Ash-Sha´rani of Cairo (d. 973) is typical of the later orthodox Sufi. He was a follower of Ibn `Arabi on general lines but without his pantheism. His writings are a strange mixture of lofty speculation and lowly superstition, his life was full of intercourse with jinns and other supernatural beings. The truth, he states, is not to be reached by the aid of reason, but only by ecstatic vision. The wali is the man who possesses the gift of illumination (ilham), or direct apprehension of the spiritual, but that grace differs from the inspiration (wahy) bestowed upon the prophets, and the wali must submit to the guidance of prophetic revelations. All walis are essentially under the qutb, but the qutb is inferior to the companions of Muhammad. Whatever rule (tariqa) a darwish follows he is guided by God, but ash-Sha´rani himself preferred the rule of al-Junayd. The varying opinions of the canonists are adapted to the different needs of men. Ash-Sha´rani was the founder of a darwish order which forms a subdivision of the Badawiya (cf. above). His writings have considerable influence in modern Islam, and form the programme of those who advocate a neo-Sufi reformation.
CHAPTER VIII
ORTHODOX SCHOLASTICISM
The formation of an orthodox scholasticism within the Muslim church appears as a development spread over the 4th-5th centuries of the Hijra (10-11 cent. A.D.), and is in three strata associated with the three leaders, al-Ash`ari, al-Baqilani, and al-Ghazali. Such a development, of course, is principally of interest for the internal history of Islam and the evolution of Muslim theology, but it had its influence also on the transmission of Arabic thought to Latin Christendom in two ways: (i.) directly, in that al-Ghazali was established as one of the great Arabic authorities when the Latins began to study the interpreters of Aristotle, and his teaching is quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas and other scholastic writers; and (ii.) indirectly, because a considerable part of the work of Ibn Rushd (Averroes) takes the form of controversy against the followers of al-Ghazali; his Destruction of the Destruction, for example, is a refutation of al-Ghazali’s Destruction of the Philosophers. It thus becomes imperative to know something about the position and teaching of al-Ghazali and the influences which prepared the way for his work.
Such a movement as orthodox scholasticism was inevitable. The position at the end of the third century was quite impossible. The orthodox Muslim adhered strictly to tradition, and entirely refused to admit “innovation” (bid`a): he had been forced into this position as a reaction against his earlier ready acceptance of Plato and Aristotle as inspired teachers, for the later errors of the Mu`tazilites showed what extremely dangerous conclusions could be drawn by those who came under Hellenistic influence, and the more accurately the Greek philosophers were studied the worse the heresies gathered from them. Orthodox thought held itself carefully aloof from the Mu`tazilites and philosophers on the one side, and from the Shi`ites and Sufis on the other, confining itself to the safe studies of Qur´an exegesis, tradition, and the canon law in which at Baghdad the reactionary influence of Ibn Hanbal was predominant. The whole of the third century had been a time of reaction on the part of the orthodox, very largely due to the unfortunate attempt of al-Ma´mun to force rationalism on his subjects. Al-Ghazali tells us in his “Confessions” that some sincere Muslims felt themselves bound to reject all the exact sciences as of dangerous tendency, and so repudiated scientific theories as to eclipses of the sun and moon. All speculation lay under a ban, because it led to “innovation” in belief or in practice; it was contrary to orthodoxy to use the methods of Greek philosophy to prove revealed doctrine as much as it was to impugn it, for both alike were innovations on the traditional usage; nothing was known of spiritual matters save what is actually stated in the Qur´an and tradition, and from this nothing could be deduced by the use of argument, for logic itself was a Greek innovation, at least as applied to theology: only that was known which was actually stated, and no explanation of the statement was lawful. Thus, when Ahmad ibn Hanbal was examined by the inquisitors of al-Ma´mun he replied only by quoting the words of the Qur´an or tradition, refusing to draw any conclusions from these statements and admitting no conclusions drawn, keeping silence when arguments were proposed to him, and protesting that such examination as to religious belief was itself an innovation.
This position was hardly satisfactory to those who had inherited any part of the Hellenic tradition, and it ultimately became impossible. An organic body which cannot adapt itself to its surroundings is doomed to decay. The Islamic state had sufficient vitality to meet the new conditions introduced by its expansion to Syria and Persia, and now the time had come for Islamic theology to adapt itself to the new thought that was invading it. As we have seen, the philosophers al-Kindi and al-Farabi were loyal Muslims, and had no suspicion that their investigations were leading to heretical conclusions, and such was undoubtedly the case with the earlier Mu`tazilites also, but results had justified the orthodox in a suspicious attitude towards “argument” (kalam). Now, towards the close of the third century the attempt to find an orthodox kalam appears as a movement which originates with the Mu`tazilites, of whom a section of the more conservative sought to return to an orthodox stand-point, and to use kalam in theology in defence of the traditional beliefs as against the heretical conclusions which were in circulation. Following a somewhat later usage we may employ this term kalam to denote an orthodox philosophical theology, that is to say, one in which the methods of philosophy were used, but the primary material was obtained from revelation, and thus one which was closely parallel with the scholastic theology of Latin Christendom.
We have cited the name of al-Ash`ari as representative of the first stage of this movement, but it is equally represented by the contemporary al-Mataradi in Samarqand and by at-Tahawi in Egypt. Of these, however, at-Tahawi has quite passed into oblivion. For long the Ash`arites and the Mataridites formed rival orthodox schools of kalam, and al-Mataridi’s system still has a certain vogue amongst Turkish Muslims, but the Ash`arite system is that which commands the widest assent. Theologians reckon thirteen points of difference between the two schools, all of purely theoretical importance.