Divine actions, creation, and the human fate after death in 9th/15th-century Imami Shi'ite theology.

• Author: Griffel, Frank

The 9th/15th century was an important period for Imami Shi'ite scholarship. Following the destruction of the Sunni caliphate in 656/1258 and the religiously tolerant period of the Il-Khans, Twelver Shi'ism had become more and more influential in Iran and Iraq. During the 8th/14th century usuli Twelver Shi'ism had developed. Its clear distinction between laypeople and scholars and its stress on taqlid led to a gradual increase of the role of scholars in society, where they took over tasks previously designated for the hidden Imam. Ibn Abi Jumhur al-Ahsa'i was one of the most important Imami Shi'ite theologians of this time. He is certainly a fitting subject for an enquiry into the parameters that determined a period of Muslim theology which is almost unknown to Western researchers.

Prior to Sabine Schmidtke's recent monograph on Ibn Abi Jumhur, which is the subject of this review article, there has only been a brief but very informative sketch of Ibn Abi Jumhur's theology by Wilferd Madelung. (1) Schmidtke's important book breaks new ground in the study of Muslim intellectual history and shows the richness of an intellectual atmosphere in which doctrines from Ash'arism, Mu'tazilism, falsafa, and Sufism were discussed and compared, and where the accepted solution to a theological problem was often formed by a combination of these traditions. Schmidtke's reconstruction of Ibn Abi Jumhur's teachings is thorough and generally convincing. But often her inquiry stops at a careful doxography of Ibn Abi Jumhur and neglects to explore the function of certain doctrines in the overall system of Shi'ite theology. Ibn Abi Jumhur's synthesis of falsafa and Ash'arite kalam merits a deeper analysis than that which is contained in Schmidtke's book. Regarding his positions on the afterlife, Schmidtke's analysis that he taught metempsychosis cannot be substantiated.

Ibn Abi Jumhur Muhammad ibn 'Ali al-Ahsa'i hailed from the oasis region of al-Hasa' in the north of modern Saudi Arabia. He was born in the middle of the 9th/15th century, and died soon after its end (the last information about him is from 906/1501). Near the end of his lifetime, Ibn Abi Jumhur witnessed the successes of the Twelver Shi'ite da'wa of the Safavids among the Turcoman tribes present in Iran and Iraq--a group that so far had resisted Shi'ism. One main element of the Safavids' triumph was the Sufism they employed in the form of hierarchical teacher-discipline relationships within their military movement. Intellectually, however, the Safavids were extremist outsiders, ghulat, who only after their ascension to power in 907/1501 slowly managed to develop ties to leading Imami scholars. Ibn Abi Jumhur represents the last generation of pre-Safavid Imami scholarship. With the further rise of Imami Shi'i scholarship under the Safavids, the importance of his thought grew and his works became sources for the most prosperous period of Imami theology and philosophy, the so-called School of Isfahan of Mir-i Damad (d. 1040/1630) and Mulla Sadra Shirazi (d. 1050/1640).

By now, Western research has become familiar with the Avicennan turn in Muslim theology during the 6th/12th and 7th/13th centuries. (2) This period was thoroughly impacted by al-Ghazali's (d. 505/1111) condemnation of some of Ibn Sina's (d. 429/1037) teachings as well as his acceptance of others. A number of Ash'arite theologians went through similar struggles when confronted with Ibn Sina's works. As a result, Ibn Sina was widely studied in Ash'arite circles. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 672/1274) introduced Ibn Sina into Imami Shi'ism. The following period of Shi'ite theology between al-Tusi and the School of Isfahan is still a fairly blank page in Western research. Sabine Schmidtke's second book on this era following her seminal work on al-'Allama al-Hilli (d. 726/1325) (3) once again proves to be a highly successful endeavor to shed light on this period.

Schmidtke's book is a study of intellectual history; and she does not deal with the political and religious Zeitgeschichte of Ibn Abi Jumhur's lifetime. After a concise and precise introduction into the history of Imami Shi'ite dogmatic theology (pp. 1-13), the author examines Ibn Abi Jumhur's life and works (pp. 14-36) before going into the analysis of his teachings. These teachings are treated according to the syllabus of a traditional kalam compendium. Schmidtke follows the flow of Ibn Abi Jumhur's most detailed work in kalam, the Mujli mir'at al-munji fi l-kalam wa-l-hikmatayn wa-l-tasawwuf. This book is a supercommentary to Ibn Abi Jumhur's own commentary on one of his own short compendiums on theology (Masalik al-afham fi'ilm al-kalam). The Mujli thus contains three texts in one book: a brief treatment of theology in the base work (Masalik al-afham), a commentary upon this text (Nur al-munji min al-zalam), and a supercommentary (Mujli mir'at ...). The book is available in a lithograph print of 1911. (4)

The Mujli is a curious work and difficult to read not only because of the poor print. Theological problems are dealt with on three levels. This might lead one to believe that the different levels are for different kinds of readers. Curiously, the texts are only available in manuscripts that contain all three levels (Schmidtke, pp. 275f.). A layperson, for instance, who seeks to read the shortest treatment in the base work Masalik al-afham can only access it through manuscripts and a print that also contain Ibn Abi Jumhur's commentary and supercommentary. The three levels are hardly addressed to different readers. They represent three ways of dealing with theological problems with which expert theologians should become familiar. Once familiar with all three levels, the expert may choose a particular level of instruction, according to the group that he is addressing and according to the occasion. Such a threefold system of instruction had already been suggested by al-Ghazali (e.g., in a famous passage at the end of his Mizan al-'amal) (5) and by Ibn Rushd in his Fasl al-maqal. If such an interpretation of the Mujli-manuscripts is right, Ibn Abi Jumhur's own convictions should be sought in the supercommentary section of the book, while the commentary and the base work represent teachings adequate for scholars or laypeople of lesser insight than the author and his model reader.

Bibliographical appendices and an analysis of Ibn Abi Jumhur's academic isnad complete Schmidtke's picture of 9th/15th-century Shi'ite theology. Her meticulous list of Ibn Abi Jumhur's works and their manuscripts on pp. 270-78 should be augmented by an edition of the Munazarat ma'a l-Fadil al-Harawi (# 43) published under the title Munazara al-Gharawi wa-l-Harawi (without identifying Ibn Abi Jumhur as its author) in Tabriz 1331 [1953] (Idarat-i Khiyaban al-Mujayyidiyya) and by Ahmad al-Kinani's edition of Kashifat al-hal 'an ahwal al-istidlal (# 29) published by Mu'assasat al-Qurra in Beirut 1416 [1995]. This edition is based on two manuscripts from the Central University Library in Tehran (of which one does not tally with Schmidtke's list of numbers) and one from the Mar'ashi Public Library at Qom.

Schmidtke's report of the systematic character of Ibn Abi Jumhur's thought is meticulous and thorough. This becomes apparent during Ibn Abi Jumhur's treatment of God's power (qudrat Allah). Ibn Abi Jumhur identifies two main competing systems of thought that aim to explain how divine actions come about: Ash'arite kalam and peripatetic philosophy (falsafa). The two systems held opposing views on the relationship between God's essence and His will. The mutakallimun that Ibn Abi Jumhur refers to (Schmidtke renders this ambiguously as "Theologen," but other parties did theology as well and what is meant is "the Ash'arites") understood that God's will must be additional to His essence (za'id 'ala l-dhat) in order for God to be a free agent who truly chooses His actions. For the falasifa, who followed the teachings of Ibn Sina, God's will is not distinguishable from His essence. For them, God acts out of necessity (mujib) and there was never the possibility for Him not to act or not to create this particular world. The falasifa understood creation as the necessary result of God's essence. Everything God creates is pre-determined by His eternal essence. For the falasifa, the world is pre-eternal (qadim) just like God's essence is pre-eternal. Schmidtke analyzes how these two opposing systems clash in the work of Ibn Abi Jumhur (pp. 72-94) and notes a disturbing peculiarity: while in his base work of the Mujli-collection (the Masalik al-afham), Ibn Abi Jumhur teaches--or at least gives the impression to teach--that God is a free agent and created this worked at one point in time, he effectively upholds the philosophical view of creation as a necessary act following from God's essence on the level of his commentary and supercommentary to this text. Such a contradiction is a challenge to each interpreter and must be looked into closely. The following remarks are based on the material gathered in Schmidtke's book.

On the level of his commentary, i.e., the middle level of Ibn Abi Jumhur's treatments, he writes that the people who inquire into the truth (al-muhaqqiqun) teach that God is a free agent (mukhtar). He then reports the opposing view of the falasifa, namely that God acts out of necessity (bi-l-ijab). This, he says in a difficult but important passage, either does not conform to the position of the muhaqqiqun or the conflict is merely on the level of words. This means that if the falasifa's view did not conform with the views of the muhaqqiqun it would simply be wrong and not merit further discussion; but that is not the case, Ibn Abi Jumhur implicitly says. The conflict between theologians and falasifa is only on the level of words. He...