Kalām Studies – serie

This study explores the ways in which theological ideas regarding the nature of God shaped the jurisprudential and legal landscape of Islam. Focusing on the traditionalist theological and jurisprudential thought of Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728/1328) and Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 751/1350), this study traces the way in which these towering scholars critiqued the dominant theological-jurisprudential tradition of their day, which was influenced by dialectical theology. Against the dialectical theologians, Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim argued that an authentically fideist, consistent and rational theory of Islamic law could only emerge from an acceptance of the reality of God’s voluntary attributes.

Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī’s (d. 465/1072) theological oeuvres remain eclipsed by his celebrated achievements in Sufism, with prevailing scholarly assertions that he is a mere repeater of Ashʿarite views and that his theology plays an apologetic role within al-Risālat al-Qushayriyya, anchoring its esoteric content to orthodoxy. Against this backdrop, the present study investigates al-Qushayrī’s theology, in the light of intellectual developments in the fourth-fifth/tenth-eleventh centuries. His views are critically analysed on prominent epochal issues across his three most voluminous theological creeds, Lumaʿ fī al-iʿtiqād, al-Fuṣūl fī al-uṣūl and al-Risāla. Key topics include God’s attributes; His relationship with man; and epistemological concerns. The thesis argues that al-Qushayrī’s theology is, contrary to prevailing views, neither homogenous, nor entirely Ashʿarite. It reveals that his variegated theology is shaped by teleological forces. Al-Lumaʿ shows a traditionalist bent, whereas al-Fuṣūl is distinctly semi-rationalist. In al-Risāla, he lays the foundations of a mystical theology that governs the Sufi schema, whilst simultaneously delimiting the relevance of Ashʿarite doctrines to the mere confines of the masses.

Ibn Taymiyya is commonly characterized as a fundamentalist advocate of “sola scriptura” despite the findings of new research which demonstrate his participation in the “Avicennan-turn” of post-classical Islamic thought.  The text, edited and published here in Arabic and English for the first time as The Defense of Ibn Taymiyya, is an important record of how, just a few decades after Ibn Taymiyya’s death, he was accused of Avicennism and defended from that accusation by one of his last living disciples.  Ibn Qāḍī al-Jabal’s Defense shows the reader another side of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought, fully articulate in the metaphysics of post-classical Islamic philosophy, and suing for respectability within its intellectual circles.  It is a scholarly apologia with a literary flair, making vivid reference to personal tutelage under Ibn Taymiyya himself, citing literary documents for his distinct theological theses while observing Mamluk conventions of respectability.  Among its findings is the importance of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and his interpreters for establishing Ibn Taymiyya’s intellectual horizons, as this publication aims to both provoke and answer enduring questions about Ibn Taymiyya’s status in the history of Islamic theology and philosophy.