ABU AL-HASAN AL-ASH'ARI

'Abū al-Hasan Alī ibn Ismā'īl al-Ash'arī' (874- 936) (Arabic: ابو الحسن بن إسماعيل اﻷشعري) was a Muslim Arab theologian and the founder of the Ash'ari school of early Muslim philosophy.

Contents

Biography

Views

Legacy

Works

Sunni view

Notes

Biography

Al-Ash'ari was born in Basra, Iraq, a descendant of the famous companion of Muhammad and arbitrator at Siffin for Ali ibn Abi Talib, Abu Musa al-Ashari. He spent the greater part of his life at Baghdad. Although belonging to an orthodox family, he became a pupil of the great Mutazalite teacher al-Jubba'i (d.915), and himself remained a Mutazalite until his fortieth year. In 912 he left the Mu'tazalites and became one of its most distinguished opponents, using the philosophical methods he had learned. Al-Ash'ari then spent the remaining years of his life engaged in developing his views and in composing polemics and arguments against his former Mutazalite colleagues. He is said to have written over a hundred works, from which only four or five are known to be extant.

Views

Al-Ash'ari was noted for his teachings on atomism, among the earliest
Islamic philosophies, influenced by Greek and Hindu concepts of ''atoms of time and matter'', and for al-Ash'ari the basis for propagating a deterministic view that Allah created every moment in time and every particle of matter. Thus cause and effect was an illusion. He nonetheless believed in free will, elaborating the thought of Dirar ibn Amr' and Abu Hanifa into a "dual agent" or "acquisition" account of free will. ^[6]
While he is considered to be the founder of the Ash'ari tradition of Aqeedah, toward the end of his life al-Ash'ari actually adopted the Athari creed of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, even affirming that Allah 'rose above his throne' and possesses a "face" and "hands" as mentioned in the Qur'an (though not a face or hands similar to anything in creation).^[7] ''Al-Ibaanah'', one of the last books that he wrote, is especially notable for al-Ash'ari accepting the Athari creed entirely.^[8]

Legacy

Works

The Ashari scholar Ibn Furak numbers Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari's works at 300, and a biographer like Ibn Khallikan at 55;^[9] Ibn Asāker gives the titles of 93 of them, but only a handful of these works, in the fields of heresiography and theology, have survived. The three main ones are:

★ ''Maqālāt al-eslāmīyīn'',^[3] it comprises not only an account of the Islamic sects but also an examination of problems in ''kalām'', or scholastic theology, and the names and attributes of Allah; the greater part of this works seems to have been completed before his conversion from the Mutaziltes.

★ ''Ketāb al-loma''^[4]

★ ''Ketāb al-ebāna'an osūl al-dīāna'', his last work ,^[5] an exposition of his developed theological views and arguments against Mutazilite doctrines.

Sunni view

stated ^[13]:

Notes

1. Al-Albaani, Mukhtasar Al-'Uluww
2. Al-Albaani, Mukhtasar Al-'Uluww
3. ed. H. Ritter, Istanbul, 1929-30
4. ed. and tr. R.C. McCarthy, Beirut, 1953
5. tr. W.C. Klein, New Haven, 1940
6. Watt, Montgomery. Free-Will and Predestination in Early Islam. Luzac & Co.: London 1948.
7. http://spubs.com/sps/sp.cfm?subsecID=GSC06&articleID=AQD060002&articlePages=1
8. http://spubs.com/sps/sp.cfm?subsecID=GSC06&articleID=AQD060001&articlePages=1
9. Beirut, III, p.286, tr. de Slaine, II, p.228
10. ed. H. Ritter, Istanbul, 1929-30
11. ed. and tr. R.C. McCarthy, Beirut, 1953
12. tr. W.C. Klein, New Haven, 1940
13. Izalat al-Khafa p. 77 part 7