A Literary History of the Arabs

by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

The two main types of zandaqa which have been described above are illustrated in the contemporary poets, Bashshár b. Bashshár b. Burd. Burd and Ṣáliḥ b. ‘Abd al-Quddús. Bashshár was born stone-blind. The descendant of a noble Persian family—though his father, Burd, was a slave—he cherished strong national sentiments and did not attempt to conceal his sympathy with the Persian clients (Mawálí), whom he was accused of stirring up against their Arab lords. He may also have had leanings towards Zoroastrianism, but Professor Bevan has observed that there is no real evidence for this statement,[702] though Zoroastrian or Manichæan views are probably indicated by the fact that he used to dispute with a number of noted Moslem theologians in Baṣra, e.g., with Wáṣil b. ‘Aṭá, who started the Mu‘tazilite heresy, and ‘Amr b. ‘Ubayd. He and Ṣáliḥ b. ‘Abd al-Quddús were put to death by the Caliph Mahdí in the same year (783 a.d.).

This Ṣáliḥ belonged by birth or affiliation to the Arab tribe of Azd. Of his life we know little beyond the circumstance Ṣáliḥ b. ‘Abd al-Quddús. that he was for some time a street-preacher at Baṣra, and afterwards at Damascus. It is possible that his public doctrine was thought dangerous, although the preachers as a class were hand in glove with the Church and did not, like the Lollards, denounce religious abuses.[703] His extant poetry contains nothing heretical, but is wholly moral and didactic in character. We have seen, however, in the case of Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya, that Muḥammadan orthodoxy was apt to connect 'the philosophic mind' with positive unbelief; and Ṣáliḥ appears to have fallen a victim to this prejudice. He was accused of being a dualist (thanawí), i.e., a Manichæan. Mahdí, it is said, conducted his examination in person, and at first let him go free, but the poet's fate was sealed by his confession that he was the author of the following verses:—

"The greybeard will not leave what in the bone is bred Until the dark tomb covers him with earth o'erspread; For, tho' deterred awhile, he soon returns again To his old folly, as the sick man to his pain."[704]

Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí, himself a bold and derisive critic of Muḥammadan dogmas, devotes an interesting section of his Risálatu ’l-Ghufrán to the Zindíqs, and says many hard things about them, which were no Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí on the Zindíqs. doubt intended to throw dust in the eyes of a suspicious audience. The wide scope of the term is shown by the fact that he includes under it the pagan chiefs of Quraysh; the Umayyad Caliph Walíd b. Yazíd; the poets Di‘bil, Abú Nuwás, Bashshár, and Ṣáliḥ b. ‘Abd al-Quddús; Abú Muslim, who set up the ‘Abbásid dynasty; the Persian rebels, Bábak and Mázyár; Afshín, who after conquering Bábak was starved to death by the Caliph Mu‘taṣim; the Carmathian leader al-Jannábí; Ibnu ’l-Ráwandí, whose work entitled the Dámigh was designed to discredit the 'miraculous' style of the Koran; and Ḥusayn b. Manṣúr al-Ḥalláj, the Ṣúfí martyr. Most of these, one may admit, fall within Abu ’l-‘Alá’s definition of the Zindíqs: "they acknowledge neither prophet nor sacred book." The name Zindíq, which is applied by Jáḥiẓ († 868 a.d.) to certain wandering monks,[705] seems in the first instance to have been used of Manes (Mání) and his followers, and is no doubt derived, as Professor Bevan has suggested, from the zaddíqs, who formed an elect class in the Manichæan hierarchy.[706]

II. The official recognition of Rationalism as the State religion came to an end on the accession of Mutawakkil in 847 a.d. The new Caliph, who owed his throne to the Turkish Prætorians, could not have devised a surer means of making himself popular than by standing forward as the The Orthodox Reaction. avowed champion of the faith of the masses. He persecuted impartially Jews, Christians, Mu‘tazilites, Shí‘ites, and Ṣúfís—every one, in short, who diverged from the narrowest Sunnite orthodoxy. The Vizier Ibn Abí Du’ád, who had shown especial zeal in his conduct of the Mu‘tazilite Inquisition, was disgraced, and the bulk of his wealth was confiscated. In Baghdád the followers of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal went from house to house terrorising the citizens,[707] and such was their fanatical temper that when Ṭabarí, the famous divine and historian, died in 923 a.d., they would not allow his body to receive the ordinary rites of burial.[708] Finally, in the year 935 a.d., the Caliph Ráḍí issued an edict denouncing them in these terms: "Ye assert that your ugly, ill-favoured faces are in the likeness of the Lord of Creation, and that your vile exterior resembles His, and ye speak of the hand, the fingers, the feet, the golden shoes, and the curly hair (of God), and of His going up to Heaven and of His coming down to Earth.... The Commander of the Faithful swears a binding oath that unless ye refrain from your detestable practices and perverse tenets he will lay the sword to your necks and the fire to your dwellings."[709] Evidently the time was ripe for a system which should reconcile the claims of tradition and reason, avoiding the gross anthropomorphism of the extreme Ḥanbalites on the one side and the pure rationalism of the advanced Mu‘tazilites (who were still a power to be reckoned with) on the other. It is a frequent experience that great intellectual or religious movements rising slowly and invisibly, in response, as it were, to some incommunicable want, suddenly find a distinct interpreter with whose name they are henceforth associated for ever. The man, in this case, was Abu ’l-Ḥasan al-Ash‘arí. He belonged to a noble and traditionally orthodox family of Yemenite origin. One of his ancestors was Abú Músá al-Ash‘arí, who, as the reader will recollect, played a somewhat inglorious part in the arbitration between ‘Alí and Abu ’l-Ḥasan al-ash‘arí. Mu‘áwiya after the battle of Ṣiffín.[710] Born in 873-874 a.d. at Baṣra, a city renowned for its scientific and intellectual fertility, the young Abu ’l-Ḥasan deserted the faith of his fathers, attached himself to the freethinking school, and until his fortieth year was the favourite pupil and intimate friend of al-Jubbá’í († 915 a.d.), the head of the Mu‘tazilite party at that time. He is said to have broken with his teacher in consequence of a dispute as to whether God always does what is best (aṣlaḥ) for His creatures. The story is related as follows by Ibn Khallikán (De Slane's translation, vol. ii, p. 669 seq.):—

Ash‘arí proposed to Jubbá’í the case of three brothers, one of whom was a true believer, virtuous and pious; the second an infidel, a debauchee and a reprobate; and the third an infant: Story of the three brothers. they all died, and Ash‘arí wished to know what had become of them. To this Jubbá’í answered: "The virtuous brother holds a high station in Paradise; the infidel is in the depths of Hell, and the child is among those who have obtained salvation."[711] "Suppose now," said Ash‘arí, "that the child should wish to ascend to the place occupied by his virtuous brother, would he be allowed to do so?" "No," replied Jubbá’í, "it would be said to him: 'Thy brother arrived at this place through his numerous works of obedience towards God, and thou hast no such works to set forward.'" "Suppose then," said Ash‘arí, "that the child say: 'That is not my fault; you did not let me live long enough, neither did you give me the means of proving my obedience.'" "In that case," answered Jubbá’í, "the Almighty would say: 'I knew that if I had allowed thee to live, thou wouldst have been disobedient and incurred the severe punishment (of Hell); I therefore acted for thy advantage.'" "Well," said Ash‘arí, "and suppose the infidel brother were to say: 'O God of the universe! since you knew what awaited him, you must have known what awaited me; why then did you act for his advantage and not for mine?" Jubbá’í had not a word to offer in reply.

Soon afterwards Ash‘arí made a public recantation. One Friday, while sitting (as his biographer relates) in the chair Ash‘arí's conversion to orthodoxy. from which he taught in the great mosque of Baṣra, he cried out at the top of his voice: "They who know me know who I am: as for those who do not know me I will tell them. I am ‘Alí b. Ismá‘íl al-Ash‘arí, and I used to hold that the Koran was created, that the eyes of men shall not see God, and that we ourselves are the authors of our evil deeds. Now I have returned to the truth; I renounce these opinions, and I undertake to refute the Mu‘tazilites and expose their infamy and turpitude."[712]

These anecdotes possess little or no historical value, but illustrate the fact that Ash‘arí, having learned all that the Mu‘tazilites could teach him and having thoroughly mastered their dialectic, turned against them with deadly force the weapons which they had put in his hands. His doctrine on the subject of free-will may serve to exemplify the method of Kalám (Disputation) by which he propped up the orthodox creed.[713] Here, as in other instances, Ash‘arí took Ash‘arí as the founder of Scholastic Theology. the central path—medio tutissimus—between two extremes. It was the view of the early Moslem Church—a view justified by the Koran and the Apostolic Traditions—that everything was determined in advance and inscribed, from all eternity, on the Guarded Tablet (al-Lawḥ al-Maḥfúẓ), so that men had no choice but to commit the actions decreed by destiny. The Mu‘tazilites, on the contrary, denied that God could be the author of evil and insisted that men's actions were free. Ash‘arí, on his part, declared that all actions are created and predestined by God, but that men have a certain subordinate power which enables them to acquire the actions previously created, although it produces no effect on the actions themselves. Human agency, therefore, was confined to this process of acquisition (kasb). With regard to the anthropomorphic passages in the Koran, Ash‘arí laid down the rule that such expressions as "The Merciful has settled himself upon His throne," "Both His hands are spread out," &c., must be taken in their obvious sense without asking 'How?' (bilá kayfa). Spitta saw in the system of Ash‘arí a successful revolt of the Arabian national spirit against the foreign ideas which were threatening to overwhelm Islam,[714] a theory which does not agree with the fact that most of the leading Ash‘arites were Persians.[715] Von Kremer came nearer the mark when he said "Ash‘arí's victory was simply a clerical triumph,"[716] but it was also, as Schreiner has observed, "a victory of reflection over unthinking faith."

The victory, however, was not soon or easily won.[717] Many of the orthodox disliked the new Scholasticism hardly less than the old Rationalism. Thus it is not surprising to read in the Kámil of Ibnu ’l-Athír under the year 456 a.h. = 1063-4 a.d., that Alp Arslán's Vizier, ‘Amídu ’l-Mulk al-Kundurí, having obtained his master's permission to have curses pronounced against the Ráfiḍites (Shí‘ites) from the pulpits of Khurásán, included the Ash‘arites in the same malediction, and that the famous Ash‘arite doctors, Abu ’l-Qásim al-Qushayrí and the Imámu ’l-Ḥaramayn Abu ’l-Ma‘álí al-Juwayní, left the country in consequence. The great Niẓámu ’l-Mulk exerted himself on behalf of the Ash‘arites, and the Niẓámiyya College, which he founded in Baghdád in the year 1067 a.d., was designed to propagate their system of theology. But the man who stamped it with the impression of his own powerful genius, fixed its ultimate form, and established it as the universal creed of orthodox Islam, was Abú Ḥámid al-Ghazálí (1058-1111 a.d.). We have already sketched the outward course of his life, and need only recall that he lectured at Baghdád in the Niẓámiyya College for four years (1091-1095 a.d.).[718] At the end of that time he retired from the world as a Ṣúfí, and so brought to a calm and fortunate close the long spiritual travail which he has himself described in the Munqidh mina ’l-Ḍalál, or 'Deliverer from Error.'[719] We must now attempt to give the reader some notion of this work, both on account of its singular psychological interest and because Ghazálí's search for religious truth exercised, as will shortly appear, a profound and momentous influence upon the future history of Muḥammadan thought. It begins with these words:—