Обсуждение:Сотворённость Корана

Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE

Создание Корана как речи Бога (kalām Allāh) стало основой жарких споров во втором / восьмом веке, которые имели серьезные богословские и политические последствия. Спор противоречил требованию некоторых диалектических богословов (мутакаллимун) о том, что Коран, который известен людям в его устных и письменных формах, был создан (махлук) Богом. Доктрина созданного Корана (хал аль-Коран) была аргументирована и защищена главным образом, но не исключительно, теологической теорией Мутазили. Некоторые шииты, в частности секта Зайди (Fiver), также подписались на убеждение, что Коран был создан. Он был решительно настроен против традиционалистских ученых-хадитов и других публичных интеллектуалов-суннитов, особенно в школе теологии Аш’ари, которая твердо придерживалась того, что Коран был необработанным (ghayr makhlūq) божественным словом Божьим, подразумевая, что он был и вечен , В Коране термин халк обозначает естественный мир и все существование как творение Бога. Позднее мутакаллимун приписывается Джаму б. Ṣafwān (d. 128 / 745-6) и его последователей утверждают, что это означало, что только Бог был вечен и что Небеса и Ад и Небесная Скрижаль (al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ), мифический Urtext of the Qur'ān, были созданы , Те богословы, которые утверждали, что Коран был создан, не отрицали, что это было откровением от Бога, но считали, что люди получили божественную речь Бога в форме звуков и письменных материалов. Это был по существу аргумент в отношении онтологии божественной речи в контексте человека, существа. Народное восстание вспыхнуло в 218/833 году, когда халиф аль-Мамун в последний год своего царствования возбудил инквизицию (миньну), требуя от qāḍī (судей) и других государственных служащих публично заявить о доктрине создания Коран. Независимо от того, был ли аль-Мамун Мутазили, все ещё обсуждается учеными. Известный юрист и ученый ḥadīth, Aḥmad b. Ḥанбал (д. 241/855) отказался от ордена халифа и был заключен в тюрьму на несколько лет, став тем самым героем суннистской ортодоксии. В поддержку его дела были большие демонстрации за пределами тюрьмы. Его современник Ибн Куллаб (д. 241/855) напал на учения Джахма и Мутазили о созданном Коране. Многие взгляды Ибн Куллаба были разработаны и стали нормативными в третьем / девятом веке, в новой богословской школе, основанной Абу-ласаном аль-Ашари (д. 324 / 935-6). Инквизиция была отменена в 234/848 третьим преемником аль-Мамуна, халифом аль-Мутавакилом (р. 232-47 / 847-61). Отмена инквизиции и рост школы Ашари в третьем / девятом веке была главной причиной уменьшения влияния богословов Му’тазили и отказа от учения о создании Корана суннитским ортодоксией. В четвёртом-десятом веке мутазили-богословы из школы в Басре защищали доктрину созидания Корана. В пятом / одиннадцатом столетии qāḍī 'Abd al-Jabbār (d. 414 / 1024-5) посвятил весь седьмой том своего магнумного опуса аль-Мугни защите оборонительного хал-аль-Корана. Его аргумент суммируется следующим образом в Sharḥ al uṣūl al-khamsa: Коран — это речь Бога и его откровение (wahy) … Он создан (махлук) и производится (мудат). Бог послал его своему Пророку … чтобы у нас были правила, о которых мы могли бы говорить о том, что разрешено и что запрещено … Поэтому Коран — это то, что мы слышим и читаем сегодня. [Это] приписывается [Богу], на самом деле, так же, как стихи, которые мы могли бы прочесть сегодня [может быть] поэзию Имру аль-Кайса [доисламского поэта] на самом деле, хотя он не производит их сейчас [когда мы читаем их] ("Абд аль-Джаббар, 528). "Современный противник Аш’ари Абд аль-Джаббар, Абу Бакр аль-Бакиллани (д. 403/1013) выдвинул несколько аргументов, чтобы опровергнуть создание Корана, основанное на знаменитом отрывке: " За все, что Мы [Бог] пожелали, мы говорим это «есть», и, следовательно, это "(аль-Бакиллани, 268-84). Шанбалистский традиционалистский критик Мутазили и ашарского богословия Таки-дин б. Таймийя (д. 728/1328) утверждал, что Ибн Шанбал не утверждал, что Коран был либо создан, либо вечен, только то, что это была речь Бога. Некоторые модернистские мусульманские писатели по германской терминологии Корана, такие как Нашр Шамид Абу Зайд (d. 2010) и Мохаммед Аркун (d. 2010), высказались за пересмотр обоснованности утверждения о том, что Коран создан на основе современных лингвистических и герменевтической теории, но их взгляды не были приняты большинством мусульманских мыслителей сунни.

The createdness of the Qurʾān as God’s speech (kalām Allāh) became the basis of a heated controversy in the second/eighth century that had serious theological and political consequences. The controversy was over the claim of some dialectical theologians (mutakallimūn) that the Qurʾān, which is known to humans in its oral and written forms, was created (makhlūq) by God. The doctrine of the created Qurʾān (khalq al-Qurʾān) was argued and defended chiefly, but not exclusively, by the Muʿtazilī school of theology. Some Shīʿīs, particular the Zaydī (Fiver) sect also subscribed to the belief that the Qurʾān was created. It was strenuously opposed by traditionalist ḥadīth scholars and other Sunnī public intellectuals, most notably by the Ashʿarī school of theology, which held firmly that the Qurʾān was the uncreated (ghayr makhlūq) divine word of God, with the implication that it was and is eternal. In the Qurʾān, the term khalq denotes the natural world and all existence as God’s creation. Later mutakallimūn attributed to Jahm b. Ṣafwān (d. 128/745-6) and his followers the claim that this meant that only God was eternal and that Heaven and Hell and the Heavenly Tablet (al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ), the mythical Urtext of the Qurʾān, were created. Those theologians who asserted that the Qurʾān was created did not deny that it was a revelation from God but held that humans received God’s divine speech in the form of sounds and written materials. It was essentially an argument about the ontology of divine speech in the human, creaturely context. A public uprising broke out in 218/833, when the caliph al-Maʾmūn, in the final year of his reign, instituted an inquisition (miḥna) requiring qāḍīs (judges) and other civil servants to affirm publicly the doctrine of the createdness of the Qurʾān. Whether or not al-Maʾmūn was a Muʿtazilī is still debated by scholars. The well-known jurist and ḥadīth scholar, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), refused the caliph’s order and was imprisoned for several years, thereby becoming a hero of Sunnī orthodoxy. There were large demonstrations outside the prison in support of his cause. His contemporary, Ibn Kullāb (d. c. 241/855), attacked the teachings of Jahm and the Muʿtazilīs about the created Qurʾān. Many of Ibn Kullāb’s views were developed and became normative in the third/ninth century, in the new school of theology founded by Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935-6). The inquisition was reversed in 234/848 by al-Maʾmūn’s third successor, the caliph al-Mutawakkil (r. 232-47/847-61). The reversal of the inquisition and the rise of the Ashʿarī school in the third/ninth century was a major cause of the diminishing influence of Muʿtazilī theologians and the rejection of the doctrine of the createdness of the Qurʾān by Sunnī orthodoxy. In the fourth/tenth century, Muʿtazilī theologians of the Basra school defended the doctrine of the createdness of the Qurʾān. In the fifth/eleventh century, the qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 414/1024-5) devoted the entire seventh volume of his magnum opus, al-Mughnī, to the defense of khalq al-Qurʾān. His argument is summarised as follows in the Sharḥ al uṣūl al-khamsa: The Qurʾān is the speech of God and his revelation (wahy)… It is created (makhlūq) and produced (muḥdath). God sent it down to his Prophet…so that we could have rules to which we could refer concerning what is permitted and what is forbidden… Therefore, the Qurʾān is that which we hear and recite today. [It] is attributed to [God], in reality, just as the poems we might recite today [may be] the poetry of Imruʾ al-Qays [a pre-Islamic poet] in reality, even though he is not producing them now [when we recite them] (ʿAbd al-Jabbār, 528). ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s contemporary Ashʿarī opponent, Abū Bakr al-Baqillānī (d. 403/1013) advanced several arguments to refute the createdness of the Qurʾān, based on the famous passage, «For anything We [God] have willed, we say to it ‘be,’ and thus it is» (al-Baqillānī, 268-84). The Ḥanbalī traditionalist critic of both Muʿtazilī and Ashʿarī theology, Taqī l-Dīn b. Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), argued that Ibn Ḥanbal did not claim the Qurʾān was either created or eternal, only that it was the speech of God. Some modernist Muslim writers on Qurʾānic hermeneutics, such as Naṣr Ḥāmid Abū Zayd (d. 2010) and Mohammed Arkoun (d. 2010), have argued for reconsidering the validity of the claim that the Qurʾān is created, on the grounds of contemporary linguistic and hermeneutic theory, but their views have not been accepted by the majority of Sunnī Muslim thinkers.

Литература

Sources

• ʿAbd al-Jabbār, al-Mughnī fī abwāb al-tawḥīd wa-l-ʿadl, vol. 7, Khalq al-Qurʾān, ed. Ibrāhīm al-Ibārī, Cairo 1380/1961
• ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Sharḥ al-uṣūl al-khamsa, with the super-commentary by Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn b. Abī Hāshim, known as Mānkdīm Shashdīw, ed. ʿAbd al-Karīm ʿUthmān (Cairo 1384/1965), 527-63
• al-Baqillānī, Kitāb tamḥīd al-awāʾil wa-talkhīṣ al-dalāʾil, ed. ʿImād al-Dīn Aḥmad Ḥaydar, Beirut 19933
• Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil wa-l-masāʾil, ed. Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā, 5 vols. in 2 (Cairo 1976), esp. vol. 3.

Studies

• Mohammed Arkoun, Rethinking Islam. Common questions, uncommon answers, trans. from the French and ed. Robert D. Lee (Boulder 1988), 6
• J. van Ess, Ibn Kullāb und die Miḥna, Oriens 18-9 (1965-6), 92-142
• Wilferd Madelung, The origins of the controversy concerning the creation of the Qurʾān, in Wilferd Madelung, Religious schools and sects in medieval Islam (London 1985), article no. 5, 504-25
• John Nawas, Al-Maʾmūn. Miḥna and caliphate, Ph.D. diss., University of Nijmegen 1992.

Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān / Createdness of the Qurʾān

Article Table of Contents

Introduction to the problem

Before the inquisition

The inquisition and the Muʿtazilī doctrine

After the inquisition

Conclusion

Bibliography

A central issue in Muslim theological discussion that asks whether the Qurʾān was created by God or is, like him, eternal. The term creation( khalq) appears 48 times in the Qurʾān and designates the natural world and all existence as God's creation (q.v.). Instances of the perfect and imperfect tenses of the verb ( khalaqa, yakhluqu and the passive khuliqa, yukhlaqu) appear ¶ over 200 times in reference to God's act of creation. God himself is referred to in the Qurʾān as the Creator ( khāliq) twelve times, e.g. “There is no God but he, the creator of everything” ( q 6:102). The phrase khalq al-Qurʾān, often rendered as “createdness of the Qurʾān” or “creation of the Qurʾān (by God),” does not occur in the Qurʾān as such. Assertions that the Qurʾān was created appeared at the beginning of the second/eighth century and eventually came to be associated primarily with the heterodox theological school known as the Muʿtazila (see muʿtazilīs ).

Introduction to the problem

The issue at hand does not conflict with the fact of the prophetic event, i.e. the revelation of the Qurʾān to Muḥammad at a particular point in history. Both proponents of and opponents to the theory of the createdness of the Qurʾān understand many qurʾānic verses as having been revealed in response to a particular situation in Muḥammad's life (see occasions of revelation; revelation and inspiration). Both sides also acknowledge the role that Muslims in the generations after Muḥammad had in the collection and the ordering of the codices of the Qurʾān (see codices of the qurʾān; collection of the qurʾān). Nor did the discussion of “createdness” involve the status of the Qurʾān's existence prior to Muḥammad's receiving of the revelation or even its existence before the rest of creation. Rather, the debate over khalq al-Qurʾān focuses on the nature of the pre-existent prototype of the book (q.v.), which is known as umm al-kitāb (Mother of the Book, see heavenly book ) or lawḥ maḥfūẓ (Preserved Tablet [q.v.]). Both sides are agreed upon the existence of this heavenly prototype, but are in disagreement as to whether it is coeternal with God or contingent upon the will of God, and thus created and ¶ existing within a limited sphere of time (cf. van Ess, tg, iv, 625-7).

A legendary account of the origins of the assertion of the createdness of the Qurʾān that circulated among some Sunnī heresiographies traces it back through extreme Shīʿī revolutionaries to Ṭālūt, the son-in-law of a Jew, Labīd b. al-Aʿṣām . Labīd is said to have tried to cast a magical spell on the Prophet (Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 7:49; van Ess, tg, i, 442). This may be seen as a later orthodox attempt to depict the Muʿtazila and others who defended the doctrine as enemies of the Prophet Muḥammad as well as of the Qurʾān itself. Muslim heresiographers trace the first claims made by theologians ( mutakallimūn) that the Qurʾān was created ( makhlūq) by God and sent down to the Arabs in historical time to the last decade or so of the ʿAbbāsid revolution that brought down Umayyad rule (ca. 120/738). In these tumultuous years of uprising and political conflict, inevitably religious in its articulation, two of the darker figures of early Muslim thought are named as proponents of the createdness of the Qurʾān: Jaʿd b. Dirham (executed in 125/743) and Jahm b. Ṣafwān (killed in 128/745 while supporting the rebellion of al-Ḥārith b. Surayj).

Before the inquisition

Particular attention is paid to Jahm b. Ṣafwān in the heresiographical literature and especially among traditionalist opponents of the createdness of the Qurʾān such as ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Dārimī (d. 255/869) and Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855). In a heresiographical notice by Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/936), Jahm b. Ṣafwān is also accused of denying that heaven (q.v.) and hell (q.v.) are eternal (Maqālāt, 280, l. 4, 279, l. 2; see eschatology ). Jahm's doctrine of God was founded on the strict assertion that God alone is eternal (see god and his attri- ¶ butes ). All else, including heaven and hell, and even the prototype of scripture — written on a heavenly Tablet, the Mother of the Book — is created. The strongest opponents of Jahm b. Ṣafwān and his followers, known as the Jahmiyya, were the Traditionalists( muḥaddithūn) led by Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal. The latter's refutation of Jahm is titled: al-Radd ʿalā l-Zanādiqa wa-l-Jahmiyya, “Refutation of the deniers of our religion and the followers of Jahm.” Jahm's followers lasted apparently until the fifth/eleventh century. W.M. Watt has warned that it is extremely difficult to identify those who are listed as members of the Jahmiyya except to conclude that they are enemies of the Ḥanbalīs (Formative period, 144-7; cf. van Ess, tg, ii, 507; v, 220, Text 19 d-e and W. Madelung, Origins, Nr. V, 506f. for a discussion on Jahm; a good summary is found in van Ess, tg, iv, 625-30). Nonetheless, the doctrine of the createdness of the Qurʾān seems to have found defenders after Jahm other than the Muʿtazila. The latter were, however, the most important in this debate. As a consequence of having to defend the assertion of the createdness of the Qurʾān, they developed a philosophy of language to support their claim that everything about the Qurʾān — paper, ink, organs of speech, memory, writing, sounds and phonemes — is a part of the phenomenal, created world.

One reason for Jahm's insistence that the Qurʾān was created was his strong denial of anthropomorphism (q.v.). According to Ibn Ḥanbal, Jahm held that “God has never spoken and does not speak” (Ibn Ḥanbal, Radd, 32). In the Qurʾān, Moses (q.v.) is presented as the only prophet to whom God spoke directly (from the fire, q 20:10-48; cf. M. Seale, Muslim theology, 102-12 for an English translation of relevant passages from the Radd). Jahm held that God could not have a physical body like his creatures. Therefore God must cre-¶ ate a speech (the Qurʾān) unlike his own speech which human ears can hear. Part of what was at issue in the ensuing debate between rationalist mutakallimūn on the one side and the traditionalist Ḥanbalīs and the Ashʿarīs on the other was the problem of God's attributes ( ṣifāt, see god and his attributes ). Jahm promulgated a theologia negativa by declaring it possible for humans to say of God only what he is not. It followed that God's attributes such as his speech must be unlike the attribute of speech among God's creatures. During the three centuries after Jahm b. Ṣafwān, the Muʿtazila became the main, but not the exclusive, defenders of the doctrine of the createdness of the Qurʾān (which was not a monolithic position; cf. W. Madelung, Origins and van Ess, tg, iv, 620 for a discussion of the two prevalent views supporting khalq al-Qurʾān). They were opposed vigorously in the court of public opinion by traditionalists such as the popular Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal. Their chief theological opponents were the Ashʿarīs, who engaged the Muʿtazilī mutakallimūn on their own grounds of rational argumentation.

The inquisition and the Muʿtazilī doctrine

The dispute between those who defended the doctrine of the created Qurʾān and those who denied it was one among many such disputes in early Muslim thinking about the nature of God, his attributes and his revelation to humankind. It became a major fissure in Islamic religious doctrine when the caliph al-Maʾmūn (r. 198-218/813-33) made public affirmation of the created Qurʾān a requirement for judges (qāḍīs) during the last year of his reign (see W. Madelung, Origins). The inquisition(miḥna), as it was called, lasted some 16 years until finally reversed by the caliph al-Mutawwakil (r. 232-47/ 847-61) two years after he assumed the caliphate. Of the ¶ many judges and court-appointed witnesses in the service of the caliph (q.v.) and his provincial governors (not every province beyond Baghdad and its environs in Iraq paid much attention to al-Maʾmūn's decree), only two steadfastly refused to affirm the doctrine of the created Qurʾān, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal and Muḥammad b. Nūḥ. The latter died on his way to prison, but Ibn Ḥanbal was imprisoned, beaten and subjected to theological interrogation and testing. Al-Maʾmūn's brother and successor, the caliph al-Muʿtaṣim (r. 218-27/833-42), was less adamant about promulgating the affirmation of the createdness of the Qurʾān and feared the public reaction gathering outside the prison in Baghdad where Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal was held. All along, Ibn Ḥanbal refused to affirm that the Qurʾān was created. After his release, he shunned public life and did not engage the issue when it cropped up again under the more aggressive inquisitional policies of al-Muʿtaṣim's son, the caliph al-Wāthiq (r. 227-32/842-7). Ibn Ḥanbal, nonetheless, is remembered as the victor over the Muʿtazilī doctrine of the created Qurʾān and, in reference to this particular doctrine, over the three caliphs who attempted to enforce it in Islamic public religious life (cf. van Ess, tg, iii, 446-508).

After the inquisition

The miḥna was not only a test of traditionalist beliefs about the Qurʾān. It was also a test of whether or not the caliphate had the authority to define and enforce religious doctrine. Politically, the miḥna and Ibn Ḥanbal's tenacious refusal to affirm the createdness of the Qurʾān constituted an important moment in the contest between the caliphate and the religious scholars ( ʿulamāʾ) about the exercise of religious authority in early and medieval Islam (see exegesis of the qurʾān: classical and medieval ). Theologically, the miḥna and ¶ the doctrine of khalq al-Qurʾān raised the question of whether divine revelation, “the Book” as the Qurʾān often refers to itself, was coeternal with God or a created vessel of communication from God to his creatures. Since the third/ninth century the majority of Muslims have condemned the Muʿtazilī doctrine of the created Qurʾān by asserting that the Qurʾān is eternal. Historically, the orthodox Shīʿī rebuttal of the assertion of the createdness of the Qurʾān has been more guarded.

For example, even in the second/eighth century, the sixth Shīʿī imām, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), is said to have replied, when asked if the Qurʾān was the creator or the created, that it was neither. A great many early traditionalists such as Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā al-Tamīmī (d. 226/840) asserted against the doctrine of the created Qurʾān that the Qurʾān is the speech (q.v.) of God. For the Muʿtazila, speech is phenomenal, that is, sounds and letters which come into being ( muḥdath) in the world God creates. Speech is an attribute of God acting external to himself. Later Muʿtazila developed a sophisticated theory of language and linguistics based on the ontology and mechanics of speech. Whereas the Jahmiyya denied that God could speak on the grounds that this would constitute anthropomorphism — likening God to humans — the Muʿtazila accused their opponents of claiming that the Qurʾān was eternal, which was tantamount to implying that an entity other than God is coeternal with God, in other words, dualism. The unacceptability of dualism, referred to as zandaqa and thanawiyya in the heresiographical literature from the second/eighth century on, was as strong among traditionalists like Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal as it was among Muʿtazila.

In his super-commentary on Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār's (d. 414/1025) Sharḥ al-uṣūl al-¶ khamsa, Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn b. Abī Hāshim, known as Mānkdīm (d. 425/1034), says that the Qāḍī classified the dispute about the createdness of the Qurʾān under the topic of divine justice (al- ʿadl, one of the five fundamentals of Muʿtazilī doctrine; see justice and injustice ) because the Qurʾān is one of God's acts ( ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Sharḥ, 527). ʿAbd al-Jabbār identifies ʿAbdallāh b. Kullāb (d. 240/854) and those whom he terms the “mindless” (al- ḥashwiyya) Ḥanbalīs as holding that the Qurʾān is not created ( ghayr makhlūq) and not produced (lā muḥdath), but that it is eternal with God. He states the Muʿtazilī doctrine of the createdness of the Qurʾān as follows:

…the Qurʾān is the speech of God and his revelation ( waḥy)… it is created (makhlūq) and produced (muḥdath). God sent it down to his Prophet to be an emblem and evidence of [the latter's] prophethood. [God] made it an evidentiary proof ( dalāla) so that we could have rules to which we could refer concerning what is permitted and what is forbidden (see lawful and unlawful )…. Therefore, the Qurʾān is that which we hear and recite today. If it is not produced by God [in the present moment] it is attributed to him in reality, just as the poems we [might] recite today [can be] the poetry of Imruʾ al-Qays [a pre-Islamic poet] in reality, even though he is not producing them now [when we recite them] (ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Sharḥ, 528).

ʿAbd al-Jabbār's contemporary and opponent, the Ashʿarī Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Ṭayyib b. al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013), replied to Muʿtazilī defenses of the createdness of the Qurʾān with arguments based on qurʾānic proof texts. Especially crucial was the passage from q 16:40: “For to anything we (God) have willed, we say to it ‘be’ ¶ and thus it is,” on which al-Bāqillānī builds several arguments to deny the createdness of the Qurʾān (Bāqillānī, Tamhīd, 237-57).

Several historians of Islamic thought in the twentieth century have also concluded that ʿAbd Allāh b. Kullāb, a contemporary of Ibn Ḥanbal and considered a forerunner or early exponent of many of the views held by al-Ashʿarī, was in fact the chief architect of the orthodox doctrine of the eternity of the Qurʾān (cf. van Ess, tg, vi, 411-2). W. Madelung (Origins) believes that the controversy over the createdness of the Qurʾān was not a critical public debate until al-Maʾmūn initiated the miḥna, and that Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, not ʿAbdallāh b. Kullāb, added to the traditionalist denial of the createdness of the Qurʾān the claim that the Qurʾān is eternal ( qadīm). Taqī l-Dīn b. Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), the later theological critic of both Muʿtazilī and Ashʿarī theology ( kalām) and reviver of Ḥanbalī traditionalist thought, also argued against the doctrine of the eternity of the Qurʾān on the grounds that the pious ancestors( salaf) had claimed only that it was the speech of God, not that it was eternal ( kalām Allāh; Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿa, iii, 20 passim).

Conclusion

Although the Ashʿarī and traditionalist Sunnī doctrine of the eternity of the Qurʾān has prevailed down to the present, some modernist Muslims have challenged the Ashʿarī denial of the Muʿtazilī doctrine of the createdness of the Qurʾān. Muḥammad ʿAbduh (d. 1324/1906) did so in the late nineteenth century, although he removed his defense of the createdness of the Qurʾān after the publication of the first edition of Risāla al-tawḥīd, the work in which it appeared. More recently, revisionist modernist writers such as Mohammed Arkoun (Rethinking Islam, 6) have called for ¶ a return to the Muʿtazilī doctrine of the createdness of the Qurʾān. In the comparative study of religions, the dispute about the created versus the uncreated or eternal nature of the Qurʾān is a theological problem of the proportions of the ancient problem in Christian theology concerning the divine versus the human nature of Jesus Christ. In fact, as Trinitarian debates are attested within Christian circles at Baghdad contemporaneous with the Muslim discussion on the createdness of the Qurʾān, the formulation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity (q.v.) and the Islamic debate on the createdness of the Qurʾān may have influenced one another (cf. H. Wolfson, Philosophy, 240-2; for a rebuttal of Wolfson's position, see van Ess, tg, iv, 625-7). See also theology and the qurʾān .

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Bibliography

Primary

ʿAbd al-Jabbār, al-Mughnī fī abwāb al-tawḥīd wa-l-ʿadl. vii. Khalq al-Qurʾān, ed. Ibrāhīm al-Ibārī, Cairo 1380/1961

id., Sharḥ al-uṣūl al-khamsa, with the super-commentary by Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn b. Abī Hāshim known as Mānkdīm, ed. ʿAbd al-Karīm ʿUthmān, Cairo 1384/1965, 527-63

M. ʿAbduh, Risālat al-tawḥīd, Cairo 1315/1897

al-Ashʿarī, Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn, ed. H. Ritter, Wiesbaden 1963

Ibn Ḥanbal, al-Radd ʿala l-Zanādiqa wa-l-Jahmiyya, ed. M.F. Shaqafa, n.p. 1967

Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil wa-l-masāʾil, ed M. Rashīd Riḍā, 5 vols. in 2, Cairo 1976 (esp. vol. iii)

Secondary

M. Arkoun, Rethinking Islam. Common questions, uncommon answers, Boulder 1988

J. van Ess, Ibn Kullāb und die Miḥna, in Oriens 18-9 (1965-6), 97-142

id., tg

W. Madelung, The origins of the controversy concerning the creation of the Qurʾān, in W. Madelung, Religious schools and sects in medieval Islam, London 1985, Nr. V, 504-25

J. Nawas, al-Maʾmūn. Miḥna and caliphate, Ph.D. diss., Nijmegen 1992

W.M. Patton, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal and the miḥna, Leiden 1897

M. Seale, Muslim theology, London 1964

W.M. Watt, Early discussions about the Qurʾān, in mw 40 (1950), 21-40, 96-105

id., The formative¶ period of Islamic thought, Edinburgh 1973

H.A. Wolfson, Philosophy of the kalam, London 1976

Cite this page

Martin, Richard C., “Createdness of the Qurʾān”, in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC. Consulted online on 07 January 2017 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1875-3922_q3_EQCOM_00044>

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