Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari
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| <region> scholar Medieval era |
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| Name: | Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari |
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Abu al-Hasan bin Isma'el al-Ash'ari (Arabic ابو الحسن بن إسماعيل اﻷشعري) (ca. 873-ca. 935), was a Muslim Arab theologian and the founder of the Ash'ari school of early Muslim philosophy.
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[edit] Biography
Al-Ash'ari was born in Basra, a descendant of the famous companion of the Prophet 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 returned to the faith of his fathers and became its most distinguished champion, using the philosophical methods he had learned in the school of heresy. 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.
[edit] 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. [1]
[edit] Legacy
[edit] 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;[2] 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.
[edit] Sunni view
Shah Waliullah, a 18th century Sunni Deobandi Islamic scholar stated [6]:
| A Mujadid appears at the end of every century: The Mujtahid of the 1st century was Imam of Ahlul Sunnah, Umar bin Abdul Aziz. The Mujadid of the 2nd century was Imam of Ahlul Sunnah Muhammad Idrees Shaari the Mujadid of the 3rd century was Imam of Ahlul Sunnah Abu Hasan Ashari the Mujadid of the 4rth century was Abu Abdullah Hakim Nishapuri. |
[edit] Notes
[edit] Reference
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
