CHAPTER III

The rise of orthodox kalam; al-Ash'ari; decline of the Mu'tazilites; passing of heresy into unbelief; development of scholastic theology by Ash'arites; rise of Zahirite kalam; Ibn Hazm; persecution of Ash'arites; final assimilation of kalam.

As we have already seen, the traditionalist party at first refused to enter upon any discussion of sacred things. Malik ibn Anas used to say, "God's istiwa (settling Himself firmly upon His throne) is known; how it is done is unknown; it must be believed; questions about it are an innovation (bid'a)." But such a position could not be held for any length of time. The world cannot be cut in two and half assigned to faith and half to reason. So, as time went on, there arose on the orthodox side men who, little by little, were prepared to give a reason for the faith that was in them. They thus came to use kalam in order to meet the kalam of the Mu'tazilites; they became mutakallims, and the scholastic theology of Islam was founded. It is the history of this transfer of method which we have now to consider.

Its beginnings are wrapped in a natural obscurity. It was at first a gradual, unconscious drift, and people did not recognize its existence. Afterward, when they looked back upon it, the tendency of the human mind to ascribe broad movements to single men asserted itself and the whole was put under the name

of al-Ash'ari. It is true that with him, in a sense, the change suddenly leaped to self-consciousness, but it had already been long in progress. As we have seen, al-Junayd discussed the unity of God, but it was behind closed doors. Ash-Shafi'i held that there should be a certain number of men trained thus to defend and purify the faith, but that it would be a great evil if their arguments should become known to the mass of the people. Al-Muhasibi, a contemporary of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, was suspected, and rightly, of defending his faith with argument, and thereby incurred Ahmad's displeasure. Another contemporary of Ahmad's, al-Karabisi (d. 345), incurred the same displeasure, and the list might easily be extended. But the most significant fact of all is that the movement came to the surface and showed itself openly at the same time in the most widely separated lands of Islam. In Mesopotamia there was al-Ash'ari, who died after 320 ; in Egypt there was at-Tahawi, who died in 331; in Samarqand there was al-Mataridi, who died in 333. Of these at-Tahawi is now little more than a name; al-Mataridi's star has paled before that of al-Ash'ari; al-Ash'ari has come in popular view to be the solitary hero before whom the Mu'tazilite system went down. It will perhaps be sufficient if we take his life and experiences as our guide in this period of change; the others must have followed very much in the same path.

He was born at al-Basra in 260, the year in which al-Kindi died and Muhammad al-Muntazar vanished from the sight of men. He came into a world full of intellectual ferment; Alids of different camps were