is a neutral tool that transcends geography, belongs to all humanity, and does not conflict with religion. For this reason, he himself wrote independent treatises on logic.

The Use of Logic in the Islamic Sciences and the Formation of Dialectical Mutual Understanding

Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī wrote several books on logic and used this tool in his works on kalām, legal theory, and even jurisprudence. Acceptance of this method among Sunnis and the theologians, however, was a slow process. Even so, from the earliest periods a kind of mutual understanding and agreement formed around these argumentative principles. The parties to the dialogue aligned on particular rules so they could debate on that basis.

This gradual agreement helped the theologians develop their own argumentative system and, when an opponent denied something, answer him on those same foundations. This mechanism not only gave the people of kalām a tool for debate but also widened its scope. By the late third century AH, a large part of these foundations had been firmly established.

Theological disputes took shape within such a framework, and this was technically called the “science of dialectic” (ʿilm al-jadal) or dialectical methods. This approach created a kind of shared procedure among theologians of various sects and religions, whether Christian, Muslim, Shiʿi, or Sunni, and allowed them to understand one another properly.

The Debate between al-Sīrāfī and Mattā b. Yūnus: The Question of Language and Logical Thought

A brilliant historical example of this encounter is the famous debate between Abū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī,²⁵ the grammarian, and Abū Bishr Mattā b. Yūnus²⁶ in Baghdad in the early fourth century AH. This debate was recorded in early sources, has been translated into many languages, and has been analyzed many times.

One of the fundamental themes of this debate was whether logic is possible independently of the structure of language. Abū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī, with his Muʿtazilī leanings, argued that logic is not universal but entirely dependent on language. Therefore, one cannot establish a single argumentative structure that applies to all languages, since the process of thinking and reasoning is fully bound up with the vessel of language. This is a very forward-looking view, and today it is seriously pursued in the philosophy of language, which holds mind and language to be inseparable.

On the opposing side, Abū Bishr Mattā b. Yūnus, one of the famous Christian translators and logicians before the time of al-Fārābī and Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī,²⁷ claimed that beyond linguistic differences, there is a universal argumentative system particular to human nature. He considered this logic not dependent on spoken language, but the language of reason and shared human understanding.

After this period too, in the debates of theologians such as Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī²⁸ with the philosophers, the two sides repeatedly stated that they could not grasp the logic of the other side’s statements, because their technical languages did not match. Nevertheless, the theological community gradually moved toward a deeper familiarity with the foundations of Greek philosophy.

The Formation of the Classical Period of Kalām and the Convergence of Textual Structure

Until the end of the third century AH, the structure of the discussions continued in this manner. But from the latter part of that century, prominent theologians of various schools set out to compile comprehensive books. They systematized past achievements in coherent works with a defined thematic order, under the heading of comprehensive theological texts, in which each discussion rested on the results of the preceding ones.

In the Muʿtazilī school, this process took shape with Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī²⁹ and his son Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī. In the Ashʿarī school, it began with Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī and was continued in later generations by his students and successors, such as Ibn Fūrak³⁰ and al-Qāḍī Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī. Among the Imāmiyya, it reached its peak with brilliant figures such as al-Shaykh al-Mufīd and al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā. This period is called the classical period of kalām, the era in which the structure of written texts took on a more precise formulation. The treatise of al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā we are studying belongs precisely to this classical era.

A comparative study of the works of this period shows that the structure and arguments of a Bahshamī Muʿtazilī theological text and of an Imāmī theological work are fully in line in their general principles. If we set aside the chapter on the Imamate, there is no structural difference in the discussions of tawḥīd and the divine attributes between the book of al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Muʿtazilī³¹ and the work of al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā.

Beyond this, in the theological works of the Karaite Jews, who were influenced by Muʿtazilism, if the chapter on prophethood is excluded (because of its discussion of abrogation), it is very difficult in the discussions of tawḥīd to tell whether or not the author was a Muslim. This shared argumentative method was a universal framework for the people of kalām, and all theologians made use of it. Although the kalām of the classical period had not yet been directly influenced by philosophy, it was strongly under the sway of Muʿtazilī frameworks.

The Negative Attitude of the Early Theologians toward Greek Philosophy

Whenever the theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries AH addressed the philosophers, they generally referred to them with labels such as “heretics” (malāḥida), “materialists” (dahriyya), or “the people of hyle” (aṣḥāb al-hayūlā), meaning those who believe in prime matter and the Aristotelian concepts of potentiality and actuality. They criticized them with a negative approach. This opposition was rooted in a superficial acquaintance, because their educational institutions were separate from one another. It rarely happened that a student of a theological circle would attend the lessons of the philosophers.

Despite this structural divide, individuals sometimes encountered one another. For example, in the city of Rayy, where Ibn Sīnā and al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār were contemporaries, there is a report that after someone asked about a statement of ʿAbd al-Jabbār in one of his works, Ibn Sīnā responded to it. Even so, these relations did not amount to a merging or a deep acquaintance between the schools.

Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī: The Dawn of the Link between Kalām and Aristotle’s Physics

This separation of the schools changed with the appearance of Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī.³² He first learned Muʿtazilī kalām in Baghdad and went to Rayy to study with al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār. Beyond his Muʿtazilī affiliation, he became thoroughly devoted to medicine and then to Greek philosophy, and he attended lessons on Aristotle’s Physics with the Christian philosophers of Baghdad, such as Ibn al-Samḥ³³ and Abū al-Faraj ibn al-Ṭayyib.³⁴

There is debate about the order in which he studied. Wilferd Madelung, for instance, believes that he first studied philosophy with Christian teachers and then went to ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s lessons. My view, however, is that he was a Muʿtazilī from the start. After studying with the masters of this school, he saw the similarity of concepts such as substance and accident in kalām and philosophy, and became drawn to Aristotle’s Physics.

His historical importance lies in the fact that the surviving Arabic manuscript of Aristotle’s Physics, prepared in the philosophical circle of Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī, is in the very hand of Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī. He wrote all of his teachers’ lectures and commentaries in the margins of this manuscript, and the contemporary editions of this book are based on this unique manuscript.

The Innovations of Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī and His Dispute with al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā

Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī was the first theologian who, after engaging seriously with philosophy, tried to reconstruct the theological views of the Muʿtazila. His new views no longer matched the foundations of his teacher al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār or his contemporary al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā. It is worth noting that both scholars lived in Baghdad, and both died in exactly the same year, 436 AH.

When al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā wrote al-Shāfī fī al-imāma³⁵ to refute the views of ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī wrote an extensive rebuttal of it. Although that rebuttal is lost, quotations from it survive. Likewise, after al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā composed the treatise al-Muqniʿ fī al-ghayba, which we covered earlier in our lessons, Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī wrote a rebuttal titled Naqḍ al-Muqniʿ. In legal theory, he also produced the weighty book al-Muʿtamad fī uṣūl al-fiqh. By criticizing the Bahshamī school, which al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā and ʿAbd al-Jabbār supported, he founded a distinct path and paved the way for a serious engagement between kalām and philosophy.

Al-Ghazālī and the Re-creation of Ashʿarī Kalām in the Encounter with Ibn Sīnā

After Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī, the theological approach gained more momentum. Before composing Tahāfut al-falāsifa, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī wrote Maqāṣid al-falāsifa, an Arabic recension of Ibn Sīnā’s Dānishnāma-yi ʿAlāʾī, in which he explained Avicennan views with precision. Even before him, the influence of Ibn Sīnā’s intellectual achievements was evident in the works of his teacher, Imām al-Ḥaramayn Abū al-Maʿālī al-Juwaynī.³⁶

The theologians realized that ignoring this philosophical system was no longer possible. Ibn Sīnā’s achievements in the sections on metaphysics in the general sense and in the specific sense in al-Shifāʾ, and his views on existence, the Necessary Existent, and the contingent existent, forced the theologians to respond. Ibn Sīnā himself took a critical stance toward the people of kalām, calling them people of dialectic (jadal) and unworthy of demonstrative debate. Even so, the social influence of the theologians prevented him from ignoring them entirely.

The comprehensive response to philosophy was offered by al-Ghazālī in Tahāfut al-falāsifa. To describe the depth of this change, the words of his Andalusian student, al-Qāḍī Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī,³⁷ are very illuminating. In his works he consistently refers to al-Ghazālī with the Persian word dānishmand (“the scholar”), saying:

قال دانشمند…

“The scholar (dānishmand) said….”

He remarked about his teacher that he plunged into the depths of the philosophers’ foundations and could not fully free himself from them. This assessment fits exactly with contemporary Ghazālī scholarship. It shows that although al-Ghazālī criticized philosophy, his intellectual structure was influenced by it, and he provided a dynamic setting for dialogue between these two fields of thought.

From the School of Khwārazm to the Turning Point of Fakhr al-Rāzī

In the same period, in the land of Khwārazm, a Muʿtazilī theologian named Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad b. al-Malāḥimī,³⁸ who leaned toward the school of Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī and opposed the views of the earlier masters, wrote Tuḥfat al-mutakallimīn fī al-radd ʿalā al-falāsifa, drawing on al-Ghazālī’s critiques. He formally placed kalām in dialogue with the Avicennan system.

The peak of this transformation took form in the intellectual system of Imām Fakhr al-Rāzī. He is counted among the great luminaries of Iran. He first studied Ashʿarī kalām in depth in cities such as Rayy, and then in Khurasan attended the lessons of the commentators on Ibn Sīnā’s works. By writing Sharḥ al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt and fundamentally recasting the structure of discussion in his theological works, he laid a new foundation and brought about a fundamental change in the structure of kalām.

The Transformation of Kalām’s Argumentative System and the Entry of Aristotelian Logic

One of the essential points is that our early theologians did not use Aristotelian logic in their argumentative systems. Yet Aristotelian logic knows no religious or geographical boundaries. Islam, Christianity, Greek or non-Greek, are all the same to it, since logic is responsible for stating the general rules of sound thinking and reasoning. A researcher must establish proofs on the basis of these very rules, and if a logical fallacy occurs somewhere, the religious identity of the speaker does not prevent that argument from being invalid.

Fakhr al-Rāzī, though fundamentally at odds with philosophy, transformed the structure of kalām. In his Sharḥ al-Ishārāt,³⁹ he repeatedly rejects and refutes Ibn Sīnā’s statements. As Khwāja Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī put it in the preface to his own commentary on al-Ishārāt:

لَيْسَ هَذَا بِشَرْحٍ بَلْ هُوَ جَرْحٌ

“This is not a commentary (sharḥ); rather, it is a wounding (jarḥ).”

That is, this book is not a commentary but an attack and a demolition, for the commentator’s task is to explain the author’s aims, whereas you have imposed your own views on the text.

Even so, Fakhr al-Rāzī’s positive contribution was to transform the formulation of kalām and theology. From his time on, the face of theological writing changed completely. This structural approach is clearly visible in the works of later theologians, such as Khwāja Naṣīr’s Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād⁴⁰ and Fakhr al-Rāzī’s al-Muḥaṣṣal. The structure of earlier works, such as those of al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā, differs fundamentally from the arrangement of the Tajrīd or Fakhr al-Rāzī’s works. Although the principles of belief remained constant, after Fakhr al-Rāzī the method of argument and the treatment of comprehensive theological questions entered the stage of philosophical kalām.

Things reached the point that in later centuries, students who wanted to learn the foundations of Avicennan philosophy read the commentaries on Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād instead of the original philosophical texts. These included the “New Commentary” of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Qūshjī (d. 879 AH)⁴¹ and the “Old Commentary” of Shams al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī (d. 749 AH).⁴² These texts had taken on a thoroughly philosophical character.

Thus, the monotheistic creed of Imāmī Shiʿism remained stable in principles such as the oneness of the Real and the affirmation of the attributes of the essence, from the era of al-Shaykh al-Mufīd and al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā to the time of Khwāja Naṣīr and ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī. Its formulation and argumentative form, however, took on a new shape under the influence of the encounter with philosophy.

The Problem of the Obligation of Knowledge and the Invalidity of Imitation in the Principles of Religion

As the discussions grew and massive works were written, such as al-Mughnī fī abwāb al-tawḥīd wa-l-ʿadl⁴³ by al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Muʿtazilī in twenty volumes, a vital question confronted the theologians and jurists. Are ordinary legally responsible believers (mukallafūn), who cannot grasp these difficult arguments or study these lengthy books, among the saved?

The responsible believer stands at a crossroads here. Either he must take up the specialized study of kalām, which is incompatible with the demands of everyday life, or he must resort to imitation (taqlīd) in matters of belief. But imitation in the principles of religion is, by consensus of the theologians and jurists, invalid and without standing. Faith taken through imitation, even from an infallible (a), does not produce knowledge and certainty of the heart. Some jurists have even considered such belief equivalent to a lack of faith.

The Theory of “Jumal al-ʿIlm”: The Sufficiency of a Simple Proof for the General Public

To solve this problem, the theologians put forward the theory that general knowledge of the “essentials of the questions” (jumal al-masāʾil), the cardinal points of doctrine, is sufficient. They hold that for the faith of ordinary believers to be valid, there is no need to master subtle objections and theological disputes. Rather, a general and simple argument that brings certainty and peace of mind is enough.

For example, if a layperson says that things which did not exist before have now come into being, so something must have brought them about, this general notion of origination is sufficient to prove the Maker. As long as the philosophers’ doubts, about perpetual origination (ḥudūth dahrī) as formulated by Mīr Dāmād or about imaginary time, have not entered his mind, that same simple, innate proof will produce true and saving faith. On this basis, al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā named his concise and valuable treatise Jumal al-ʿilm wa-l-ʿamal:⁴⁴

• Jumal al-ʿilm (“the essentials of knowledge”): the general and cardinal points of foundational and doctrinal beliefs.
• Jumal al-ʿamal (“the essentials of practice”): a summary of the general legal duties of the responsible believer.

In such texts, “knowledge” (ʿilm) means beliefs and knowledge of the principles of religion, which count as an act arising from the intellect and the heart. “Practice” (ʿamal) means the legal duties performed by the limbs, such as prayer and fasting. In jurisprudence, one can rely on a concise treatise of practical rulings instead of multivolume encyclopedias such as Jawāhir al-kalām⁴⁵ or the jurisprudential lecture notes of Ayatullah al-Khūʾī. In the same way, in the domain of beliefs, learning the general principles and general proofs is enough to make the responsible believer a Muslim. We will go over the discussions of this noble book in the coming sessions.

Questions and Answers

The Historical Development of Kalām: From the Formative to the Classical Period

Question: Professor, given the audio problems at the start of the lesson, could you please explain again the distinction between the formative period and the classical period of kalām?⁴⁶

Answer: In the tradition of contemporary Islamic studies, the span from the beginning of Islam to the late third century AH is called the “formative and early development period.” In contrast, the “classical period”, corresponding to the concept of the classical and scholastic period (Scholasticism) in the West, begins in the late third century and extends to the era of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī and Fakhr al-Rāzī. In this period, the foundations formed earlier enter disciplined scholastic structures and literature.

Just as in jurisprudence the schools first emerged and then, in the classical period, concise manuals and analytical commentaries on them were written, so in kalām too, books such as Jumal al-ʿilm wa-l-ʿamal represent this era of scholastic expansion and coherence. In this period, a noticeable similarity can be seen between the methodology of al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā’s works and works such as those of Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 403 AH)⁴⁷ or Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī, since both currents breathed in a shared and interactive atmosphere.

Al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā taught in the Karkh quarter of Baghdad, while al-Bāqillānī lived in the eastern areas or the Ḥanbalī neighbourhoods of that city. Students moved between the teaching circles, and scholarly debates took place at the Buyid court. For example, the book al-Fuṣūl al-mukhtāra,⁴⁸ compiled by al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā, is a precise record of these very conversations and disputes in the circle of al-Shaykh al-Mufīd with Sunni theologians, including al-Bāqillānī.

The Tradition of Abridgment in Early Kalām

Question: Regarding lengthy theological texts such as the twenty-volume works, was abridgment done by the authors themselves, or did others abridge them?

Answer: Both practices were common. In most cases, however, leading authors themselves prepared abridged versions, to provide a text suited to teaching and to the use of beginners. Besides his concise treatises, al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā himself wrote the major work al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī uṣūl al-dīn. After it remained unfinished, he expanded its discussions in al-Dhakhīra fī ʿilm al-kalām, a very early and foundational work that has recently been published in four large-format volumes.⁴⁹

The book al-Mughnī fī abwāb al-tawḥīd wa-l-ʿadl⁵⁰ covers everything from the opening discussions of tawḥīd to the topic of the resurrection and its branches, and al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār wrote it in twenty volumes. Interestingly, he also has another book called Mukhtaṣar al-Ḥusnī, which may not even reach twenty pages, and in which he gathers all those extensive discussions. The aim of writing such texts was that anyone wanting a brief and useful acquaintance with these foundations could obtain it. The main reason for compiling such short books was to create standard teaching texts, that is, textbooks.

The Rationale for Concise Texts in the Teaching Tradition of the Seminaries and the Niẓāmiyyas

Especially in the era of the Niẓāmiyya of Baghdad, scholars wrote texts in abridged form. A student studying at the Niẓāmiyya had to learn concise texts of jurisprudence and kalām and had no time to study twenty-volume works. So they made short books the basis of teaching and discussion.

This tradition continues in contemporary jurisprudence as well. In the advanced (khārij) lessons of jurisprudence, where discussions are presented in detail, around seventy to eighty volumes of lecture notes from the late Ayatullah al-Khūʾī have been published, from purity (ṭahāra) to blood money (diyāt). Yet the base text of many of these lessons is al-ʿUrwa al-wuthqā⁵¹ by the late Sayyid Muḥammad Kāẓim Yazdī.

Al-ʿUrwa al-wuthqā is a short text of legal rulings, but many commentaries have been written on it. For example, the late Ayatullah Sayyid Muḥsin al-Ḥakīm wrote a commentary of nearly ten volumes on it, and perhaps more than two hundred commentaries and glosses have been written on this book. The reason for this popularity was that its wording was brief and very effective for teaching. The teacher would read the text in class and then expand and explain it.

The Tradition of Annotation and Text-Based Teaching from the Old Madrasas to Today’s Universities

The same method prevailed in the early centuries. Al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā’s Jumal al-ʿilm wa-l-ʿamal⁵² received attention for this reason, and several commentaries were written on it. One of these commentaries, which, God willing, we will begin reading in the coming sessions, is one that al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā himself produced after writing the book, when he made it the text of his own teaching.

The teaching method in the old madrasas was exactly like that of Western universities today. I studied at the Sorbonne, and I saw that a professor would make a book he had written the basis of his course. He would not read it line by line, but would treat it as the core and explain and elaborate on it.

Al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā likewise taught Jumal al-ʿilm wa-l-ʿamal many times after writing it. Fortunately, one of his students wrote down the master’s words in class. In those days, when there were no recording devices, students turned to rapid note-taking during lessons. This tradition is called taʿlīq (annotation), and in our time taqrīr-nivīsī (writing lecture reports). That student recorded al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā’s teaching. So this work is an oral commentary that the author himself delivered on his own book. Fortunately, this manuscript has survived and has been published in our time.

Others did the same. For example, Ibn al-Barrāj⁵³ wrote a commentary on the jurisprudential part of this book, known as Sharḥ Jumal al-ʿilm wa-l-ʿamal. In this way, short texts became the basis for the commentaries of later scholars. Sometimes the authors themselves abridged their detailed books, and sometimes others abridged the texts of their teachers.

How the Theologians Reached Agreement

Question: In theological debates and disputes, how did the theologians reach conclusions and agreement? Since they apparently had no common standard and each argued on the basis of his own theory, did they reach consensus through dialogue?

Answer: That is a very precise question. In fact, theological thought took shape precisely within these dialogues. The people of kalām exchanged views and debated until, gradually, shared principles and foundations became established for them and they reached a horizon of agreement.

The starting point was that both sides were Muslims and believed in the One God, the prophethood of the Prophet, and the revealed nature of the Qur’an. So they conducted dialogue on this common ground. In areas of disagreement, the Holy Qur’an was also accepted by both sides (musallamun fīhi), and alongside it, rational arguments gradually became coherent.

In this way, agreed-upon principles increased step by step, and propositions took shape on which all Muslims agreed. These matters were no longer disputed, unless a new objection was raised. Through these intellectual exchanges, it became clear what the logical implications are, in questions such as predestination and free will and the divine attributes, if we are committed to the Qur’an and the fundamental beliefs of Islam. In this way, propositions agreed upon among Muslims were established.

Question: Instead of reaching final agreement, did this process not lead to splits and the emergence of various sects?

Answer: Yes, because these agreements had no stopping point, and new ideas and interpretations formed around the very principles that had been agreed upon. The history of theology in Christianity has followed exactly the same pattern. Belief in the Trinity did not exist in this coherent form from the first day. Rather, an initial belief first took shape among groups of Christians, and after a kind of initial agreement was reached, various interpretations arose around it again. The number of these interpretations grew so large that the Orthodox Church of Rome was forced to convene several church councils to fix official doctrine and prevent the collapse of the faith as a whole.

The Fundamental Difference between Ecclesiastical Authoritarianism and Orthodox Tolerance in Islam

In the Christian tradition, it is the institution of the Church that, after many disputes, draws a decisive line and declares that the truth is nothing but this, and whoever opposes it is outside the Church. In this way independent churches formed. In the Islamic world, however, there is no such dogmatic and centralized authority to impose one interpretation and declare others unbelievers. Therefore, theologians could disagree on secondary theological matters while all remaining within the circle of the school.

For example, there were great Shiʿi figures who disagreed with al-Shaykh al-Mufīd on almost all intellectual and theoretical foundations, yet their Shiʿism was, broadly speaking, not in doubt, because they believed in the principle of the wilāya and Imamate of the Commander of the Faithful (a) and in the Book of God.

In the Roman Church, many councils had to be held to distinguish the divine and the human, the concept of the Incarnation, and even the manner of Christ’s Ascension, in order to declare one reading as official orthodoxy. In Islam, no such mechanism exists. The endless theological disputes have their place in theological texts. But when we look at works such as Jumal al-ʿilm wa-l-ʿamal, the picture is much more fluid. The entire doctrinal discussion of this treatise is perhaps about ten to twelve pages. The author says that to be a Twelver Imāmī Shiʿi, a general belief in these very principles and proofs is enough. If you believe in the immediate Imamate of ʿAlī (a), it is enough to know the argument based on texts such as the event of Ghadīr Khumm:

مَنْ كُنْتُ مَوْلَاهُ فَهَذَا عَلِيٌّ مَوْلَاهُ

“Whoever I am his master (mawlā), this ʿAlī is his master.”

The Genre of “What a Muslim Should Not Be Ignorant Of” and the Essence of Religion

Since these teachings are directed at Muslims in general, there is no need for everyone to get involved in theological disputes or to follow the path of mere imitation. The middle way is to reach a general, reasoned belief. Such writings are sometimes classed under the heading mā lā yanbaghī li-l-muslim al-jahl bihi (“what a Muslim should not be ignorant of”): treatises of three or five pages that explain the summary of the pillars of being a Muslim.

Islam is essentially not a religion of complex theology and institutional impositions. Rather, it is a faith of easy belief and easy practice, a tolerant and gentle religion (dīn samḥ sahl), and it contains a fundamental moral system. One should not take the words of the noble Messenger of Islam (p) as mere courtesy:

بُعِثْتُ لِأُتَمِّمَ مَكَارِمَ الْأَخْلَاقِ

“I was sent to perfect noble character.”

In my view, Islam seeks to convey this meaning: O people, you are not in the place of God, and you must not play God over one another. The absolute judge is the Lord; the divine court on the Day of Resurrection is the place of judgment, and all human beings are equal before Him. This is the truth of Islam. Concise theological works such as Jumal al-ʿilm wa-l-ʿamal show that being religious is not difficult, and that a person with a general belief counts among the people of Islam.

Even in the Imāmī school, if a person commits a sin, the sin does not take him out of the circle of religion or make him an unbeliever. His account is with God, but in worldly relations he is a member of the Islamic community, and no one has the authority to expel him. The criterion for entering Islam is the pure word of tawḥīd:

قُولُوا لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ تُفْلِحُوا

“Say: there is no god but God, and you will prosper.”

A Critique of the Salafi Outlook: Confusing a Scholastic Intellectual System with the Essence of Religion

If kalām is written in twenty volumes, it must not be confused with the text of the religious law. Kalām is a scholastic intellectual system, a scholarly craft and profession, and a theoretical effort. But the essence of religion does not fully correspond to these discussions. Our dividing line in Shiʿism with the Salafi currents and the Ahl al-Ḥadīth becomes clear exactly at this point. Salafi thought claims that the smallest ordinary behavior of the Messenger of God (p), even in non-religious matters such as how he rested after a meal, is religious Sunna that must be followed. If anyone acts otherwise, they call it an innovation (bidʿa).

Years ago, at a book fair, I came across a work promoted by one of the followers of this current. It was a book titled Muʿjam al-bidaʿ (Dictionary of Innovations), which arranged new phenomena and practices alphabetically, for instance the ruling on smoking under the entry tadkhīn, to show whether each ordinary act was permissible, disliked, or an innovation. Such an approach results from neglecting the tolerant spirit of Islam and reducing religion to a frozen and rigid circle.

The Expansion of Theological Implications and How It Differs from the Reality of Faith

The aim of the authors of such works was to settle the religious obligations of believers through strict and detailed rulings. This approach is in fact a kind of deviation from the simplicity and authenticity of the original religion. The agreement of the first believers rested on the same initial and fundamental principles around which Islam was founded. But later theologians came and widened this circle.

Their method was to rely on “implications” (ilzāmāt). That is, they would tell their interlocutor: “If you believe in such-and-such a principle, then you must necessarily also believe in this proposition and that theoretical proposition!” This chain of theological implications gradually turned into a broad intellectual culture. These discussions are, of course, very attractive from a theoretical point of view. They have an argumentative apparatus, demonstrative foundations, and precise intellectual disputes, and they acquire a status similar to the philosophy of Ibn Sīnā, the philosophy of al-Fārābī, or the works of Aristotle. But one must never imagine that the reality of faith is anything other than that authentic belief of the heart. Unfortunately, a careful distinction is usually not made between the reality of faith and the argumentative systems of kalām.

The Infallible Imams and Theological Debate

Question: Did the infallible Imams take part in theological discussions? And in the presence of an infallible Imam, whose word is decisive, did engaging in theological disputes have any meaning or necessity?

Answer: The practice of the infallible Imams was never based on closing the door to thought and debate. When we look at the lives of companions such as Hishām b. al-Ḥakam⁵⁴ or Muʾmin al-Ṭāq,⁵⁵ we see that they were actively involved in the theological debates and discussions of their time. The Imams did not intervene to stop them, so long as their beliefs did not leave the framework of the true principles of tawḥīd.

Of course, if someone adopted a belief that conflicted with the fundamental principle of tawḥīd, the Imam would warn him. But in other theoretical areas, the Imams did not forbid engaging through argument. The relationship is similar to someone wanting to read Aristotle’s Physics or its commentaries; the Imam certainly would not intervene in such scholarly and theoretical choices.

The Theological Security of the Shiʿa in Light of the Imam’s Scholarly Authority

Because of this openness and intellectual security, Shiʿi theologians showed much more interest in rational and theological inquiry. Their reasoning was: we engage freely in discussion and rational argument, and if we happen to slip in argument, we have an infallible authority available to whom we can present our words, so that he may distinguish the sound from the unsound. If the Imam said our argument was not incompatible with tawḥīd, we would continue on the path of thought.

For this reason, philosophical and argumentative thought grew remarkably among the Shiʿa. The believers were confident that behind all theoretical explorations there stood an infallible Imam by whose guidance the soundness of beliefs could be measured.

The Debate of Hishām b. al-Ḥakam and the Distinction between Argumentative Proof and the Proof of Faith

This approach can be seen clearly in a report of a debate between Hishām b. al-Ḥakam and his opponents. His interlocutor proposes: “Let the condition of the debate be that whoever is defeated accepts the belief of the other side.” But Hishām gives a principled reply: “If I win, you must follow me. But if I lose, I will never follow you, because I have an infallible Imam, and I return to him to correct my thinking.”

This distinction is very fundamental. Hishām states plainly that these debates are an arena for human argument and theoretical hypotheses, whereas the foundation of religious belief requires a firm proof (ḥujja). The other side relied entirely on his limited mental arguments, and if his argument collapsed, he had no choice but to submit. The Shiʿa, however, while welcoming argument, built the authenticity of their religiosity on the authority of the infallible’s word.

This epistemic backing led the Shiʿa to turn to philosophical and rational discussions with greater boldness and breadth. In contrast, the Ahl al-Ḥadīth among the Sunnis were always afraid of entering rational discussions. They said that entering this field makes a person irreligious, to the point that they spread this notion:

مَنْ تَمَنْطَقَ تَزَنْدَقَ

“Whoever practices logic becomes a heretic.”

Because they had no inner, infallible proof to purify their reason, they feared falling into the whirlpool of skepticism or heresy (zandaqa). The Imāmī theologians, however, trusting in the Imam’s guidance, had no fear of delving even into Aristotelian logic. They knew that if any epistemic dead end arose, they had a divine measure and standard to return to. This theological backing provided the ground for the ever-growing flourishing of philosophy and kalām in Imāmī Shiʿism.

Reconstructing the Hermeneutical Horizon of the Age of Revelation

Question: How can we approach the understanding that the audience of the age of revelation had of fundamental concepts such as tawḥīd or the obligation of zakāt, without our minds being clouded by the background and terminology of later and modern theology, jurisprudence, and philosophy? Given that early Islam involved a simple and unpretentious belief and these detailed discussions formed later, what is the method for reaching that original understanding?

Answer: This question goes back to the fundamental field of hermeneutics and the problem of understanding a text. On the horizon of intellectual history, our task as researchers is to reconstruct the epistemic conditions of that age, so that, for example, we can learn what understanding the students of Imam al-Ṣādiq (a) had of the concept of the Imamate. Reaching such an understanding is entirely possible methodologically. On the basis of methodical principles, we can bring our own intellectual horizon closer to that of the audience of that time.

The Methodology of Early Lexicographers in Extracting the Original Meaning of the Verses

In understanding the text of the Holy Qur’an, the exegetes and lexicographers of the second and third centuries AH also used such a method. To reach the untouched language of the age of revelation, great scholars such as al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī⁵⁶ would set out for the deserts of Syria and the Arabian Peninsula. They would live among the Bedouin Arabs, whose language had not been mixed with urban culture and civilizational changes. They sought the meaning of Qur’anic words in their authentic and untouched context from those same Bedouin Arabs, without necessarily stating that the word came from the Qur’an.

The basis of these scholars’ work was this: when the noble Prophet (p) recited the verses, his contemporaries and the Companions understood the concepts clearly, on the basis of their own natural language, and never said that they did not understand these words. Therefore, to grasp those meanings, the original language of that period, especially the dialect of Quraysh, to whose mode of expression the text of revelation is close, must be taken as the basis.

In the philosophy of interpretation and hermeneutics, the interpreter must be able to approach the intellectual system of the text’s author while also recognizing his own historical distance. The course of development of the Islamic sciences, from kalām and philosophy to jurisprudence, has in fact been a methodical chain of these continuous efforts to understand and reread the foundational text.

Ibn Rushd’s Criticism of Ibn Sīnā and the Question of Reinterpretation in the Islamic Tradition

In this context, one can look at the dispute between Ibn Rushd⁵⁷ and Ibn Sīnā. Ibn Rushd attacks Ibn Sīnā sharply and faults him for sometimes exercising independent judgment in understanding Aristotle’s views, or for saying that Aristotle lacked a sufficient account on some point. He believed the commentator’s role is solely to fully understand Aristotle’s intentions.

The root of Ibn Rushd’s view lay in his jurisprudential and judicial background. He treated Aristotle’s text like a sacred text, whose author’s intended meaning must be recovered. For Ibn Sīnā, by contrast, Aristotelian philosophy was a setting for new reflection and renewed thought.

Throughout the Islamic heritage, these two parallel currents have always been present. On the one hand, there is the effort to come close to the original first understanding. On the other, there is the concern to renew understanding and reread that knowledge within the context of tradition. One should not imagine that these reinterpretations are things outside tradition. Rather, “Islamic tradition” itself has essentially taken shape through these very rereadings and ever-new interpretations.

In kalām too, a text of five or ten pages in the second century AH became, in later centuries, the ground for composing a twenty- or forty-volume encyclopedia such as al-Mughnī by al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār.⁵⁸ All of these volumes are the commentary and elaboration of those initial concise foundations, which, through the theory of interpretation and rereading of the text, established a great scholarly tradition.

We will end this session’s discussion at this point. With thanks to all of you for joining, and with congratulations on the blessed birthday of the noble Prophet (p) and Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (a), we will continue these conversations in the next session.⁵⁹

1. Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Ghazālī al-Ṭūsī (d. 505 AH), the renowned jurist, legal theorist, Ashʿarī theologian, and opponent of philosophy in the Islamic world.
2. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Jubbāʾī (d. 303 AH), one of the greatest leaders of the Basran Muʿtazilī school.
3. ʿAbd al-Salām b. Muḥammad al-Jubbāʾī, known as Abū Hāshim (d. 321 AH), the famous Muʿtazilī theologian and founder of the Bahshamī school in kalām.
4. ʿAbd Allah b. Aḥmad b. Maḥmūd al-Balkhī al-Kaʿbī (d. 319 AH), one of the prominent theologians of the Baghdad Muʿtazilī school.
5. ʿAlī b. Ismāʿīl al-Ashʿarī (d. 324 AH), the great theologian and founder of the Ashʿarī theological school.
6. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī, known as Shaykh al-Ṭāʾifa (d. 460 AH), the eminent Imāmī Shiʿi jurist, hadith scholar, and theologian.
7. Rukn al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad al-Malāḥimī al-Khwārazmī (d. 536 AH), a famous late Muʿtazilī theologian and author of al-Muʿtamad and al-Fāʾiq.
8. A prophetic hadith reported in the sources of both schools, including Ibn Shahrāshūb’s Manāqib Āl Abī Ṭālib and ʿAllāma al-Majlisī’s Biḥār al-anwār.
9. Al-Bayhaqī, al-Sunan al-kubrā, vol. 10, p. 192; al-Ṭabrisī, Majmaʿ al-bayān, vol. 10, p. 500.
10. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831 CE), the famous philosopher of German Idealism.
11. The Dēnkard, the great encyclopedia of Mazdaism in Pahlavi, whose final redaction was completed in Baghdad in the third century AH.
12. Abū Naṣr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Fārābī (d. 339 AH), known as the Second Teacher, the great Islamic philosopher.
13. Iḥṣāʾ al-ʿulūm (The Enumeration of the Sciences), al-Fārābī’s famous work on the classification and definition of the sciences of his time.
14. Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb b. Isḥāq al-Kindī (d. ca. 256 AH), known as the Philosopher of the Arabs.
15. Theologia (the Enneads), attributed to Aristotle, but in reality parts of the Enneads of Plotinus, the Neoplatonic philosopher.
16. Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Rushd al-Andalusī (d. 595 AH), the renowned philosopher of the Islamic West and great commentator on Aristotle.
17. Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī (d. early fourth century AH), a prominent Imāmī theologian and philosopher and author of Firaq al-Shīʿa.
18. Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-ʿĀmirī (d. 381 AH), an Iranian Muslim philosopher who followed the philosophical tradition of Khurasan.
19. Al-Dhakhīra fī ʿilm al-kalām, the most comprehensive theological book of al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn, known as ʿAlam al-Hudā (d. 436 AH).
20. Wilferd Madelung (1930–2023 CE), the eminent German Islamicist and Orientalist.
21. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī (d. 436 AH), the famous Muʿtazilī theologian and legal theorist and founder of a new branch within the Muʿtazilī school.
22. Al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār b. Aḥmad al-Muʿtazilī (d. 415 AH), Shāfiʿī jurist and the greatest late theologian of the Muʿtazilī school of Asadābād.
23. Abū Sahl Ismāʿīl, or al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī, an Imāmī theologian and philosopher of the third and early fourth centuries AH and author of Firaq al-Shīʿa.
24. Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Ghazālī al-Ṭūsī (d. 505 AH), Shāfiʿī jurist, Ashʿarī theologian, and one of the most renowned thinkers of the Islamic world.
25. Al-Ḥasan b. ʿAbd Allah al-Sīrāfī (d. 368 AH), the eminent Basran grammarian, judge, and Muʿtazilī theologian.
26. Mattā b. Yūnus (d. 328 AH), the eminent Nestorian philosopher and translator and teacher of Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī.
27. Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī (d. 364 AH), the eminent Jacobite Christian logician and philosopher of Baghdad and a student of al-Fārābī.
28. ʿAbd al-Salām b. Muḥammad, known as Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī (d. 321 AH), the great Muʿtazilī theologian and founder of the Bahshamī school.
29. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Jubbāʾī (d. 303 AH), the master of the Basran Muʿtazilī theologians.
30. Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan b. Fūrak al-Iṣfahānī (d. 406 AH), the famous Ashʿarī theologian, legal theorist, and exegete.
31. Al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār b. Aḥmad al-Hamadānī (d. 415 AH), chief judge of Rayy and one of the leading late masters of Muʿtazilī kalām.
32. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Ṭayyib, known as Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī (d. 436 AH), the renowned Muʿtazilī theologian and one of the students of al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār.
33. Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. Suwār, known as Ibn al-Samḥ (d. ca. 418 AH), the renowned Christian philosopher and translator of Baghdad.
34. Abū al-Faraj ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Ṭayyib (d. 435 AH), the famous Nestorian philosopher and physician of Baghdad.
35. Al-Shāfī fī al-imāma, al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā’s outstanding work refuting the section on the Imamate in al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s al-Mughnī.
36. ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAbd Allah al-Juwaynī (d. 478 AH), the celebrated Ashʿarī theologian and Shāfiʿī jurist known as Imām al-Ḥaramayn.
37. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allah b. al-ʿArabī al-Maʿāfirī (d. 543 AH), Mālikī jurist, judge of Seville, and a prominent student of al-Ghazālī.
38. Rukn al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad al-Malāḥimī al-Khwārazmī (d. 536 AH), the renowned Muʿtazilī theologian influenced by Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī and teacher of al-Zamakhsharī.
39. Sharḥ al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s critical work on Ibn Sīnā’s book, which led to Khwāja Naṣīr’s rebuttal.
40. Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād (or Tajrīd al-kalām), by Khwāja Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, the most foundational text of Imāmī Shiʿi philosophical kalām.
41. Al-Sharḥ al-jadīd ʿalā al-Tajrīd, by ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Qūshjī, one of the important textbooks of Ashʿarī kalām.
42. Tasdīd al-qawāʿid fī sharḥ Tajrīd al-ʿaqāʾid, known as the Old Commentary on the Tajrīd, by Shams al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Iṣfahānī.
43. Al-Mughnī fī abwāb al-tawḥīd wa-l-ʿadl, the comprehensive twenty-volume work of al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Muʿtazilī on the kalām of the Muʿtazila of Asadābād.
44. Jumal al-ʿilm wa-l-ʿamal, the condensed work of al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā ʿAlam al-Hudā setting out the essentials of doctrine and legal rulings.
45. Jawāhir al-kalām fī sharḥ Sharāʾiʿ al-Islām, the encyclopedia of Shiʿi demonstrative jurisprudence in 43 volumes, by Shaykh Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Najafī.
46. In the original audio: thanks for the lesson and mention of the internet outage at the start of class.
47. Muḥammad b. al-Ṭayyib Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī, the eminent Ashʿarī theologian and legal theorist in Baghdad.
48. Al-Fuṣūl al-mukhtāra min al-ʿuyūn wa-l-maḥāsin, al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā’s reports of the debates of his teacher al-Shaykh al-Mufīd with Sunni scholars.
49. Al-Dhakhīra fī ʿilm al-kalām, al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā’s most comprehensive theological book, recently published in four volumes.
50. The monumental twenty-volume theological work of al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Muʿtazilī, one of the most comprehensive references of Muʿtazilī kalām.
51. The enduring jurisprudential and fatwa work of Sayyid Muḥammad Kāẓim al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī al-Yazdī, presenting legal rulings in concise form.
52. A concise and condensed theological and jurisprudential treatise by al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā ʿAlam al-Hudā.
53. Al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. al-Barrāj al-Ṭarābulusī, the renowned Imāmī jurist of the fifth century AH and a student of al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā and Shaykh al-Ṭūsī.
54. Abū Muḥammad Hishām b. al-Ḥakam al-Kūfī (d. ca. 179 or 199 AH), one of the most prominent Imāmī theologians and a close companion of Imams al-Ṣādiq and al-Kāẓim (a).
55. Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Nuʿmān al-Kūfī, known as Muʾmin al-Ṭāq, a famous Shiʿi jurist and theologian of the second century AH and a companion of Imam al-Ṣādiq (a).
56. Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī (100–170 or 175 AH), the eminent Basran man of letters and lexicographer, author of Kitāb al-ʿAyn, the first compiled Arabic dictionary.
57. Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Rushd al-Andalusī (520–595 AH), philosopher, Mālikī jurist, and great commentator on the texts of Aristotle in al-Andalus.
58. Abū al-Ḥasan al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār b. Aḥmad al-Hamadānī (ca. 324–415 AH), Shāfiʿī jurist and one of the greatest Muʿtazilī theologians, author of the encyclopedic al-Mughnī fī abwāb al-tawḥīd wa-l-ʿadl.
59. In the original audio, closing courtesies were exchanged between the host and the professor: “Thank you very much, Doctor, for your trouble; we truly benefited… Many thanks… Goodbye, everyone.”