Theology and Society in The Second and Third Centuries of The Hijra

Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra
Volume 2
Handbook of Oriental Studies
Handbuch der Orientalistik
section one
The Near and Middle East
Edited by
Maribel Fierro (Madrid)

M. Şükrü Hanioğlu (Princeton)
Renata Holod (University of Pennsylvania)
Florian Schwarz (Vienna)
VOLUME 116/2
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ho1

Theology and Society
in the Second and Third Centuries
of the Hijra
A History of Religious Thought in Early Islam
VOLUME 2
By
Josef van Ess
Translated from German by
Gwendolin Goldbloom
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Translated from Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra. Eine Geschichte
des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam. © Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin, Boston. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ess, Josef van, author. | O’Kane, John, 1940– translator.

Title: Theology and society in the second and third centuries of the Hijra : a history of religious thought
in Early Islam / by Josef van Ess ; translated from German by John O’Kane. Other titles: Theologie und
Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra. English | Handbuch der Orientalistik. Erste Abteilung,
Nahe und der Mittlere Osten ; 116. Bd., 1.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2017. | Series: Handbuch der Orientalistik = Handbook of Oriental
studies. Section one, The Near and Middle East ; volume 116/1 | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016047963 (print) | LCCN 2016052965 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004323179 (hardback : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9789004323384 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Islam—Doctrines—History. | Islamic philosophy—History.
Classification: LCC BP166.1 .E8413 2017 (print) | LCC BP166.1 (ebook) | DDC 297.209/021—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016047963
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In memory of Helmut Ritter’s
100th birthday (27. 2. 1892)
⸪
Contents
2.2 Basra ........................................................................................................................................................................... 1

2.2.1 The “Heretics” ................................................................................................................................... 4
2.2.1.1 Bashshār b. Burd ................................................................................................. 6
2.2.1.2 Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs ............................................................................. 17
2.2.1.3 The Sumaniyya ..................................................................................................... 23
2.2.1.4 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ ..................................................................................................... 26
2.2.1.4.1 A Text against Islam ........................................................... 33
2.2.1.4.2 The Parody of the Quran ................................................ 39
2.2.1.5 The Context. “Natural Philosophers” ....................................... 41
2.2.2 Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and His Spiritual Successors ............................................ 46
2.2.2.1 The Qadariyya ........................................................................................................ 57
2.2.2.1.1 Qadarite Ideas in hadith ................................................ 58
2.2.2.1.2 Qadarite Traditionists ....................................................... 61
2.2.2.1.2.1 The Generation Following
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī ........................................... 62
2.2.2.1.2.2 The Middle Generation ................ 69
2.2.2.1.2.3 Pupils of Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba .... 83
2.2.2.1.2.4 Other Qadarites in the Second
Half of the Second Century ..... 86
2.2.2.1.3 The Uswārīs ................................................................................... 91
2.2.2.1.4 Qadarites among the Basran
Grammarians ............................................................................. 98
2.2.2.2 Qadariyya and Asceticism ..................................................................... 101
2.2.2.2.1 Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s Younger
Contemporaries ........................................................................ 103
2.2.2.2.2 The Next Generation ........................................................... 110
2.2.2.2.2.1 The Significance of
ʿAbbādān .......................................................... 119
2.2.2.2.3 Theological and Juristic Divergent Opinions
within the Circle of Basran Ascetics ................. 123
2.2.2.2.3.1 The Bakriyya ................................................ 125
2.2.2.2.4 Asceticism and Rationality ......................................... 137
2.2.3 The Jurists ............................................................................................................................................. 141
2.2.3.1 The Case of Iyās b. Muʿāwiya .............................................................. 143
2.2.3.2 Early Theoretical Texts ............................................................................... 152
2.2.3.3 Experts and Jurisconsults ....................................................................... 155
viii contents
2.2.3.4 Kullu mujtahid muṣīb .................................................................................... 177

2.2.4 Murjiʾites in Basra. The “Ghaylāniyya” .............................................................. 189
2.2.4.1 Faḍl al-Raqāshī ..................................................................................................... 192
2.2.4.2 Abū Shamir and His School ................................................................. 200
2.2.4.3 “Jahmites” .................................................................................................................... 211
2.2.5 The Ibāḍiyya ...................................................................................................................................... 215
2.2.5.1 The Case of ʿAbdallāh b. Ibāḍ ............................................................ 215
2.2.5.2 The Development of the Basran Community .............. 218
2.2.5.3 The Question of qadar ................................................................................ 233
2.2.5.4 The Quarrel over the Anthropomorphisms .................... 237
2.2.5.5 Further Controversial Issues ............................................................... 245
2.2.5.6 The Environment .............................................................................................. 248
2.2.5.7 The Relation between Sin and Faith ......................................... 258
2.2.5.8 Puritanism and Scrupulousness ..................................................... 266
2.2.6 The Early Muʿtazila .................................................................................................................. 268
2.2.6.1 Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ ............................................................................................................. 269
2.2.6.1.1 The Chronology of his Life. His Origins
and Profession ............................................................................ 270
2.2.6.1.2 Wāṣil the khaṭīb. His Appearance before
ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿazīz ..................... 276
2.2.6.1.3 Wāṣil’s Speech Defect ......................................................... 282
2.2.6.1.4 Wāṣil’s Relations with the ʿAlids in
Medina ................................................................................................ 285
2.2.6.1.5 The Image of Wāṣil’s Personality ......................... 290
2.2.6.1.6 Wāṣil’s Relationship with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd
and Ḥasan al-Baṣrī .............................................................. 292
2.2.6.1.7 The Doctrine of the Intermediate State ........ 298
2.2.6.1.7.1 Sin and Penitence ................................. 305
2.2.6.1.7.2 Wāṣil’s Relationship with
Khārijites and Murjiʾites .............. 306
2.2.6.1.8 Wāṣil’s Political Views ........................................................ 309
2.2.6.1.9 Further Points of Doctrine ........................................... 312
2.2.6.1.9.1 Epistemological Issues ................... 315
2.2.6.2 ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd ....................................................................................................... 319
2.2.6.2.1 Biographical Data ................................................................. 321
2.2.6.2.2 Political Decisions .................................................................. 325
2.2.6.2.2.1 The Relationship with
Manṣūr ............................................................... 327
Contents ix
2.2.6.2.3 The Image of ʿAmr’s Personality ........................... 336

2.2.6.2.4 His Relationship with Ḥasan
al-Baṣrī ................................................................................................ 338
2.2.6.2.4.1 ʿAmr as an Exegete .............................. 339
2.2.6.2.5 ʿAmr as a Legal Scholar ................................................... 342
2.2.6.2.6 ʿAmr as a Traditionist ........................................................ 344
2.2.6.2.7 Theology and Politics ......................................................... 348
2.2.6.3 The Pupil Generation ................................................................................... 352
2.2.6.3.1 The Circle around Wāṣil ................................................. 353
2.2.6.3.1.1 The duʿāt ........................................................... 353
2.2.6.3.1.2 Wāṣil’s Other Pupils ........................... 360
2.2.6.3.2 The Circle around ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd ....................... 366
2.2.6.3.2.1 Jurists and Traditionists ............... 366
2.2.6.3.2.2 The “Muʿtazilites” of the
Uprising of AH 145 ............................... 372
2.2.6.4 The Origin of the Name Muʿtazila ............................................... 382
2.2.7 The Traditionist Reaction .................................................................................................. 390
2.2.7.1 Opposition against ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd ............................................. 390
2.2.7.1.1 Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī ............................................................ 391
2.2.7.1.2 Yūnus b. ʿUbayd ........................................................................ 401
2.2.7.1.3 ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn ..................................................................... 404
2.2.7.1.4 Sulaymān al-Taymī .............................................................. 418
2.2.7.1.5 Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ ........................................................... 421
2.2.7.2 The Next Generation .................................................................................... 427
2.2.8 The Muʿtazila in Basra during the Second Half of the
Second Century ...................................................................................................... 434
2.2.8.1 Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī ................................................................................................. 435
2.2.8.1.1 The Image of the Early Muʿtazila in
Ṣafwān’s qaṣīda ......................................................................... 436
2.2.8.2 The Principle of amr bil-maʿrūf wal-nahy
ʿan al-munkar .......................................................................................................... 440
2.2.8.2.1 The Case of Muḥammad b. Munādhir ......... 443
2.2.8.3 The Position of the Muʿtazila in Basra after 145 ......... 446
2.2.8.4 The Development of Theology and Law ............................. 448
2.2.8.4.1 Al-Aṣamm ........................................................................................ 450
2.2.8.4.1.1 Aṣamm’s “Ontology” .......................... 452
2.2.8.4.1.2 Aṣamm’s Quranic
Commentary ............................................... 457
x contents
2.2.8.4.1.3 The Consensus of Muslims ...... 461

2.2.8.4.1.3.1 Consensus and
Political Theory ..................... 463
2.2.8.4.1.4 Aṣamm the Lawyer ............................. 469
2.2.8.4.2 Ibn ʿUlayya ...................................................................................... 473
2.2.8.4.3 Further Basran Muʿtazilites ....................................... 477
2.2.9 Basran Shīʿites ................................................................................................................................ 479
2.3 Wāsiṭ ........................................................................................................................................................................... 487
2.4 The Jazira .............................................................................................................................................................. 498
2.4.1 Ḥarrān ...................................................................................................................................................... 500
2.4.1.1 The Ṣābians ............................................................................................................... 501
2.4.1.2 Ḥarrān and Islamic Theology ............................................................ 509
2.4.2 Diyār Rabīʿa ....................................................................................................................................... 520
2.4.2.1 The Khārijites ......................................................................................................... 520
2.4.2.2 Mosul ................................................................................................................................. 527
2.4.2.3 Nisibis ............................................................................................................................... 530
2.4.3 Raqqa ......................................................................................................................................................... 532
2.4.3.1 Sulaymān al-Raqqī ........................................................................................... 533
2.4.3.2 Extreme Shīʿites ................................................................................................... 548
3 Iran ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 551

3.0 General Preliminary Remarks ................................................................................................... 551
3.1 Eastern Iran ....................................................................................................................................................... 553
3.1.1 Jahm b. Ṣafwān .............................................................................................................................. 556
3.1.1.1 The Connection between Jahm and the
Jahmiyya ........................................................................................................................ 571
3.1.2 The Cities ............................................................................................................................................... 572
3.1.2.1 Balkh .................................................................................................................................. 572
3.1.2.1.1 Quranic Exegesis ..................................................................... 573
3.1.2.1.1.1 Muqātil b. Ḥayyān ................................ 574
3.1.2.1.1.2 Muqātil b. Sulaymān ......................... 581
3.1.2.1.1.2.1 Muqātil’s Theological
Views .................................................. 594
3.1.2.1.2 ʿUmar b. Ṣubḥ and the rafʿ al-yadayn ............ 598
3.1.2.1.3 Murjiʾites and Ḥanafites ................................................. 600
3.1.2.1.4 The Beginnings of Eastern Iranian
Mysticism ......................................................................................... 611
3.1.2.2 Marv .................................................................................................................................... 615
3.1.2.3 Tirmidh ........................................................................................................................... 626
Contents xi
3.1.2.4 Samarqand ................................................................................................................. 628

3.1.2.5 Herat .................................................................................................................................. 636
3.1.3 Sīstān ......................................................................................................................................................... 642
3.1.3.1 The Khārijites ......................................................................................................... 642
3.1.3.1.1 Ḥamza b. Ādharak’s Uprising ................................. 656
3.1.3.2 Non-Khārijite Groups ................................................................................... 660
3.1.4 The Western Part of the Province of Khorasan ........................................ 662
3.1.4.1 Khorasanian Khārijites .............................................................................. 662
3.1.4.1.1 The Bayhasiyya ......................................................................... 666
3.1.4.1.1.1 Yamān b. Riʾāb ........................................... 671
3.1.4.1.2 The Ibāḍiyya ................................................................................. 674
3.1.4.2 Nishapur ........................................................................................................................ 678
3.2 Central and Southern Iran ............................................................................................................. 686
3.2.1 The Khārijites ................................................................................................................................... 687
3.2.1.1 Yazīd b. Unaysa and the uprising of Abū
ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī ........................................................................................................ 688
3.2.1.2 Later Khārijites ..................................................................................................... 693
3.2.2 ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya ........................................................................................................... 700
3.2.3 The Cities ............................................................................................................................................... 702
3.2.3.1 Isfahan ............................................................................................................................. 703
3.2.3.2 Qom .................................................................................................................................... 707
3.2.3.3 Hamadan ...................................................................................................................... 708
3.2.3.4 Rayy ..................................................................................................................................... 709
4 The Arabian Peninsula ...................................................................................................................................... 717

4.1 The Hijaz ............................................................................................................................................................... 718
4.1.1 Mecca ........................................................................................................................................................ 718
4.1.1.1 The Qadarites ......................................................................................................... 721
4.1.1.2 The Khārijites ......................................................................................................... 734
4.1.1.2.1 The Ibāḍites ................................................................................... 735
4.1.1.3 The Murjiʾites .......................................................................................................... 738
4.1.1.4 The Shīʿites ................................................................................................................. 743
4.1.2 Medina ..................................................................................................................................................... 744
4.1.2.1 The Khārijites ......................................................................................................... 746
4.1.2.2 The Murjiʾa ................................................................................................................. 748
4.1.2.3 The Qadarites ......................................................................................................... 749
4.1.2.3.1 Al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s Uprising ................................... 759
4.1.2.3.2 Later Developments. Resistance against
the Qadariyya ............................................................................. 770
4.1.2.4 The Jahmiyya .......................................................................................................... 785
xii contents
4.2 Southern Arabia .......................................................................................................................................... 787

4.2.1 Yemen ........................................................................................................................................................ 787
4.2.1.1 The Qadarites ......................................................................................................... 791
4.2.2.1 Other Trends ............................................................................................................ 794
4.2.2 Oman and Ḥaḍramawt ....................................................................................................... 796
5 Egypt .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 800

5.0 General Preliminary Remarks ................................................................................................... 800
5.1 Shīʿite Tendencies ...................................................................................................................................... 803
5.2 Counter-Trends. The Ibāḍiyya ................................................................................................... 806
5.3 Implicit Theology. Hadith ............................................................................................................... 810
5.4 Explicit Theology. Kalām ................................................................................................................. 816
5.4.1 Theologians of Uncertain Affiliation ................................................................... 822
Supplementary Remarks ................................................................................................................................ 831

iraq 1
2.2 Basra
The rise of Basra began with ʿAlī’s death. Kufa’s short time as the capital was
over; Muʿāwiya ensured his popularity in the sister foundation by bestowing
land on his followers.1 Money was now circulated from here; when issuing
coins for Iraq and Iran, Basra took a clear lead over Kufa.2 It was the residence
of the first governors: Ziyād, whom Muʿāwiya recognised as his brother through
istilḥāq, and his son ʿUbaydallāh. The city repaid the Umayyads with loyalty; in
Kufan eyes the city was “ʿUthmānite”.3 This changed under Ḥajjāj’s rule; Basran
“Quran reciters” were involved in Ibn al-Ashʿath’s uprising,4 whereupon Ḥajjāj
moved his residence to Wāsiṭ. This did not, however, lead to a fundamental
change. Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, seen later as the most important figure among the
learned Basrans, kept his distance from the uprising,5 as did Jābir b. Zayd al-
Azdī who was believed to be an Ibāḍite and consequently was not very favour-
ably inclined towards the ruling political order.6 Ḥasan’s pupil and successor
Qatāda was an adviser to the authorities.7 When Ḥammād b. Abī Sulaymān, the
teacher of Abū Ḥanīfa, visited from Kufa after 110/728 he said that the Basrans
appeared to him like Syrians.8 Yazīd III’s coup was appreciated only among
those who followed Qaḍarite ideas,9 but the majority of the population rose
up against him.10 Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ paid his respects to Yazīd’s governor ʿAbdallāh
b. ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz in Wāṣit,11 but in Basra people rallied around Saʿīd
b. ʿAmr b. Jaʿda al-Makhzūmī, a scholar of the Quraysh who would later also
1 Cf. Morony in: The Islamic Middle East 161.

2 Gaube, Arabosasanidische Numismatik 4ff.
3 Cf. e.g. Muwaffaq b. Aḥmad, Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa II 101, 2ff.; Barrādī, Jawāhir 86, 3ff. after
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. For general information on the ʿUthmāniyya see Pellat, Milieu basrien
189ff.; a clear instance of this tendency is provided by the positive biography of ʿUthmān
in Taʾrīkh al-Madīna by the Basran ʿUmar b. Shabba (ed. Shaltūt, p. 952ff.).
4 Sayed, Revolte des Ibn al-Ašʿaṯ 348ff.
5 See p. 47f. below.
6 See p. 220 below.
8 IS VI 232, 20f.; a slightly different interpretation in Madelung, Qāsim 235. Regarding
Ḥammād see vol. I 211ff. above.
9 If indeed this is not merely a later Qaḍarite view of history (see p. 270f. below).
10 Caetani, Chronographia 1591.
11 See p. 277ff. below.
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� chapter �
support Marwān II.12 When the Abbasids came to power, leading Basran citi-
zens refused to appear before Saffāḥ; some had already fled.13
The city centre was divided into five tribal quarters called akhmās.14 Over
time it was among these old-established inhabitants, generously encouraged
by patronage, that a class of landowners emerged.15 The Azd were the last of
the early settlers; in the years 60–61/679–80 they were joined by their cousins
from Oman.16 The latter had long been seafaring experts;17 Oman dominated
the trade with India and throughout the Persian Gulf. They continued this tra-
dition in Basra as the city had a port and was only 15 miles from the Shatt
al-Arab. Being merchants they were wealthy and accustomed to being inde-
pendent, but they were not greatly respected, as they had not taken part in the
conquest, and the offices of honour had already been allotted. They were not
convinced by the concept of the caliphate, either; the events of the early years
of Islam had been very far from Oman indeed. Consequently they continued to
keep to themselves; the core of the Ibāḍiyya evolved among them, described in
the heresiographers’ categories as peaceful, “quietist” Khārijites. Towards the
end of the first century they had consolidated their position18 and were able to
retain it for more than two generations.19
The city was growing fast. According to Yaḥyā b. Aktham whom Maʾmūn
had appointed qāḍī there20 it had 109,000 mosques (16,000 of which had fallen
out of use) and 100,000 ṭirāz workshops for the embroidery of ceremonial fab-
rics; 300,000 canals are said to have been built for the ever-precarious water
supply. These were figures to impress people who had no means of checking
12 Muʾarrij al-Sadūsī, Nasab Quraysh 75, apu. ff., where he is called the ṣāḥib al-fitna after
Walīd’s death. Concerning his relationship with Marwān cf. Ṭabarī III 224, 14ff., and 204,
10ff.
13 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Risāla fī l-ṣaḥāba para. 45 Pellat. Concerning the circumstances cf. also
p. 146 and 365 below as well as Madelung in: SI 70/1989/23.
14 In more detail Ṣāliḥ Aḥmad al-ʿAlī, Khiṭaṭ al-Baṣra wa-minṭaqatihā 81ff. and Morony, Iraq
245ff.; Pellat in EI2 I 1085f. s. v. Baṣra.
15 Cf. Morony in: T. Khalidi, Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the Middle East 211ff.
16 Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī 96ff.; Morony 248f.; Strenziok in EI2 I 811ff. s. v. Azd.
17 Cf. also Caskel, Ǧamharat an-nasab II 217 b.
18 Cf. Donner in: Khalidi, Land Tenure 107.
19 For more information see p. 214ff. below.
20 See ch. C 3.3.5 below.
iraq 3
them; the account is found in Rāzī’s Taʾrīkh Ṣanʿāʾ.21 Still, there is no doubt that
the city was a metropolis. Its sphere of influence extended as far as the island
of ʿAbbādān two and a half days’ journey away.22 The place was teeming with
foreigners; not only Persians coming across from the Gulf, but also Indians,
Malays and East Africans.23 When the poet Yazīd b. Mufarrigh spoke disrespect-
fully of Ziyād’s mother Sumaiya, he was led around the town ignominiously in
punishment; street urchins were calling after him in Persian, and he replied in
Persian as well.24 The presence of Indians was a matter of course, so much so
that when the philologist ʿĪsā b. ʿUmar al-Thaqafī, overcome by sudden heart
trouble in the street, addressed passers-by in stilted gharīb-gobbledegook, they
thought he was speaking Indian.25 Most money changers were Indians; they
were considered to be very honest.26 The merchants who travelled on sailing
ships from the subcontinent probably had emporia on ʿAbbādān, as that was
the place for pious Muslims to go to convert Indians.27
The priorities of intellectual life were different from those in Kufa. It seems
that the Jews occupied a rather lowly position,28 but there was a strong pres-
ence of Christians; tradition had it that St Thomas the apostle had taken the
sea route to India from here.29 Seleucid Charax Spasinu, wherever it may have
been, had become a bishop’s residence,30 and Mesene the home of numer-
ous Christian communities.31 In the late eighth or early ninth century the
21 P. 116, 3ff.; after a Basran source. Yaʿqūbī mentions only 7000 mosques, and even that is a
round number (Buldān 361, 4f./transl. Wiet 361). More precise topographical information
may be found in Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Khiṭaṭ al-Baṣra 144ff. (canals) and 253f. (mosques).
22 Regarding this island see p. 119 below.
23 Pellat, Milieu basrien 34ff.
24 Meier, Die schöne Maḥsatī 9f.; Pellat in EI2 III 881f. s. n. Ibn Mufarrig̲ h̲.
25 Qifṭī, Inbāh II 377, 7ff.
26 Jāḥiẓ, Fakhr al-sūdān ʿalā l-bīḍān, in: Rasāʾil I 224, –4ff.; also MacLean, Religion and Society
in Arab Sind 93.
27 See p. 119 below.
28 Cf. Sadan in: Festschrift Ayalon 365 and earlier; more generally also S. S. Sassoun in: JQR
NS 17/1936–27/407ff. and J. Obermeyer, Die Landschaft Babylonien 338ff. (but only for the
tenth cent.).
29 A. Dihle, Antike und Orient 63ff.
30 Cf. J. Hansman in: Iranica Antiqua 7/1967/21ff.; more generally RE III 2122, and XV1 1083f.
31 Also Sachau in: Abh. Preuß. Akad. Wiss. 1919, no. 1, p. 48ff., and Schaeder in: Der Islam
14/1925/29ff.; briefly also Colpe, Siegel der Propheten 132f. Regarding the environment in
general see RE XV1 1082ff., LThK VII 318 and esp. EI2 VI 918ff. (s. v. Maisān); also Rahimi-
Laridjani, Die Entwicklung der Bewässerungslandwirtschaft im Iran 36f.; regarding its
4 chapter �
Nestorian patriarch Timothy addressed a pastoral letter to his flock in Basra

and nearby Ubulla/Apologos.32 Unlike the Jews the Christians had developed
a rational theology. The Nestorian ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī attracted Abū l-Hudhayl’s
polemic; his writings, composed in Arabic, were rather close to those of the
Muslim mutakallimūn in terms of language as well as style of argument.33 The
Basrans enjoyed kalām, as the Syrian Walīd b. Muslim noted,34 but there were
irrational trends from the very beginning, too. Ecstatics, so-called “leapers”
(qaffāzūn), dropped to the ground writhing; a phenomenon known already to
Abū l-Jawzāʾ Aws b. ʿAbdallāh,35 a Basran Quran reciter who died in Ibn al-
Ashʿath’s uprising.36 Zurāra b. Awfā al-Jurashī (d. 108/726–7?), temporarily qāḍī
of Basra, suffered a heart attack during the Feast of the Sacrifice while reciting
a verse from the Quran which mentioned the trumpet of the Last Judgment.37
As Ibn Taymiyya would clearly see later, Basra became the cradle of Islamic
asceticism and mysticism. Much more than in Kufa the consciousness of being
chosen was kept in check by the awareness of the vanity of the world and the
sinfulness of the people here.38
2.2.1 The “Heretics”

A frequently quoted account from the K. al-Aghānī noted that in the late
Umayyad era there were six people in Basra who were interested in kalām,
i.e. probably: religious debate. They are reported to have met in the house of an
Azdite in order to debate there. Two of them, Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ and ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd,
later became Muʿtazilites, while two others showed genuine remorse (ṣaḥḥaḥā
l-tawba), namely ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Abī l-ʿAwjāʾ and Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs,
whom history counts among the “heretics”. A fifth one, the poet Bashshār
history during the Parthian era cf. Nodelman in: Berytus 30/1960/83ff. The metropolitan’s
residence was not in Charax (= Karḵā) but Perāth de Mayshan (for its situation cf.
Schaeder 31).
32 Significantly, on the question of whether Christ may be called ʿabdā “serf”; cf. Hurst,
Syriac Letters of Timothy I 44. Regarding Timothy see ch. C 1.2.3 below.
33 More detailed information in ch. C 1.3.1.2 and 3.2.1.3.4.2 below.
34 Cf. Dunlop in: Studies in Islam (New Delhi) 1/1964/14.
35 Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya III 80, 1ff.
36 Cf. Sayed, Revolte des Ibn al-Ašʿaṯ 351.
37 Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt I 294, –4ff.; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-Islām III 368, 10f.
38 Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya II 94, –6f.; Ibn Taymiyya, Risālat al-Ṣūfiya wal-fuqarāʾ, transl.
E. Homerin in: Arabica 32/1985/219ff., esp. 222f., 229 and 231. Ibn Taymiyya also based his
account on the case of Zurāra b. Awfā (ibid. 223 with comm. 239). Cf. also F. Meier in:
Saeculum 32/1981/76.
iraq 5
b. Burd, remained “confused and chaotic” all his life.1 The sixth one, the Azdite,
was interested in the views of the Sumaniyya, “an Indian doctrine”, and always
presented the same demeanour at least outwardly.2
We should not take this account at face value. It immediately poses phil-
ological problems,3 and the source, a certain Saʿīd b. Sallām – probably
Saʿīd b. Sallām al-ʿAṭṭār al-Baṣrī who transmitted from Sufyān al-Thawrī (d.
161/778) among others, probably did not himself experience the time which
he described. He had moved from Basra to Baghdad where he could say all
sorts of things about his native city which could not easily be checked.4 And
there is a parallel in Ibn Taghrībirdī which embellishes the episode further.
Here we have ten people who meet, each of them with a little label to ensure
we all know which opinion he adheres to: Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs (dualist),
Khalīl b. Aḥmad (Sunni),5 al-Sayyid al-Ḥimyarī (Shīʿite), Sufyān b. Mujāshiʿ
(Ṣufrite),6 Bashshār b. Burd (freethinker), Ḥammād ʿAjrad (zindīq), the son of
Rēsh gālūthā (Jewish poet), Ibn Naẓīr (Christian mutakallim), ʿAmr b. Ukht al-
Muʾayyad (Zoroastrian),7 and Ibn Sinān al-Ḥarrānī (Sabian). This time they do
not engage in kalām but recite poetry to one another. It is not possible to iden-
tify the transmitter, a certain Khalaf b. al-Muthannā.8
What is probably correct is that the “orthodoxy” among Basran intellectuals
in pre-Abbasid days left much to be desired. They would revise their positions
later, each in his own way. The gentlemen who met in this “debating society”9
had not yet, after all, reached a ripe old age. Bashshār would die at the end of
1 mutaḥayyir mukhallaṭ. The edition reads mukhalliṭ “causing confusion”; this is also possible.
Regarding mutaḥayyir “sceptic” cf. my Erkenntnislehre 226.
2 Agh. III 146, 10ff. > Ibn Nubāta, Sarḥ al-ʿuyūn 300, 9ff., and Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān IV 51,
apu. ff.; cf. also Fück, Arabische Kultur 258ff. and 267 (= Festschrift Kahle 95).
3 This gives rise to the question of concerning what the two heretics should “show genuine
remorse”. Because of their interest in kalām, maybe? The phrase ṣaḥḥaḥā l-tawba is unusual
as it is. It is possible to correct tawba to read thanawiyya (as Fück does 259, n. 1 and 267,
n. 2). But ṣaḥḥaḥā would still be problematic. Should we translate it as “agree, believe to
be correct”? Later traditions would change it: Ibn Nubāta has fa-ṣārā ilā l-thanawiyya; the
editors of Dīwān Bashshār b. Burd read fa-ṣammamā ʿalā l-thanawiyya. Cf. in more detail
Festschrift Spuler 65, n. 63.
4 Regarding him see TB IX 80f. no. 4661; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 108f. no. 580; Mīzān no. 3195.
5 The well-known grammarian, of course (regarding him see p. 253ff. below).
6 Not documented elsewhere.
7 The editor wonders whether this should be read al-Mōbadh instead of al-Muʾayyad.
8 Nujūm II 29, 3ff.; cf. also Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ṭab. 91, 10ff. Also Vajda in: RSO 17/1938/204.
9 Fück 241.
6 chapter �
the 60s; in those days he was thirty at the most. Wāṣil and ʿAmr, too, were born
around the year 80/700. We can safely assume that all of them drifted apart
quite soon. ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd is said to have driven Ibn Abī l-ʿAwjāʾ out of Basra
because he was “corrupting the younger generation”,10 and Bashshār b. Burd
did not escape the Muʿtazila unharmed either. It is true that the persecution of
heretics under al-Mahdī seems to have barely touched Basra and Kufa;11 by that
time officials and poets had followed the call – or the attraction – of the court.
However, before that there had been some fairly violent clashes of opinions
within the respective cities.
2.2.1.1 Bashshār b. Burd

Still, it is not at all easy to determine to which degree Bashshār was indeed
a “heretic”. His confrontation with the Muʿtazila is only one of many phases
of a biographical development within which someone like al-Jāḥiẓ already
found it difficult to distinguish a clear line. Modern observers, too, such as
F. Gabrieli, only found syncretism and aimlessness in this poet.1 He was
a typical social climber: highly talented, but rather indiscriminate as to the
means he employed. His father had been the slave of one of Muhallab’s wives,
a brick maker,2 who was freed when his blind son was born.3 He found this
10 Agh. III 147, 3ff.; see vol. I 516 above and p. 442 below.
11 But for Abū l-Hudhayl see ch. C 3.2.1.1 below.
1 In: BSOAS 9/1937/154. Regarding Bashshār see also: Moḥammad Badīʿ Sharīf, Beiträge zur
Geschichte der Mawālī-Bewegung im Osten des Kalifenreiches (PhD Basel 1942), p. 50ff.;
Attia Rizk, Baššār b. Burd, ein Dichter der ʿabbasīdischen Moderne, in der Überlieferung und
der Darstellung des Kitāb al-Aġānī (PhD Heidelberg 1966); for general information GAS
2/455ff. and Schoeler in CHAL II 276ff. On his being a zindīq see Vajda in: RSO 17/1938/197ff.;
Fück, Arabische Kultur 262f. and 267, n. 3. More recently and in detail Fārūq ʿUmar in:
Buḥūth fī l-taʾrīkh al-ʿabbāsī 286ff. If I diverge from these accounts, I am aware that a final
appreciation will only be possible once the surviving sections of the dīwān have been
examined and the akhbār in Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, Ibn al-Muʿtazz etc. have been anal-
ysed. This has by no means been achieved so far; the authors of the two PhD theses men-
tioned above are not familiar with the concept of source criticism. The akhbār traditions
are on the whole anecdotal in character and must not be mistaken for historical docu-
ments. The failure to take this into account sufficiently is, indeed, the weakness of the
most compelling interpretation of Bashshār’s character so far: R. Blachère, Le cas Baššār,
in: Analecta 583ff. This is a sketch composed only in the last weeks before the scholar’s
death; consequently minor mistakes e.g. in the chronology should be overlooked.
2 Agh. III 137, 8ff., and 207, ult.; also Text XII 2, v. 27.
3 Agh. III 136, 3ff. Or was Bashshār the only one to be freed, as the parallel account 136, 15
claims?
iraq 7
background distressing and made up a fantastic Iranian genealogy for himself

which went back 25 generations to Luhrāsp, the father of Wīshtāspa in the
time of Zarathustra.4 When Wāṣil reached the cusp of his fame, after the audi-
ence with ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz in 126/744, Bashshār flattered him
for his rhetorical skills;5 but he had no intention of supporting his cause. He
regaled the governors who followed ʿUmar II’s son, men like Ibn Hubayra or
Salm b. Qutayba for whom the religious opposition in Iraq had little affection,
with panegyrics; even a qasidah on Marwān II survives.6 When the Abbasids
took the helm he praised the “knights from Khorasan” and discovered that he,
whose grandfather had grown up in Tokharistan,7 was really one of their num-
ber.8 The calculation paid off and his tributes were accepted gracefully. His co-
lourful past was overlooked as a matter of course. He even came in contact with
al-Manṣūr and seems to have accompanied him on his pilgrimage to Mecca.
He claims to have boasted of his Iranian origins in al-Mahdī’s presence: while
he was an Arab in language and dress, his roots were among the “Quraysh of
the Persians”.9 Now, however, times had changed; when the vizier Yaʿqūb
b. Dāwūd felt insulted by him and the caliph had him flogged to death and
thrown into the Baṭīḥa marshes, his “heresy”, namely his Iranian style, was re-
garded as the reason for the execution.10 If it is true that the newly appointed
judge of heretics Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā, known as Ḥamdōya, carried out the ex-
ecution, his death should be dated to the year 168/784.11
The accusation of zandaqa, if indeed it did play a part at the crucial mo-
ment, was presumably only a pretext at the time. Involving the judge of
4 Ibid. 135, 2ff.; cf. the references in Attia Rizq, Bashshār b. Burd 76, n. 2. Significantly it
was transmitted by a Shuʿūbite. In his poetry, Bashshār also hinted at being descended
from “Kisrā and Sāsān” (Dīwān I 377, 8f., transl. in Wagner, Grundzüge der klassischen ara-
bischen Dichtung II 90, and also in Schoeler, CHAL II 279f.); he also referred to himself as
a nephew of the Basileus (ibid. I 380, 2f.).
5 See p. 279 below.
6 Dīwān I 306ff.; also Gabrieli in BSOAS 1837, 153f. Regarding this and the following in
general see Blachère in EI2 I 1080f., and Fārūq ʿUmar Fawzī in: Mawrid 16/1987/75ff.
7 Agh. III 135, 6f.
8 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 49, 4ff.; also Agh. III 138, 11ff. Cf. also the praise for Saffāḥ, Dīwān III 29ff.,
esp. 37, ult.
9 Agh. III 138, 1ff. Regarding his relationship with al-Mahdī cf. also Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ṭab. 21,
12ff.
10 Ibid. 243, 9ff., and 245, 4ff.; also Ibn al-Muʿtazz 24, apu. ff., Fück 262f., and Vajda 202.
11 Ibid. 250, 1ff.; cf. also my Ṭailasān des Ibn Ḥarb. 167 is also frequently named as the date,
possibly because it was known that this was the year of the great persecution of heretics
(see ch. C 1.2.2 below).
8 chapter �
heretics does not mean the accused was necessarily a heretic. There were
also other voices who claimed that Bashshār had been accused of Khārijite
leanings.12 Being versatile he had probably noticed earlier signs of what was
coming. Occasionally he would stress his orthodoxy in downright obtrusive
fashion;13 he praised Mahdī for being harsh towards those who “deny them-
selves to guidance”.14 He reviled Ibn Abī l-ʿAwjāʾ, who had been executed years
before, as a zindīq and accused him of neither praying nor fasting.15 But it is sig-
nificant that he clashed with Yaʿqūb b. Dāwūd of all people, who had replaced
Abū ʿUbaydallāh Muʿāwiya when the latter lost favour because of, among other
things, his son’s zandaqa scandal.16
As for public opinion, one thing led to another. Someone who wrote such
unrestrained poetry could not have been a pious and decent man. The Basran
ascetic Mālik b. Dīnār (d. 131/748)17 is reported to have visited him at home, in
keeping with the duty of amr bi-l-maʿrūf, to reproach him that he was offending
public decency by “propositioning” women in his love poems.18 Ḥasan al-Baṣrī,
too, is said to have been outraged at his conduct, even though Bashshār was
not even fifteen years old at the time of Ḥasan’s death.19 The poet’s response to
all this was sarcasm; he called Ḥasan al-Baṣrī a “clergyman” (qass),20 and Mālik
b. Dīnār was “not really his type”.21 In order to confirm that he did not observe
the duty to prayer people are said to have spread sand at his place and not
found any marks in it afterwards;22 Bashshār was, of course, blind. Apparently
he once attempted to complete the hajj with the aim of changing the image
12 Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ṭab. 21, 15f.

13 Dīwān II 36, 3; this is, however, in an oath.
14 Ibid. II 86, 1.
15 Agh. III 147, 5ff. The question remains of whether these verses are genuine. Tradition
takes pleasure in having zanādiqa bearing witness against one another (see vol. I 521ff.
above).
16 Cf. Sourdel, Vizirat I 100ff.; also ibid. 106 Bashshār’s verses insulting him. In Buḥūṯ 294ff.
Fārūq ʿUmar considers the political situation to be the definitive moment, believing the
accusation of heresy to be a pretext. Regarding Bashshār’s attitude of conforming with the
government cf. also Sahron, Black Banners 77, n. 8.
17 More information on him on p. 105ff. below.
18 Agh. III 170, 8ff.; also Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 118, 5ff. (where the correct reading of l. 6 is
istihtār, not ishtihār).
19 Agh. 169, 15ff. This was probably one of the reasons why Abū ʿUbayda said that Bashshār’s
tongue was feared before he had even reached majority (ibid. 143, 3f.).
20 Ibid. 168, 16. The word is used in the following poem without mentioning Ḥasan al-Baṣrī
by name. This, presumably, was the origin of the anecdote.
21 mā huwa min ashkālī wa-lā aḍrābī (170, 12).
22 Murtaḍā, Amālī I 138, 10f.
iraq 9
people had of him, but ended up drinking wine somewhere in low company
the entire time and at the end rejoined the returning pilgrims in Qādisiyya,
shaven-headed.23
The Muʿtazilites in particular, being famously straight-laced, kept adding
details to this image. The Iraqi scholar ʿAlī al-Zubaydī has shown that many
Bashshār traditions in the K. al-Aghānī originated with Muʿtazilites.24 They did
not really pay much attention to the truth, either. Jāḥiẓ quoted an outraged
philippic by Wāṣil who, like the prophet in Medina before him, asked whether
there was no-one who could put a stop to the freethinker’s (mulḥid) activities.25
The text is easily spotted as a fake as it very carefully avoids the letter r which
was a danger to Wāṣil; later narrators made sure that Wāṣil should remem-
ber his luthgha even in anger, and thus polished these anecdotes thoroughly.26
It had become hard to imagine that Wāṣil, who had once been praised by
Bashshār, should not have noticed the kind of rascal he was dealing with. The
falling-out was documented reliably only later, in the attacks of the Muʿtazilite
poet Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī, whose verses probably date to around 160.
These also unfurl Bashshār’s past, but in a rather more concrete fashion – so
concrete, in fact, that some of the allusions are barely comprehensible to us.
Bashshār is said to have been in contact with Abū Manṣūr al-ʿIjlī’s nurse Maylāʾ
as well as a certain ʿĀṣim,27 placing him definitely within radical Shīʿite circles.
Some decades earlier Abū Manṣūr’s followers had spread fear among the citi-
zens of Kufa by terrorist methods; some verses name Maylāʾ herself as the chief
of these “stranglers” (khannāqūn) who gained entry into houses posing as mu-
sicians, and then murdered the inhabitants under cover of the noise.28 This had
been a long time before; Abū Manṣūr had been executed under Yūsuf b. ʿUmar
al-Thaqafī (120/738–126/744). But the sect had not died. His son was put on
trial under al-Mahdī; it seems that he had pretended to be a prophet and made
much money that way which the caliph was only too pleased to have flowing
into his own coffers.29 This was the danger of denunciation. If Bashshār had
23 Agh. III 185, 5ff. This was reported in similar fashion about other people, too (cf. Vajda in:
RSO 17/1938/199, n. 3).
24 Maṣādir akhbār Bashshār b. Burd, in: Maj. Kull. Ādāb Baghdād 7/1964/129ff.
25 Agh. 146, 1ff.; also Bayān I 16, 10ff. After this Mubarrad, Kāmil 924, 1ff.; Ibn al-Nadīm 202,
–4ff. etc.
26 See p. 281 below. Abū ʿUbayda adopted this tradition, too, but phrased Wāṣil’s statement
differently – once again without r (Marzubānī 118, 8f.).
27 Text XII 2, v. 24; also vol. I 314 above.
28 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān VI 389, ult.; cf. vol. I 466, n. 4 above. Aʿshā Hamdān had already been
executed after Ibn al-Ashʿath’s uprising (GAS 2/345).
29 Halm, Gnosis 86ff.
10 chapter �
ever been an “extremist”, he had by then outgrown such youthful foolishness.

Still, his father had been close to that movement, and that was what Ṣafwān
seized on.30 Later biographical tradition did not differentiate anymore at all:
in his abovementioned apocryphal invective Wāṣil mentioned in passing that
he really did not want to employ the tactics (ghīla) of the paid killers that were
the ghulāt.
In the following verses Ṣafwān let the cat out of the bag: Bashshār mocked
Wāṣil himself. He called him the “yarn-seller” or “spinner” and made fun of his
misshapen neck.31 This is obviously a reference to some of Bashshār’s verses
which have survived thanks to Jāḥiẓ:
Why would I join a spinner who has a neck like the ostrich in the desert,
whether he shows it from the front or the back –
a giraffe’s neck. I want no part of you. ‫ ٭‬You declare people to be infi-
dels who have (themselves) called others infidels.32
While Jāḥiẓ claimed that Bashshār directed these verses against Wāṣil himself
after the latter had criticised him, he was merely following the fixed Muʿtazilite
image of history of the time. Bashshār used the plural; he was addressing Wāṣil’s
followers, and nobody tells us that Wāṣil was still alive at that time. They were
intolerant, declaring other Muslims infidels, but they were not the only ones,
as this is common practice among fanatics. Bashshār presented this sarcasti-
cally as a chain reaction where one points a finger at the other; he was clearly
thinking of the Khārijites who were branded heretics by the Muʿtazilites but
who had themselves branded someone else, namely ʿAlī, a heretic. He probably
emphasised this so much because the Muʿtazilites around Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī
30 Regarding this interpretation cf. my essay in: Festschrift Steppat, WO 28/1988/148ff. It also
leads to the chronological approach to the verses suggested above; it fits with the dates
we have for Ṣafwān (see p. 434f. below). However, we must not overlook the fact that he
also reviled Bashshār’s mother (Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 31, 1f.; transl. Pellat in: Festschrift Wickens
25); this probably dated back some time. Still, the two are not necessarily connected, and
in addition those verses are, despite being addressed to the mother, of course directed
mainly against Bashshār himself.
31 Text XII 2, vv. 24–26.
32 Agh. 145, 11ff.; Bayān I 16, 1ff.; quoted in Mubarrad, Kāmil 922, 4ff.; Murtaḍā, Amālī I 139,
4ff.; IKH VI 11, 1f. I am going with Aghānī’s tukaffirūna rather than a-tukfirūna as in Bayān,
and have consequently translated the last hemistich as a statement instead of a question.
The Jāḥiẓ tradition may be the older one, but the version in K. al-Aghānī has been pre-
ferred by all subsequent sources.
iraq 11
had called him an unbeliever, too.33 Ṣafwān took up the accusation: Bashshār
not only renounced ʿAlī – like the Khārijites – but also disparaged Abū Bakr.34
This is indeed as far removed from Wāṣil’s neutralist views35 as could be, and at
the same time it seems to contradict the ultra-Shīʿite tendencies he previously
ascribed to Bashshār. Jāḥiẓ accordingly followed this up by deepening the con-
tradiction: “Bashshār believed in the Parousia (rajʿa; like the Shīʿites) and con-
sidered the entire community to be unbelievers”36 – for in his view Abū Bakr’s
followers had gone astray as far as ʿAlī’s.
Still, what we are looking at here is not the result of inconsistent thought; it
is the doctrine of the Kāmiliyya.37 And once again it was not so much Bashshār
who followed it but rather his father who “knew nothing but clay”, and Bashshār
laid his own extravagance at his father’s door.38 It does, however, seem that
he would agree with the Kāmiliyya’s demand that the imam should assert his
own right even later, as he was said to have paid homage to Muḥammad b.
ʿAbdallāh “al-nafs al-zakiyya” and dedicated a qaṣīda to him celebrating him
as Fatima’s descendant and announcing the end of Manṣūr’s reign. It is true
that the Kāmiliyya, like many of Abū Manṣūr al-ʿIjlī’s followers, changed sides
to support Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh.39 Still, the authenticity of this poem does
not seem to me to be beyond doubt. The qaṣīda must have been written quite
early as it was transmitted only because Bashshār, when he began to find the
situation embarrassing, rewrote it directing it at Manṣūr and Abū Muslim in
such a way that all praise was directed at the caliph and all criticism at Abū
Muslim.40 This would hardly have been a sensible or advisable course of ac-
tion after the general’s downfall in 136, but then there were nearly ten years
33 Fück tries to read this into the last verse and translates: “You mean to declare others to
be infidels! You should only do this to one man (namely your leader Wāṣil)” (Arab. Kultur
242); i.e. he reads kaffirū or akfirū instead of kaffarū or akfarū. However, this abrupt im-
perative in the middle of the verse as well as the additions Fück has to presume in order
for it to make sense, seems to me to be asking rather too much. I agree with Rizq’s trans-
lation (Bashshār 93). – Wāṣil would be addressed directly only if ʿunqa l-zirāfati at the
beginning of the second verse were understood as a vocative. However, there is not much
in that.
34 Text XII 2, vv. 27f.
36 Agh. III 145, 8 and 224, 2.
37 For more information see vol. I 311 above.
38 V. 28.
39 See vol. I 313 above.
40 Agh. III 156, 6ff., and 213, 13ff.; transl. in Rizq 109ff. and 196ff. Cf. also Vadet, Esprit Courtois
168 and Beeston, Selections from the poetry of Bashshār 48ff.
1� chapter �
until the uprising of 145. Of course we do know that Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh

was being “built up” for quite some time before this,41 but in fact this was only
in secret, not to the sound of blaring panegyrics; furthermore tradition insists
that Bashshār only carried out the correction once the uprising had failed.42
In all probability we are looking at a piece of fiction after all.
Regarding the phenomenon of reusing a panegyric qaṣīda cf. Kilito,

L’Auteur et ses doubles 31ff.; also the example in vol. I 120 above. –
U. F. Fawzī read one verse in the qaṣīda Dīwān II 297ff. as polemic against
ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥasan and his two sons Muḥammad and Ibrāhīm (Maurid
16/1987/1, p. 84); in that case it could be even more firmly ruled out that
Bashshār ever committed himself to al-Nafs al-zakiyya. However, this
hypothesis is based on an incorrect reading (muddaʿiyayni instead of
muddaʿīna in 300, 5); this is impossible due to the metre. Also the qaṣīda
was addressed to al-Mahdī referring to him as caliph (312, 3); conse-
quently it must have been composed at least 13 years after the uprising.
Bashshār’s ongoing connection to the Kāmiliyya would be confirmed if
we could link it to the last line of the poem mentioned on p. 10 above. We
would have to base our argument on Jāḥiẓ’ version and translate the line
“Do you want to declare people to be infidels who have called someone
else an infidel?” The “people” would then be the Kāmiliyya, and “someone
else” ʿAlī. This is how Chokr, Zandaqa 435, interpreted the verse, but it is
hard to believe that Bashshār should have employed his opponents’ ter-
minology. In fact Jāḥiẓ was the first to claim that the Kāmiliyya “declared
ʿAlī an infidel”. – The fact that Bashshār had no time for the Rāfiḍites
(Agh. III 168, 1f.) is not relevant to these considerations.
Among the heresiographers Baghdādī was the first to point out Bashshār’s con-
nection with the Kāmiliyya.43 He used it to illustrate the rather vague remarks
in Jāḥiẓ’ text and quoted an anecdote the latter had already recounted: When
someone asked Bashshār whether ʿAlī, too, had apostasised, the poet replied
with another verse:
Not the worst of the three, o Umm ʿAmr, /

is your companion (here), from whom you withhold the morning cup.44

42 Agh. III 156, 9 and 213, 15.
43 Farq 39, 6ff./54, 4ff.
44 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 16, 8f.; Agh. 224, 8ff.; ʿAskarī, Awāʾil II 136, pu. ff. In his translation Rizk
erroneously links the story to Wāṣil.
iraq 13
In other words: ʿAlī at least converted in the end; Abū Bakr and ʿUmar on the
other hand continued to follow the wrong path. The phrase itself is a quotation,
usually located in ʿAmr b. Kulthūm’s Muʿallaqāt,45 but also transmitted from
ʿAmr b. ʿAdī b. Naṣr al-Lakhmī.46 Anbārī included this verse in his commen-
tary on the Muʿallaqāt, but not a next one.47 This story, too – if indeed it is
genuine – probably dates to Bashshār’s early years; neither Jāḥiẓ nor Baghdādī
considered the possibility of development on Bashshār’s part. Later, when the
Kāmiliyya had lost its meaning in the common consciousness, only his rajʿa
belief was still used as a motif: when the cattle in his house made a noise he
is said to have believed that the Day of Judgment had come, and that people
knocked on the graves of the dead to make them come out.48
When Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī took his anger out on the follies of Bashshār’s youth,
this was probably also due to the fact that he and the Muʿtazilites were a long
way from enjoying the social prestige Bashshār had. The Muʿtazilites had actu-
ally played a part in al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s uprising.49 Therefore he not only re-
viled Bashshār’s father as a clay worker, but also brought in a “plebeian” (ʿilj)
of the name of ʿĀṣim with whom Bashshār was in contact, and a “gentleman”
(mawlāka) who “if an injustice is done him, will resolve the matter with the
barge-pole”.50 Sailors were not respected much;51 we can easily believe that
many of them were slaves, and most of them were Iranians.52 But Ṣafwān really
only wanted to divert attention, as the major part of his qaṣīda was devoted to
refuting Bashshār’s theory of the elements. For 22 verses he sang the praises of
earth,53 because Bashshār had declared fire to be the nobler element.54 This
was not at all plebeian, and it did not have anything to do with the Kāmiliyya
at first glance. Jāḥiẓ preserved the point of reference, albeit in one verse only:
45 Cf. Muʿallaqāt with Zawzanī’s commentary, ed. Muḥammad ʿAlī Ḥamdallāh, Damascus
1383/1963. p. 239, v. 6/transl. Nöldeke in: SB Wiener Ak. Wiss., Phil.-Hist. Kl. 140/1899 no. 7,
p. 24.
46 Marzubānī, Muʿjam 11, 4f.
47 Ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥ. Hārūn, Cairo 1963, p. 374 with n. 2. The phrase “the worst of the
three” (sharr al-thalātha) actually recalls hadith pronouncements concerning the prosti-
tute’s child (see vol. I 23 above and Text XXII 254, 8b).
48 Agh. 160, 7ff.
50 Text XII 2, vv. 24 and 26. We are not given further insights into who these people were.
51 Cf. Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn I 70, 17ff.; also Muḥāsibī, Aʿmāl al-qulūb 104, 13 and 106, 9ff.
52 Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Tanẓīmāt ijtimāʿiyya 246ff.
54 Text XII 2, v. 1.
14 chapter �
Earth is dark; fire, however, luminous. /

Fire has been worshipped ever since there first was fire.55
He added with the merest sneer that Bashshār would seem to have agreed
with Satan – a reference to sura 7:12: “I am better than he (i.e. Adam). Me you
created out of fire, but him (only) from clay (i.e. earth).” Maʿarrī later con-
firmed this in his Risālat al-Ghufrān where he has Satan thanking Bashshār for
honouring him in the following verses:
Satan is more excellent than your father Adam./

You can be sure of it, you evil people!/
Fire is his element; Adam, however, is clay./
But clay will never equal the position of fire.56
Still, it seems that this is pure fiction. These verses, which would have served
to prove Bashshār’s heresy much more effectively than the verse Jāḥiẓ quoted,
are transmitted nowhere else. The verse quoted by Jāḥiẓ really points in an
entirely different direction, as does Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī’s refutation. With it,
Bashshār joined in the discussion of the elements which the “heretics” had
learned from the dualists – or, more precisely, with his worship of fire he
seems like a Kantaean. Shahrastānī described the Kantaeans as “fanatics of
fire”; but at the same time they regarded it as one of the elements together
with earth and water.57 The Muslims themselves realised that Bashshār was no
Manichaean: they noted that he ate meat.58 He was certainly no Kantaean ei-
ther, but he might have got the seed of his ideas from them, and maybe Ṣafwān
al-Anṣārī was referring to them when he mentioned a “barge-pole”. After all,
Bashshār was not only a poet but also a khaṭīb who employed sajʿ, and he wrote
“well-known treatises (rasāʾil)”.59 With the last named genre he infringed on
the Muʿtazilites’ territory, and it is possible that some of his prose writings dis-
cussed topics of natural philosophy.
55 Bayān I 16, 5f. > Agh. 145, 9f.; also Murtaḍā, Amālī I 138, 9 (but with the first half of the
verse inverted).
56 Ġufrān 302, 1ff.
57 Milal 196, pu. ff./649, 2ff.; for more information see vol. I 509f. above.
58 Mubarrad, Kāmil 923, 5ff. > Murtaḍā, Amālī I 138, 4ff.; cf. also Vajda in: RSO 17/1938/201,
n. 2.
59 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 49, 9f. > Agh. III 145, 3f.
iraq 15
If we can believe one of his nephews, even the Ḥarrānians played a part: he
allegedly studied with them.60 This is not impossible; he wrote a panegyric to
Sulaymān b. Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik when the latter was governor of Ḥarrān.61
With Marwān II, who was residing in Ḥarrān, he apparently went to war
against the Khārijite Ḍaḥḥāk b. Qays;62 he also mentioned the caliph’s punitive
expeditions against the Syrian cities.63 Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī, too, said that he left
Basra only towards the end of the Umayyad era, returning “to the (Iraqi) cities
(amṣār) only after (the death of) Wāṣil”, having “wandered about the coastal
area (tahāʾim) and the highlands (nujd).64,65 He did in fact write a poem about
the Banū ʿĀmir in the Yamāma in 126.66 But the “coastal area” and the highlands
should not be thought to refer precisely to the Hijaz, but rather read per mer-
ismum, to mean “everywhere” – and looking from Basra, Ḥarrān was of course
in the mountains. Ṣafwān seems to have intended to hint that Bashshār fled
Iraq because he was afraid of Wāṣil, preparing the way for later tradition. Still,
it is unlikely that he hit upon the truth; Bashshār left Basra simply because he
wanted to carve a career for himself elsewhere. The subsequent, last three lines
of the poem show how much the author’s pen was guided by moral outrage –
as, indeed, it would be in later tradition as well: Bashshār harassed strange
women, although he was as ugly as a monkey. Ṣafwān then advised him to look
to the women around Abū Manṣūr al-ʿIjlī. While we cannot recognise all the
names he mentioned, we can see that these were ascetics.67
It may be that Bashshār developed his doctrine of fire in order to buttress an
idea attributed to the later Kāmiliyya, namely that imamate and prophethood
are a spark of light passing from one person to the next.68 Ṣafwān believed
that this was thanks to tanāsukh, metempsychosis.69 When Sulaymān al-Aʿmā
(d. 179/795), the brother of Ṣarīʿ al-ghawānī and like he a poet,70 described the
body as the “temple” (haykal) of the soul, to be inhabited by the latter, people
60 Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ṭab. 22, ult. ff.

61 Dīwān I 291ff.
62 Regarding him see p. 525f. below.
63 For more information see vol. I 130 above. Cf. Blachère, Analecta 594.
64 Thus instead of nujud in the rhyme.
65 Text XII 2, v. 30.
66 Dīwān II 8ff.
67 Text XII 2, vv. 32f. with commentary. Bashshār’s ugliness was probably reviled by Ṣafwān
again in the last two verses in Ibn al-Dāʿī, Tabṣira 169, 12f.
68 See vol. I 367 and 533f. above.
69 V. 31.
70 Regarding both of them cf. GAS 2/528f.
16 chapter �
immediately presumed that he had learned this from Bashshār, whom he used
to visit in his youth.71 However, in Bashshār’s view this light was not an indepen-
dent force, a primal principle as it was understood by dualist theory. Mismaʿī
said this quite clearly in a doxographical account which is entirely isolated,
unlike everything else we have adduced so far:
Bashshār the blind’s prominence was due to the following views in par-
ticular: Humans do not have duties beyond understanding and avoiding
whatever is an abomination by nature: murder, robbery (ghaṣb), theft,
vice. He denied that the substance light, as the dualists presume, was a
god, a lord and a ruler, or deserving of divine, lordly or regal honours. He
denied that part of (this) substance prayed to another, or abased itself
before the other.72
This is a rejection of core dualist beliefs. The light is not God, but rather, as we
may add based on the foregoing, implanted in certain humans by God. It may
be similar to the divine light, but it is not part of it in the way the Manichaeans
would say that in the act of praying the particle of light within the believing
human comes into contact with the primal light of which it is a part. In this,
Bashshār is a Muslim as well as a self-confident intellectual: he is not led by a
revelation, but purely by his reason. Humans do not have duties beyond un-
derstanding – which probably means: creating an image of God through rea-
son – and to follow a natural moral code. The theologians of the opposition
preferred to interpret this differently: Bashshār, they claimed, said he recog-
nised only what he saw with his own eyes,73 which smacked of sensualism.74
Conflict with them was unavoidable. But he did not go far enough for zandaqa
in the strict sense of the term.
71 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān IV 195, 6ff. However, like Ṣafwān – and in opposition to Bashshār – he
sang the praises of the earth (Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 31, 6ff.).
72 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mughnī V 20, 12ff.; the translation in Monnot, Penseurs 173, is wrong.
Slightly abbreviated also in Malāḥimī, Muʿtamad 590, 9ff.
73 Agh. III 227, 1ff.; Murtaḍā, Amālī I 138, 14.
iraq 17
2.2.1.2 Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs

The third “freethinker” in this circle, Abū l-Faḍl Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs
b. ʿAbdallāh,1 was an entirely different type. He, too, composed verses, but they
were world-weary and misanthropic. No love poem by him survives, instead
much sage rhetoric and moralising preaching. Later generations regarded him
as a qāṣṣ;2 the Muʿtazilites ought to have delighted in him. But in the end they
looked at him rather differently; Abū l-Hudhayl is said to have debated with
him and – of course – refuted him. This was due to the fact that people thought
they knew that Ṣāliḥ had been executed as a zindīq; during the persecutions in
Baghdad the mutakallimūn had, after all, had the task to bring the “heretics”
to account. However, it is difficult to grasp his execution as actual fact. If we
assume that it did indeed take place it is only because there are numerous
anecdotes surrounding it. Still, they only illustrate attempts at retrospective
justification or explanation of the event: someone reading Ṣāliḥ’s worthy and
highly-principled verses could not possibly imagine him to have been a her-
etic. I have described the events in detail elsewhere3 and am only briefly going
to recall the most important points.
In the oldest sources that refer to Ṣāliḥ, Jāḥiẓ and Ibn al-Mudabbir (d. 279/
892),4 not a word was said about the execution. On the contrary, Jāḥiẓ quoted –
without commenting – the very verses which were later said to have been al-
Mahdī’s pretext for the execution.5 In its surviving form Saʿīd b. Sallām’s account
of the “debating society” only tells us that Ṣāliḥ “showed genuine remorse”.6 The
first explicit statements appeared in Ibn al-Muʿtazz’s (murdered 296/908) writ-
ings. He did, however, refer to an older tradition whose features had become
blurred by that time, because by then people were not sure anymore which ca-
liph had taken action against Ṣāliḥ, al-Mahdī or Hārūn al-Rashīd. Later, Hārūn
was barely ever mentioned in the context, and al-Mahdī gained predominance
in the tradition. Consequently secondary sources have usually, and supported
by Brockelmann’s authority,7 focussed on him. But as far as the origin of the
1 Regarding the kunya cf. TB IX 303, 8; on the grandfather’s name Yāqūt, Irshād IV 268, 10f.
2 Yāqūt, Irshād IV 269, 11f.; Ibn ʿAsākir, TTD VI 375, 9; Mīzān no. 3810; Ṣafadī, Wāfī XVI 260, 10ff.,
and Nakt al-himyān 171, 7f.; all after Ibn ʿAdī (d. 365/976?).
3 In: Festschrift Spuler 53ff. The most important biographical information has been collated by
Cheikho in: Mashriq 22/1924/819ff.
4 In his Risāla ʿAdhrāʾ; see p. 18 below.
5 Bayān I 120, 9f.; also Ḥayawān III 102, 6f.
6 See p. 4 above. It seems, however, that he only did this when threatened with death (Maʿarrī,
Ghufrān 429, 4ff.).
7 GAL S 1/110f.
18 chapter �
tradition is concerned, it is likely to have been exactly the reverse. The Hārūn
tradition is older; in the K. al-Aghānī it goes back to an older contemporary of
Ibn al-Muʿtazz, the philologist Thaʿlab (d. 291/904).8 His version was also the
shortest one of the story that would subsequently be embellished again and
again. However, this version already bore all the hallmarks of legend. Al-Mahdī
took Hārūn’s place because in the consciousness of later generations he would
be the great champion against the zanādiqa. This also explains the date of his
death usually – albeit not until rather late – transmitted: 167, the exact year
when al-Mahdī began the persecutions in Baghdad. For this very reason, it is
certainly wrong, too. The reports give us no reliable information on either the
date or the reason for the execution.
The so far oldest source for 167 as the date of Ṣāliḥ’s death is perhaps
Yaʿqūbī, Taʿrīkh I 483, 1ff., where, although it is not mentioned explicit-
ly, it is followed directly by news of the year 168, relating to Ṣāliḥ b. Abī
ʿUbaydallāh’s execution. He was one of al-Mahdī’s kuttāb, and probably the
son of the vizier Abū ʿUbaydallāh (see Vajda in: RSO 17/1938/186f.). – The
editor of the Dīwān Bashshār b. Burd considered whether Bashshār, when
he reminded the caliph of two drinking companions who had “passed
away” might have been referring to Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs (and an un-
known colleague) (II 287, 3), but I should think this was most unlikely.
In all probability Ṣāliḥ was not a qāṣṣ, either. Ibn al-Mudabbir knows him as an
official in Manṣūr’s chancellery who, in concert with Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and Jabal
b. Yazīd, and with his dissembling correspondence lured Abū Muslim to his
doom.9 If he really gave paraenetic lectures in the mosque in Basra, as the qāṣṣ
traditions claim, this may have been later; one of his poems tells us he went
blind.10 He was a mawlā, although people were not sure later where exactly he
8 Agh. XIV 177, 1ff.

9 Risāla ʿAdhrāʾ 42, pu. ff.; see also Festschrift Spuler 65. Regarding Jabal b. Yazīd cf. Ibn al-
Nadīm, Fihrist 132, 1f., and Ṣafwat, Jamharat rasāʾil al-ʿArab III 135ff. and 148ff.; he was a
translator (probably from Middle Persian) and served especially as ʿUmāra b. Ḥamza’s
secretary, who was in his turn considered a zindīq (see vol. I 524f. and 534 above, also
p. 700 below).
10 Only, of course, if the poem is genuine (cf. Ṣafadī, Nakt al-himyān 71, 12ff.; ibid. also his
biography 171, 7ff.). A qāṣṣ was considered to be particularly good if he was blind (Jāḥiẓ,
Bayān I 93, 15).
iraq 19
belonged. The Asad11 were mentioned, then the Azd,12 and among the latter
either the Duḥaiy13 or the Judhām.14 His father ʿAbd al-Quddūs, the son of a
convert, probably of Iranian descent, is also said to have written poetry – he-
retical poetry, people hastened to add.15 There was a certain ʿAbd al-Quddūs
among Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s pupils,16 but however characteristic the name may
seem to us, it was in fact not all that rare at the time.17 When admonishing
people, the son used hadith, too; Ibn ʿAdī had some examples in front of him.18
Other early authors confirmed this;19 the material would be forgotten later.
It was not easy to craft him into a convincing zindīq. Arguments used by
the zanādiqa were of course attributed to him; the tradition about Abū
l-Hudhayl employed this strategy. However, it was even more difficult to decide
whether he should be a dualist or a sceptic;20 furthermore, the competition
between schools became so dominant that in one of the versions al-Naẓẓām
replaced Abū l-Hudhayl.21 One passage claims, against all probability, that
he joined Bashshār b. Burd,22 but often people were content with just some
11 TB IX 303, 8.
12 IKH II 492, 3; also GAL S 1/110. Azd developed by assimilation out of Asd; consequently
Azd and Asad were occasionally seen as synonymous (EI2 I 811f. s. v. Azd). Concerning the
Asad see E. Landau-Tasseron in: JSAI 6/1985/1ff.
13 Ibn Durayd, Ishtiqāq 511, apu. f.
14 TTD VI 373; thus also GAS 2/461. Regarding the Judhām cf. EI2 II 573b.
15 Cf. Maʿarrī, Ghufrān 428, 6f., where he wished destruction on Mecca, because the city
had ruined so many visitors. Maʿarrī may well have worked deliberately with fiction (see
p. 13f. above regarding Bashshār). In the same passage he also claims to know that a son of
Ṣāliḥ’s was incarcerated for being a heretic (429, 1ff.).
16 Muqātil, Tafsīr I 3, pu. f.; see p. 51f. below.
17 Cf. Fasawī, Index s. n.; Mīzān no. 472 and 5155ff.; regarding the Dhū l-Nūn in Egypt see my
essay in: WO 12/1981/102ff.
18 Mīzān no. 3810.
19 Such as Nasāʾī, Ḍuʿafāʾ 57, 7 no. 299; IAH II1 408 no. 1794; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 203 no. 731 > Ibn
Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān III 172 no. 699.
20 A dualist according to Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 258, 5ff. > IM 46, 12ff.; similarly Murtaḍā,
Amālī I 144, 11ff. and in some detail Malāḥimī, Muʿtamad 593, 5ff.; Abū Rashīd, “Fī l-tawḥīd”
264, pu. ff. presents a different argument; also Murtaḍā 144, 8ff. A sceptic according to Ibn
al-Nadīm 204, 7ff. > IKH IV 265, apu. ff. > Ṣafadī, Wāfī V 162, 22ff. and Nakt 279, 2ff. Even a
K. al-Shukūk was attributed to him. Cf. ZDMG 135/1984/22ff.
21 See ch. C. 3.2.1.1 below.
22 Ibn Durayd, Ishtiqāq 511, pu.
�0 chapter �
vague suspicion23 or with saying that he was just dissimulating.24 When people
saw him praying and asked him why he did so, he is reported to have replied
“Custom of the land, habit of the body, well-being of wife and child”.25 The
same saying was attributed to other heretics as well.26
As Goldziher noted, the Dīwān does not offer any reliable clues.27 Ṣāliḥ’s
poetry was much appreciated later: by Ibn al-Muʿtazz for instance, who sim-
ply could not understand how a zindīq could say things so worth heeding,28
or by Buḥturī who included around two thirds of all extant fragments in his
Ḥamāsa.29 Qalqashandī still recommended employing quotations by Ṣāliḥ in
the mannered prose of chancellery style (inshāʾ).30 This was due to the gnomic
style of his verses; Abū ʿUbayd quoted him several times in his Faṣl al-maqāl
because of this.31 This is also where critics found a foothold, such as Jāḥiẓ and,
following him, Ibn Rashīq.32 We could, of course, assume that an orthodox
selection would have been made,33 but this is not likely considering that the
Dīwān comprised a mere 50 sheets.34 It is possible on the other hand to prove
that heretical verses were deliberately attributed to Ṣāliḥ retrospectively.35 In
the Nuṣayri tradition, in amongst poems by Khaṣībī (d. 346/957)36 we find a
long qaṣīda containing esoteric speculation on the meaning of letters which, as
is pointed out there, “was attributed wrongly to him (Khaṣībī) and was in fact
the work of Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs”.37 There is no clear delimitation between
23 Ibn al-Nadīm 185, apu. and 401, 17f.; Murtaḍā, Amālī I 128, 5; Marzubānī in: Ṣafadī, Nakt 171,
10 > Kutubī, Fawāt I 391, 9f./II 116, –7f.; a Dahrite according to Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl mukhta-
lif al-ḥadīth 356, 2f. = 279, 11/transl. Lecomte 310 no. 300a and Tawḥīdī, Imtāʾ II 20, 13, and
Mathālib al-wazīrayn 183, 2.
24 Maʿarrī, Ghufrān 429, 4.
25 Murtaḍā, Amālī I 144, 14f.; slightly different and more detailed Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ṭab. 91, 10ff.
26 Thus Ibn Abī l-ʿAwjāʾ after Ibn Bābōya, Tawḥīd 242, 1; cf. Monnot, Penseurs 314.
27 In: Transactions of the 9th Intern. Congr. of Orientalists (London 1893) II 104ff. (= Ges. Schr.
III 1ff.), there 110ff./7ff. The poems have been collected by ʿAbdallāh Khaṭīb, Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd
al-Quddūs al-Baṣrī (Basra 1967).
28 Ṭabaqāt al-shuʿarāʾ 91, 16ff. and 92, 7; also TB IX 304, 1.
29 Cf. the Facsimile edition by Geyer and Margoliouth, Index s. n.
30 Ṣubḥ al-aʿshāʾ I 292, 14f.
31 Ibn Ṭabāṭabā notes the similarity to a saying of Aristotle’s on the death of Alexander
(ʿIyār al-shiʾr 80, 3ff.).
32 Bayān I 206, 8ff.; also Goldziher 110/7.
33 Thus Fück, Arab. Kultur 261, n. 24.
34 Fihrist 185, pu. (unless this is already the selection).
35 Festschrift Spuler 60ff.
36 For more information about him see Halm in: Der Islam 55/1978/258ff.
37 MS Manchester, John Rylands Library, Arabic 452 (655), fol. 72 a.
iraq �1
Ṣāliḥ’s oeuvre and that of ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya, either.38 The gnomic verses in
particular could easily be used like set pieces anywhere.
If we wish to adduce the Dīwān in explanation despite all this, we should
preface it with the question of whether Ṣāliḥ was not in fact too pious for some
people or, in other words, whether his verses perhaps touched on what we
would call “Revolutionstheologie” nowadays. This was ancient kātib tradition;
Ghaylān al-Dimashqī was imagined in a similar fashion. Ṣāliḥ’s understanding
of free will was rather absolute: God does not guide the actions of humans;
indeed, he does not even have any part in them, otherwise we could not be
responsible for our own actions.39 As in the case of Ghaylān, this was linked to
social criticism: religion is better than riches; on earth, the gifts of fortune are
unfairly distributed.40 Disdain for the ruling class can be felt:41 they surround
themselves with ignorant fools who wrongly wield influence.42 Consequently
the paraenesis in which Ṣāliḥ revelled43 might well not have been to everyone’s
taste.
The latter tendency was absolutised in the Qiṣṣat Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs
maʿa rāhib al-Ṣīn, in which a Chinese “monk” – a Nestorian? a Manichaean?
a Buddhist? – gives Ṣāliḥ a talking-to.44 The monk lives on seeds and herbs,
but the language he speaks is entirely Islamic. While he does not quote the
Quran, as that would have been stylistically incongruous, he is otherwise in-
distinguishable from a Muslim zāhid. He addresses his sinful ego (nafs), he
cries and condemns this corrupt world and advises against acquiring anything
prohibited.45 It makes the reader wonder whether Ṣāliḥ did not put his own
ideas into the monk’s mouth. Monks, like Jesus, enjoyed a good reputation at
the time;46 there was no tradition of zuhd in Islam as yet. However, there are
also noticeable discrepancies to the Dīwān: the latter describes poverty as being
worse that unbelief, and a life without worldly influence is seen as worthless.47
38 Cf. the edition in Muṭṭalibī, al-Adīb al-mughāmir 268f. and 299.
39 Khaṭīb 139 no. 46; also 83, 5ff.
40 Ibid. 150 no. 81; general: 79ff.
41 Ibid. 120 no. 7.
42 Goldziher 111/8.
43 Khaṭīb 124, vv. 19ff.; Goldziher 112/9.
44 Ed. Isḥāq Armala in: Mashriq 14/1926/274–78 and 334–38; reprinted in Khaṭīb 93ff.
45 Khaṭīb 95, 5ff.
46 See vol. I 145 and 167 above; also Köbert in: Orientalia 42/1973/520ff. Cf. also ch. C 1.4.3.2.1
below.
47 Goldziher 111/8.
�� chapter �
This does sound more like a chancellery official’s philosophy.48 The qiṣṣa prob-
ably is apocryphal after all.
Maybe it was his style that made Ṣāliḥ seem suspicious. In Iraq, gnomic
expressions and moralising in general could quickly seem Iranian. After all,
hadith had not assumed this function at that time. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ emphasised
in his introduction to Kalīla wa-Dimna that his aims were not joking and pass-
ing the time (hazl, lahw) but rather that his audience should find the moral,
the ḥikma, in his stories.49 In fact he did not like the idea that the fables might
have merely entertainment value. The book of the panther and the fox, written
by Sahl b. Hārūn, al-Maʾmūn’s secretary and head of the bayt al-ḥikma, was also
written in this style; the fox describes the vanity of the world to the king.50 Saḥl
b. Hārūn, born in Dastmaysān, lived in Basra at first.51
The Damascene poet Ṣāliḥ b. Janāḥ al-Lakhmī, who was active around
the same time (for more information see TTD VI 369ff. and Ṣafadī, Wāfī
XVI 255, 1ff.) wrote in a similar vein. His Risāla fī l-adab wal-muruwwa
survives, which Khaṭīb has reprinted (p. 159ff.; originally edited by Ṭāhir
al-Jazāʾirī in: al-Muqtabas 7/1912/648ff.; see also Ziriklī, Aʿlām III 275). As
is frequently the case in paraenetic texts it praises reason; the relation
between reason and learning (adab) is the same as between inclination
and environment, between talent and education (Khaṭīb 165, 1ff). Wealth
depends on reason, but reason also depends on wealth (ibid. 172, 14ff.).
This similarity in their approaches led Khaṭīb to the rather daring idea
that the two poets might have been the same. This is not possible due
to the geographical distance. Furthermore, in his book the Damascene
warned against discussing with sectarians (ahl al-ahwāʾ), as one would
only confuse oneself, while the opponents could only be refuted by
means of dubious arguments (ibid. 174, 12ff.). This does not sound like
Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs, who was presented as a more of a mutakallim.
Moreover, Khaṭīb developed his hypothesis only because he considered a
late, certainly apocryphal, Syrian version of the account of the execution
(cf. Festschrift Spuler 54f.) to be a reliable source.
48 It is true that already in the view of the Zoroastrians, poverty was a consequence of sin
among the lower classes (Dēnkart, transl. de Menasce 143; Duchesne-Guillemin, La re-
ligion de l’Iran ancien (335f.). The Khurramiyya was later accused of a similar mindset
(cf. Madelung, Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran 12, n. 28).
49 Ed. Būlāq 1297/1880, p. 19, 11f., and 15f.; p. 23, 17ff.
50 P. 112, 3ff./ transl. 87f.
51 Ibid. 13.
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2.2.1.3 The Sumaniyya

There is no reason why we should devote much time to the “Sumanite” men-
tioned in our anecdote. His person and his doctrine remain unclear. A later
transmitter, the historian Yaḥyā b. ʿAlī al-Munajjim (241/855–300/913),1 tried
to identify the anonymous Azdite with Jarīr b. Ḥāzim, who would become
quite a respected traditionist and historian and wrote a book on the Azraqites,
among other things.2 He was indeed acquainted with Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs;
in a poem the latter criticised him, saying that he was never sure of Jarīr’s
friendship.3 But in the early 120s he would still have been rather young; he died
only in 170/786, although he was allegedly born in 85/704. Ibn al-Munajjim’s
speculation was probably really only a shot in the dark.4
It would, on the other hand, be important what in fact a Basran narrator
thought a Sumanite was. He was probably simply evoking a stereotype. The
Sumanites were regarded as sensualists who did not believe in any spiritual
reality; this is how they were said to have confronted Jahm b. Ṣafwān.5 This
was exactly what was expected of a zindīq as well; we have seen it in the case
of Bashshār b. Burd,6 and there are more examples.7 The Indian physician with
whom Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq converses in the “Book of the Myrobalan”8 is presented
in the same way. And there were indeed Indian physicians in Basra. Hārūn al-
Rashīd would later invite them to his court; some translated Sanksrit texts on
behalf of the Barmakids.9 It seems that their comand of Arabic was quite good,
and even if that had been a problem, clearly an interested Muslim intellectual
could always find a decent translator in Basra. This was how texts on rhetoric
were made accessible;10 the Indians were regarded as especially exemplary.11
Jāḥiẓ was able to form an opinion on Indian literature in general: Indian
books, he found, did not have one specific author but were transmitted over
1 Agh. III 146, 14, where he appears as Abū Aḥmad; for more information see GAS 1/375f.
2 Regarding him see GAS 1/310f.
3 Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir II 811, 3ff./2IX 188 no. 628; also Buḥturī, Ḥamāsa 92, 7ff.
4 Cf. also Fück, Arab. Kultur 259, n. 3.
5 See p. 566 below; cf. also Gimaret in: JA 1969, p. 299ff.
6 See p. 15f. above.
7 Cf. e.g. Kulīnī, Kāfī I 78, –7; further material see vol. I 530, n. 13 above.
9 Ullmann, Medizin 105 f. It was on behalf of the Barmakid Yaḥyā b. Khālid that the
oldest (?) account of the Indian religion was written, which would be used by later
authors time and time again (Minorsky, Sharaf az-Zamān on China 125ff.).
10 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 92, 4ff.; Maʿmar Abū l-Ashʿath, who converses with an Indian physician
here, came from Basra (see p. 42 below).
11 Ibid. III 14, 6ff.
�4 chapter �
centuries.12 Basran Muʿtazilites such as Abū l-Hudhayl or al-Naẓẓām studied

the “Sumanite” doctrine that the earth is constantly falling down.13
Of course not all Indians, not even all Indian physicians, were believed to
be Sumanites. Still, the question who they actually were is not easy and can
be answered in individual cases at best.14 The etymology of the word seems to
be clear per se: Sanskr. śramaṇa, or its Middle Indian equivalent samana. The
concept and the word were already known to the Greeks during the Hellenistic
era. Megasthenes, who was the ambassador of Seleucus I at the Mauryan court
of Pataliputra from 302–291 BCE, mentions Σαρμα̃ναι describing ascetics in
the wider sense, including travelling physicians, soothsayers etc. Half a cen-
tury later Clement of Alexandria added the form Σαμαναι̃οι, now without the
r (as in Pali) and a suffix influenced by Aramaic; he understood the word to
refer to Buddhist monks from Bactria.15 Analogous loan words are found in the
Kartir inscription on “Zoroaster’s Kaʿba” – where the zanādiqa are mentioned
as well – and in Sogdian texts.16 Like Clement, the Arabs knew the “Sumanites”
mainly from Iran. Ibn al-Nadīm said that the majority of the population of
Transoxiana followed their teachings; as he mentioned “their prophet Būdāsaf /
Bodhisattva” in this context, he was probably referring to Buddhists here.17 He
was relying on a foreign source; he himself, in Iraq, does not seem to have had
a very concrete idea. Iranian authors such as Bīrūnī or Pazdawī use the form
Shamaniyya which is nearer to the original; the u in Sumaniyya does not seem
to be justified in any way. After Mahmud of Ghazna destroyed the legendary
temple of Sūmanāt, this place name was used as a retrospective explanation.
The question is worth considering of whether the numerous instances

of the adjective sumanī/samanī found in the Chach-Nāma, a source
on the Arab conquest of Sind only surviving in Persian, can be traced
back to older expressions. The text clearly refers to older Iraqi accounts,

13 See ch. C 3.2.1.3.1.5 and 3.2.2.2.1.2 below.
14 For more detailed information on the following cf. my discussion in Erkenntnislehre 257ff.,
and Calverley in: MW 54/1964/200ff.
15 Cf. Elliot-Dowson, History of India I 506, n. 1; more recently and in greater detail A. Dihle,
Indische Philosophen bei Clemens Alexandrinus, in: Mullus, Festschrift Klauser 60ff. =
Antike und Orient 78ff., p. 62f./80f. regarding the derivation of the ending -αι̃ος from the
Aramaic plural ending -aiyā. The question remains of whether the Arabic word is based
on an Aramaic form as well.
16 Back, Staatsinschriften 261; the word entered the language via Sogdian.
17 Fihrist 408, 16ff.
iraq �5
maybe Madāʾinī’s (cf. Friedmann in: Islam in Asia I 23ff., esp. p. 29 and 31;
more recently also MacLean in EIran IV 605f.). It is certain that this text is
talking about Buddhists in general, not only Buddhist monks (MacLean,
Religion and Society in Arab Sind 5).
There are no reports of śramaṇa actually travelling as far as Basra. Jāḥiẓ men-
tions “monks of the zanādiqa” who always travelled in twos and never stayed
anywhere for longer than two nights,18 but he had this information second-
hand, and it probably referred to eastern Iran.19 But then one would really ex-
pect merchants in Basra in any case. And then it is interesting that in Sind at
least, where the Muslims gained a foothold in India, and to where many trad-
ing connections from Basra extended, the Buddhists appear to have played a
much greater part in trade than the Hindus;20 Sumanites may well have been
a designation for Buddhist merchants. Still, references to their beliefs never
grew tangible. “Sumaniyya” remained a label for everything that contradicted
a revealed religion: scepticism towards the spiritual, denying the prophecy;
combined with information on Indian religions in general.21 The sensualism
that was our starting point can of course be found in Indian sources as well,
for instance in Lokāyata’s school of thought.22 We are also able to prove that
an educated man like Bīrūnī knew this; he recorded without any indication of
surprise that the astronomer Āryabhaṭa (b. 476 CE) presumed that “what the
senses do not perceive we are unable to know”.23 But generalising this would
be too bold. To a scholar in eastern Iran the Shamaniyya was reality, but we are
dependent on speculation as regards the Sumaniyya in Basra. If the designa-
tion śramaṇa was not exactly concrete in the Indian sources, it became merely
an empty formula in Iraq.
18 Ḥayawān, IV 457, ult. ff.; also Goldziher, Vorlesungen 161f.

19 His source Abū Shuʿayb al-Qallāl was a Sogdian (see ch. C 1.4.3.2.2 below).
20 MacLean, Religion and Society 58ff.
21 The opponents of the “Sumanites” are generally the “Brahmins”, i.e. the Hindus; cf.
Gimaret in: JA 1969, 263ff. and ch. C 8.2.2.3.7 below.
22 Cf. the references in Erkenntnislehre 263f.
23 Taḥqīq mā lil-Hind 183, 15f./transl. Sachau I 225. Regarding Āryabhaṭa cf. Pingree in: DSB I
308f.
�6 chapter �
2.2.1.4 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ

There is no documentary evidence of the presence of Manichaeans in Basra
either, but that people were prepared for them is suggested by Wāṣil’s “1000
questions to refute the Manichaeans”1 – if, indeed, this text, of which we have
no trace, was not merely an apocryphon. The extent of the problem becomes
clear in the case of Abū ʿAmr2 ʿAbdallāh b. al-Muqaffaʿ. At the beginning of
the Abbasid era he lived in Basra where he was until his death the secretary
of ʿĪsā b. ʿAlī, one of those uncles against whom the young Manṣūr had to be
on his guard at the beginning of his rule.3 He had grown up there, too, learn-
ing his excellent Arabic at the time. His teachers, on the other hand, remain
shadowy, and if it were not for the fact that at least one of them is documented
elsewhere, one might be inclined to think that their names were chosen as a
joke: Abū l-Ghūl and Abū l-Jāmūs, both apparently Bedouins.4 His career took
him to Iran, first to Masīḥ b. al-Ḥawārī, the governor of Nishapur from 126/744
onwards, and then to Dāwūd b. Yazīd b. Hubayra in Kerman (130/748–131/749).5
He came from a distinguished Iranian family from Persis. His father Dādōya
had been a tax collector under al-Ḥajjāj and Khālid al-Qasrī; he was tortured
and his fingers crippled for alleged peculation. This was reason enough for the
Arabs to give him the nickname al-Muqaffaʿ; he had called himself Mubārak
when he was with them. The name stayed with the son, too, who may not have
been too pleased about it. In his view the Arabs were upstarts; everything he
wrote expressed his pride in the greatness of the Iranian past. And he does
seem to have learned from his father’s fate: while he, too, made a fortune in
Kerman, he would later share it with the influential people in Basra and Kufa.6
Still, it seems that it was his very prudence and his distrust of the Arabs’
treachery that led to his downfall. When his employer’s brother ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAlī,
another of the caliph’s uncles, had worked off his resentment in an uprising,7
he went into hiding in Basra awaiting a guarantee of protection by al-Manṣūr.
Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was employed by the ʿumūma to draft the document at an
1 Catalogue of Works IX, no. 13.

2 Regarding the kunya cf. Jāḥiẓ, Muʿallimīn, in: Rasāʾil III 44, 2f.
3 Regarding the part played by the ʿumūma cf. Lassner in: Festschrift Wiet 69ff. and SI
49/1979//39ff.; for general information on Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ cf. F. Gabrieli in: EI2 III 883ff. and
Fārūq ʿUmar in: Buḥūth fī t-taʾrīkh al-ʿabbāsī 260ff.; also Latham in: CHAL II 48ff.
4 Regarding Abū l-Jāmūs Thawr b. Yazīd cf. Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 50, –6ff.; he was acquainted
with the family of ʿĪsā b. ʿAlī’s brother Sulaymān in Basra, but did not settle there. Could Abū
l-Ghūl be referring to the poet of that name of the ʿAbdshams? He did, however, live in Kufa.
5 ʿUmar, Buḥūth 261f. after Balādhurī.
6 Jahshiyārī, Wuzarāʾ 109, 7ff.; also Sourdel in: Arabica 1/1954/311f.
7 Lassner, Shaping of ʿAbbāsid Rule 31ff., and in: Festschrift Wiet 69ff.
iraq �7
expert level, but it seems that he furnished it with such detailed clauses that
the caliph took offense and gave the nod to have him removed.8
We must refrain from going into too much detail, not just for brevity’s sake
but also because of the sources: tradition concerning Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ is just
as anecdotal as that around Bashshār b. Burd. The way in which he was killed
was later described with cruel imagination: he was said to have been thrown
into a furnace, possibly because fire was what people wished on the zanādiqa
in any case.9 In reality, not much was known. There is a report according to
which he found time to commit suicide,10 and entirely different explanations
for his death can be found as well.11 Both the biography and the person of Ibn
al-Muqaffaʿ still have many riddles for us, and it is probably wiser to present the
difficulties than attempt a coherent picture.12
Firstly, there is the question of the date of his death. Answering it means
taking a decision in the matter of the cause of death as well. If – and there are
many indications in favour of this – the caliph did indeed order his murder,
one may assume that Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was only arrested once the influence of
the ʿumūma had waned in Basra, i.e. after Sulaymān b. ʿAlī, the third of the trio
of uncles, had been deposed as governor of the city. In fact the execution is al-
ways laid at the door of his successor Sufyān b. Muʿāwiya, a Muhallabid whom
Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ had already annoyed in Iran, and who had had to put up with
attacks from him in Basra as well as long as the uncles’ protection held.13 The
shift in power has so far always been dated to 139 following Ṭabarī. Khalīfa b.
Khaiyāṭ, on the other hand, named Ramadan 137/Feb. 755, and also dated Ibn
al-Muqaffaʿ’s death to this year.14 This takes us very close to the date of Abū
Muslim’s murder.
At the same time we are settling Goitein’s question of how Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ
could have dared after these events to address his Risāla fī-l-ṣaḥāba to the ca-
liph, giving him advice on how to administer his office.15 The text must have
8 Cf. Jahshiyārī’s text in Sourdel, op. cit. 313ff. Sourdel points out that an amān was com-
posed by the petitioner in each case (319).
9 Thus said directly in Jahshiyārī 107, 1; see vol. I 489 above.
10 Qummī, Maqālāt 67, 13f.
11 Thus e.g. Ḥammād ʿAjrād in Jahshiyārī 109. 1ff.
12 The fundamental study is still F. Gabrieli in: RSO 13/1932/197ff. Further reading in later
summaries by the same author in: EI2 III 885, and in: Elaboration de l’Islam 26ff. We may
leave the flood of Arabic publications on the subject aside.
13 Jahshiyārī 104, –5ff.; also Sourdel 309.
14 Taʾrīkh 638, 2f. and 674, 1f.
15 In: IC 28/1949/120ff. = Studies in Islamic Hisrory and Institutions 149ff.; regarding the text
cf. also CHAL II 64ff.
�8 chapter �
been composed earlier, at the very beginning of Manṣūr’s caliphate, when no-
body could have guessed how quickly the Iranians’ influence would be spent in
the new surroundings; maybe as early as 136/764. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was recom-
mending that the young ruler should make sure to consider the members of
his own family when appointing offices,16 but then events came thick and fast.
ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAlī staged his uprising. Abū Muslim defeated him in Jumādā II
137/Nov. 754 in the Jazīra, and was in turn removed himself. In reaction to these
events, and still in the same year, Sinpādh revolted in Rayy.17 When in these
circumstance Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, a Persian, used his pen in support of a rebel such
as ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAlī, it is not surprising that the caliph’s suspicions were awak-
ened. It also seems more than natural that Sulaymān b. ʿAlī was deposed a mere
four months after his brother’s defeat.
Goitein already claimed that all this might have played a part in Manṣūr’s
decision; Sourdel pointed it out, too (Arabica 1/1954/318ff.). The most re-
cent discussion of the subject is by Fārūq ʿUmar (Buḥūth 264ff.). However,
we do not even know if the Risāla ever reached the caliph (regarding
the wider issue cf. C. Pellat, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, ‘Conseilleur’ du Calife 2ff.).
Shifting the date also leads to certain difficulties. We must assume that
in more than one instance the information in Ṭabarī’s lists of governors
is incorrect (III 121, 8f., and 124, 16; especially 125, ult. f.). This could only
be explained if an old misreading of 137 for 139 for Sulaymān b. ʿAlī’s de-
position, which was then made explicit by Ṭabarī or his source for the
years 137 and 138. Khalīfa 673, ult. ff. has a much more precise list of gov-
ernors than the one Pellat, Milieu 280f. compiled based on Ṭabarī and Ibn
al-Athīr (whose work was also based on Ṭabarī’s). Azdī, who quoted the
amān extensively, reported it for the year 138 (Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 167, –4ff.).
According to the abovementioned note in Ibn al-Mudabbir’s version, Ibn
al-Muqaffaʿ was supposed to have colluded in luring Abū Muslim to Iraq.
Manṣūr may in fact have known him from his time in Fārs where he had
worked with ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya for a time (see p. 334 below).
The second question concerns Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s age and arises due to the large
number of writings attributed to him. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ is said to have complet-
ed only 36 years. If this were true, he would have been surprisingly young in
his office in Kerman, and the anecdote that tells how in a precarious situation
he pretended to be his friend ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Yaḥyā, who was significantly
16 Ṣaḥāba 56f. para. 50 Pellat.

17 Khalīfa 637, 15; Ṭabarī III 119, 11ff. For more information on him see p. 708f. below.
iraq �9
older, would be incomprehensible.18 Furthermore his son Muḥammad was

a kātib in Egypt before 140/758 and seems to have died not long after.19
The figure 36 is less deserving of trust than has been thought; it is too “round”
(3 × 12) and has also been found to be incorrect when applied to other
persons.20 Only a small number of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s writings, on the other hand,
was actually composed by him; most of them are translations.21 This leads us
to assume that we are looking at a workshop: the authenticity is not assured
in every case anyway. And the question immediately following on from this is,
who commissioned the work. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ appears to have been wealthy,
but there is no reason to assume that he would have funded everything him-
self. His time in Basra was too short to allow for the volume of production.
Consequently we must look at Kerman or Fars. Texts like the Khvatāynāmak/
Khudāynāmeh, the Kitāb Mazdak (= Mazdaknāmak?),22 the Letter of Tansar
etc. were much more at home there; Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ received the last-named
text from a scholar from Fars named Bahrām, son of Khorzād.23
Sadly this region lies shrouded in darkness during the late Umayyad pe-
riod. What is apparent is that Hishām sponsored the translation of Mirrors
for Princes, and not only in Syria where Abū l-ʿAlāʾ Sālim was his secretary.24
Masʿūdī saw a book of this kind in Iṣṭakhr that was made for the caliph and had
been finished around the middle of Jumādā II 113/August 731.25 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ
18 Jahshiyārī 80, 1ff.; of course, it is made up anyway. Regarding ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Yaḥyā see
Brinner in: EIran I 111f. and Latham in: CHAL I 164ff. as well as ʿAbbās in his introduction
to the Rasāʾil.
20 See ch. C 3.2.2 below regarding al-Naẓẓām.
21 Cf. Gabrieli, loc. cit.; discussed with particular consideration of their Iranian character by
Colpe, Manichäismus 155ff.
22 Cf. Klima, Beiträge 53f.: Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ may have included a section on Mazdak in the
Khudāynāmeh. Also Yarshater in: CHI III994. Tafazzoli in: Festschrift Duchesne-Guillemin
(Acta Iranica 23), p. 507ff., is of a different opinion: the title Mazdaknāmak in his view is a
misreading of Mrdk-nāmag.
23 Cf. M. Boyce, The Letter of Tansar 4. In a hidden place, ʿAbdallāh al-Baghdādī’s book of
the secretaries, even the translation of Hazār afsāne, the original version of the Thousand
and One Nights, is attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (ed. Sourdel in: BEO 14/1952–4/140, 9).
Regarding this genre in general see Boyce in: HO IV 2, 1 (Iranistik: Literatur), p. 57ff., and
Bosworth in: CHAL I 488f.
24 See, most recently, Latham in: CHAL I 154ff.
25 Tanbīh 106, 5ff. The so-called ʿAhd Ardashīr may have been translated into Arabic around
this time as well (cf. the edition by I. ʿAbbās, Beirut 1387/1967, introduction, p. 33ff.).
30 chapter �
was a tutor to the Arab aristocracy living in Iran.26 We can safely assume that
he was supposed to use the texts translated by him or under his supervision to
instruct his pupils in the art of government or manners in polite society, and at
the same time teach them about their Iranian surroundings.
Later his translation work was associated with his “heresy”. Yaʿqūbī claimed
in his R. mushākalat al-nās li-zamānihim27 that he “translated the books of the
dualist Mani and the dualist Ibn Dayṣān”, and Masʿūdī repeated it after him
or after a common source.28 Finally people claimed to have heard al-Mahdī
say that he had never seen a heretical book that could not be traced back to
Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ.29 It is not necessary to reject these reports out of hand, for if
such heretical texts were indeed translated in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s “workshop”, it
was only the clients’ intention that would later be misinterpreted: at the time
people thought they might learn something from such texts, without necessar-
ily succumbing to heresy themselves.
The stated objective would be entirely assured if the earliest surviving

Arabic translation of Aristotle, an epitome of the Organon which, in keep-
ing with the scholarly tradition of the time, comprised the text as far as the
end of the Prior Analytics,30 could also be attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ.
Aristotle, of course, had no connection to either Iranian tradition or the
zanādiqa. The editor of the text, Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh, left
no doubt as to the authorship,31 and Western academics have followed
his lead.32 However, P. Kraus’s theory that the actual translator was Ibn
al-Muqaffaʿ’s son Muḥammad33 is also worth considering. Not only the
corrupted MS Beirut 1927 has his name, but also another, Indian MS
consulted by Dānishpazhūh (no. 2) mentions him on the title page. Most
26 Thus e.g. among the Banū l-Ahtam who played a part in Khorasan under the Umayyads
(Jāḥiẓ, Muʿallimīn, in: Rasāʾil III 44, 1f.) Regarding them cf. Eisener, Zwischen Faktum und
Fiktion 26, n. 87, and 95; also Balādhurī, Ansāb, ed. Reisülküttap 598, II 976 and 992.
27 24, 3f. Millward.
28 Murūj VIII 293, 2ff./V 212, 3ff. The entire section agrees overall with Yaʿqūbī, although
Masʿūdī did add Markion; to even it out he allowed other translators besides Ibn al-
Muqaffaʿ. More generally Bīrūnī, Hind 220, 2ff./transl. Sachau I 264.
29 Murtaḍā, Amālī I 134, ult. f.
30 Cf. Meyerhof, Von Alexandrien nach Bagdad 8; Walzer, Greek into Arabic 98.
31 Al-manṭiq li-bn al-Muqaffaʿ; Tehran 1398/1978. Introduction 62ff.
32 Thus Troupeau in: Arabica 28/1981/242ff.; Ch. Hein, Definition und Einleitung der
Philosophie 41ff.; Endreß in GAP II 420; Elamrani-Jamal in Dictionnaire des philosophes
antiques I 510.
33 In: RSO 14/1934/1ff.; regarding earlier research cf. also Colpe, Manichäismus 155f.
iraq 31
importantly, he is mentioned in the colophon of every manuscript that is

furnished with one; influenced by secondary tradition Dānishpazhūh cor-
rected his findings against the MSS.34 Evidence in favour of Muḥammad
b. ʿAbdallāh al-Muqaffaʿ himself has also come to light; he was Maʿn b.
Zāʾida’s secretary when the latter was governor of Egypt under Manṣūr,
and it seems he died there before Maʿn was transferred to Yemen in 142.35
Which means that as far as the chronology of the journey of the transla-
tion is concerned it makes no real difference if he was indeed the transla-
tor. Later versions appear to have been based on this text; the colophon
shows the development quite clearly.36 Regarding the terminology cf.
the abovementioned article by Kraus; also Zimmermann in: Festschrift
Walzer 529ff. Troupeau (loc. cit.) pointed out that the grammatical ter-
minology used in the epitome of the Hermeneutics was not adopted by
Sībawayh.
The third and most complex question concerns Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s personal de-
velopment and his understanding of the world. He has had more than his fair
share of trouble. Gabrieli mentions the “évolution du mazdéisme de ses aïeux,
à travers l’Islam embrassé extérieurement, vers un scepticisme rationaliste
qui se serait enfin apaisé dans la revelation dualiste”.37 Colpe believes that he
did not “find an inner home in Islam, although on the other hand he became
alienated from Mazdaism due to his conversion; in the end he became a
‘free-thinker’ . . .”.38 Colpe does not see this as a contradiction of his being
Manichaean, as “zindīq here describes a man who, thinking independently of
Islamic dogma, attempted to link his rational explanation of the world to a per-
sonal guarantee of salvation, in which attempt he was in line with the rational
component of Manichaeism”.39 A Paris dissertation of 1957 instead calls Ibn
al-Muqaffaʿ a “humanist of the second/eighth century”.40 In order to see more
clearly we must ask once again which sources we are looking at.
34 This is true of three of the four manuscripts that have come to light; one is incomplete
(cf. introduction 73ff. and Text 93, –5ff.). The title page of only one manuscript (Hamadān,
Madrasa-yi Gharb 4750) clearly states the father as the translator. Regarding the second-
ary tradition cf. in detail Dānishpazhūh 63ff.; that the father was unanimously believed to
be the translator, rather than the well-nigh unknown son, is hardly surprising.
35 Balādhurī, Ansāb III 236, –4ff.; concerning the date cf. EI2 VI 345 a.
36 Text 93, –5ff.
37 In: Elaboration de l’Islam 28.
38 Manichäismus 154.
39 Ibid. 190.
40 M’hamed Ben Ghazi, Un humaniste du IIe/VIIIe siècle, ʿAbd Allāh Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ.
3� chapter �
It is anything but certain that Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was a Zoroastrian. If people

said that he “hummed like the magi”,41 this is no more than a label; he was
thought to be a dualist while at the same time people were unable to distin-
guish between the rituals of the different dualist religions. Even less is known
concerning his father’s faith. He seems to have converted to Islam rather late,
allegedly at the insistence of ʿĪsā b. ʿAlī.42 At that time he probably exchanged
his Persian name Rōzbih for the usual convert’s name ʿAbdallāh. Many stories
named him together with well-known zanādiqa, with Ibn Abī l-ʿAwjāʾ, with
Muṭīʿ b. Iyās, Wāliba b. Ḥubāb and others. He did in fact occasionally spend
time in Kufa, where he would have been most likely to meet them; one anec-
dote described how he made snide remarks about the qāḍī Ibn Shubruma be-
cause he was hostile to the Persians.43 However, he did not have much time in
Iraq, even if the early date we are assuming for his death should turn out to be
incorrect. The stories mainly reflect the image people had of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ
later; this is adab, not historiography. What is significant, though, is that the
zandaqa was not brought in as a reason for his execution.44
The assumption that Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was a sceptic is based on one text,
namely the introduction to Kalīla wa-Dimna, with which Burzōya, royal phy-
sician at the court of Anōshirwān I, prefaced his Middle Persian translation.
Nöldeke assumed that one passage from this text, in which the author de-
scribed how in his youth he weighed the religions against one another and
found that none of them satisfied him entirely, was interpolated by Ibn al-
Muqaffaʿ. He did not provide philological evidence, but assumed that this kind
of attitude would have been unthinkable during the late Sasanid era under
the dominion of Mazdaism. Although it has become clear that this presump-
tion was incorrect, that the middle of the sixth century was in fact the time
when a kind of enlightenment emerged at the Persian court, scholarship has
found it difficult to abandon Nöldeke’s theory again, all the more since there is
a passage in Bīrūnī stating that Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ “interpolated Burzōya’s chap-
ter”. However, this has probably been misinterpreted as well, as Bīrūnī was not
41 Thus Balādhurī according to Goitein in: IC 23/1949/131, n. 4, and Sourdel in: Arabica
1/1954/311, n. 1; also ʿUmar, Buḥūth 264. Regarding the “humming” (zamzama) cf.
Duchesne-Guillemin, La religion de l’Iran ancien 295; Widengren, Religionen Irans 249f.
42 Balādhurī, op. cit.; also Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 91, 2f., 9ff. and passim.
43 Mīzān I 249, 3ff.; based on Wakīʿ, Akhbār III 117, 7ff., where circumstances are not quite so
clear.
44 It is, however, claimed that he saw one of his sons arrested together with other zanādiqa
(Agh. XXI 107, pu. ff.).
iraq 33
referring to the genuineness but merely criticised that Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ wrote
his own introduction to precede Burzōya’s but still kept the latter’s with all its
sceptical content. Bīrūnī believed this to have been due to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s
intention of “precipitating those of little faith into doubt and leading them to
Manichaeism”. There was no mention of anything being added to Burzōya’s
introduction. We must take the radical decision: Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ had nothing
to do with that passage. Consequently we cannot use it as proof that he was a
sceptic.
We could, however, interpret the passage in Bīrūnī as meaning that he

considered Burzōya’s entire introduction a fiction. This seems to be what
Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār was trying to say in a similarly phrased statement
(Tathbīt dalāʾil al-nubuwwa I 72, 4ff.), and Bīrūnī was after all only one
generation younger than he. In that case Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ would have
been a sceptic after all. Even so, the theory is as good as untenable in
this universal form. – For more detailed information cf. my discussion
in Erkenntnislehre 222. Other literature to be added is Goitein in: IC
23/1949/120ff. and Sourdel in: Arabica 1/1954/307ff., in more detail Colpe,
Manichäismus 165ff. and more recently Chokr, Zandaqa 290ff.; briefly
also Khaleghi-Motlagh in EIran IV 382 a, and Latham in CHAL II 51f.
A genuine addendum by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, on the other hand, is the trial
of Dimna at the end of the chapter on the bull and the lion. The motive,
however, is entirely different here: the dastardly scheming of the sly jack-
al could not be taken lying down (thus Nöldeke, Burzōes Einleitung 2).
This re-evaluation has not been properly thought through (Richter,
Fürstenspiegelliteratur 25ff.); calling Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ a moralist on the
base of it is problematic.
2.2.1.4.1 A Text against Islam

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Manichaeism hangs on a text that survives only in frag-
ments embedded in a wordy and not necessarily straightforward refutation
that can be traced back to the Zaidite al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm.1 Whether the text
was indeed composed by a Manichaean is not proved quite as clearly by the
surviving passages as Qāsim claimed in his polemic. The burden of proof
rests in the main on a rather isolated fragment which is yet to be interpreted
1 M. Guidi, La lotta tra l’Islam e il Manicheismo, Rome 1927. Cf. Nyberg’s suggestions for im-
provement in OLZ 32/1929/425ff. and Bergsträsser in Islamica 4/1929–31/311ff.
34 chapter �
satisfactorily,2 and also on the foreword which begins with a parody of the
basmala and then adds a hymn to Light.3 At the end Qāsim fulminated against
the doctrine of mixture and the fantastic vocabulary: father of greatness, mother
of life, beloved of lights, primordial man, archontes, pillar of glory.4 However, he
did not find these in the text he had in front of him: he would not have missed the
opportunity to skewer it within the actual wording. He was honest enough not
to ascribe it to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ alone, but to the Manichaeans in general. It was
part of his tactics of making Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ into a Manichaean.
What is clear is that the text was not written by a Muslim. This degree of
contempt for Islam has never before nor since been expressed in Arabic within
the dominion of that faith. The author knew of no religion that “was more un-
educated, unreasonable, worldly and sensual”, it had a corrupting influence on
its followers and “if churned, would ooze bad cream”. It encouraged obscuran-
tism as it commanded “neither to study nor to ask questions”, but required peo-
ple “to believe in something they do not know, and hold true something they
do not understand”.5 Add to this a furious hatred of the Arabs: Muḥammad
is a “man from the Tihāma”,6 i.e. an uncouth Bedouin. Unbearable that in his
person primitiveness was victorious, but it was due to force of arms only, not
thanks to religion or divine intervention. Muḥammad “fought for worldly dom-
inance only”.7
In another place, however, the author admitted implicitly that God sent
his angels to help devout Muslims;8 but this was meant dialectically. He knew
Islam and directed his polemic at several targets. He quoted the Quran9
and refuted the image of God it promotes as anthropomorphic and leaving
the question of theodicy unresolved. God sits on his throne by himself, and
according to sura 53:8–9 descended from it in order to approach the prophet
2 Text V 9 with commentary.

3 Text V 1. Whether this is indeed a hymn, as I maintained in: bustan 5/1964, vol. 2, p. 11, is not
absolutely certain. The fragment has no metric structure. If we were to assume such a struc-
ture for the Middle Persian original, we run into trouble with the re-worded basmala; bismi
l-nūri l-raḥmāni l-raḥīm can only have been devised in Arabic. It is possible to assume that it
was simply prefaced to the hymn itself.
4 Lotta 50, 7ff., and 52, 20ff.
5 Text V 4.
6 Ibid. 4, e.
7 Ibid. 4, a–b with commentary.
8 Text 3, b.
9 Text 3, a; 5, a; 8, a; maybe also 3, d (cf. the commentary).
iraq 35
to two bows’-lengths away, or nearer,10 he feels sadness, sorrow and anger.11 At

the same time this God is powerless; unable to overcome evil or rather, worse
still, unable to control his own creation, for evil as an independent principle
does not exist for Muslims. He must defend himself against them and does this
in a transparently clumsy fashion: he throws shooting stars12 or has angels act
on his behalf. If they win, he takes the credit for the success.13 This is again a
sign of his all too human character: he enjoys boasting of his achievements,14
although there really is no call for that at all. His enemies were able to kill
the prophets he sent into the world, and he did not take revenge immedi-
ately but postponed the punishment until the Day of Judgment.15 If one of
his followers is beaten, he justifies himself by saying that he only wanted to
test him.16 Sometimes disaster comes from him directly: when he sends dis-
ease to earth. He has ruined his own creation.17 Satan remains victorious, most
people follow him.18
It is really worth asking whether God existed by himself in the beginning.19
It would certainly be easier to say that an evil principle, the opposite of the
very Light addressed in the preface, existed beside him from the beginning
and should be held responsible for all the inconsistencies and ills mentioned.
After all, God showed two ways20 – this is probably another reference to the
Quran where, as Qāsim adds, we read in sura 4:76 that some fight in the way
of God, while others fight in the way of the dark force (al-ṭāġūt).21 God created
the world for good,22 consequently he cannot want what is evil. It is further-
more absurd to assume that he created it from nothing; nothing does not exist,
10 Text 8, a. This is probably a reference to a miʿrāj narrative.

11 Text 6; also 8, b.
12 Text 3, a. Further information in ch. C 1.2.3 below.
13 Ibid. 3, b.
14 Text 5, a.
15 Text 3, c. The author leaves out the legends of punishment contained in the Quran. It is
possible that the “enemy” on whom God does not revenge himself immediately refers to
Satan, but the context suggests a more collective interpretation.
16 Ibid. 3, b.
17 Ibid. 3, d.
18 Text 5, b.
19 Text 2.
20 Text 7, a.
21 Lotta 34, 5f. The meaning of ṭāġūt was debated; it is not impossible that the author inter-
preted it in the same way as Iranian propaganda does today.
22 Text 7, b–c.
36 chapter �
and it is impossible to imagine, too.23 On the contrary, something has always

been, and the world emerged, we may surely continue, through “mixture” – or
else it was the work of the adversary. This is the only course of reasoning that
does not force us to believe that God’s delight in the world must have turned
to ill will, and that he follows his mercy on his creatures with punishment
immediately.24
This is denying fundamental dogmas indeed. The author obviously be-
lieves in the eternal duration of the world, or rather: the fight between good
and evil takes place on the substratum of eternal matter. God creating things
“with his own hand” is clearly regarded as too anthropomorphic.25 The more
transcendent idea that he brought things into existence with his creative word
did not satisfy the author either: it is not possible to address something that
is not already there.26 Similar views would be expressed later in the Shkand
gumānīk vičār.27 The Quran is criticised before the backdrop of a spiritual un-
derstanding of religion and a rational explanation of the world. The author
shows himself to be elitist; those who imagine God like themselves or hint at
the deeper meaning of sigla and formulae in the Quran28 only betray an un-
derdeveloped faculty of thought. We should, however, assume that creatio ex
nihilo became a constitutive point of faith in Islam only relatively late.28a The
various doctrines of elements to which Qāsim, too, refers in his refutation,29
could still leave ample space for God’s creative impulse. As for anthropomor-
phism, Jahm b. Ṣafwān and his followers were abandoning it in Iran during Ibn
al-Muqaffaʿ’s time.
Consequently it is not easy to deduce the text’s historical location by analys-
ing it. The rational religion it promoted would suit an intellectual aware of his
Iranian heritage; it is aggressive and infused with Shuʿūbite elements. Jāḥiẓ also
mentioned that from their lofty scientific watchtower the “Dahrites” smiled
23 Text 8, c and e.

24 Ibid. 8, d. Cf. also the reconstruction of the train of thought in Levi Della Vida in: OM
8/1928/85, and in Colpe, Manichäismus 181ff. and 253ff.; also Nagel, Rechtleitung 315ff., and
my article in: bustan 5/1964, vol. 2, p. 10ff. Colpe assumes that Qāsim rearranged the frag-
ments; I do not think this is necessarily the case.
25 Text 8, e.
26 Ibid., commentary after Lotta 43, pu. f.
27 187 (78ff.) de Menasce.
28 Text 8, commentary.
28a Cf. ch. D 1.3.2.1 below.
29 Lotta 45, 5ff.
iraq 37
down on e.g. the Quranic explanation of shooting stars.30 But this does not
help determine the author. Wansbrough recently called the text a “Muʿtazilite
tour de force” interpreting the preamble bismi l-nūri l-raḥmāni l-raḥīm as mere
“childish trite humour”,31 and clearly understanding the text as a Muslim falsi-
fication. I have examined this theory before,32 and can only repeat: it seems to
me that a falsification would have looked different. It would have emphasised
those aspects of Manichaeism that are suppressed here: its “mad” mythology,
its enigmatic imagery. Fragment 9 would have been phrased much more clear-
ly. The falsifier would presumably have provided a refutation at the same time.
Qāsim, however, is unlikely to have been the falsifier as his style is entirely dif-
ferent from that of the fragments: undisciplined, long-winded and, above all,
not yet skilled in Muʿtazilite theology.33
But Qāsim suggests another possibility. His refutation was, as can be deduced
from his untrained style, an early work probably composed in Egypt where he
stayed between around 199/815 and 211/826.34 The rather harsh rhyming prose
and the way in which ideas are presented suggest that the text was intended to
be heard rather than read; probably in the form of sermons.35 Sermons, how-
ever, only make sense if they have an actual occasion. Was the text circulated
in Egypt as an apocryphon, attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ only because he was
by that time the most famous “Manichaean”? It is entirely possible that there
were still genuine Manichaeans in Egypt at the time;36 Shīʿite tradition imag-
ined that Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq debated with a zindīq from Egypt named ʿAbd al-Malik
Abū ʿAbdallāh among others,37 although going by his name, this zindīq would
presumably have been a Muslim. It is thus possible that Qāsim was aiming at
Muslim circles whom he considered to be susceptible to Manichaean theories.
It is less probable that Manichaean circles publicised Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s text.
This would not have been entirely wise. And it is not at all certain that the text
was composed in Egypt at all. The author believed that the end of the world
30 Ḥayawān VI 272, 4ff., and 496, –4ff. Also ch. C 3.2.2.2.4.2.2.3 below.
31 Quranic Studies 160.
32 Festschrift ʿAbbās 162.
33 Cf. Madelung, Qāsim 111. Concerning the style of the refutation in detail cf. esp.
Bergsträsser’s thorough analysis in: Islamica 4/1929–31/296ff.
34 Madelung, ibid. 88ff.
35 Thus already Bergsträsser 301. More generally Madelung 153.
37 Ṭabrisī, Iḥtijāj II 72, ult. ff. (after Hishām b. al-Ḥakam); but cf. the parallel in vol. I 529, n. 3,
where al-Baṣrī is written rather than al-Miṣrī.
38 chapter �
was nigh, he did not think Islam had much time left.38 This fits most prob-
ably into the last years of the Umayyad era. The loathing of the “man from the
Tihāma” sounds Iranian, and during the collapse of the public order before the
Abbasid restoration, dualist ideas would have been most likely to have gained
the freedom in which the formula “in the name of Light, the merciful and
compassionate” would not have been merely trite humour. Unlike in eastern
Iran, Islam did not really take root in central Iran until the Abbasid era.39 Thus
there is no strong argument against Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ; he had not yet become
a Muslim at the time. Manichaeism, if interpreted with so little mythology,
could be regarded as the continuation of Zoroastrianism and the summary
of Iranian religious thought.40 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ need not have identified with
the text directly; being a translator he merely conveyed Iranian material, and
his Arab patrons were certainly interested in finding out what was happening
in the anti-Islamic scene. The text is not, however, a translation. The paths of
transmission are too complex to permit the hope that comparisons of style
would be of use, but at least, as Gabrieli noticed,41 the comparison with the
bazar where the buyer examines the wares as carefully as one should also do in
the case of religion appears in Burzōya’s foreword to Kalīla wa-Dimna, too. This
provides a last piece of evidence in favour of the Iranian background.42
This framework of the text’s chronological and geographical position is all
we need for our research. It is unlikely that it will ever be proved43 that Ibn
al-Muqaffaʿ was indeed the author as Qāsim claims;44 to the imagination of
later generations he was too much the exponent of a particular tendency to
be considered. Still, we should not take scepticism too far, as Mismaʿī’s review
points out:
Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was characterised by the following doctrine: light rules

(dabbara) over darkness and surges into it spontaneously, as this is ulti-
mately more beneficial (aṣlaḥ) for it. He rejected the objectionable stories
told by the Manichaeans about the struggle between the two principles.
38 Text 4, d.
39 In more detail p. 686ff. below.
40 Thus Colpe, Manichäismus 189f. Richter regard the intellectualisation of ethics as expressed
in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Adab al-kabīr as a typically Manichaean trait (Fürstenspiegelliteratur
13ff.).
41 In: RSO 13/1932/239.
42 Regarding agreement with Shkand gumānīk vičār see p. 36 above.
43 Cf. Vajda’s critical attitude in: JA 228/1936/350, and RSO 17/1938/228, n. 1, as well as
Madelung in GAP II 361; more recently also Chokr, Zandaqa 297ff.
44 Lotta 8, 5ff.
iraq 39
He claimed that movement (al-ḥarakāt) existed and was not identical

with the respective entity (al-aʿyān). He claimed that movement per-
tained to both kinds of existence (i.e. light and darkness); the movements
of light being entirely good, those of darkness entirely evil.45
This is not a synopsis of the text in question, at least not of the extant frag-
ments. The remarks on the theory of movement touch on a completely dif-
ferent topic which, as we have seen, interested the zanādiqa in general.46 The
reference to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s dislike of mythology, on the other hand, exactly
captures the basic tendency of the text refuted by Qāsim. Someone who identi-
fied the light with Allāh could have said that light “rules over” darkness. Qāḍī
ʿAbd al-Jabbār pointed out that a fundamental principle of dualism was vio-
lated here: when light invades darkness spontaneously, it takes responsibility
for the evil that originates there.47 This might in fact have been the intention
of someone hoping to unify Islam and dualism.
2.2.1.4.2 The Parody of the Quran

Guidi believed that the text he brought to wider notice when he edited Qāsim’s
refutation of it was the very Muʿāraḍat al-Qurʾān that would later be attrib-
uted to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ from time to time.1 This view immediately met with
justified criticism by Bergsträsser2 and then Gabrieli.3 The conclusive proof
to the contrary can be found in a few fragments brought to light in a Zaydite
text some time ago.4 They show what we should look for in the Muʿāraḍa:
parodies of Quranic style which employ rhyming prose to repeat the effect of
Meccan suras either with freely invented subject matter or drawing on Quranic
45 Mughnī V 20, 5ff.; transl. Monnot, Penseurs 172f. Now also Malāḥimī, Muʿtamad 590, 2ff.
47 Mughnī V 69, 17ff./Monnot 243f.
1 Thus Balʿamī in his Persian adaptation of Ṭabarī’s history of the world (cf. Festschrift
ʿAbbās 153); critical review by Bāqillānī (ibid. 161).
2 Islamica 4/1929–31/295, n. 5.
3 RSO 13/1932/240 and EI2 III 885a.
4 Initially by Madelung, Qāsim 90, n. 27; subsequently edited by me in: Festschrift ʿAbbās
151ff. The text, which was available to me in manuscript form only, has now been edited:
Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Muʾaiyad billāh (333/944–411/1020), K. ithbāt nubuwwat al-nabī,
ed. Aḥmad Ibrāhīm al-Ḥājj (Beirut, al-Maktaba al-ʿIlmiyya, n. d.). The oldest surviving
textual witness, MS Cairo, Dār al-kutub, kalām 1567, to which I did not have access at the
time, does not provide new variants. The edition diverges slightly in places, although not
necessarily with better readings.
40 chapter �
set pieces. Only one fragment is different, in which the author explained his
intention: “(The conclusion) remains that both texts (i.e. the Quran and the at-
tempt at parody) are equal in that (human) conviction may find a difference in
quality and accordingly rank one higher, and dismiss the other. Ultimately, one
must merely be recited as frequently as the other, and soon people will believe
the style of both equally pleasing and elegant. For it is by habituation that a
recited text becomes pleasing just as (by habituation) food, drink, and sexual
intercourse become enjoyable. Through alienation and lack of familiarity, on
the other hand, people will be repelled and kept from what is right. Thus one
should train (?) one’s vocal cords with this (text) as much as with the other”.5
After this there is no need for us to look at the other fragments, six in total.
They are only of interest to us in that their contents do not contradict a date of
composition before 137. On the contrary, two of them play on historical asso-
ciations that must have been fresh in everyone’s memory at the time. Fragment
5 mentions the Iraqis and accuses them of discord and hypocrisy (al-shiqāq
wal-nifāq), like al-Ḥajjāj had done in his famous accession speech in Kufa.
Fragment 4 is directed at the Syrians who committed many crimes and who
have now been overwhelmed by people from the east who live in tents and
chastise them.6 As we know, Syria had just been conquered by ʿAbdallāh b.
ʿAlī: we are very close to the ʿumūma. A second point is just as important: the
historical associations ensured that everybody understood that the text would
not have been found in the Quran in this form. The author was not imitat-
ing the Quran in order to replace or improve it, but merely to show that the
Quranic style was nothing special, that the awe people felt when they heard
the suras was due to their being accustomed to hearing them in a liturgical
context. The reasoning shows that there must already have been a diffuse con-
viction that the language of the Quran was perfect and inimitably beautiful, a
conviction presumably held mainly by Arabs. However, the text does not as-
sume the dogma of iʿjāz or use the term. There is nothing heretical about the
text, either; it was not until later that people read heresy into it. It may have
been composed by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ; as an Iranian he would have had particular
reason to object to the expanding Arabic “dogma”. He did indeed dabble in
kalām, as Jāḥiẓ pointed out, too; adding, however, that he did not seem to be
very knowledgeable in it.7
5 Festschrift ʿAbbās 159f.

6 Ibid. 156ff. with further details.
7 Muʿallimīn in: Rasāʾil III 44, 5f.
iraq 41
The Quran itself may be furnishing an early instance of a parody of

Quranic style. Sura 89:1–4 has been interpreted as a failed muʿāraḍa of
Meccan suras, directed against the prophet’s claim to inimitability by his
opponents, maybe poets; in that case verse 5 would be Muḥammad ridi-
culing it (thus I. Shahid in: JAL 14/1983/9, n. 21; similar but without refer-
ence to verse 5 also Bell 654 in the preliminary remarks on his translation
of the sura; cf. Paret, Komm. 509 on the passage).
2.2.1.5 The Context. “Natural Philosophers”

Just as in Kufa, in Basra people like Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs and Bashshār b.
Burd were not alone, either, but the “sympathiser scene” was not documented
in quite so much detail, and of course they were not drawn from the ranks
of the Shīʿa. The poet Munqidh b. ʿAbdarraḥmān al-Hilālī1 was regarded as a
zindīq, as was Salm al-Khāsir (d. 186/802), who went on to seek his fortune in
Baghdad under al-Manṣūr and his two successors.2 Abān al-Lāḥiqī also went to
the capital; he was a client of the Raqāsh who was sponsored by the Barmakids
for whom he translated Iranian literature into Arabic: the biographies of
Ardashīr and Anōshirwān for instance, but also the book about Mazdak (?) and
finally the legend of the Buddha, the famous K. Bilawhar wa-Būdhāsaf which
reached the West under the title Barlaam and Josaphat.3 Abū Nuwās reviled
him as a zindīq in a satire that had slander written all over it; it was all about
money and influence.4 Ṣūlī later tried to rehabilitate him; with justification, it
would seem.5
The world of the “heretics” remained attractive; it was not taboo during the
second half of the second century, as it did not only cloak itself in poetry, but
in fact had much to offer that was useful. Several Basran theologians, most of
whom had more or less close links with the Muʿtazila, but also the historian
1 Cf. GAS 2/466 with further literature. Also Marzūqī, Sharḥ al-Ḥamāsa 1052f. no. 369, and 1198f.
no. 446.
2 GAS 2/511f.
3 Ibn al-Nadīm 132, –7ff.; Vajda in: RSO 17/1938/207ff.; Stern in: EI2 I 2; ʿAbbās in: EIran I 58f.; GAS
2/515f. Regarding the Mazdaknāmak see p. 29, n. 22 above; regarding Bilawhar wa-Būdhāsaf
cf. Gimaret, Le Livre de Bilawhar et Būḏasf (Paris 1971). Fragments of his verse version of Kalīla
wa-Dimna probably survive in Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī’s K. al-amthāl al-ṣādira ʿan buyūt al-shiʿr
(cf. Schoeler, Katalog arab. Handschriften II 309).
4 Vajda 208; translation in Pellat, Milieu 220.
5 Awrāq 37, –6ff.; more generally Taheri-Iraqi, Zandaqa 228ff.
4� chapter �
Madāʾinī, studied with a physician, who was apparently so rich that he could
afford several assistants (ghulām),6 named
Maʿmar Abū l-Ashʿath7
whom Jāḥiẓ called “a philosopher among the mutakallimūn”, comparing him

to people like Muḥammad b. al-Jahm al-Barmakī or Ibrāhīm b. al-Sindī, free-
thinkers whom he met later at court in Baghdad.8 Maʿmar probably never left
Basra; there is no source from the capital preserving his memory. Even when he
associated with the Indian physicians with whom the Barmakid Yaḥyā b. Khālid
surrounded himself, this was in all likelihood in Basra, before the visitors trav-
elled on to Baghdad.9 He was naturally interested in them as colleagues, but he
quizzed them concerning the manner in which rhetoric was practised in their
home country. His curiosity extended much further than the boundaries of his
own profession. He observed bats and believed that when they gave birth to
twins they would carry both of them around with them and only later, when
the young became too heavy, make them take turns.10 Following a belief widely
held among intellectuals like him he did not allow a menstruating woman to
approach a vessel with milk; Jāḥiẓ, who considered this rather outlandish, sur-
mised that he might have believed her to exude a strong smell or emanation
that could mix with the milk.11 Above all, he did not eat beans.
His pupil Abū Shamir would later find a fairly rational explanation.12 For Abū
l-Ashʿath, on the other hand, it may well have been an age-old philosophical
custom; the bean taboo has had a long history around the Mediterranean ever
6 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 113, 17ff. after a handwritten note by the Muʿtazilite Bakr Ibn
al-Ikhshīd (270/883–326/938) which it seems Ibn al-Nadīm had in front of him (qaraʾtu bi-
khaṭṭ Abī Bakr Ibn al-Ikhshīd). However, this is directly followed by the remark wa-qaraʾtu
bi-khaṭṭ Ibn al-Kūfī which, being a different reading, can really only have been written
by someone else. It is probably one of those later glosses that appear in the Fihrist from
time to time (cf. Sellheim in: IOS 2/1972/430). Ibn al-Nadīm quotes Ibn al-Kūfī (254/868–
348/960) rather frequently (cf. GAS 1/384f.). He probably turns up here because shortly
afterwards, he is the source for the entire catalogue of Madāʾinī’s works (113, –6ff.).
7 Ibn al-Nadīm has Ibn al-Ashʿath instead of Abū l-Ashʿath. This is contradicted by all par-
allel passages in Jāḥiẓ (cf. Ḥayawān III 357, n. 8). He is frequently confused with the
Muʿtazilite Muʿammar, one of his pupils.
8 Ḥayawān II 140, 9f. Regarding the other two see ch. C 1.3.2 and 3.1 below.
9 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 92, 4ff.; cf. p. 22 above.
10 Ḥayawān III 530, 6f. Or had he read it somewhere?
11 Ibid. II 140, 9ff.
iraq 43
since Pythagoras.13 Elitist, aristocratic groups were especially partial to spread-

ing it, as beans were a food for the common people and not everyone was able
to afford more expensive foods instead. Abū Shamir thought beans damaged
the brain not only as a food but also with their smell or through contact with
the plants – a typical intellectuals’ phobia which probably hid other, nameless
fears.14 The “superstructure” recalls the Sabians; they, too, believed that beans
made the mind sluggish,15 but they looked at it within the framework of their
cosmology: the bean’s cubic shape makes it an enemy of the heavens which are
spherical.16 Abū Shamir’s argument, on the other hand, was more agronomi-
cal: everything that grows head down is harmful, which led him to name the
aubergine together with the beans. Elsewhere we are more likely to find lentils
and garlic listed with beans.17
Abū Shamir was not the only one to be infected by his teacher. The
Muʿtazilite Muʿammar and Madāʾinī shared his fear, as did Maslama b.
ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥārib al-Fihrī, known as a grammarian and Quran reciter in
Basra,18 and also a certain Wakīʿī, a pupil of Wākiʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, probably the tra-
ditionist Aḥmad b. Jaʿfar al-Ḍarīr who died in Baghdad in 215/830.19 Clearly the
taboo was not characteristic of one particular denomination; it did not divide
13 Cf. Th. Klauser’s comprehensive article in: RAC II 489ff.; regarding ideas of taboo
ibid. 493ff., and M. D. Grmek, Les maladies à l’aube de la civilisation occidentale 307ff.
Also K. E. Müller, Pseudo-islamische Sektengebilde 321ff., and W. Burkert, Weisheit und
Wissenschaft 164ff.
14 During antiquity people believed that beans were home to the spirits of the dead
whom one would consume with the food and who would then try to force their way out
(cf. Klauser, loc. cit.). However, it must be taken into consideration that a specific “bean
disease” (favism) does indeed occur in Gīlān and Māzandarān which may be triggered by
merely breathing in the pollen (cf. H. Aʿlam in: EIran III 724f.).
15 Bīrūnī, Āthār 205, ult./transl. 188; also F. Dölger, Ichthys II 74ff. (within the context of
his discussion of the prohibition of electric fish). Also Ibn al-Ṭayyib al-Sarakhsī in Ibn
al-Nadīm 384, 14, and p. 505 below. A fundamental study is Chwolsohn, Ssabier II 109ff.
16 Cf. Pines in: Proc. Israel Acad. of Sciences and Humanities II 13, p. 30, n. 117 after Qāḍī ʿAbd
al-Jabbār, Tathbīt I 163, 11f.
17 Thus also among the Sabians (cf. Ibn al-Nadīm, loc. cit.); see p. 129f. below.
18 Ḥayawān III 357, apu. ff. = Text II 19, c. Regarding him cf. Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭab. II 298 and Qifṭī,
Inbāh III 262 no. 748 with further sources. He was a nephew of the early grammarian Ibn
Abī Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī (Inbāh II 104ff. no. 316) and is quoted as an authority by Jāḥiẓ in his
Bayān as well as his K. al-Ḥayawān, always with the shorter form of his name Maslama
b. Muḥārib.
19 Regarding him TB IV 58f. no. 1675. Concerning the nisba in general Samʿānī, Ansāb XIII
355, 12ff. The person referred to could also be Aḥmad b. ʿUmar b. Ḥafṣ al-Wakīʿī, but he
came from Kufa and died only in 235/850 (TB IV 284f. no. 2038).
44 chapter �
“orthodox” and “unorthodox”. Maybe it accompanied other ascetic customs.

It seems that Maslama b. Muḥārib was very punctilious about trimming one’s
moustache and wearing short garments, as was the custom among pietists,20
but we do not know this for certain.21 One rather gets the impression of dealing
with Kneipp disciples.22
However, we must not overlook the greater context. Ashʿarī linked
Muʿammar, or, in the alternative reading, Maʿmar, with certain “natural phi-
losophers” (aṣḥāb al-ṭabāʾiʿ) he sometimes mentioned.23 He did not say quite
clearly whom he meant; it is more of a vague collective term that probably
referred to “philosophers” outside of Basra as well. They certainly were not phi-
losophers in our understanding of the word.24 As the name shows, they put
the ṭabāʾiʿ at the centre of their thought, the ṭabāʾiʿ being the elementary prop-
erties of Aristotelian physics: cold and hot, moist and dry. In their view, the
world was composed of these; they argued about whether πνευ̃μα (rūḥ) joined
them as the fifth principle.25 Even living creatures could, if one so wished, do
without it; those whose concept of humans did not include a separate πνευ̃μα,
i.e. no soul, believed that the spirit of life was provided by “natural warmth”
(al-ḥarāra al-ġarīziyya).26 The elementary properties were regarded as bodies
which mix,27 they are eternal.28 The process of mixing implies movement; but
20 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 97, 1f.; cf. p. 437f. below. Cf. also his tradition after ʿĀmir b. ʿAbdqays ibid. III
143, 12ff.; concerning the latter see p. 101 below.
21 The passage could also be interpreted differently. Furthermore Maslama was otherwise
most interested in rhetorical texts, as one would expect from a grammarian (ibid. II 61,
12ff.; 48, 7ff. etc.).
22 There were also traditions which recommended eating beans (as for the Shīʿa cf. al-Ḥurr
al-ʿĀmilī, Wasīlat al-Shīʿa XVII 100f.); they probably reflect the ideas of the less educated
classes.
23 Thus Maq. 382, 13f. and 517, 2. The second passage certainly refers to Muʿammar, as the
correspondence between 517, 1 and 405, 14 proves (cf. Text XVI 14, commentary). In the
case of the first passage this is not entirely clear, but considering that Maʿmar Abū Ashʿath
is not mentioned elsewhere in Ashʿarī, we can reasonably safely decide in Muʿammar’s
favour here, too (cf. Text XVI 61).
24 Cf. ch. C 3.1 below.
25 Maq. 309, 1ff. and 348, 3ff.; Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq in Malāḥimī (in: MUSJ 50/1984/390, 4ff.; 391,
12f.; 393, 13). A general overview by Gimaret in: Livre des Religions 208f., n. 42.
26 Maq. 335, 7ff.; the rūḥ was identical with the “pure, unsullied and uncorrupted blood”,
which in turns was composed of the four elementary properties.
27 Maq. 348, 3f.; also 309, 1ff., where we read jawāhir “substances” instead of ajsām “bodies”.
Regarding “mixture” cf. Maq. 333, 5 (ikhtilāṭ) and Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq in: MUSJ 50/1984/390,
10f.
28 At least according to Baghdādī, Uṣūl al-dīn 70, 13ff.
iraq 45
once again there was no agreement on whether this movement was an attri-
bute to be regarded as separate. If this was indeed the case, it would certainly
have been the only attribute.29
This model uses the same building blocks as the cosmology of the dualists.30
Hishām b. al-Ḥakam, too, had some ideas in common with them, down to the
details.31 From among the Muʿtazilites, not only Muʿammar but also Naẓẓām
would later build on this.32 What we must bear in mind is that while the idea of
elementary properties and the number four are Aristotelian in origin, the way
in which they are applied here is far removed from the Aristotelian foundation.
Aristotle did not regard hot, cold, moist, and dry as bodies but as mere attri-
butes differentiating the materia prima;33 furthermore, he never called them
φύσεις which would correspond to Ar. ṭabāʾiʿ.34 Here, they played a much more
independent part, recalling Stoic thought;35 but the decisive impulse may have
been due to the fact that in dualist understanding natural principles were able
to compete independently and underived.36 This would presumably have been
convenient for the aṣḥāb al-ṭabāʾiʿ in alchemical consideration. They believed
to be able to produce minerals etc.; this went as far as the creation (tawlīd)
of the homunculus.37 The author of the Jābir texts appears to count himself
among them.38
29 Maq. 348, 5, and 7ff. Motion cannot be more than an attribute, as inanimate objects never
start moving of their own accord (Maq. 431, 7f.).
30 Cf. vol. I 497ff., and ch. C 3.2.2.2.1.7 below; motion as a separate attribute in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ
see p. 38f. above.
31 Cf. esp. Text IV 33, c–e, according to which he, like the aṣḥāb al-ṭabāʾiʿ regarded motion
as a maʿnā, but not rest (cf. vol. I 419f.). Ashʿarī, however, doubted the authenticity of the
tradition. In any case the similarities may be explained by Hishām’s dependence on dual-
ist cosmology without the need to involve the aṣḥāb al-ṭabāʾiʿ.
32 See ch. C 1.3.2.1.1 and 3.2.2.2.1.3 and 6 below.
33 Thus already Kraus, Jābir II 161ff.
34 Ibid. II 165; regarding the origin of the term ibid. n. 7.
35 Ibid. 168ff.
36 In the Zoroastrian view, moist is part of Ahriman’s anti-creation which combines with
Ahura Mazda’s creation; that is why it destroys fire. However, they were also aware of the
elements; they were created by Ahura Mazda (Gujastak Abālish, ed. Barthélemy 34).
37 Rasāʾil Jābir b. Ḥaiyān 461, 5ff. (K. al-Sabʿīn); cf. also Kraus, Jābir II 98.
38 Kraus II 16ff.; regarding the role of the ṭabāʾiʿ in the Corpus Ǧabirianum ibid. II 151 and
162ff. The K. al-Ikhrāj distinguishes between the immaterial elementary properties and
material, but otherwise identical with them, proto-elements (Rex, Naturprozesse 18). Cf.
also Tadbīr al-iksīr al-aʿẓam li-Jābir b. Ḥaiyān, ed. Lory, index s. v. aṣḥāb al-ṭabāʾiʿ.
46 chapter �
Their ideas are sometimes labelled with the term Dahriyya;39 however, the
informative value of this name is smaller still; it was usually interpreted only
to mean that God the creator was rejected and the world was believed to be
eternal.40 But a Dahrite, like a zindīq, was expected to recognise only sensual
perceptions; a prophet would not have stood much of a chance there.41 At the
beginning of the third century, Ḥumayd b. Saʿīd b. Bakhtiyār, a Muʿtazilite theo-
logian of Iranian origin and probably a secretary like so many zanādiqa, wrote
denouncing a Basran “atheist” who was attacking Islam and other revealed
religions.42 The Basran grammarian Quṭrub, possibly a pupil of Naẓẓām’s,43
wrote a Radd ʿalā l-mulḥidīn which addressed doubts of the internal logic of
the Quran or, as Muslims said, “unclear” verses (mutashābihāt) whose meaning
had to be explained.44 Influence wielded by these critical ideas can be traced
all the way to Ibn al-Rēwandī.45
2.2.2 Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and His Spiritual Successors

Shortly after the turn of the century ʿUmar b. Hubayra engaged the Basran Iyās
b. Muʿāwiya,1 expecting three things from him: that he should be able to recite
the Quran, know a fair amount of poetry by heart, and have an understanding
of the ayyām al-ʿAjam, the Persian heroic legend.2 This was Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s
educational ideal as well.3 Piety or knowledge of the prophetic tradition was
not in demand. The latter virtues flowered less in the administration and more
among the simple citizens, in a pietist movement that soon acquired funda-
mentalist traits. However, as usual the boundaries were not firmly defined, as
is illustrated clearly by one man who paved the way for this development at the
threshold of the second century, whom the city would invoke in later times in
a number of different ways:
39 Thus in Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq, loc. cit. 387ff.; also in Jāḥiẓ (cf. Text XXII 81, a–b).
40 EI2 II 95ff. s. v. Dahriyya. According to Abū ʿĪsā they did not only believe the world
to be eternal in duration but also infinite in size (392, 7ff.); cf. also Text XXII 120 with
commentary.
41 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān VI 269, 11ff.; Mutawallī, Mughnī 3, 5f.
42 Catalogue of works XXXIb, no. 2; also ch. C 5.1.2 below.
44 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 58, –4; a fragment from it in Ibn Ṭāwūs, Saʿd al-suʿūd 270, –9ff.
45 See ch. C 8.2.2.3.3 below.

2 Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt I 351, –4ff.; also Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn I 18, 4ff., where knowledge of
the commandments (farāʾiḍ) is added.
3 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ the poet, cf. Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 191a, 17.
iraq 47
Abū Saʿīd Ḥasan b. Yasār al-Baṣrī,
21/642–110/728.4 He was the son of an Iranian named Pērōz who had been
captured during the conquest of Mesene and was later freed by his owner, a
woman from Medina.5 Whether he himself grew up in the Hijaz, as tradition
claimed,6 seems dubious.7 As a young man he accompanied ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
b. Samura on his campaigns in eastern Iran when he advanced as far as Kabul
from 43/663 onwards. He joined the administration in Sīstān under ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān’s successor Rabīʿ b. Ziyād in 46/666; the governor entrusted him with
the task of setting up the dīwān of taxes.8 Earlier, still under Ibn Samura, he had
made himself useful as teacher of forced converts in the newly built mosque.9
For this position it was necessary that he spoke Persian; he had probably learnt
it as a child, even if he may not have grown up in Basra. The position in the
administration required more extensive knowledge: he had to be able to read
Pahlavi, and to be versed in Sasanid chancellery practice.
We do not know on what he lived after he returned to Basra. Of course he
would have received a “veteran’s” pension, but this is unlikely to have amounted
to much. Like his younger brother Saʿīd he was a qāṣṣ;10 this may have brought
him a salary.11 Or maybe he remained with the administration; not a profession
that needed to be remembered later when people began to idealise his image.12
As early as the second half of the 60s he commanded sufficient influence and
prestige to address a letter to ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr in whose sphere of control
4 Cf. for general information H. Ritter’s article in EI2 III 247ff., with further literature. The
first modern Arabic monograph on the subject is by Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.
Sīratuhū, shakhṣiyyatuhū, taʿālīmuhū wa-ārāʾuhū, Cairo 1952), an early work of the au-
thor’s, in which he attempts to write a chronological biography based on numerous sourc-
es which he did not, however, evaluate according to their date. Muṣliḥ Sayyid Baiyūmī’s
extensive study Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (Cairo 1980) is absolutely uncritical and untouched by
any knowledge of secondary sources.
5 In more detail Schaeder in: Der Islam 14/1925/44ff.
6 Ritter, loc. cit., follows this; as does ʿAbbās 21f.
7 Thus Schaeder 47f.
8 Schaeder 48ff.; Bosworth, Sīstān 22f. and 26.
9 Bosworth ibid.; cf. vol. I 48f. above.
10 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 367, 4.
11 The only certain documentary evidence we have comes from Egypt (cf. e.g. Kindī, Quḍāt
Miṣr 317, 3f., according to whom a qāṣṣ received the same salary as a qāḍī; concerning the
issue see Pellat in EI2 IV 734, also Morony, Iraq 437).
12 Should we draw this conclusion from the fact that he was frequently seen in public wear-
ing a ṭaylasān? (IS VII1 117, 7ff.).
48 chapter �
the city was at the time, reminding him of his responsibilities as a ruler.13 He
may have been speaking in the name of the common people, for Ḥajjāj would
later say that the best orator of his day was “the man with the black turban”
who worked “among the reed huts of Basra”, i.e. in the slums outside the
city.14 Unlike his brother he did not let himself be drawn into Ibn al-Ashʿath’s
uprising;15 the understandable course of action if he was indeed a public of-
ficial. Tradition, firmly on the side of the qurrāʾ, found this hard to stomach –
especially as he advised those who had been less cautious than he to claim
during the interrogation that they were infidels, just as Ḥajjāj demanded of
them by way of penance. Men like Saʿīd b. Jubayr, who refused to do this, lost
their lives as a consequence.16 The rift between Ḥasan and the governor came
when Ḥajjāj moved the seat of the government to Wāsiṭ; Ḥasan criticised this
decision, which also affected the officials of the administration.17 From then
on he was forbidden to appear in public. His military pension may have been
stopped even before then; it would not be paid again until ʿUmar’s time.18
Under the last-named caliph he even was a qāḍī for a short time.19
Considering his client status this was a most unusual occurrence; one cannot
help feeling slightly sceptical towards that particular tradition. We do, how-
ever, know that ʿUmar acted like this in Egypt as well,20 and only one genera-
tion later ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn (d. 151/768) would date events from the time that
Ḥasan assumed the office of judge.21 Farazdaq is said to have divorced his wife
Nawār before Ḥasan al-Baṣrī in his old age; the verses in which he regretted
13 He was at least believed to be capable of it; the authenticity of the source is not certain
(Balādhurī, Ansāb V 196, 3ff. Goitein).
14 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 398, 6ff.; slightly altered also Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 224, 5ff.; also ʿAbbās
70f. Or do the “reed huts” simply refer to the particular character of the city? (Cf. Donner
in: EIran III 851f.). Regarding the black turban cf. IS VII1 117, 4ff. Unfortunately we do not
know what the meaning of the colour would have been. Ḥasan’s contemporary Ibn Sīrīn
used to wear a white turban (IS VII, 148, 25).
15 For more detail cf. Schaeder 53ff.; also Ritter in: Der Islam 21/1933/53ff., and Sayed, Revolte
des Ibn al-Ašāṯ 349.
16 Azdī, K. al-Mutawārīn in: RAAD 50/1975/571, 6ff., cf. vol. I 181 above.
17 Cf. Schaeder 59f.; Ritter 55.
18 Fasawī II 51, 1f.; IS V 256, 20ff. The latter passage indicates that this was Hajjāj’s collective
punishment for Basrans after the uprising (cf. Anfänge 123).
19 IS V 251, 18; Pellat, Milieu 289, n. 7. Further information p. 146f. below.
20 Kindī, Quḍāt Miṣr 338, 2ff.
21 Wakīʿ, Akhbār II 6, –4ff.; Fasawī II 45, 6f. Regarding ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn see p. 404f. below.
iraq 49
having taken this step were quoted frequently.22 The attempts at reform failed
in the end. ʿUmar’s governor, ʿAdī b. Arṭāt, seems to have considered Ḥasan to
be weak23 and himself too old;24 he is said to have burst into tears repeatedly
during meetings.25 His failure was hinted at in a tactful way:26 “His expertise
did not meet with praise”.
Fasawī II 49, 8f.: lam yuḥmad fahmuhū. Concerning legal maxims attrib-
uted to Ḥasan cf. Juynboll, Muslim Tradition 52ff.; ʿUmar is said to have
asked him through ʿAdī b. Arṭāt to elucidate the status of the Zoroastrians
(Abū Yūsuf, Kharāj 285, –4ff. > Ṣafwat, Jamharat rasāʾil al-ʿArab II 313,
no. 213). The Basra-born Mālikite Ibrāhīm b. Ḥammād (see GAS 2/302)
later collated a concordance between Mālik’s and Ḥasan’s doctrines (Ibn
Farḥūn, Dībāj I 262, 4). It is interesting that Ḥasan disdained calculating
shares of inheritance precisely, preferring – possibly trained by his ad-
ministrative experience – to determine them freely. Iudex non calculat
(Wakīʿ II 8, 1f.).
After all this it is not surprising that Ḥasan remained faithful to the caliph
during Yazīd b. al-Muhallab’s uprising. While Ibāḍites and Murjiʿites allied
themselves with him in considerable numbers, Basran Qadarites kept their
distance.27 It seems that Ḥasan did not leave his house at all during this time.28
When the news arrived that Ibn al-Muhallab had been beaten by Maslama b.
ʿAbd al-Malik near ʿAqr,29 he [Ḥasan] was asked to give the Friday sermon as
the governor, a brother of Ibn al-Muhallab’s who had ousted ʿAdī b. Arṭāt, did
not have enough authority anymore.30 He was probably the man of choice
not least because he was qāḍī at the time. This was probably also the reason
22 Agh. XXI 290, 6ff.; Akhbār al-Zajjājī 90, 12ff. etc. Their authenticity is, however, debated
(negative e.g. Blachère in: EI2 II 789a and Histoire 500). Ḥasan is also reported to have said
the prayer for the dead over Nawār (Agh. XXI 391, 5ff.).
23 Wakīʿ II 7, 15ff.
24 Ibid. 7, 6f.
25 Ibid. II 7, 10ff., and 9, 1f.
26 Ibid. II 8, –5ff., and 9, 3ff.
27 This also included e.g. Farqad al-Sabakhī (see p. 108f. below) and Qatāda (see p. 159f.
below). Regarding the Murjiʿites see vol. I 188ff. above; regarding the Ibāḍiyya cf. Lewicki
in: Cahiers d’histoire mondiale 13/1971/70f.
28 Wakīʿ II 14, apu. f.; also Ṭabarī II 1400, 8ff., and Ibn al-Aʿtham, Futūḥ VIII 9, 2ff.
29 Ṣafar 202/Aug.–Sept. 817. Further details in vol. I 190f. above.
30 Wakīʿ, Akhbār II 117, pu. ff.; Fasawī II 265, 4ff.
50 chapter �
why he was part of a delegation to negotiate with the rebel’s other brothers;
he appears to have persuaded several of them to surrender to ʿAdī.31 He had
also been in contact with the Muhallabids for a long time; conversations with
them show that they protected him from Hajjāj. Maslama b. ʿAbd al-Malik, who
would later become governor himself, presented him with a long coat (jubba)
and a black garment made from heavy silk with a coloured hem (khamīṣa)
which he wore to pray from then on.32 Still, the authorities kept a watchful
eye on him. Shortly before his death, when he was already in his late eight-
ies, Mālik b. al-Mundhir al-ʿAbdī, the city’s police chief since Dhū l-Qaʿda 106/
March 725,33 warned him to stay away from certain but unspecified “riotous
gatherings” (jumūʿ).34 ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn paid him the, probably true, compli-
ment that there was none among the mawālī who was as similar to the Arabs as
he.35 It certainly seems that he never was on a genuinely friendly footing with
the merchants, most of whom were of Iranian origin like himself.36 When he
heard that someone asking for his granddaughter’s hand in marriage was very
wealthy despite his client status, he would not have anything to do with that
marriage.37 Too many people had made their fortune by speculation.38 If he
was indeed an administration official, it becomes even more understandable
that he should have felt this way.
All of this must not be regarded too superficially. The “world” as such seemed
suspicious to him; humans collecting possessions within it in order to indulge
their vanity and thus giving themselves up to hypocrisy (riyāʾ); whoever does
this is a munāfiq like those among the prophet’s contemporaries who were
his followers only outwardly. In his ground-breaking study Ritter collected
31 In more detail Schaeder 64ff. It is clear from Wakīʿ II 81, 6 that he was qāḍī at the time.
Yazīd al-Muhallab confirmed him in this office (ibid. 14, 14ff.), but he had probably
appointed by ʿAdī b. Arṭāt (see p. 146f. below).
32 IS VII1 126, 1ff.; Serjeant, Islamic Textiles 14.
33 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 535, 6f.
34 Al-ʿuyūn wal-ḥadāʾiq I 87, 4ff. Is this connected to the events of the year 109 reported in
Ṭabarī II 1495, 11ff.?
35 Fasawī II 43, 2f.
36 Ibid. II 42, 4ff., and 43, 9ff.; cf. ʿAbbās 119ff. and 135. This is probably why he did not get on
with Muḥammad b. Sīrīn, a cloth merchant (Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 441, 14; regarding him
EI2 III 947f., and p. 413 below). Ibn Sīrīn actually declined ʿUmar II’s offer to pay him the
ʿaṭāʾ once again (see n. 18 above).
37 IS VII, 125, 19ff.
38 Cf. Morony, Iraq 257.
iraq 51
relevant source material.39 However, nearly all the sources are later devotion-
al texts; the question of how and where they found the information has still
not been resolved.40 They have, of course, been shaped by later tendencies;
but on the other hand many fragments contain “gripping images, striking an-
titheses, resonant and inspired prose rhyme”41 marking them as individually
coined speech.42 Through his sermons Ḥasan contributed to awakening the
consciousness of sin like no other, paving the way for a typically Basran kind of
asceticism. He was not a mystic; he had no inclination to meditation either,43
but he was not simply serving “the powerful” by trivialising the hardships of
life on earth.
We can never be sure whether some of the other texts attributed to Ḥasan
al-Baṣrī might not be apocrypha as well.44 The K. al-Ikhlāṣ, quoted in a Ḥallāj
tradition,45 does not assume a definite shape.46 The “Quran commentary”
should probably be regarded as some kind of lecture notes written by different
people and later evaluated in different ways. A letter to a “brother” in Mecca in
which Ḥasan exhorts him not to leave the holy city, which was later circulated
under titles like Risālat Faḍāʾil Makka was-sakan fīhā, may have a genuine core,
but we know nothing about the addressee, nor why it would have been so di-
sastrous if he left Mecca.
The most important redaction of the Tafṣīr went back to ʿAmr b.

ʿUbayd (see p. 339f. below). Some material by a second Qadarite trans-
mitter, Mubārak b. Faḍāla, was incorporated into the Iraqi review of
Muqātil’s Quran commentary (see p. 77 below). Muqātil himself re-
ferred to two other authorities of whom we have no further knowl-
edge: ʿAbd al-Karīm and ʿAbd al-Quddūs (Tafṣīr Muqātil 3, pu. f.). Even
Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī, whose Tibyān was firmly in the Muʿtazilite tra-
dition, had two different strands of transmission (qawlān), of which
39 Der Islam 21/1933/12ff.

40 Cf. ibid. 9ff. critical examination of Massignon. The oldest coherent sermon texts are
found in Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 132, 5ff. A new source worth consulting is Ābī, Nathr al-durr
V 177ff.
41 Ritter 13.
42 Of course this does not prove that this was genuinely composed by him. ʿAbbās has shown
that some of these expressions also occur in the Nahj al-balāgha or elsewhere (p. 15ff.).
43 Schaeder 50f.
44 Cf. GAS 1/592ff.
45 TB VIII 138, 20; Al-ʿuyūn wal-ḥadāʾiq IV 217, 2ff.; Ibn al-Dāʿī, Tabṣira 125, 3ff.
46 But cf. p. 115 below.
5� chapter �
one only may be identical with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s. Among Ḥasan’s

idiosyncrasies was that he read malikayn rather than malakayn in sura
2:102: in his view, Hārūt and Mārūt were not two angels but two Chaldean
kings (Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 33, 11f.; Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl mukhtalif al-ḥadīth
223, 1ff. = 178, apu. ff./misinterpreted in Lecomte’s translation 198 para.
203 a). Angels, he argued, are incapable of disobedience; consequently
he did not regard Satan as an angel, either (Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt ahl al-sun-
na I 235, 2ff.). The Muʿtazilite Aṣamm adopted this theory and added to
Ḥasan’s arguments (Text XIII 20; concerning the problem cf. Qāḍī ʿIyād,
Shifāʾ II 857, 6ff., and Ṭūsī, Tibyān VII 56, 10ff.). Consequently Satan could
not have lived in the heavenly paradise where Adam dwelt, but God en-
sured that he could reach Adam (Māturīdī I 120, 1f.). – In more detail
p. 54f. below, and ʿAbbās 151ff.; concerning his offences against correct
grammar in his philological explanations cf. Fück, Arabiya 18. Regarding
Ḥasan’s qirāʾāt cf. G. Bergsträsser in: Islamica 2/1926/11ff. (and p. 22 con-
cerning sura 2:102).
The letter to his “brother” in Mecca survives in a number of manu-
scripts (GAS 1/592f. no. 4). Fākihī included the entire text in his Taʾrīkh
Makka (cf. Arazi in: JSAI 5/1984/213ff.); it was also circulated in Spain (Ibn
Khayr, Fahrasa 298, –5ff.). There is a Persian as well as a Turkish transla-
tion (GAS 1/593; Ritter in: Der Islam 21/1933/8, n. 2). However, Muṣṭafā
Ḥāmī’s Ottoman version, printed under the title Faḍīlat al-mujāwara in a
pilgrims’ booklet in 1280/1863 (Istanbul, Maṭbaʿa-yi ʿĀmira, pp. 2–39), has
obviously been revised; it mentions Abū Ḥanīfa (p. 9, 5). Fākihī names
the “brother” as ʿAbdallāh b. Ādam; we are told that he was wealthy and
had retired to Mecca not for business reasons but simply for contempla-
tion. Then, however, he got the idea to go to Yemen “because of a man
from there” (fī sababi rajulin min ahlihā), and Ḥasan found a multitude
of Quranic verses, prophetic dicta and other arguments to convince him
that Mecca was the better place to be. These details are left uncertain
in all the other transmitted versions; the addressee’s name is different
even though it is not quite clear whether it was ʿAbd al-Raḥīm or ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān b. Anas al-Ramādī. Sezgin identifies him with ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
b. Anas al-Sulamī, whom Ṭabarī I 1906, 11 mentions once as a transmit-
ter (GAS 1/592); however, there is nothing to support this assumption.
In this version the text provides a long riwāya by way of legitimation;
unfortunately the authority who received it from Ḥasan is once again
entirely unknown and not always transmitted in the same form. Cf.
Sāmī Makkī al-ʿĀnī’s edition (Kuwait 1400/1980), which is based on three
manuscripts.
iraq 53
Ḥasan’s much-discussed summary of Qadarite doctrine, which he is said to

have written at ʿAbd al-Malik’s request, is of great theological significance. For
a long time research unanimously considered it to be genuine; some ten years
ago, by way of adding a full stop to this train of thought, I collected all the argu-
ments in favour.47 Since then, however, scepticism has emerged, the impulse
coming from J. Wansbrough who understood the text as evidence of an uṣūl
controversy juxtaposing the pure word of scripture on the one hand and the
conclusion by analogy and the tradition – going back to the companions or
to the prophet himself – on the other.48 M. Cook subsequently criticised my
arguments in a thorough analysis.49 This resulted in a dispute concerning the
chronology: while I supported a date between 75/694 and 80/699,50 Cook re-
garded the Risāla as an example of the fictitious “successor-epistle” belonging
in the late Umayyad period,51 Wansbrough even going as far as the late second/
eighth century.52 The authenticity of the document cannot, in fact, be proved
beyond doubt. We can say that in the years preceding ʿAbd al-Malik’s death
(86/705), and before his final rift with Ḥajjāj in Basra, Ḥasan was the right man
for the caliph to write to – all the more if he was indeed employed in the ad-
ministration, as we are assuming. It is also possible to imagine that the caliph
had an interest in finding out more about the Qadariyya at a time when he
wanted to restore ideological unity in his realm after defeating Ibn al-Zubayr,53
or at the time when Ibn al-Ashʿath’s ideologically motivated uprising erupted
in Iraq.54 All of this is, of course, mere hypothesising; the versions of the text
transmitted are not consistent, and the way in which Ḥasan emphasises to the
caliph that his interpretation is the doctrine of the ancients (in one version
going so far as to address the caliph as ʿabd Allāh ʿAbd al-Malik) is really rather
self-important.55 In addition this would presume that there were no Qadarites
in Syria at the time; but in view of the precision and the detail of its argument it
47 Anfänge 27ff.; this includes a reference to earlier secondary sources. Cf. also the Turkish
translation by Y. Kutluay and L. Doğan in: Ankara Üniv. Ilah. Fak. Dergisi 3/1954, issue
3–4/75ff., and the English partial translation, based mainly on M. Schwarz in: Oriens
20/1967/15f., in: Rippin and Knappert, Textual sources for the study of Islam 115ff.
48 Quranic Studies 160ff.; critically: Juynboll, Muslim Tradition 50f.
49 Early Muslim Dogma 117ff.
50 Anfänge 18; also HT 31.
51 Dogma 120 and 153ff.
52 Quranic Studies 163.
53 Thus my theory in Anfänge 6, referring to K. al-Irjāʾ.
54 In response to Cook’s arguments (p. 119).
55 This mode of address only “on the cover”, in the text proper always amīr al-muʾminīn. The
emphasis on the salaf is explained by the way in which ʿAbd al-Malik phrased his request;
54 chapter �
is undeniable that Ḥasan’s Risāla presents the beginnings of Qadarite thought.

Thus for the time being all we can do, considering our intention to focus on the
second century, is to record the following:
1. During Ḥasan’s later years Qadarite thought did exist as a dogmatic po-
sition in Iraq. The most convincing evidence is provided by the verses
from a paean to Maslama b. ʿAbd al-Malik in which Ruʾba attacked the
Qadarites.56 While Maslama did not die until 120/738 or 121/739, Ruʾba
began his panegyric to the Umayyads around 96/715.57
2. Ḥasan was a Qadarite, and that in a rather specific sense. The best defini-
tion of his position is found in ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī’s Muṣannaf, who
heard it from his teacher Maʿmar b. Rashid (d. 154/770): the things that
are predestined are the date of one’s death (ajal), one’s personal wealth
(rizq), tribulations and good deeds; sins on the other hand originate with
man himself, or with Satan.58
3. This “asymmetrical”59 idea of qadar is the one expressed in the Risāla,
too.60 It was considered to be characteristic of one particular school61
and was attacked specifically in predestinarian hadith.62
4. “Orthodox” tradition later attempted to clear him of this flaw. The
Muʿtazila, on the other hand, was happy to refer to his authority, without,
however, ever blurring the differences from its own doctrine (according
to which good as well as evil is in man’s power).
Cf. the sources in Ritter 60ff. and in Anfänge 27f. Numerous traditions
aiming to absolve Ḥasan of the accusation of being a Qadarite also in
Fasawī II 38, 10ff. The true circumstances were emphasised by Kufans in
this is the very passage on which Wansbrough based his argument (ed. Ritter in: Der Islam
21/1933/67f.).
56 Ahlwardt, Sammlungen alter arabischer Dichter, p. 6 v. 43ff.
57 GAS 2/367f. He is said to have debated the qadar problem with Dhū l-Rumma (d. 117/735),
who was a Qadarite, before Bilāl b. Abī Burda, during the latter’s governorship between
110/728 and 120/738 (Murtaḍā, Amālī I 19, 12ff.); however, the story is probably made up.
58 XI 119 no. 20086.
59 Cook’s description (Dogma 149).
60 Cf. Schwarz in: Oriens 20/1967/23.
61 Malaṭī, Tanbīh 126, 15ff./165, ult. ff.
62 HT 115ff.
iraq 55
particular (ibid.; also Kardarī, Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa II 85, 7ff., or Muwaffaq
b. Aḥmad, Manāqib II 103, 10ff.). Kashshī presents Ḥasan as the raʾīs al-
Qadariyya, who would echo the statements made by any sect, and, being
power-hungry, dissimulate (Rijāl 97, ult. f.). In his exegesis of the Quran
Ḥasan advanced the view that the unbelievers were themselves respon-
sible for their unbelief, and that God would “seal” their hearts only when
they exceeded a certain limit (Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt 81, 8f., and 42, ult. f.).
This corresponds to the attitude expressed in the Risāla (cf. Schwarz in
Oriens 20/1967/24). Consequently he read āmarnā in sura 17:16 instead of
amarnā, disarming the controversial statement that when God wants a
city to perish, he will command those living a life of luxury to transgress
(Bergsträsser in: Islamica 2/1926/39). His reading asāʾa instead of ashāʾu
in sura 7:156 resulted in God not speaking of himself saying “My chastise-
ment – I smite with it whom I will” but rather “. . . whomever has trans-
gressed” (ibid. 33). It is, however, not possible to rule out entirely that all
these readings were only attributed to Ḥasan by a later redaction, maybe
ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s.
Cook compared the different versions of the Risāla in great detail.
The version edited by Ritter, which he calls R 1, still provides the most
complete and detailed text. There is also an abbreviated version (R 2)
which was already collated by Ritter and subsequently edited twice, by
Muḥammad ʿImāra (in: Rasāʾil al-ʿadl wal-tawḥīd, Cairo 1971, vol. I 82ff.,
after a Cairene manuscript) and by ʿAbd al-Amīr Dixon in: Al-muʾtamar
ad-duwalī li-taʾrīkh bilād al-Shām, Amman 1974, p. 57ff.; following the MS
consulted by Ritter. This version lacks many of the explicitly Qadarite
passages, but the overall character is retained; in places it is even more
detailed (cf. Ritter 78 and 79, n.). It is joined by a Muʿtazilite tradition that
first became tangible in Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s writings (Faḍl 215, ult. ff.)
and made its way from there via Ḥākim al-Jushamī to Ibn al-Murtaḍā’s
Ṭabaqāt al-Muʿtazila (M 1 – M 3 in Cook). ʿAbd al-Jabbār has only excerpts
which at first correspond to R 1, but differ significantly in the second half
(Faḍl 218, apu. ff.; with the exception of one small corresponding at 219,
–4ff. = Ritter 75, 6ff.).
R 2 ends with an added passage in which a third person conveys
Ḥasan’s text to the caliph, with appreciative words about the author; it
“sounds like a contrived letter from Ḥajjāj to ʿAbd al-Malik” (Ritter 80, n.
a; cf. ʿImāra 88, 3ff., and Dixon 63, 13ff.). Ibn al-Murtaḍā mentions Ḥajjāj
explicitly (Ṭab. 19. 3f. = M 3) as the one who wrote to Ḥasan. However,
56 chapter �
the two strands (R and M) of the tradition, which had long been separate
by this point, did not come together again; Cook was probably correct
to assume that both were spinning out the presumed historical context
independently of one another (Dogma 118f.). It is not easy to find criteria
for an evaluation of R compared to M. Both versions not only present the
Qadarite doctrine as requested, but pass into polemic against the predes-
tinarians. R uses more colourful arguments, while M descends ever deep-
er into a dry list of scriptural evidence the longer it continues. M even
contains discussion of one hadith (Faḍl 220, 3ff.; cf. Cook 121); R avoids
quoting hadith altogether. M addresses ʿAbd al-Malik as ayyuhā l-amīr
every time, which is probably the result of a pietistic redaction. R 1 and
R 2 both contain the “address”. In R 2 it is expressed in exactly the form
that we would expect in a letter to someone of higher rank: li-ʿAbd al-
Malik min Ḥasan b. Abī l-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. In R 1, on the other hand, Ḥasan
names himself first: min al-Ḥasan . . . This “impolite” order was not en-
tirely without parallel at the time. The Syrian Khālid b. Maʿdān had also
used it in a letter to the caliph (AZ 350 no. 751; see vol. I 131 above), as did
ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar in Medina; this style, it was claimed in the context,
had been used when writing to Muʿāwiya (Ibn Manẓūr, Mukhtaṣar TD
XXIX 215, 7f.). But Ibn ʿUmar was the son of a caliph, and Khālid b. Maʿdān
a respected tribal leader, while Ḥasan was only a mawlā. The lack of any
of ʿAbd al-Malik’s titles in R 2 is also worth noting; a chancellery official
would not have permitted himself such a slip.
In its Muʿtazilite version the Risāla was refuted by the Ḥanbalite Najm
al-Dīn al-Ṭūfī as late as the turn of the eighth/fourteenth century; the
short treatise is entitled K. darʾ al-qawl al-qabīḥ bil-taḥsīn wal-taqbīḥ
and survives in the manuscript collection Şehit Ali 2315 (cf. Ṭūfī, ʿAlam
al-jadhal 123, 3f.). – Shīʿite tradition also knows of a correspondence be-
tween Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Ḥasan b. ʿAlī on the same subject, in which
the latter espouses an entirely predestinarian attitude. Ḥasan himself
takes on the role of the inquirer; he would not have been twenty yet at
the time when Ḥasan b. ʿAlī was recognised as caliph in Iraq. The text
is found in Ḥarrānī, Tuḥaf al-ʿuqūl 162, 4ff. and in Biḥār V 40f. no. 63 as
well as 123f. no. 71; in a Tehran MS (Univ. Bibl. 1022) it is even transmit-
ted together with the Risāla to ʿAbd al-Malik. The oldest record appears
to be Shalmaghānī’s K. al-taklīf that would later be known under the
name of Fiqh al-Riḍā (cf. Mudarrisī, Introd. to Ḥākim al-Jushamī, Risālat
Iblīs 4f.).
iraq 57
2.2.2.1 The Qadariyya

When it came to hadith, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī had not exercised any particular care.1
A gradual change took place over the following generations; among his pupils
we already find some who would become indispensable to the science of tradi-
tion later. More than a few of them, possibly even the majority, were Qadarites
like he; if this was known, they are mentioned as such in rijāl works. Until the
third century they did not have to fear criticism in the city greatly. Aḥmad b.
Ḥanbal had no choice but to accept the Qadarites among his Basran authori-
ties because, as he said, on closer inspection they made up around a third of
the resident muḥaddithūn,2 and Muqaddasī would write around 380/990 that
the majority of Basrans were Shīʿites (sic!) and Qadarites.3 In Kufa it was said
that each of them claimed to provide his own guidance.4 Nowhere else do we
find isnāds that are Qadarite for generations;5 and nowhere else do we hear so
clearly that Qadarite traditionists were preferred to the “orthodox” colleagues6
or that people had a great following whose reputation would later not be
among the best.7 Like the Murjiʾa in Kufa the Qadariyya in Basra was not really
a “sect”; the Muʿtazila was the first to cause offence. It is remarkable that nei-
ther Ashʿarī nor Baghdādī or Shahrastānī used the term as classifying criterion
in their heresiographical works.
Outside of Ashʿarite heresiographical tradition the term Qadariyya some-

times replaced the Muʿtazila entirely, thus e.g. in Abū Muṭīʿ al-Nasafī.
Kulīnī, Kāfī I 351, –6 makes clear that both groups were still distinguished
in Kufa after 150/767 (concerning the text see vol. I 403, n. 66 above).
Regarding the origin of the word Qadariyya cf. HT 122ff. In fact, it did not
refer to the school or “sect” only but also to the doctrine: cf. qadariyyatī
“my Qadarite convictions” in TB VII 147, 15.
1 Ritter 2f.; ʿAbbās 144ff.; Juynboll, Muslim Tradition 49ff.

2 TB XII 200, 1ff. and TT VIII 114, 11 with reference to Abū Qaṭan ʿAmr b. al-Haytham who died
198/814 (see p. 84f. below).
3 Aḥsan al-taqāsīm 126, 13f. This raises the question of whether he included the Muʿtazilites
among the Qadarites.
4 Ibn al-Faqīh, Buldān 168, 16f.; similar also Kardarī, Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa II 85, 7ff. with refer-
ence to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.
6 See p. 76 below.
7 See p. 80f. below. For general information cf. also HT 62ff.
58 chapter �
Nevertheless we must consider the type of our sources. The rijāl books reveal
how much Qadarite thought in Basra infiltrated even such an “orthodox” sec-
tor as hadith. Of course they only cover those traditionists who were conspic-
uous as Qadarites either because of their material or their behaviour; there
is proof that there were more of their kind. We can also safely assume that
circumstances were no different in the rest of the population, even though
the only reliable information we have in that regard concerns grammarians
and philologists – probably because they engaged in Quranic exegesis and
betrayed their true colours in that way.8 On the other hand, “Qadarite” does
not necessarily always mean one and the same thing. As opposed to, e.g.,
“Muʿtazilite”, this term only emphasises one particular aspect of someone’s
personal religious conviction; it was possible to be a Qadarite and at the same
time a Khārijite or Murjiʾite. Furthermore there was more than one variety of
the doctrine. Ḥasan’s “asymmetrical” model would find followers until the first
half of the third century,9 but Malaṭī listed six further varieties10 and Abū Muṭīʿ
al-Nasafī as many as twelve.11 This shows much superfluous systematising, but
maybe also the occasional correct observation. Thus we do not know who the
Aḥmad was who, according to Abū Muṭīʿ, believed that God’s justice implied
that man had to make all his own decisions,12 or which Qadarites claimed
that God could not have created Satan.13 Qatāda, on the other hand, attract-
ed the accusation of being a Qadarite simply by saying sin was provoked by
Satan.14
2.2.2.1.1 Qadarite Ideas in hadith

Conscientious collectors, especially those who came from out of town, at-
tempted to select some from among their colleagues in Basra. ʿAbdallah b.
al-Mubārak (d. 181/797) transmitted from Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba and Hishām al-
Dastuwāʾī,1 even from ʿAbd al-Wārith b. Saʿīd,2 but not from ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd,
because the former “kept their mouths shut”.3 A Muʿtazilite was regarded
8 Regarding them see p. 97ff. below.

9 Cook, Dogma 205, n. 28.
10 Tanbīh 126, 14ff./165, pu. ff.
11 Ar-radd ʿalā l-bidaʿ 87, 14ff.
12 A Muʿtazilite? Cf. Radd 87, 15ff.; also p. 20f. above.
13 Ibid. 90, 5ff.

2 Regarding him see p. 367ff. below.
3 Fasawī, Maʿrifa II 263, 8f.; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 109, 10ff.
iraq 59
simply as a dāʿiya “propagandist”.4 This criterion took hold only gradually; for
a time hadiths were transmitted from ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd as well.5 But this would
soon lead to traditions being withdrawn from circulation if they clearly ex-
pressed a Qadarite point of view: only very few examples of this kind survive.6
This gives rise to the question of how those who did not “engage in propa-
ganda” could be recognised as Qadarites? Of course the opinions of pupils and
contemporaries played a part, but there were also objective criteria. Some mo-
tifs in the hadiths transmitted could awaken suspicion, even if they had noth-
ing in common with the doctrine of free will. Praising reason (ʿaql) was among
them; the conclusion that it was reason that gave man the faculty of decision
suggested itself. Still, this was not incontrovertible evidence as there were also
ascetics and Shīʿites who, while not seeing themselves as Qadarites, set great
store by reason.7 Another motif was clearer, and it seems to have evolved in
Basra in particular: the part played by certain harmful animals in the plan of
divine salvation.
Much thought was devoted to snakes and stinging insects. “He who omits
to kill a snake out of fear of its revenge will be smitten by the curse of God and
the angels” was transmitted, or “We have not made peace with them since we
declared war on them” or, even more directly, “He who kills a snake kills an
unbeliever”.8 The latter sounds like an allusion to popular ideas of transmu-
tation, and would later be understood as such.9 In Basra, however, that was
probably not how it was understood, as the Basran ascetic Rabīʿ b. Ṣabīḥ10 had
heard from ʿAṭāʾ al-Khurāsānī: “What the snakes were accused of was, among
other things, that they did not show themselves. He who (!) among them shows
himself, may be killed. Fighting them is like fighting unbelievers. Only a doubt-
er will fail to kill them”.11 Of the stinging insects only the bees found mercy,
all others ending in the fires of hell.12 How different the destiny of the sheep:
“Wash the snot off the sheep and clean their pens of thorns and rocks, for they
4 Concerning this term see vol. I 70 above.

5 Cf. al Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Kifāya 124, 10ff. with reference to ʿAlī b. ʿĀṣim al-Ṣiddīqī
(d. 201/816); concerning him see p. 364f. below.
6 They are listed in vol. I 266 above, and p. 61ff. below, among the prosopographical mate-
rial. A summary may be found in HT 68ff. and 119ff.
7 See p. 137ff. below; also vol. I 416.
8 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān IV 293, 1f. and pu. ff., with Qadarite Basran isnād in both cases (see p. 73f.
below).
9 Cf. ch. 3.2.2.2.7.3 below.
10 Regarding him see p. 121 below.
11 Ḥayawān IV 294, 3ff.
12 Ibid. III 392, 4ff. (cf. p. 80f. and p. 89f. below); cf. also p. 56 and 65.
60 chapter �
shall be in paradise”;13 and even, in fact, the frogs: “Do not rail against the frogs,
for their croaking praises God”.14
Now while it is clearly true that similar hadiths were also found outside
Basra: Jāḥiẓ who, being a Basran, naturally relied on local material first, also
has other instances,15 it cannot be overlooked that the Basran Muʿtazila
would later use these examples to illustrate the theodicy problem.16 “More
than a few mutakallimūn” believed that some animals would go to paradise,
others to hell.17 The perspective had changed by Jāḥiẓ’ time: he believed that
flies formed an “army” with which God would punish and destroy evildoers,18
or that snakes, scorpions and similar creatures were meant to be a trial for
humans.19 Originally, however, it is likely that harmful animals were con-
demned or fought simply because they caused harm.
People at the time were well aware that they were moving very close to
Zoroastrian ideas. The magi persecuted snakes and scorpions as being crea-
tures of evil; even the New Testament counts them among the “power of the
enemy”.20 Hell is teeming with them, Ahriman created them.21 The Dēnkart
polemicised against the idea that God might also have created wolves,22 and
Jāḥiẓ was amused by the Mazdaist idea that the mouse was created by God, the
cat on the other hand by Satan.23 This was not what the Qadarites intended
to express. They were not thinking of an anti-creation. But they did embrace
a controversial issue, and calling them the “Zoroastrians of the community”
might have alluded to this, too.
13 Ibid. V 503, pu. ff. (also p. 766f. below).

14 Ibid. V 536, 3f. (also p. 73f. below).
15 Regarding Kufa cf. Mīzān IV 424, 8ff. (no. 9695), or Majlisī, Biḥār LXIV 267 no. 22f., and
269ff. no. 32ff. (on snakes); regarding Syria cf. the hadith by Waḍīn b. ʿAṭāʾ after Yazīd b.
Marthad: “A spider is a devil, therefore you should kill it!” (Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 161, –4f.; con-
cerning the isnād see vol. I 93 above). General: Conc. I 544f. s. v. ḥaiya.
16 See ch. C 1.3.2.1.3 and 3.2.2.2.4.2.2.2 concerning Text XVI 44; cf. Geries in: SI 52/1980/85f.
20 Luke 10:19.
21 Thus already Abū Qurra, Mīmar fī wujūd al-khāliq 207, 6f.; cf. Widengren, Religionen Irans
113f. and Boyce, Zoroastrians 44 (cf. also the Herodotus quotation ibid. 76).
22 Transl. de Menasce 100 para. 94 and 102 para. 96 (end).
23 Ḥayawān IV 298, 4ff. and V 219, pu. ff. Cf. also Text XV 36, a.
iraq 61
S. and G. G. Stroumsa have recently sought to see this apocryphal pro-

phetic dictum as reference to the Manichaean background of the qadar
debate (HTR 81/1988/54f.). However, primarily the emphasis was rather
different (HT 137ff.). Others who also deliberated on the deeper purpose
of vermin were the Stoics, the Jews, and the Early Church Fathers (cf. pas-
sages in Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus 3262ff. and Ormsby, Theodicy
56, n. 77).
2.2.2.1.2 Qadarite Traditionists

Many of the muḥaddithūn whom we must discuss in the following will re-
main rather colourless. They did not intervene in politics; the Qadarite doc-
trine was above all an ideology for the middle class. Some have simply been
forgotten, in particular some of Ḥasan’s pupils whose names survive only on
one list of Qadarites in Jāḥiẓ’ K. al-amṣār1 or in occasional Kufan documents.
Then there are others who were remembered from time to time but whom
only Jāḥiẓ – who, having himself grown up in Basra, presumably is a reliable
source – identified as Qadarites; later “orthodox” tradition was unaware of this
despite grave individual concerns. This may be due to the fact that Ḥasan’s
“asymmetric” point of view allowed a variety of determinist statements among
which the one characteristic deviation, the “freedom to commit sins”, van-
ished; if someone was forgotten, it was probably not because he had been too
extreme a Qadarite, but because Ḥasan held barely any interest for profession-
al muḥaddithūn.
The following list is chronological as far as possible; some persons, how-
ever, can only be dated approximately as we have no precise information. It
should start with Qatāda, but he will be discussed later, among the jurists.2
Other Qadarites can be found in the chapter on ascetics, on the Ibāḍiyya, or
on the circle of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s pupils.3 Biographical sources which do not
furnish information on Qadarite leanings are marked in the respective sections
with “cf. also . . .”.4

3 See p. 103ff., 232ff. and 366ff. below.
4 Kaʿbī’s extensive unique materials have been ignored in the main. Unlike Jāḥiẓ, he collected
second-hand, and his sources would have to be examined first.
6� chapter �
2.2.2.1.2.1 The Generation Following Ḥasan al-Baṣrī
Abū Muʿādh ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Maymūna Manīʿ al-Baṣrī,
mawlā of Anas b. Mālik1 and Ḥasan’s pupil, died in the “year of the plague”
131/7482 or later.3 In Ḥammād b. Zayd’s (d. 179/795)4 view he was among those
who mistakenly presented Ḥasan as a Qadarite: he is said to have called on
Ḥasan together with Maʿbad al-Juhanī before Ibn al-Ashʿath’s uprising and
complained to him that the Umayyads claimed that all the wrongs they were
committing against the Muslims were predestined, whereupon Ḥasan said:
“God’s enemies tell lies”. This led him to conclude that Ḥasan rejected predes-
tination.5 Later there would be debates on whether ʿAṭāʾ himself was a promi-
nent Qadarite or not.6 Ibn Saʿd already noted his views and so would many
later authors such as Bukhārī,7 Ibn Abī Ḥātim,8 ʿUqaylī,9 Dhahabī,10 Ibn Ḥajar,11
Suyūṭī,12 as well as Muʿtazilite sources,13 all of these probably second-hand.
The Muʿtazilite sources made the same claim concerning his son
Rawḥ b. ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Maymūna,14
who also transmitted from Ḥasan. Zakariyyāʾ b. Yaḥyā al-Sājī (d. 307/920), a
Basran and Ashʿarī’s teacher,15 confirmed this in his K. al-Ḍuʿafāʾ.16 Others, on
1 Fasawī III 397, 12.

2 Thus Kaʿbī 99, 4ff.; concerning the date see p. 271 below.
3 Thus IS VII2 13, 3ff.
4 Regarding him cf. EI2, Suppl. 384b.
5 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 404, 2ff.; Ibn Qutayba (Maʿārif 441, 7ff.) has ʿAṭāʾ b. Yasār tell the story of
ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Maymūna.
6 TT VII 216, 2ff.
7 Taʾrīkh III2 469 no. 3012.
8 Jarḥ III1 337 no. 1862.
9 Ḍuʿafāʾ III 404, 1.
10 Mīzān no. 5650, and Taʾrīkh al-Islām V 280, 6ff.
11 TT VII 215, apu. and Hady al-sārī II 148, 14.
12 Tadrīb al-rāwī I 329, 4.
13 Kaʿbī 99, 4ff. > Faḍl 343, 8 > IM 138, 13.
14 Kaʿbī 106, 1 > Faḍl 343, 8 > IM 138, 13 (here incorrectly Mufarrij instead of Rawḥ).
15 Regarding him see GAS 1/349f.
16 Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-mīzān II 467, 3; cf. also Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh loc. cit.
iraq 63
the other hand, regarded him as merely “weak” and his hadith as “objection-
able” (munkar).17
Abū Sahl ʿAwf b. Abī Jamīla Bandōya (?) al-Aʿrābī,
b. between 57/677 and 59/679,18 d. 146/763;19 mawlā of the Ṭayyiʾ, transmitted

from Ḥasan. He was one of his oldest pupils and had studied with him even
before Ibn al-Ashʿath’s uprising.20 His traditions are quoted by Jāḥiẓ several
times, in Bayān as well as in Ḥayawān; he seems to have enjoyed great esteem
in Basra. He is described as a Qadarite by Ibn Qutayba,21 ʿUqaylī,22 Dhahabī,23
Ibn Ḥajar,24 and the Muʿtazilite sources.25 However, he was also a Shīʿite,26 as
is clearly shown by his traditions as published by Ṭabarī.27 He appears to have
followed his teacher closely in his Qadarite views. He transmitted the follow-
ing dictum from him: “He who denies predestination, denies Islam. There is
divine predestination: God created humans (al-khalq) due to predestination,
he apportioned the manner of death due to predestination, he apportioned his
gifts (arzāq) according to predestination, he apportioned health according to
predestination, and God gave commandments and prohibitions”.28 Only those
who had ears to hear noticed that human action, the reaction to “command-
ments and prohibitions”, was left out. Consequently ʿAwf disagreed when Mūsā
al-Uswārī referred to Ḥasan when remarking that humans could influence the
time of their death.29 He seems to have had differences with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd as
well; he suspected him of transmitting certain prophetic dicta only because
17 ʿUqaylī II 57f. no. 494; Mīzān no. 2806.

18 Concerning his birthdate cf. Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 272, 12, and Fasawī II 267, 8f.
19 Fasawī I 130, 11; IS VII2 22, 14; Khalīfa, Ṭab. 527, 2, and Taʾrīkh 652, 5.
20 IS VII2 22, 13f.
21 Maʿārif 625, 10.
22 Ḍuʿafāʾ III 429 no. 1471.
23 Mīzān, no. 6530.
24 TT VIII 166 no. 301, and Hady al-sārī II 155, –9.
25 Kaʿbī 89, 11ff. > Faḍl 341, apu. f. > IM 137, 12.
26 Cf. e.g. IS VII2 22, 8f., where he is listed only as such; also Fasawī III 135, 8.
27 Cf. e.g. I 1579, 2ff.; also I 3136, 13ff.
28 Fasawī II 47, apu. f. and earlier.
64 chapter �
of his dogmatic viewpoint,30 and he disapproved of him pretending that their

mutual teacher Ḥasan’s dicta were hadiths.31
Abū l-Faḍl Khālid b. Rabāḥ al-Hudhalī,
a pupil of Ḥasan’s. He was esteemed on account of his polished language

(ʿarabiyya), but people thought him ruined by Qadarite inclinations.
A Qadarite according to Kaʿbī 98, 11ff.; Bukhārī II1 148 no. 508; Ibn Ḥibbān,
Majrūḥīn I 281, 3ff.; ʿUqaylī II 5 no. 403; Mīzān no. 2421; Lisān al-Mīzān II
375. Cf. also IAH I2 330 no. 1482.
ʿAnbasa b. Saʿīḍ al-Naḍrī al-Qaṭṭān al-Wāsiṭī,
a pupil of Ḥasan’s.32 He appears to have transmitted Qadarite hadith directly,

but as he was much respected otherwise, people claimed that he had been
“mad” at times.33 The discredited material probably included the animal tradi-
tions which Jāḥiẓ preserved in his K. al- Ḥayawān.34
A Qadarite according to Mīzān no. 6503; TT VIII 157ff,; Kaʿbī 106, 2f. (after
Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī) > Faḍl 343, 12f. Cf. also IAH III1 399 no. 2231; ʿUqaylī III
366 no. 1404. – His brother Abū l-Rabīʿ al-Ashʿath b. Saʿd al-Sammān was
also suspected of Qadarite leanings, although in his case this was gener-
ally assumed to be slander (TT I 352, 4). However, the Muʿtazilite sources
repeated the suspicion (Kaʿbī 106, 2 > Faḍl 343, 12 > IM 139, 4). On his
reputation cf. also Bukhārī I1 430 no. 1386, and Mīzān no. 995. Both were
apparently members of the merchant class.
Abū Ismāʿīl ʿAlī b. Nijād al-Yashkurī al-Rifāʿī
transmitted from Ḥasan. He seems to have been esteemed highly by Shuʿba.35
30 Muslim, Muqaddima I 22, 10ff.

31 IS VII2 22, 9ff. The difficulties Sachau had with the passage (cf. ibid. p. lv f.) can be resolved
in part, but l. 12 remains problematic.
32 Cf. e.g. Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 108, 10ff.
33 TT VIII 157, 14f. and earlier.
34 III 392, apu. ff., and V 503, 7ff.; cf. p. 59f. above.
iraq 65
A Qadarite according to Kaʿbī 99, 13ff. > Faḍl 343, 9 > IM 138, 15 (which
incorrectly states al-Daqqāq instead of al-Rifāʿī); confirmed by ʿUqaylī
III 240 no. 1238 > Mīzān no. 5895 and TT VII 366 no. 591. Cf. also Bukhārī
III2 288 no. 2424; IAH III1 196f. no. 1080; Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya VI 310ff.; Ibn
Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn II 112, 9ff.
Abū Ḥamza Isḥāq b. al-Rabīʿ al-ʿAṭṭār36 al-Ubullī al-Baṣrī
transmitted from Ḥasan and Ibn Sīrīn.
A Qadarite according to Faḍl 342, –4f. > IM 138, 8, and TT I 232. Regarding
his reputation cf. also Fasawī III 234, 1f. Also Bukhārī I1 386 no. 1237; IAH
I1 220 no. 756; Mīzān no. 754.
Abū ʿUmāra (or Abū ʿAmmār) Ḥamza b. Najīḥ al-Aʿwar37
transmitted from Ḥasan. Mūsā b. Ismāʿīl al-Tabūdhakī al-Baṣrī (d. 223/838) de-
scribed him as a Muʿtazilite;38 but even Muʿtazilite sources regarded him as
nothing more than a Qadarite.39 – Yazīd b. Hārūn (d. 206/821) said the same of
Sahl b. Abī l-Ṣalt al-Sarrāj al-ʿAyshī,
another pupil of Ḥasan’s who appears to have been a saddler. No Muʿtazilite

leanings were perceivable in his hadith, and the Muʿtazilite sources are silent
on him.
Cf. ʿUqaylī II 156f. no. 660 > Mīzān no. 3582. Bukhārī II2 101 no. 2103 with-
out reference; IAH II1 200 no. 862; TT IV 254f. no. 437.
Abū Jabala b. ʿAbdallāh al-Dārimī,
a goldsmith, transmitted from Ḥasan that ʿUmar condemned a thief to forty

lashes after having his hand cut off when the thief claimed that predestination
36 In TT incorrect: al-ʿUṭāridī.

37 Concerning this laqab cf. Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 280 no. 1807. However, the connection is not
entirely certain.
38 Bukhārī II1 52 no. 196 > ʿUqaylī I 290 no. 355; Mīzān no. 2309; TT III 34 no. 55 .
39 Faḍl 342, 18 > IM 138, 7. Surprisingly Kaʿbī does not list him. Cf. IAH I2 216 no. 951.
66 chapter �
led him astray. However, he had to confess to having made the story up out of
thin air and was forced to confirm this in writing in front of witnesses.40 –
ʿAbdarraḥmān (b.) al-Aṣamm
a Qadarite according to ʿUqaylī III 4f. no. 960 and TT VI 141 no. 288,41 was an-
other quite interesting case. He had been, presumably in his youth, muʾadhdhin
to al-Ḥajjāj. If he already held Qadarite convictions at the time, they would
not have worried the governor. In later years he spent most of his time in
Madāʾin. – Jāḥiẓ’ list furthermore contains the following names:
Abū Rajāʾ Muḥammad b. Sayf al-Azdī al-Ḥuddānī,
d. c. 130/748. He transmitted from Ḥasan42 and composed a Tafsīr of which not

even a trace has survived.43 Is he identical with Muḥammad b. Sayf b. ʿAlī who
was part of Ḥasan’s qirāʾa tradition via an intermediary?44
Abū l-Haytham Qaṭan b. Kaʿb al-Quṭaʿī al-Zubaydī.
Thus only Kaʿbī 107, 3. Cf. also IAH III2 138 no. 776 and TT VIII 381f. no. 676.
Regarding his grandson see p. 85 below.
Abū Yūnus Salm b. Zarīr al-ʿUṭāridī,
d. c. 160/777.45 Jāḥiẓ testimony loses some conviction as the father’s name was
written differently by Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār,46 whose text was based on Kaʿbī,
and by Ḥākim al-Jushamī, too.
40 Mīzān no. 2386. Regarding him also IAH I2 248 no. 1103.
41 Cf. also Bukhārī III1 259 no. 836.
42 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 523 bi, 1820; IS VII2 22, 3ff.; IAH III2 281 no. 1519; TT IX 217 no. 337.
43 Kaʿbī 107, 2f.; Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 37, 2f.; Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn II 154f. no. 498.
44 Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭabaqāt al-qurrāʾ II 152 no. 3058.
45 Kaʿbī 107, 3f.; cf. also Mīzān no. 3370 and TT IV 130f. no. 220.
46 Faḍl 343, –4.
iraq 67
Abū ʿĀmir Ṣāliḥ b. Rustum al-Khazzāz al-Muzanī,
a silk merchant and client of the Muzayna,47 d. 152/769. He transmitted the

same moderate creed from Ḥasan as ʿAwf b. Abī Jamīla.48
Kaʿbī 107, 4 > Faḍl 343, apu. > IM 139, 6. Cf. also IAH II1 403 no. 1764;
ʿUqaylī II 203 no. 732; Mīzān no. 3791; TT IV 391 no. 658. According to
Jāḥiẓ his son ʿAbdallāh (Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār: ʿUbaydallāh) was a Qadarite.
However, the latter is not on record anywhere else, biographers mention-
ing only another son named ʿĀmir (TT V 70 no. 113).
Abū Naʿāma ʿAmr b. ʿĪsā b. Suwayd al-ʿAdawī,
a nephew of Isḥāq b. Suwayd’s who attacked Wāṣil and ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd in a

poem.49 He lived to be very old;50 before his death his memory grew so weak
that he was unable to tell isnāds apart.
This is what the term ikhtalaṭa usually refers to (cf. e.g. Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal
19 no. 82, 110 no. 662, 168 no. 1030, 373 no. 2471, and 371 no. 2480f.); more
generally it can mean “to be confused, to be mad” (Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya V
165, 13f.; vol. I 343, n. 63 above). Regarding him see Kaʿbī 107, 5 > Faḍl 343,
pu. > IM 139, 7; cf. also Mīzān no. 6418, TT VIII 87 no. 130.
Abū Diḥya Ḥawshab b. ʿAqīl al-Jarmī and/or al-ʿAbdī51
was an authority of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Mahdī’s.52 Ibn Ḥanbal considered

him to be reliable53 with the result that he enjoyed a good reputation later,
too.54 – Two further muḥaddithūn, they, too, apparently Ḥasan’s pupils, cannot
47 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 533 no. 1864.

48 Fasawī II 47, 10ff.; see p. 63 above.
50 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 155, 7.
51 Kaʿbī 107, 5 > Faḍl 344, 1 > IM 138, 6.
52 Fasawī II 114, 2ff. and III 123, 9f.; regarding him see p. 88f. below.
53 ʿIlal 51 no. 291; 179, ult. ff.; 298 no. 1938.
54 Bukhārī II1 100 no. 348; IAH I2 280f. no. 1253; ʿUqaylī I 298 no. 372; Mīzān no. 2380; TT III
65, –5ff.
68 chapter �
be identified at all: Ḥasan b. ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAṭṭār55 and Jahm b. Yazīd al-ʿAbdī.56

The same is true of a certain Yūnus b. Bashīr named together with Wāṣil and
ʿAmr b. ʿUabyd as a Qadarite pupil of Ḥasan’s57 by Abū Ḥanīfa’s biographers
Muwaffaq b. Aḥmad al-Khwārizmī (d. 568/1172) and Kardarī (d. 642/1244).
Ghaylān b. Jarīr, however, who is also mentioned with him there, seems to be
identical with
Ghaylān b. Jarīr al-Maʿwalī al-Azdī,
who appears to have been connected with the Qadarite ascetic Muṭarrif b.
ʿAbdallāh b. al-Shikhkhīr58 and died in 129/747. Once again the experts of the
jarḥ wal-taʿdīl would seem to have been ignorant of this inclination.
Regarding him cf. IS VII2 9, 8f.; Bukhārī IV1 101f. no. 455; IAH III2 52f.
no. 297; TT VIII 253f. – Another possibility is a certain Ghaylān, who
has not been identified further, whom we find mentioned as a Qadarite
in Ibadite sources. However, this is more likely to refer to Ghaylān
al-Dimashqī.
A final early Qadarite from Jāḥiẓ’ list,
Bukayr b. Abī l-Samīṭ,
a mawlā of the Mismaʿī’,59 transmitted little from Ḥasan; he was more focussed
on Qatāda. However, he also transmitted form Ibn Sīrīn who died in the same
year as Ḥasan. He was blind.
The name is misspelt in Kaʿbī 107, 7 > Faḍl 344, 1 > IM 139, 8. The correct
reading was pointed out by Fück in: OLZ 59/1964/374. More information
on him in Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 195, 4f.; Mīzān no. 1305; TT I 490 no. 904.
55 Kaʿbī 107, 5f. > Faḍl 343, ult. > IM 139, 8.
56 Kaʿbī 107, 6 > Faḍl 343, pu. f. > IM 139, 7.
57 Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa II 103, pu. f. and 86, 3 (in the former, earlier, passage only as “Yūnus”).
58 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 103, pi. f. and 195, 1; Fasawī II 80, pu. ff., and 90, apu. ff. (which also confirms
the connection with Ḥasan al-Baṣrī).
59 Cf. ch. C 4.2.4.3 below.
iraq 69
2.2.2.1.2.2 The Middle Generation

The following traditionists are slightly younger and widely documented.
Abū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan b. Dīnār1 al-Tamīmī
transmitted from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Qatāda, among others. He had a great fol-
lowing in Basra;2 maybe his audience enjoyed hearing the hadith according to
which the angels surrounding the throne speak Persian (Darī), and that God,
too, proclaims his revelations in Persian when he is in a good humour, and in
Arabic only when he is enraged.3 He did not seem to have any qualms trans-
mitting from written material of which he was not the author.4 Ṭabarī men-
tions him several times as a transmitter, in one instance together with ʿAmr
b. ʿUbayd.5 Famous people such as Ibn al-Mubārak,6 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ,7 and
even ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Mahdī8 are said to have kept their distance from him.
Fasawī, however, compiled good as well as bad opinions of him.9 These were
probably influenced by his circulating hadiths in praise of intelligence.10
Qadarite according to Kaʿbī 91, 6f. and 103, 9 (also 105, ult., under the name
of “Ḥasan b. Wāṣil” after a list by Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī) > Faḍl 342, 2f. > IM
137, 15; Naysābūrī, Maʿrifat ʿulūm al-ḥadīth 137, pu.; ʿUqaylī I 122f. no. 271;
Mīzān no. 1843; Lisān al-Mīzān II 205, 2f. Cf. also Bukhārī I2 292 no. 2513;
IAH I2 11f. no. 37; Anfänge 57.
Abū Bakr Hishām b. Abī ʿAbdallāh Sanbar al-Dastuwāʾī al-Rabaʿī,
d. 152/768 or 153/770,11 allegedly aged 78. He was a mawlā of the Sadūs and
consequently close to Qatāda, who was a member of the same tribe. People
believed that he was the younger by only seven or eight years, but the various
1 Or: “b. Wāṣil”. Dīnār was his stepfather.

2 Fasawī III 34, 7f.
3 Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 232, –5ff.
4 IS VII2 37, 9ff.; also Azmi, Studies 131 no. 95.
5 I 299, 15ff.: both according to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.
7 Regarding him see vol. I 271 above.
9 Cf. III 63, 2ff. and II 127, 13f., and III 141, 11f.; also II 17, 4ff.
10 Ibn Ḥibbān, Rawḍat al-ʿuqalāʾ 4, 7f.
11 IS VII2 37, 19ff.; Khalīfa, Ṭab. 531 no. 1851 etc.
70 chapter �
pieces of information do not quite add up.12 It is true that he transmitted a

great amount of material from Qatāda;13 he was a Qadarite14 but of a similarly
moderate persuasion. For while it is said that he rejected the compulsion (jabr)
to evil,15 he did adopt a prophetic dictum from Qatāda according to which no
one who recited the shahāda and performed even the smallest of good deeds
would remain in the fires of hell for eternity.16 Humans who were not aware
of the revelation, or who could not grasp it because they were deaf or feeble-
minded, would not be able to enter paradise, but hell would cool down for
them.17 Some of his hadiths recommended deeper piety and renunciation of
the world; he also spread apocryphal dicta of Jesus.18 This was the reason why
Abū Nuʿaym included him in his Ḥilya;19 Ibn al-Jawzī followed his example.20
His prestige in Basra was great: while he did not have the greatest following,21
he was referred to as the “commander of the faithful in hadith”.22 As a lawyer
he followed the line of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Ibn Sīrīn.23
It seems that he was no friend of the Abbasids. Abū Muslim is said to have
sworn revenge on him because he ranked ʿUthmān above ʿAlī.24 One wonders
why he came to Abū Muslim’s attention in particular; after all, he was a long way
from Basra. But Hishām had business connections to Iran; he sold silk fabrics
imported from Dastawā in Ahwāz.25 He was probably the agent of one of the
merchants there: sometimes his name is given as Hishām ṣāḥib al-Dastuwāʾī.26

13 Azmi, Studies 98; also AZ 469 no. 1214, and 452 no. 1137.
14 Confirmed IS VII2 37, 16; Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 237 no. 1491; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 625, 9;
al-Khaṭīb, Kifāya 125, 13, and TB XII 184, 15; Mīzān no. 9229, and TH 164 no. 159; TT XI 43,
and Hady al-sārī II 169, 15; Kaʿbī 94, 10ff. > ? > IM 138, 1f. Nothing in IAH IV2 59ff. no. 240.
15 Kaʿbī 94, 13f.
16 Fasawī II 257, 12ff.; slightly differently Ḥilya VI 286, 8ff.
17 Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 79, 11ff., once again as hadith following Qatāda.
18 Ḥilya IV 280, 7ff., and 279, 6ff.; Ājurrī, Akhlāq al-ʿulamāʾ 101, 6 (allegedly “from a book”).
19 Ibid. VI 278ff.
20 Ṣifa III 262f.; early traces already in IS VII2 37, 16ff.
21 Fasawī III 34, 7; cf. p. 81f. below.
22 This went back to Abū Dāwūd al-Ṭayālisī (d. 203/818; Mīzān no. 9229). Concerning the
importance of Hishām cf. also Azmi, Studies 133.
23 Shīrāzī, Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ 90, 9.
24 Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān 136, 6ff.
25 Bukhārī IV2 198, 12; Samʿānī, Ansāb V 348, 1f.; Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān s. v. Dastawā. The
Dastawā region, from Pers. Dastabā or Dastbē, was north of Sāwa (cf. also Schwarz, Iram
383).
26 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān V 536, pu.; Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd 419, 1.
iraq 71
One of his business partners was based in Wāsiṭ.27 He was probably of Iranian
origin as his father’s name Sanbar is unlikely to mean “expert, specialist” as
suggested by Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ,28 but goes back to a Persian proper name
such as Σαμβάρης or Σαναβάρης.29 The manufacturers in Dastawā were Ibāḍites;
they gave him their goods together with instruction to distribute them among
the Bedouin in the Kalb area between Iraq and Syria in order to win them over
to the Ibāḍiyya. He is said to have hoped, in true Qadarite spirit, that their
racial pride might be tempered by the Islamic ideal of equality.30 This was re-
ally “home mission”;31 but if it took place towards the end of the Umayyad era,
there may have been political objectives to it as well. It is not certain whether
he himself was an Ibāḍite; the sources do not mention it.
Abū l-Naḍr Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba Mihrān32 al-ʿAdawī,
a client of the Banū ʿAdī33 and apparently a merchant,34 d. 156/773 or 157/774

in his eighties. He emphasised that his Qadarite views were a continuation of
his teacher Qatāda’s as well as Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s tradition;35 Ibn Ḥanbal, how-
ever, stated that like his precursors, he did not display his views openly.36 He
did not meet with any direct opposition, as Ibn Ḥanbal also tells us that he
was able to continue Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s majlis37 as the successor of Qatāda and
Maṭar al-Warrāq (d. before 130/747).38 It was not until later that criticism arose:
Sufyān b. ʿUyayna (d. 196/812) limited the material he transmitted from him as
he disapproved of his Qadarite views.39 Of course, Sufyān was living in Mecca.
The isnād Ḥasan > Qatāda > Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba occurs frequently in Abū
27 Baḥshal, Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 100, –8ff. The position of agent (shārik) was known in pre-Islamic
times (cf. W. Reinert, Das Recht in der altarabischen Poesie 37; regarding the later juristic
interpretation A. Udovitsch, Partnership and Profit 17ff.).
28 Cf. Lisān al-ʿarab s. v.
29 Justi, Namenbuch 281b and 282a.
30 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 33, 2ff.; cf. Pellat in: FO 12/1970/199, n. 22, and van Ess in: Studies on the First
Century of Islamic Society 121.
32 Or Dīnār (Khalīfa, Ṭab. 529 no. 1844).
33 Dhahabī, Siyar VI 413, 5.
35 Kaʿbī 94, 1ff.
36 Mīzān II 152, 14.
37 AZ 301, 6ff.
38 Regarding him cf. IS VII2 19, 14ff., and Mīzān no. 3587.
39 Khaṭīb, Kifāya 123, apu. ff.
7� chapter �
Rifāʿa ʿUmāra b. Wathīma’s (d. 289/902) K. Badʾ al-khalq wa-qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ;40

Saʿīd obviously heard a great number of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s prophetic tales from
Qatāda. He was particularly close to Qatāda. The latter, being blind and con-
sequently entirely reliant on memory, believed that his traditions would be
safest with Saʿīd;41 his K. al-manāsik survives only in Saʿīd’s recension, with pas-
sages added by him.42 He also preserved historical information from Qatāda.43
He wrote down the Tafsīr at the request of a man from Kufa,44 although the
authoritative recension of this text was the work of another Saʿīd for whom
he is sometimes mistaken:45 Saʿīd b. Bashīr.46 Some of the hadiths were prob-
ably adopted into the works published under his own name: the K. al-sunan
( fī l-ḥadīth)47 and K. al-ṭalāq; the latter appears to have been used directly as
a manual for a time.48
However, despite the concentration of material, in retrospect there was a
clear shortcoming: it had not always been received in direct contact with the
teacher – who, after all, had died early. This is true of the Tafsīr,49 but also of
many hadiths: they were not copied during a lecture, as samāʿ, but collected
in various other ways, sometimes with Qatāda’s approval. He did correctly use
the formula dhakarahū in these cases rather than ḥaddathanā.50 He used the
same approach with other authorities.51 During lectures he made do without
written notes; he quoted from memory.52 He is said to have been the first one
in Basra to have arranged hadiths according to subject matter, in the style of
40 Cf. R. G. Khoury’s edition Les légendes prophétiques dans l’Islam, p. 42, 11ff.; 46, 17ff.; 65, 4ff.
etc., (ca. 50 times altogether); for general information Index s. n. and Introduction 86ff.
41 Fasawī II 89, 9ff.; see p. 160f. below.
43 Ibn Qaiyim al-Jawziyya, Aḥkām al-dhimma 107, 5ff., and 154, 10ff.: regarding Kufa.
45 Thus in GAS 1/92.
46 Regarding him see vol. I 136ff. above.
47 Fihrist 283, 12; also Bağdatlı Paşa, Hadiyya I 387, 17ff.
48 Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān 136, 2f.
49 GAS 1/65.
50 IS VII2 33, 17f.; Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 373, 9f. – It is possible that this is an early indication of
the systematism of the following generations; in his recension of K. al-manāsik he always
refers to Qatāda using ʿan. Cf. also Azmi, Studies 99.
51 Fasawī II 123, –4ff.; also Nasāʾī’s (d. 303/915) compilation, Dhikr man ḥaddatha ʿanhu Ibn
Abī ʿArūba wa-lam yasmaʿ minhu, MS Istanbul, Ahmet III 642, fol. 14b–15a (cf. GAS 1/91 and
169). Also Azmi 157.
52 Cf. GAS 1/57, n. 4, questioning Goldziher, Muh. Studien II 212; also Schoeler in: Der Islam
62/1985/206 and 66/1989/219.
iraq 73
a muṣannaf.53 His lax methods were anathema to later experts such as Yaḥyā
b. Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān;54 they recollected that even one of his contemporaries had
refused to lend him the original of one of Qatāda’s writings, presumably to
prevent misuse.55
In all this, his methods were not really different from those of many of his
colleagues. That this was emphasised more in his case may have been due to
his Qadarite affiliation,56 as his leanings are clearly apparent in the extant ma-
terial; the intention may have been to dispose of it in this manner. He knew
that there was a prophet, Esra, who had spoken of qadar in the past, and traced
this back to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī via Qatāda;57 in the same place he contradicted the
well-known tradition of the dialogue between Adam and Moses that played
such an important part in predestinarian circles.58 He claimed to have heard
a dictum from Saʿīd b. Jubayr praising reason: “Everything has a limit, an end,
and a conclusion, except for reason. But humans do not all have an equal
amount of reason, there is a world of difference between them. The Quran
was revealed through reason,59 and the prophets were sent gifted with rea-
son: it was due to reason that they were superior to their communities”.60 The
Qadarite spirit might also have been detected in the “zoological” hadiths he
had heard from Qatāda.61 A glimpse of the Qadariyya’s political objectives may
be caught from the political information – which he once again heard from
Qatāda – that ʿUmar would have appointed a Persian mawlā, Sālim b. Maʿqil,
53 Elsewhere the introduction of the muṣannaf type in Basra is attributed to Rabīʿ b. Ṣabīḥ
who was around a generation younger (see p. 121 below).
54 Fasawī II 144, pu. ff., and III 61, 9ff.
55 IS VII2 33, 13ff.
56 Confirmed by Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 508, 3, and 625, 10, and Taʾwīl mukht. al-ḥadīth 11, 7. =
10, 7/transl. 9 para. 17; Khaṭīb, Kifāya 125, 13, and TB XII 184, 15; Mīzān no. 3242; Kaʿbī 94, 1ff.
> Faḍl 342, 7ff. > IM 137, 17ff. Cf. also HT, Index s. n. Nothing in Bukhārī II1 504f. no. 1679;
ʿUqaylī II 111ff. no. 587; IAH II1 65 no. 276; TH I 177f. no. 176; TT IV 63. The story found in
Ibn ʿAbdrabbih (ʿIqd II 380, 15ff.) in which Qatāda emphasises the validity of divine pre-
destination to Saʿīd is probably made up; the statement attributed to Qatāda there that
indeterminism was originally a Persian concept is a motif found in the context of several
scholars (cf. HT 137ff.).
57 ʿUmāra b. Wathīma, Badʾ 292, 8ff.
58 Ibid. 293, 15ff.; cf. also HT 161ff.
59 unzila bil-ʿaql. What exactly does it mean?
60 Badʾ 128, 9ff.; another tradition of this kind ibid. 214, 11ff.
61 Ḥayawān IV 293, pu. ff., and V 536, 3f.; the second tradition in similar form also from
Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī (ibid. 536, 5ff.). Cf. also p. 60 above.
74 chapter �
his successor if he had still been alive at the time.62 He was certainly claimed
to have said that nothing made him think more than Moses’ statement in sura
7:155, that the earthquake that frightened him and the chosen 70 men after the
laws had been revealed had been only a trial from God with which he could
lead people astray, or rightly guide them, however he decreed.63
It is worth noting that he was not quite himself anymore (ikhtalaṭa)64 after
Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh was defeated in 145. It sounds as if he, like the “Muʿtazila”,
had been mixed up in the affair65 and later been shunned or deliberately side-
lined. Sometimes, on the other hand, his unsound mind was explained as
simple memory loss,66 and the point in time at which people started to shun
him is occasionally dated earlier.67 Like Hishām al- Dastuwāʾī, he was on Abū
Muslim’s black list, as he, too, was a ʿUthmānite.68 This is also confirmed by the
account of ʿUthmān’s murder, which he copied from Qatāda.69
While Abū Nuʿaym did not spare him, unlike Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī,
even a single line, there are reports indicating that he – possibly more than
Hishām – was a follower of the Basran trend of asceticism. He is said never to
have touched a woman; he certainly did not have any children.70 He transmit-
ted from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī that Solomon used to wear wool,71 and he quoted an
account from Kaʿb al-aḥbār that he had heard from Qatāda, according to which
the Jewish ascetics went to become hermits in the desert or the mountains and
lived off leaves and similar things there.72 Like many other devout persons he
considered it his duty to feed the poor, but he even took the commandment
of sura 76:8 seriously, that one should feed them with foods one is particularly
partial to (ʿalā ḥubbihī): he gave them sugar cane to chew.73
62 Ṭabarī I 2776, 9ff.; where the same report is also traced back to the Qadarite Mubārak b.
Faḍāla (see p. 77 below) among others.
63 Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl 100, 13ff. = 84, 9ff./transl. 94 para. 120.
64 AZ 452 no. 1141 and passim.
65 Cf. p. 372ff. below.
66 Fasawī III 62, 2ff.
67 Ibid. III 61, 9ff.; aksi AZ 452 no. 1138: he had to be heard during Yūnus b. ʿUbayd’s lifetime,
i.e. before 139/756 (see p. 400f. below).
68 Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān 136, 6ff.; see p. 70f. above.
69 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 188, 7ff.; cf. also ʿUqaylī II 113, 12f.
70 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 508, 4f.; Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān 136, 5. He found his way into the K. al-Burṣān
because he limped (cf. also Maʿārif 583, 14).
71 ʿUmāra b. Wathīma, Badʾ 131, 14.
72 Ibid. 236, 15ff.
73 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 158, 14f.; regarding ʿalā ḥubbihī cf. Paret, Kommentar 496f.
iraq 75
The following are the names of later pupils of Ḥasan’s:
Abū Isḥāq74 Ismāʿīl b. Muslim75 al-Makkī,
d. c. 160/777.76 Despite his nisba he came from Basra and only spent a few years
in Mecca.77 In 158/77578 he probably accompanied al-Mahdī – before the latter
came to power – to Rayy, where he died.79 He was a pupil of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s80
but also studied under Zuhrī.81 Only few sources noted his Qadarite views.82
They may be expressed in animal hadiths, which were in turn quoted by Jāḥiẓ.83
It is just as likely that he believed in maskh, as he transmitted the following
dictum from Ibn ‘Abbās: “Black dogs are evil spirits (jinn), and spotted ones,
too”.84 Later his reputation was generally poor;85 he seems to have confused
hadiths all the time.86 At the same time people did not deny that the mate-
rial he transmitted was well known.87 While he was believed to be nearly as
dangerous as ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, he was not dropped altogether.88 Like him, al-
Makkī transmitted traditions from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī which went back to Samura
74 Thus e.g according to IS VII2 34, 2; Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭabaqāt al-qurrāʾ I 169 no. 788 etc.; the
kunya “Abū Rabīʿa” given by Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 120, 9 > Mīzān I 249, ult., is probably
due to a mistake. Ibn Ḥibbān traced hadiths transmitted in Kufa by Ṣāliḥ b. Ḥaiy back to
Ismāʿīl b. Muslim. The isnād mentions the kunya Abū Rabīʿa, and nothing else. It clearly
refers to a different person (Majrūḥīn I 121, 5ff. > Mīzān I 250, 4ff.).
75 Dhahabī, Mīzān no. 842 appears to list him once more as Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm al-Makkī, but
this is probably due to a mistake on the part of Zakariyyāʾ b. Yaḥyā al-Sājī (d. 307/902)
whom he quotes there.
76 Ibn al-Jazarī, ibid.
77 IS VII2 34, 4f.; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 597, 1f.; also Fasawī II 114, ult. f.
78 Cf. Ṭabarī III 445, 18.
79 IAH I1 198, 4.
80 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal I 372 no. 2465.
81 Fasawī II 781, 6ff.
82 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 625, 10f.; ʿUqaylī I 92, –4. The Muʿtazilites did not mention him.
83 Ḥayawān III 392, 4ff. and IV 293, 1f.; also Mīzān I 249, apu. f., and Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 463, –4ff.
with a different isnād. Cf. p. 25 above.
84 Ibid. I 291, 8f.
85 Cf. already Ibn al-Madīnī, ʿIlal 69, 7; AZ 681, pu. ff.
86 Mīzān I 248, ult. f.
88 IAH I1 199, 4ff. at no. 669. Abū Zurʿa (loc. cit.) also seems to mention him, probably to-
gether with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd (misspelt as ʿUbayda/ʿAbīda).
76 chapter �
b. Jundab.89 Ibn Saʿd had very positive words for al-Makkī; his teacher had
studied under him.90
He taught in the same mosque as Yūnus b. ʿUbayd,91 where he had greater
success as a teacher. Another opponent of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s, Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī,
was named together with them but without implying any kind of tension; the
same anecdote informs us that Sufyān b. ʿUyayna, who was younger, spoke of
him with respect.92 An explanation of these inconsistencies suggested later
was that there were several persons of the same name who were distinguished
mainly by their nisbas;93 however, this is not the place to examine whether
this is correct and to what extent the correct information has been ascribed to
each person.94 We must also bear in mind that Ismāʿīl b. Muslim was not only
a traditionist but that he was also respected as a Quran reciter and a jurist.
He had received his qirāʾa training in Mecca and became a follower of Ibn
Kathīr (d. 120/738).95 In jurisprudence, however, he followed Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s
practice.96 His fatwās were famous; he was compared to ʿUthmān al-Battī.97
Still, he never became a qāḍī, probably because he was a mawlā. The qāḍī
ʿUbaydallāh b. al-Ḥasan b. al-ʿAnbarī98 consulted his hadith.99 He also had con-
nections with Kufan jurists such as Ibn Shubruma, and was acquainted with
Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ.100 His prestige is finally evident from his presence in one of
the traditions about Wāṣil’s khuṭba before ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz as a further
representative of the city of Basra.101 He would once again lead negotiations
on the city’s behalf in 132/749.102
89 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal I 372 no. 2463; regarding ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd see p. 347f. below.
90 IS VII2 34, 1ff.
93 “Al-Makhzūmī” and “al-ʿAbdī” besides “al-Makkī”. Cf. Bukhārī I1 372 no. 1178–80 and IAH I1
196ff. no. 667–69; also Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 120, 10f.
94 Ibn Ḥajar’s statement (TT I 333 no. 599) that Ismāʿīl b. Muslim did not meet Ḥasan al-Baṣrī
in person is probably due to one such error (cf. already IAH I1 198, 2). Interestingly Ibn Saʿd
has only one person of this name.
95 Ibn al-Jazarī I 169 no. 788; also Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal I p. 372, 5.
96 Shīrāzī, Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ 90, 7f.
97 IS VII2 34, 5. Regarding ʿUthmān al-Battī see p. 168ff. below.
99 Wakīʿ, Akhbār II 90, 11ff.
100 Cf. the different versions of the story told by Wakīʿ, III 117, 7ff., and Dhahabī, Mīzān I 249,
3ff.
iraq 77
Abū Faḍāla al-Mubārak b. Faḍāla b. Abī Umayya al-Qurashī al-ʿAdawī,
d. 164/781103 or 165/782,104 grandson of one of ʿUmar’s slaves who had bought

his own freedom,105 and possibly an official of the administration,106 was said
to have attended Ḥasan’s lectures for a further thirteen years. Ṭabarī often cites
him as an authority for Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, in particular his Tafsīr; some of this ma-
terial went via him into the Iraqi recension of Mujāhid’s Quranic commentary
produced by Ādam b. Abī Iyās (d. 220/835), maybe via ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd (whom
Mubārak does not mention).107 However, it was remarked that Mubārak at-
tended Yūnus b. ʿUbayd’s lectures as well and transmitted hadith in his pres-
ence.108 The ascetic tendencies that several sources ascribed to him were also
evident in his traditions: he stated that the prophet never used perfume.109
He was compared to Rabīʿ b. Ṣabīḥ, the founder of the colony of ascetics on
ʿAbbādān, for various reasons.110 It was said about him, as about ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd,
that before the uprising of al-Nafs al-zakiyya he visited Manṣūr by the “bridge”
and begged him to show magnanimity, whereupon he did not enter the city.111
A Qadarite according to Mīzān no. 7048; TT X 31, 5; Kaʿbī 93, 14ff. > Faḍl
342, 6f. > IM 137, 16f. Cf. also IS VII2 35, 20ff.; Bukhārī IV1 426 no. 2867;
TB XIII 211ff. no. 7183; ʿUqaylī IV 224f. no. 1816; TH 200f. no. 183. – The
Muʿtazilite sources also name his brother al-Faraj b. Faḍāla b. Nuʿmān
al-Tanūkhī al-Ḥimṣī, d. 176/792, finance administrator at the beginning of
Hārūn al-Rashīd’s caliphate. It remains to be proved that this was indeed
his brother, although the fact that both brothers had different nisbas does
not necessarily mean anything. Faraj certainly did not belong in Basra,
103 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 688, 6.

104 IS VII2 35, 21 etc.
105 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 190, 7f.
106 He went to Isfahan with one of Manṣūr’s governors (Abū l-Shaykh, Ṭabaqāt al-muḥaddithīn
I 397, –4 > Abū Nuʿaym, Dhikr akhbār Iṣbahān II 318, 4).
107 Stauth, Korankommentar Muǧāhid b. Ǧabrs 80f. and 100.
108 IAH IV1 338, 16f., and 339, 3f.; TB XIII 212, 16ff.
109 AZ 562 no. 1543; a tradition showing a similar tendency ibid. 644, no. 1897.
110 TB XIII 214, 6ff.; regarding Rabīʿ b. Ṣabīḥ see p. 121f. below.
111 Boughanmi, Studien über al-Ābī, Ar. section, p. 73 no. 103. Cf. also p. 328 below.
78 chapter �
and it is possible that it was not originally Mubārak’s home, either.112 Cf.
also IS VII2 70, 20ff.; Bukhārī IV1 134 no. 608; IAH III2 85f. no. 483; ʿUqaylī
III 462 no. 1518; Mīzān no. 6696. Qadarite inclinations are not mentioned
here, but his hadith is criticised.
Abū Hilāl Muḥammad b. Sulaym al-Rāsibī,
client of the Sālim b. Luʾayy, d. 165/782113 or 167/784;114 transmitted from

Ḥasan and Qatāda. He is named as a Qadarite in TB XII 184, 15; Mīzān
no. 7646; Kaʿbī 92, 1ff. > Faḍl 342, 2 > IM 137, 14. This may remain doubtful as
he transmitted a predestinarian dictum of Ḥasan’s115 as well as the hadith that
John the Baptist was created a believer already in his mother’s womb. From
Qatāda he had heard the (anti-Zubayrid?) hadith: “If there are two caliphs to
pay homage to, kill one of them.” This was later adopted by ʿAbd al-Ṣamad b.
ʿAbd al-Wārith (d. 207/822), the son of ʿAbd al-Wārith b. Saʿīd,116 who may have
adduced it to justify Maʾmūn murdering his brother Amīn in 198/813. Abū Ḥilāl
was blind;117 which makes it all the more remarkable that he and Qatāda, who
was also blind, were said to have attended the lectures of Saʿīd b. al-Musayyab
in Medina together.118
Abū Rawḥ Sallām b. Miskīn al-Namarī al-Azdī,
a Yemeni, d. 167/784.119 His accounts collected by Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 110, 6f., and
Wakīʿ, Akhbār II 7, 6f., show that he was a pupil of Ḥasan’s.
His Qadarite leanings were emphasised by Khaṭīb, Kifāya 125, 14, and TB
XII 184, 16; Mīzān no. 3355; TT IV 286f. (after Abū Dāwūd); Kaʿbī 100, 4f. >
Faḍl 343, 10 > IM 139, 1. Ibn Ḥanbal considered him to be trustworthy nev-
ertheless (ʿIlal 179 no. 1115). Cf. also IS VII2 40, 8ff.; Bukhārī II2 134 no. 2228;
IAH II1 258 no. 1117.
112 Fasawī II 26, 4ff. indicates connections to Medina. Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 190, 9f. mentions
two other brothers.
113 IS VII2 36, ult. and Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 512, 3.
114 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 536 no. 1873 etc.
117 IS VII2 36, 22; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 512, 2.
118 Maʿārif 572, 6f.
119 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 538 no. 1883, andTaʾrīkh 691, 12.
iraq 79
Abū Bishr Ṣāliḥ b. Bashīr b. Wādiʿ al-Murrī,
freedman of a woman of the Banū Murra b. al-Ḥārith of the ʿAbd al-Qays;120

d. 172/788,121 173/789, or 176/792. He is said to have transmitted from Ḥasan,
Ibn Sīrīn and Qatāda, although he could have known them only in his earli-
est youth; some of his hadiths from Ḥasan were preserved by Abū Nuʿaym, as
well as some from Thābit al-Bunānī and Yazīd al-Raqāshī.122 This selection
reflects Ṣāliḥ’s mentality: he was a popular preacher (qāṣṣ) and inclined to that
type of emotional religiosity usually associated with the “weepers” (bakkāʾūn).
Abū Nuʿaym quoted samples of his style, showing his ability to make the
Judgment come alive for his audience employing the whole range of apocalyp-
tic afflictions.123 In all of this he displayed great eloquence and sophisticated
use of language; Jāḥiẓ admired him greatly for it.124 He appears to have been
admitted at court and is said to have been a positive influence on Sulaymān
b. Makhlad al-Mūriyānī, Manṣūr’s vizier.125 He was also acquainted with
ʿUbaydallāh al-ʿAnbarī, the qāḍī of Basra, who was then also governor.126 His
hadith was rejected;127 but a story was circulated which had a prominent op-
ponent, who fundamentally disagreed with the attitude of the quṣṣāṣ, praising
him unreservedly after attending one of his lectures.128 The Muʿtazilite texts
called him a Qadarite,129 as did Ibn Qutayba;130 but on the other hand he was
one of the transmitters of the famous hadith according to which the prophet
used to be irritated by qadar discussions in his vicinity.131
120 Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifat al-ṣafwa III 265, 8.

121 Thus according to Khalīfa, Ṭab. 539, 5, andTaʾrīkh 712, 6.
122 Ḥilya VI 173, 5ff., and 175, 3ff.
123 Ibid. 165, –4ff.; Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 288, 1ff.; also Ibn al-Jawzī, Quṣṣaṣ para. 155–57. Ibn al-
Nadīm counts him among the zuhhād (Fihrist 235, 15). Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān VII 62, 7ff., uses a
delightful turn of phrase that recalls the “fowls of the air” in Matthew 6:26.
124 Cf. the appreciation in Bayān I 369, 7f.; also ibid. I 119, 7, and 364, 2.
125 Ibid. III 149, 9ff.
126 Ibn ʿAqīl, Funūn 46 no. 47. The dictum mentioned there is found similarly phrased in sev-
eral other sources (cf. e.g. Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 171, ult. ff.). Regarding ʿAnbarī see p. 178ff. below.
127 Thus already Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, Muqaddima I 23, –4ff.
128 According to the majority of reports this is supposed to have been Sufyān al-Thawrī (al-
ready IS VII2 39, 3ff. > Ibn al-Jawzī, Quṣṣāṣ para. 65 and 156 etc.); but Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 369,
8ff., shows that this originally referred to a different Sufyān.
129 Kaʿbī 95, 9ff. (after Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shāfiʿī and Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī) > Faḍl 342, 16 >
IM 128, 4.
130 Maʿārif 420, 17f., and 625, 14.
131 HT 158f.
80 chapter �
Cf. also Bukhārī II2 273 no. 2782; IAH II1 395f. no. 1730; Ibn Ḥibbān,
Majrūḥīn I 371, pu. ff.; ʿUqaylī II 199f. no. 723; Mīzān no. 3773; TT IV 382f.
no. 641. Regarding the question of whether he was an Ibāḍite see p. 248f.
below.
al-Rabīʿ b. ʿAbdallāh b. Khuṭṭāf al-Aḥdab.
He, too, transmitted from Ḥasan, but became known later for attending ʿAmr b.
Fāʾid al-Uswārī’s lectures every Friday.132 The latter had studied under ʿAmr b.
ʿUbayd and lived in the second half of the second century.133
Abū Juzayy Naṣr b. Ṭarīf al-Bāhilī al-Qaṣṣāb,
a butcher (qaṣṣāb), who had not learnt to read and write. He had the best
memory in Basra, but it could of course happen that he confused hadiths.134
During an illness he had felt some qualms and retracted a few traditions; later
he refused to admit this.135 ʿAffān b. Muslim (d. 220/835), who made a name
for himself in the miḥna,136 had two little bags or chests (qimaṭr) tied up with
string at the head of his bed in which he kept hadith notes inherited from Naṣr,
but due to scruples he did not open them until his death.137
For all that, Naṣr had a greater following than Hishām al-Dastuwāʿī; on one
occasion so many people congregated in the mosque of the Banū ʿAdī that the
hall could not hold them all, and he could not give his lecture.138 He had at-
tended Abū Ḥanīfa’s lectures in Kufa and considered him not only a Murjiʾite
but also a Jahmite.139 Ibn al-Mubārak noted that Naṣr himself held Qadarite
views.140 – Another illiterate butcher like him141 was
132 ʿUqaylī II 49 no. 479; TT III 249 no. 475. Cf. also Bukhārī II1 272 n. 927; IAH I2 466 no. 2087;
Mīzān no. 2742. Not in Muʿtazilite sources.
134 Mīzān no. 9034; Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn III 52, 8ff.
136 Regarding him see ch. C 3.3.1 below.
137 ʿUqaylī IV 297, 6ff.; concerning the meaning of qimaṭr see ch. C 3.2.1.1 below.
138 Fasawī III 34, 6ff., in ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Mahdī’s recollections of his youth. The Masjid
Banī ʿAdī had been built during Ziyād’s reign (Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Khiṭaṭ al-Baṣra 56).
139 Ibid. II 783, 5ff.
140 ʿUqaylī IV 296, –7f. > Mīzān, loc. cit.
141 However: jazzār rather than qaṣṣāb. M. Ullmann has pointed out to me that according to
Shayzarī’s ḥisba treatise (Nihāyat al-rutba fī ṭalab al-ḥisba, p. 27ff.), a jazzār is the butcher
who must obey the rules for butchery set out in the sunna, while a qaṣṣāb is the meat
seller who is responsible for the counter being clean etc. Regarding the organisation of
Heruntergeladen von Brill.com03/13/2018 07:52:45PM

iraq 81
Abū Umayya Ayyūb b. Khūṭ142 al-Baṣrī al-Ḥabaṭī,
from whom ʿAbbād b. Ṣuhayb al-Kulaybī (d. 212/828)143 heard traditions. He

instructed his employees in hadith.144 His Qadarite views are only reported
vaguely;145 people may have assumed them as he transmitted one of those ha-
diths according to which all winged insects would go to hell.146
Abū ʿAbdallāh Hammām b. Yaḥyā b. Dīnār al-ʿAwdhī,
d. Ramadan 164/May 781.147 He transmitted from a “book” containing Qatāda’s

hadiths.148 Ibn Qutayba added him to his list of Qadarites.149 Nobody followed
his example, but Kaʿbī quoted a report from Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī stating that
Hammām refused to transmit the well-known predestinarian hadith accord-
ing to which the reed pen with which the predestined fate was written down
was “dry already”.150 We also learn that Hammām refused to believe that a
prayer could not change the date of death determined by God.151 He was a
qāṣṣ.152 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Mahdī, himself a moderate Qadarite,153 considered
him to be just as reliable as Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba.154
Cf. also IS VII2 39, 12ff.; Bukhārī IV2 237 no. 2852; Mīzān no. 9253; TTXI
67ff. no. 108; [especially p. 368 below].
the butcher’s trade, albeit in much later times, cf. A. Cohen, Economic Life in Ottoman
Jerusalem 11ff.
142 On the reading of the name cf. Dhahabī, Mushtabih 259, 4. Fasawī II 666, 2, has the incor-
rect “Ḥawṭ”.
144 TT I 403, –4ff.
145 TT I 402, ult. Nothing in Muʿtazilite sources or Bukhārī I1 414 no. 1318; Ibn Ḥibbān,
Majrūḥīn I 166, 1ff.; ʿUqaylī I 110ff. no. 129; Mīzān no. 1074. Regarding him also Azmi, Studies
124 no. 66, who probably assumes his dates slightly too early.
146 Mīzān I 286, 9f.; cf. also p. 59 above.
148 Fasawī II 141, 2f.; cf. also p. 162f. below. For more general information see Azmi, Studies 130,
no. 91.
149 Maʿārif 625, 11.
150 Maq. 94, pu. ff.; cf. also HT 79.
151 Fasawī II 280, ult. ff.; regarding the issue cf. HT 86f.
152 Fasawī I 150, 4; a sample of his style: cf. ʿUqaylī IV 369, 10ff.
154 IAH IV2 108, 13; cf. also ʿUqaylī IV 368, 3f. and ult. f.
8� chapter �
Abū Salama ʿUthmān b. Miqsam al-Burrī155 al-Kindī,
d. 173/789.156 He studied under Qatāda and other Basran authorities, but came
originally from Kufa.157 He was not only a Qadarite,158 but also noticeable for
reinterpreting the scales of the Day of Judgment as a metaphor for divine jus-
tice and mocking the literal interpretation.159 This was close to Muʿtazilite
views, and he was indeed sometimes considered to be one of them.160 It seems
that in his youth he was acquainted with Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ.161 It may have been
ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd who taught him that Abū Lahab could not have been included
in the heavenly original of the Quran, as that would mean eternal damnation
for him.162 Still, the Muʿtazilite sources regarded him as nothing more than
a Qadarite.163 Like Abū Juzayy he had a greater following during his lifetime
than Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī,164 and despite his “innovations” he would not be
unanimously rejected later.165 Abū ʿAwāna (d. 176/792), however, called him
“honey in a pigskin”, i.e. that his knowledge while outwardly pleasing, was in
fact useless.166 Later he would be accused of having confused isnāds, and it was
advised to burn his collections.167
Cf. also IS VII2 41, 15f.; Bukhārī III2 252f. no. 2319; IAH III1 167ff no. 918; Ibn
Ḥibbān II 101, 9ff.; Lisān al-Mīzān IV 155f. no. 364.
155 IS VII2 41, 16 .

157 Samʿānī, Ansāb II 194, 1ff.; also Azmi, Studies 175 no. 229.
158 Thus according to Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 625, 11; ʿUqaylī III 217ff. no. 1220; Mīzān no. 5568.
159 ʿUqaylī 218, apu. ff.; Mīzān III 56, –8, and 57, 9f.
160 Thus from Sājī (cf. ʿUqaylī III 217, n.).
161 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 22, 2; cf. also p. 282 below.
162 ʿUqaylī III 220, 3f.; cf. p. 124f. and 341f. below.
163 Maybe because Kaʿbī already merely copied Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī’s list of Qadarites (100, 1ff.
> Faḍl 343, 10 > IM 138, 15f.).
165 Ibid. II 123, 7ff. with a positive opinion by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Mahdī; similar IAH III2 168,
11ff. The previous report also goes back to Ibn Mahdī.
166 ʿUqaylī III 218, 11ff. etc. Abū ʿAwāna does not refer to the author of Musnad, who only
died in 316/928, but a traditionist from Wāsiṭ who would later lecture in Baghdad (TB XIII
460ff. no. 7330; Baḥshal, Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 160, 1ff. etc.).
167 Thus the tendency of the traditions found in Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 231f. no. 1455.
iraq 83
2.2.2.1.2.3 Pupils of Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba

Ibn Abī ʿArūba gathered many pupils around him; they were as highly respect-
ed as he.1 Among them was
Abū Bakr ʿImrān b. Muslim al-Qaṣīr al-Minqarī.
He may have been older than the others; he was regarded as a companion of
Ḥasan’s. In fact Abū Nuʿaym quoted some dicta that ʿImrān transmitted from
Ḥasan,2 but it did not worry him that ʿImrān also transmitted hadith from Anas
b. Mālik,3 where the isnād was certainly incomplete. The notes ʿImrān was said
to have taken on wooden tablets (alwāḥ) confirmed that he studied under Abī
ʿArūba.4 Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān (d. 198/813) regarded him as a Qadarite,5 but not even
the Muʿtazilites included him in their lists.6 His hadiths as preserved by Abū
Nuʿaym do indeed point in a different direction. They recommend not to talk
about qadar.7 Faith and purity of heart are sufficient to save someone from
hell;8 the prophet’s intercession is real.9 It would seem that ʿImrān was simply
a devout man. Prayer appears to have been very important to him;10 he slept
only when he could not help himself.11 It is interesting that he did not consider
the mutʿa verse of the Quran (4:28) to have been abrogated, or was aware of any
prophetic dictum that prohibited this form of marriage.12 Thus if he was not a
Shīʿite, he must have followed those who transmitted such a prohibition only
from ʿUmar.13 His reputation was quite undisputed.14 In an inconspicuous pas-
sage we read that a certain Abū Ṭufayla al-Hirmāzī served him as muʾadhdhin
for ten years;15 consequently he cannot have been very poor.
1 Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān 136, 4.

2 Ḥilya VI 178, 16ff.
3 Ibid. 179, 13ff.
4 Khaṭīb, Taqyīd al-ʿilm 113, 7; also Azmi, Studies 160.
5 ʿUqaylī III 305 no. 1315; Mīzān no. 6313; Hady al-sārī II 155, 15; Suyūṭī, Tadrīb I 329, 4f.
6 Cf. also IS VII2 30, 9f.; Bukhārī III2 419 no. 2840; IAH III1 304f. no. 1690; TT VIII 137ff. no.239.
7 Ḥilya VI 182, 1ff.; also HT 153f.
8 Ibid. 182, 10ff.
9 Ibid. 181, 13f.
10 Ibid. 180, –7ff.
11 Ibid. 178, 5; also Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifat al-ṣafwa III 233, 8. Ibn al-Jawzī does, however, consider
the possibility that this might have been a different ʿImrān (ibid. 233, pu. ff.).
12 Ibid. 180, 14ff.
13 HW 552 s. v. Mutʿa; also my K. al-Nakth 36.
14 Cf. e.g. Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 340 no. 2230.
15 Abū ʿUbayda, Majāz al-Qurʾān II 15, n., l. 5f.
84 chapter �
Abū ʿUthmān Kahmas b. al-Minhāl al-Sadūsī.
Named as a Qadarite by Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 625, 14; Bukhārī IV1 240
no. 1029; Mīzān no. 6982; TT VIII 451 and Hady al-sārī II 158, –10; Suyūṭī,
Tadrīb I 329, 5; Faḍl 342, 19 > IM 138, 7. Cf. also IAH III2 no. 973.
Abū l-Khaṭṭāb Muḥammad b. Sawāʾ b. ʿAnbar al-Sadūsī,
d. 187/803 or 189/805. Cf. Mīzān no. 7658 (ghālī fī l-qadar); TT IX 208, 3, and
Hady al-sārī II 160, 21; Tadrīb I 329, 5f.; Kaʿbī 107, 8 (after Jāḥiẓ). Neither early
jarḥ wal-taʿdīl works such as Madīnī’s or Ibn Ḥanbal’s K. al-ʿIlal, contain criti-
cism in connection with his name, nor does IS VII2 48, 12f.; Bukhārī I1 106
no. 300; IAH III2 282 no. 1521. He obviously knew something about genealogy.16
Abū Hammām Abū Muḥammad17 ʿAbd al-Aʿlā b. ʿAbd al-Aʿlā b.

Muḥammad al-Sāmī,
d. 189/805.18 He mainly transmitted from Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba; the typical

Qadarite isnād was noted as ʿAbd al-Aʿlā < Saʿīd < Qatāda.19 This is how Qatāda’s
K. al-Manāsik came down to us.20 Jāḥiẓ studied under him21 and recalled his
slightly strange pronunciation of the final a.22 He was not believed to be dāʿiya,
and consequently well-regarded later in spite of everything.
His Qadarite views were noted by Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 284 no. 1837; ʿUqaylī III
58f. no. 1020; Mīzān no. 4728; TT VI 96, 3, and Hady al-sārī II 140, 5; Tadrīb
I 329, 2. Cf. also IS VII2 45, 7ff.; Bukhārī III2 73 no. 1748; TH 296 no. 277.
Muʿtazilite sources do not mention him.
16 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 148, 1f., and 149, 3f.

17 Thus Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 341 no. 2239; IAH III1 28 no. 147.
18 Thus according to Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 736, 5 and Ṭab. 542, 5f., as well as IS VII2 45, 9; “198/814”
in TT VI 96, 14, is probably a mistake.
19 Mīzān II 151, 14f.
20 See p. 165 below. Another instance of this isnād in Ṭabarī I 122, ult.
21 Burṣān 136, 3.
22 E. g. in the 3rd sg. perf., with corresponding assimilation of the suffix pronoun (Bayān II
220, 11f.).
iraq 85
Abū Qaṭan ʿAmr b. al-Haytham b. Qaṭan al-Quṭaʿī,
d. 4 Shaʿbān 198/30 March 814 at 77 years of age.23 His grandfather had already
been a Qadarite.24 He came to Baghdad at a mature age and transmitted from
Basran authorities, among them Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj. Ibn Ḥanbal studied under
him25 and did not want to do without his traditions even when he was in-
formed that after returning to Basra, Abū Qaṭan behaved like a Qadarite again
and even supported this doctrine in debates.26 – Like him,
Abū Naṣr ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. ʿAṭāʾ b. Muslim al-Khaffāf al-ʿIjlī,
apparently a bootmaker by profession, went to Baghdad permanently and

made a name for himself through the Basran traditions he transmitted. He died
in Baghdad in 204/820 or 206/822.27 It was said that in his home town, people
had not taken him quite seriously.28 Once in Baghdad, however, he reaped the
rewards of having received all Ibn Abī ʿArūba’s hadith collections (muṣannafāt)
from him and written them down;29 at times, he had been his mustamlī.30 He
also transmitted from ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, from Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī and from ʿAwf
al-Aʿrābī;31 he also owned a “book” by the Meccan Qadarite Ibn Abī Dhiʾb.32
However, his students could also hear traditions from ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn and
Yūnus b. ʿUbayd from him, both of whom were eminent opponents of the
Qadarites.33 He had studied Quran recitation with the “orthodox” Abū ʿAmr
Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, among others.34 More than one books of his were known, presum-
ably published lecture notes: a K. al-Sunan fī l-fiqh, a Quran commentary every
23 TB XII 201, 1f.

24 See p. 66 above.
25 TB XII 199, 6; examples in his K. al-ʿIlal 87 no. 504 and 197 no. 646. Regarding Shuʿba cf. HT,
Index s. n.
26 Ibid. 200, 3ff.; also 199, ult. f. Regarding his Qadarite tendencies also ibid. 200, 8; Kaʿbī 107,
8f.; TT VIII 114, 10f. Nothing in Bukhārī III2 381 no. 2703, and IAH III1 268 no. 1480.
27 IS VII2 76, 5f.; TB XI 21ff. no. 5688.
28 TB XI 22 6ff.
29 IS VII2 76, 2f.; Mīzān II 153, 10f.; TB XI 22, ult. ff. Cf. also Azmi, Studies 160.
30 TB XI 22, 17f.; Samʿānī, Adab al-imlāʾ 86, 11f.; Weisweiler in: Oriens 4/1951/31.
31 TB XI 21, 10ff. Cf. Azmi 133.
32 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 109 no. 657. Cf. Azmi 152. Regarding Ibn Abī Dhiʾb see p. 763ff. below.
33 IS 76, 3f. Regarding them see p. 400ff. below. He occasionally transmits from Ibn ʿAwn in
Wakīʿ (cf. e.g Akhbār II 328, –4ff.: on Shurayḥ).
34 Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭabaqāt al-qurrāʾ no. 1996. Regarding Abū ʿAmr see p. 421ff. below.
86 chapter �
trace of which appears to have been lost entirely, a K. al-nāsikh wal-mansūkh,35

a K. al-Ṣiyām36 and even, if we can believe a later source, a Taʾrīkh.37
The Muʿtazilite sources38 and Dhahabī39 name him as a Qadarite; in
Baghdad, nobody seems to have noticed this. Abū Sulaymān al-Dārānī was
so displeased at his views that he refused to pray behind him in the mosque
again.40 He was close to the ascetics in that he would cry again and again dur-
ing his lectures.41 A pro-Abbasid hadith he transmitted from Thawr b. Yazīd
al-Ḥimṣī indicates that he had connections to Syria.42
Cf. also Bukhārī III2 98 no. 1824; IAH III1 72 no. 372; ʿUqaylī III 77 no. 1043;
TH 339 no. 321; TT VI 450ff. no. 935.
2.2.2.1.2.4 Other Qadarites in the Second Half of the Second Century
Abū Shaykh Jāriya b. Harim al-Fuqaymī
was a “leading mind in qadar” according to ʿAlī Ibn al-Madīnī (d. 234/849).1 He
transmitted from Ibn Jurayj (d. 150/767 or 151/768), among others.
Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Dīnār al-Ṭāhī al-Azdī
was acquainted with the qāḍī Sauwār b. ʿAbdallāh (d. 156/773)2 and seems to
have been interested in the law in general.3 Despite his Qadarite leanings he
also transmitted from the “orthodox” Yūnus b. ʿUbayd.
35 These three titles in Ibn al-Nadīm 284, 20 and, probably copied from there, in Dāwūdī,
Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn I 364, 6. Regarding the Tafṣīr cf. also TB XI 22, 20f. Does this refer
to a recension of Qatāda’s commentary which he received from Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba? Of
course, it might just as well refer to a simple booklet of exegetical notes.
36 ḤKh 1434, 13f.
37 Dāwūdī 364, 6. Cf. also Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam VI 225, on the entire subject.
38 Kaʿbī 98, 14f. > Faḍl 343, 7 > IM 138, 12.
39 Mīzān no. 5322.
40 Mīzān ibid. (II 682, 5f.). Regarding him see vol. I 163f. above.
41 TB XI 22, 18f.
42 Cf. also SI 31/1970/285, n. 2.
1 ʿUqaylī I 203, 10f. > Mīzān no. 1430.

2 Wakīʿ II 68, –5ff.; regarding Sauwār b. ʿAbdallāh, who was governor at the same time, see
p. 177f. below.
3 Ibid. II 246, 5ff.; 250, 10ff.; 254, 8ff. (information on Shurayḥ); II 110, 8ff. (on Sauwār’s suc-
cessor ʿUbaydallāh al-ʿAnbarī).
iraq 87
A Qadarite according to Mīzān no. 7504; TT IX 155f. no. 225; Faḍl 342, 19 >
IM 138, 8f. Cf. also Bukhārī I1 77 no. 200; IAH III2 249 no. 1367; Ibn Ḥibbān
II 272, 1ff.; ʿUqaylī IV 63f. no. 1616.
Abū ʿAbdallāh Mahdī b. Hilāl al-Baṣrī
also transmitted from Yūnus b. ʿUbayd among others, but was still regarded as
an “innovator” by Ibn Maʿīn. Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān is said to have called him
as well as the controversial Medinan Ibrāhīm b. Abī Yaḥyā4 liars publicly.5
Qadarite according to Kaʿbī 106, 4 > Faḍl 343, 11; ʿUqaylī IV 227f. no. 1819;
Mīzān no. 8827; Lisān al-Mīzān VI 106. Cf. also Bukhārī IV1 425 no. 1863;
IAH IV1 336f. no. 1548; Ibn Ḥibbān III 30, 10ff.
Abū Sulaymān Jaʿfar b. Jasr b. Farqad al-Qaṣṣāb
was one of the very few traditionists of whom Qadarite hadith survives. He
transmitted the following prophetic dictum that he had heard from his father:
“When the Day of Judgment has arrived and God has gathered the first ones
and the last ones without distinction, then whoever finds room for his foot will
be glad. And someone will call from beneath the Throne: He who absolves his
master of (the responsibility for) his sins and takes them upon himself may
enter into paradise!” And another dictum, which he had also heard from his
father, who had it from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, could also be interpreted in a Qadarite
way: “God has spared this community three things: error, oblivion, and being
forced to do something”.6
A Qadarite according to ʿUqaylī I 187 no. 232; Mīzān no. 1493; Ibn al-Jawzī,
Mawḍūʿāt I 272, 7ff.; Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 253, –6ff.; also HT 120. Cf. also IAH
I1 476 no. 1938. Not in the Muʿtazilite sources. He appears to have trans-
mitted only from his father. Consequently the latter ought to have been
a Qadarite as well, but the sources do not mention this in his case. He
seems to have supported ʿUthmānite tendencies, as he transmitted that
ʿUthmān would intercede for an entire tribe on the Day of Judgment
(Ājurrī, Sharīʿa 351, 5ff.). The son inherited his sobriquet al-Qaṣṣāb “the
butcher”; this does not, of course, mean that he could not have had the
same profession as his father as well (cf. ʿUqaylī I 202f. no. 249; Mīzān

5 IAH IV1 336, ult. f.
6 However, the word used is yukrahūna rather than yujbarūna.
88 chapter �
no. 1480). Was he the grandson of the ascetic Farqad al-Sabakhī? It is not
said anywhere. Regarding the latter see p. 108f. below.
Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muʿāwiya b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Thaqafī al-Ḍāll,
d. 180/796. He was connected to the family of the prophet’s companion Abū

Bakr as a client who had originally been a slave of the Thaqīf in Ṭāʾif who were
very influential in Basra at times.7 He bore the epithet al-Ḍāll because he had
once got lost on the way to Mecca. He lived to be very old; consequently it was
said that he had heard hadith from Ḥasan.
A Qadarite only according to Jāḥiẓ’ list (Kaʿbī 107, 8 > Faḍl 344, 2 > IM 139,
9). Cf. also IS VII2 41, 134.; Bukhārī IV1 337 no. 1451; IAH IV1 381 no. 1749;
Mīzān no. 8628; TT X 213f. no. 392.
Qurṭ b. Ḥurayth al-Bāhilī,
a client of the Bāhila, came to Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn’s attention as a Qadarite when

he visited him at home and heard him exhort his pupils to “keep God pure of
these sins”.
ʿUqaylī III 490 no. 1552; Mīzān no. 6890; Kaʿbī 98, 3ff. (where the name is
given as Qurt b. Ḥawshab; also in Lisān al-Mīzān IV 472 no. 1482).
Abū Muḍar Ghassān b. Muḍar al-Azdī al-Namarī,
d. 184/800, was overall very well regarded.8 He was also interested in historical
traditions,9 but ʿAbd al-Ṣamad b. ʿAbd al-Wārith (d. 207/822–3)10 called him a
Qadarite – maybe only because he had vilified Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj.11
7 EI2 I 111; cf. also p. 252f. below.

8 TT VIII 247f. no. 458.
9 Ṭabarī II 90, 17ff.; Fasawī III 200, apu. ff., and 331, 2ff.
11 Mīzān no. 6665.
iraq 89
Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Mahdī b. Ḥassān al-Luʾluʾī al-ʿAnbarī,
135/753–198/814. He was a pearl merchant12 and highly regarded as a tradi-

tionist.13 His Qadarite views are only vaguely documented,14 but he trans-
mitted from numerous Qadarites. He is said to have issued a fatwā declaring
the Jahmites to be deserving of death.15 Shāfiʿī composed his Risāla at his
suggestion;16 he was also in touch with Mālik’s school and spread his ideas in
Basra.17
Abū ʿAbdallāh Hārūn b. Mūsā al-ʿAtakī al-Azdī al-Aʿwar,
d. before 200/815. He is said to have heard hadith from Yazīd al-Raqāshī; later
he moved to Baghdad. While he was a confirmed Qadarite according to the
opinion of Sulaymān b. Ḥarb al-Wāḥishī (d. c. 224/839),18 he was still quoted
in every canonical hadith collection.19 His case is interesting in that he con-
verted from Judaism.20 It would seem that someone who became a Muslim at
the time considered Qadarite thought innocuous and quite normal. Hārūn was
also an expert in Quran recitation and in grammar.21
12 Samʿānī, Ansāb XI 230, 3ff.

13 Cf. Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s eulogies in: Jarḥ, Muqaddima 251ff.; also ibid. II2 288ff. no. 1382. Also IS
VII2 50, 19ff.
14 TT VI 279, ult.; Kaʿbī 100, 6f. (after Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al- Shāfiʿī) > ? > IM 139, 1.
15 Lālakāʾī, Sharḥ uṣūl iʿtiqād ahl al-sunna 316, 503.
16 This is a genuine “missive” (cf. ʿAbbādī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya 19, 12f., and 36, 11ff.). Cf. also
M. Khadduri, Islamic Jurisprudence 19ff.; Makdisi in: SI 59/1984/6; GAS 1/488.
17 Qāḍī ʿIyād, Tartīb I 399ff.; Bayhaqī, Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī I 231, 5ff.
18 Fasawī II 264, 3f. > TB XIV 4, 9f. > TT IX 14, pu. f. See also Suyūṭī, Tadrīb I 329, 6; Kaʿbī 105,
ult. f. (after Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī) > Faḍl 343, 9 > IM 138, 15. Cf. also Bukhārī IV2 222f. no. 2794.
19 Hady al-sārī II 168, 18; also 179, pu.
20 Qifṭī, Inbāh III 361, 15ff.
21 Cf. e.g. Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭabaqāt al-qurrāʾ no. 3763; TB XIV 3ff. no. 7346; Qifṭī, Inbāh III 361f.;
Abū l-Barakāt al-Anbārī, Nuzhat al-alibbāʾ 32f. no. 10 etc. – Not to be confused with Abū
ʿAbdallāh Hārūn b. Mūsā b. Sharīk al-Naḥwī al-Dimashqī (211/826–291/904) or Abū Naṣr
Hārūn b. Mūsā b. Jandal al-Naḥwī, both of whom were also grammarians (cf. Yāqūt, Irshād
VII 235 no. 143, and Ibn Khayr, Fahrasa 311, 11ff.).
90 chapter �
Abū Bishr Muʿādh b. Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī,
d. 200/815, son of Hishām b. Abī ʿAbdallāh al-Dastuwāʾī,22 who owned his fa-
ther’s hadith collection (kitāb) and transmitted it further.23
Qadarite according to Mīzān no. 8615; TT X 196, 13, and Hady al-sārī II
165, 11; Faḍl 342, 11f. > IM 138, 2. The opinion was based on the fact that he
could not bring himself to regarding sins as predestined. Cf. also Bukhārī
IV1 366 no. 1572; TH 325 no. 307.
Abū Bakr ʿAbbād b. Ṣuhayb al-Kulaybī,
d. Shawwāl 212/January 828. Was considered to be dāʿiya and falsifier of hadith;

he owned many hadith collections none of which have survived, presumably
not least because of his bad reputation. He transmitted from, among others,
Ayyūb b. Khūṭ;24 like him he transmitted the prophetic dictum that all stinging
flying creatures would go to hell, with the exception of the bees.25 He seems to
have enjoyed some esteem in the city; the governor came to pray over his bier.26
Concerning his Qadarite views cf. IS VII2 50, 15; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 625,
14; IAH III1 81 no. 417; Ibn Ḥibbān II 164, 11; Mīzān no. 4122; Kaʿbī 92, 17ff.
Cf. also Bukhārī III2 43 no. 1643.
Yaḥyā b. Bisṭām b. Ḥurayth al-Zahrānī al-Muṣaffar,27
d. after 214/829.28 He appears to have been an ascetic and was regarded as

dāʿiya.
Bukhārī IV2 264 no. 2938; IAH IV2 132 no. 556; Ibn Ḥibbān III 119, 8ff.;
ʿUqaylī IV 394 no. 2013; Mīzān no. 9465; Faḍl 342, 18 > IM 138, 7f.
22 Regarding him see p. 69ff. above.

23 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 353, –6f. no. 2328; Fasawī II 146, 3ff.
24 Fasawī II 666, 2f.; regarding him see p. 81 above.
25 Ḥayawān III 392, 4ff.: together with Ismāʿīl b. Muslim al-Makkī (see p. 75 above).
26 IS VII2 50, 16f.
27 Ibn Abī Ḥātim has “al-Aṣfar”.
28 At that time Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (105/811–277/890), the father of Ibn Abī Ḥātim, received
hadith from him (IAH IV2 132, 8).
iraq 91
Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. Maḥbūb al-Bunānī,
d. 223/838, was a moderate Qadarite in Ājurrī’s view.29
Abū Maʿmar ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAmr b. Abī l-Ḥajjāj Maysara al-Minqarī

al-Tamīmī,
d. 224/839, was an esteemed Basran traditionist who later also lectured in

Baghdad. Nobody had collected the hadith material of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s pupil
ʿAbdalwārith b. Saʿīd more comprehensively than he.30 Even ʿAlī Ibn al-Madīnī
(d. 234/849), who had received it from ʿAbd al-Wārith’s son ʿAbd al-Ṣamad,
admitted this, but he disliked greatly that Abū Maʿmar – like ʿAbd al-Wārith
himself – sang the praises of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.31 His Qadarite tendencies were
well-known in Baghdad and not forgotten later; which makes it all the more
surprising that the Muʿtazilite sources do not mention him at all.32
2.2.2.1.3 The Uswārīs

There are two Qadarites whom we have to discuss separately, who were
Quranic exegetes and quṣṣāṣ rather than traditionists. They are linked by the
same nisba, al-Uswārī, which marks them as descendants of the asāwira, the
riders (usvārān) of Yazdagird’s vanguard who allied themselves with the Arabs
and later settled under the Tamīm’s protection in Basra. They had been mem-
bers of the late Sasanid lower nobility,1 but actually had, as de Goeje showed,
their roots in Sind,2 and were consequently not of Iranian stock; they were
later joined by genuinely Iranian elements. Their number in the first centu-
ry AH has been estimated around 2500. Like the Arabs they received a state
pension (ʿaṭāʾ); the highest sum, in fact: 2,000 dirham a year.3 Ziyād built a
mosque in their quarter of the city;4 ʿUbaydallāh b. Ziyād grew up among
them.5 Their privileged position came to an end only when they went their
29 TT IX 429f. no. 700.

30 Azmi, Studies 118. Regarding ʿAbd al-Wārith see p. 367ff. below.
31 TB X 25, 1f., and 24, 17ff.
32 Ibid. 24, ult., and 25, 7ff.; TT V 336, 13f. and Hady al-sārī II 139, 8; Suyūṭī, Tadrīb I 329, 2. Cf.
also Bukhārī III1 155 no. 475; IAH II1 119f. no. 549.
1 Nöldeke, Ṭabarī 441.

2 Mémoire sur la migration des Tsiganes à travers l’Asie (Leiden 1903), p. 17f.
3 Donner, Early Conquests 257.
4 Balādhurī, Ansāb IV1 201, 19ff.; Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Khiṭaṭ al-Baṣra 56.
5 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 210, 8.
9� chapter �
own political ways, joined Muṣʿāb b. al-Zubayr’s side during the second civil
war, and finally joined Ibn al-Ashʿath; Ḥajjāj had their houses destroyed and
the state benefits cancelled.
Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Al-tanẓīmāt al-ijtimāʿiyya 69f. General information on them

in Pellat, Milieu 35; Morony in: Iran 14/1976/51 and 57ff. with further refer-
ences; id. Iraq, Index s. v.; Crone, Slaves on Horses 237f., no. 362, and Roman
Law 54f.; Sayed, Ibn al-Ashʿaṯ 142; Bosworth in: EIran II 706f. – Concerning
the reading of the nisba cf. Samʿānī, Ansāb I 250, 7ff. (with lacuna; cf. n. 2)
and Dhahabī, Mushtabih 23, 4ff.; Aswārī, as it is occasionally found in sec-
ondary sources, refers to a village near Isfahan called Aswāriyya according
to Yāqūt (Muʿjam al-buldān I 190f.; cf. also Samʿānī I 247, 9ff.). According
to a gloss in the manuscript of Mushtabih Muḥammad b. Mūsā al-Ḥāzimī
(d. 584/1188) also allowed the reading “Iswārī” in his K. al-Muʾtalif wal-
mukhtalif (cf. GAL S 1/605); but this is probably secondary.
Even after losing their political influence they still played an important part
in Basra’s intellectual life. At the end of the first century we encounter a cer-
tain Abū ʿĪsā al-Uswārī from whom Qatāda transmitted,6 and even before Ibn
al-Ashʿath’s uprising Abū Yūnus al-Uswārī seems to have secretly suggested
Qadarite heresies to Maʿbad al-Juhanī. The latter story is probably a myth,7
but there is barely any doubt that many of them were noted because of these
views. They were regarded as most intelligent in religious matters, and as dan-
gerous opponents in debates.8 The first one to stand out was
Mūsā b. Sayyār9 al-Uswārī,
a pupil of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Qatāda who probably died early in the second half
of the second century. He stated that Ḥasan did not consider murder as one of
the predestined manners of death, but met with criticism from ʿAwf al-Aʿrābī,
6 Samʿānī I 251, 1f.; Mushtabih 23, 5.

7 Cf. my deliberations in: Festschrift Meier 61 and 63f.
8 Cf. the dictum of Iyās b. Muʿāwiya p. 151 below. In the parallel passage in Wakīʿ I 345, 6f., the
the Qadarites have taken the place of the asāwira.
9 Thus according to Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 368, 5. ʿUqaylī erroneously read “Yasār” (Ḍuʿafāʾ IV 171
no. 1740); consequently both Dhahabī and Ibn Ḥajar list him twice (Mīzān no. 8874 and
8943; Lisān al-Mīzān VI 120 and 136). Mūsā b. Yasār was the name of Ibn Isḥāq’s uncle (EI2 III
810b); he lived in Jordan (AZ 384 no. 856). “Mūsā b. Sinān” in Samʿānī, Ansāb I 251, 2, is also
wrong.
iraq 93
who had studied with Ḥasan for longer. In fact, he had not heard this from
Ḥasan himself, but from ʿAbdalwāḥid b. Zayd,10 who, when pressed, had to
admit that he had made a mistake.11 He did not get on with predestinarians like
Dāwūd b. Abī Hind (d. early 140/mid-757?);12 when he prayed behind Ayyūb al-
Sakhtiyānī13 once during Ramadan, he caused a stir.14
He was not only a qāṣṣ but also a Quran reciter. He had probably studied
this art, which brought him great renown in Basra,15 in Kufa under ʿĀṣim b. Abī
Najjūd (d. 127/745).16 He used both skills in his lessons, which had a mainly ex-
egetic focus; which may also have been due to the Kufan influence of ʿAṭiyya b.
Saʿd al-ʿAwfī (d. 111/729), who also influenced Kalbī and is named as one of his
teachers.17 His lectures were attended by Arabs as well as mawālī (i.e. Persians);
he had them sit separately and taught each group in their own language. He
was equally fluent in both languages, speaking without an accent.18 Otherwise
his Quran recitation would not have given people much pleasure. Malicious
tongues had it that he was well aware of the Iranian–Arabian difference on
the cultural level; he is said to have expressed it in the following way: “The
prophet’s companions were uncouth Bedouins, and then we Persians came
and added the commentary to their religion (lakhkhaṣnā)”.19 He had special
ties to Iran, as shown by the report that during the civil war (al-fitna), prob-
ably towards the end of the Umayyad era, he moved to Khūzistān in order to
“preserve his faith”. He seems to have been well-regarded there, for Āzādmard,
presumably the leading dihqān of the area, sent him everything he needed
(matāʿ), and Mūsā came to visit him at the time of his death.20

11 ʿUqaylī IV 171, 12ff. > Mīzān IV 227, 10ff. (in both passages the text is garbled at the proper
names, due to transmitters’ or printers’ errors). Cf. Massignon, Essai2 174ff. and Passion2 I
677/I 626; my Anfänge muslimischer Theologie 172, n. 1.
12 The two appear to have been business partners (ʿUqaylī IV 171, 6ff. > Mīzān no. 8943 >
Lisān al-Mīzān VI 136, 14ff.; Ibn Ḥazm, Naqṭ al-ʿarūs 246, 20f.).
16 Mīzān, loc. cit.; cf. also GAS 1/7.
17 Samʿānī I 251, 3ff.; Mīzān, loc. cit.; cf. also GAS 1/30f.
18 Bayān I 368, 5ff. > Faḍl 271, 10ff. (abridged) > IM 60, 14; Pellat, Milieu 100.
19 ʿUqaylī IV 171, 8ff. > Mīzān no. 8943 > Lisān VI 136, 16ff. Regarding lakhkhaṣa “to comment
on, to provide a commentary on” cf. WKAS II 426f.
20 ʿIqd III 167, 20ff., and similar 229, 17ff.
94 chapter �
Āzādmard “the free one, the noble one” is a frequently used Iranian hon-
orific which the Arabs interpreted as a title (cf. P. Kraus in: Aṯ-Ṯaqāfa
no. 224, p. 12ff.). In the present context the person referred to may be
Āzādmard b. al-Hirbidh Kāmkār who was ruler of the city of Fasā in
Fārs during Ḥajjāj’s time and appears to have been very wealthy (Justi,
Namenbuch 53; Mubarrad, Kāmil 1148, 6ff., and 261, –6ff.; cf. also Tanūkhī,
Nishwār al-muḥāḍara I 136ff. and Faraj baʿd al-shidda I 398f., where
Hirbidh is written incorrectly as Firind). Later the title is documented e.g.
in Iṣṭakhrī, Masālik 145, 1ff. (for a Kurd).
The “ʿUthmānite” standpoint which Mūsā b. Sayyār, being a Basran, would have
adopted is expressed in a hadith he transmitted from Ḥasan: “God has a sword
which he keeps in its sheath for as long as ʿUthmān is alive. But if ʿUthmān is
murdered, he will draw the sword and not sheathe it again until the Day of
Judgment”.21 This saying may well have been imbued with even keener topical-
ity in those days when Mūsā went to Ahwāz in order to “preserve his faith”. It
shows at the same time that Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār was hardly correct when he
counted Mūsā among the Muʿtazilites.22 He appears to link him to someone of
the same name whom he believes to have preceded him23 but who in fact was
his assistant (ghulām)24 and later became his successor in the asāwira mosque:
Abū ʿAlī ʿAmr b. Fāʾid al-Uswārī25 al-Tamīmī al-Anṣārī.
He was also active as a qāṣṣ and was said to have explained the Quran for
36 years.26 Due to the breadth and detail of his lectures it seems that he never
went through the entire text, despite the many years of teaching. He would
sometimes spend several weeks over a single verse; he considered the indi-
vidual interpretations (taʾwīlāt) and in particular referred to the prophet’s
21 Mīzān III 283, apu. ff.

22 Cf. p. 95 below.
23 Faḍl 270, 8ff.
24 Ibn Abī Khaythama, Taʾrīkh (MS Medina, Makt. Maḥmūdiyya, Uṣūl al-ḥadīth 36), fol. 9b,
2ff.
25 When Abū Mūsā al-Iṣfahānī (d. 581/1185) in his notes on Ibn al-Qaysarānī’s Ansāb al-
muttafiqa claims that he heard the name pronounced as “Aswārī” as well, this only illus-
trates the fluctuating usage of his day, and the preponderance of the Aswārīs in his home
city of Isfahan, as the only derivation he knows is the same, from aswār/suwār (Al-ansāb
al-muttafiqa 172, ult. ff.). The connection was already emphasised by Ibn al-Nadīm (Fihrist
205, 5.).
26 A round number; see p. 28f. above.
iraq 95
vita.27 One has the impression that he, like Mūsā b. Sayyār before him, did this
professionally;28 it is possible that the rich inhabitants of the quarter paid him
a salary at the mosque. We do not know whether his Tafṣīr was ever set down
in writing; there is a lacuna in Fihrist where it should discuss ʿAmr b. Fāʾid’s
books.29 People did, however, recall a tradition of his on the ḥurūf al-Qurʾān,
i.e. the readings of specific passages; thus he was said to have read iyyāka in the
Fātiḥa (verse 5) without tashdīd.30
As was to be expected, he took umbrage at sura 81:29: “But will you shall
not, unless God wills”. He included the preceding verse “for whosoever of you
who would go straight”, and interpreted: “but you do not want to go straight,
unless God wills it so”. In this interpretation the verse referred only to those
who reject “straightness” (istiqāma) deliberately, to unbelievers or hardened
sinners; they can be forced to salvation by God. Read in this way the divine will
would still imply compulsion (mashīʾat al-qahr), but only with the result that
God prevents evil, not that he intends evil.31 On behalf of humans God can
only “will” what he has already offered; amr and irāda are identical. The ques-
tion was discussed in great depth in Basra at the time; Faḍl al-Raqāshī came
to a similar conclusion.32 ʿAmr b. Fāʾid occasionally met with criticism from
Muqātil b. Sulaymān: while God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son,
he did not in fact will it. ʿAmr’s response was to claim that Abraham had only
dreamt God’s command. Muqātil pointed out to him that this was not possible
due to the context, as the son says “Father, do as you were bid (= commanded)
to do” (sura 37:102). The debate was probably contrived, but it illustrates where
the weak point of the theory would be found later.33
27 Probably not yet according to Ibn Isḥāq’s Sīra; cf. Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 368, 13ff. and, following
him, Pellat, Milieu.
28 When Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār says about him that he “recited the Quran” for 30 years
(Faḍl 271, 9), this may merely have been copied incorrectly from Jāḥiẓ’ account on ʿAmr b.
Fāʿid. The Qāḍī mentions nothing of the sort with regard to the latter.
29 P. 205, 8; the section on Tafṣīr works (p. 36ff.) does not even mention him. However, the
Qāḍī refers to a tafṣīr kabīr (Faḍl 271, 4 > IM 60, 11). Ibn al-Faraḍī (Taʾrīkh al-ʿulamāʾ bil-
Andalus) has an interesting note stating that Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s commentary was transmit-
ted through him; he might have received it from ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd (see p. 96f. below). Or it
might simply be a transmitter’s error for ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd. In more detail p. 340 below.
30 Ibn al-Jazārī, Ṭab. I 602, apu. f.
31 Faḍl 271, 5ff.
33 Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl mukhtalif al-ḥadīth 37, 9ff. = 30, 3ff./transl. Lecomte 35 para. 40f.
Concerning this issue cf. also al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī II 238, –4ff.
96 chapter �
His Qadarite view of the world was clearly more advanced than that of his
predecessor. Still, one cannot easily turn him into a Muʿtazilite, either,34 be-
cause like Ḥasan he believed the time of death and the manner of making a
living to be predetermined – “astonishingly”, as he put it.35 He did not think
much36 of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd under whom he had studied.37 The philologist Yūnus
b. Ḥabīb, on the other hand, who was one of the very few of his calling in Basra
not to be suspected of Qadarite deviation,38 took lessons in Bedouin Arabic
usage with him, and quoted him.39 He appears to have shared Ḥasan’s view
that Satan could not be a fallen angel;40 he did not think he could even be
a jinn. He interpreted the verse contradicting him (sura 18:50), as saying that
once upon a time Satan had shared the jinns’ creed (diyāna) and their home,
but that he had never been of their kind.41
Determining ʿAmr b. Fāʾid’s dates is difficult. His connection with ʿAmr b.
ʿUbayd (d. 143/760) and Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767) means that he must
have been born around 120/738 at the latest. There was even a hadith which he
had allegedly received42 from Maṭar b. Ṭahmān al-Warrāq (d. before 130/747).43
On the other hand, Jāḥiẓ met him and confirmed that he was a most righteous
man;44 he also had him provide a short overview of the Basran quṣṣāṣ.45 He
is said to have died shortly after 200/815,46 but all this information is either not
above doubt or not precise enough. Ibn al-Nadīm’s note that he was a mem-
ber of the circle around the Abbasid Muḥammad b. Sulaymān b. ʿAlī47 seems
34 Thus not only Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, loc. cit., and Ḥākim al-Jushamī, Risālat Iblīs 48, ult.,
but also ʿUqaylī (Ḍuʿafāʾ III 290, ult. > Mīzān no. 6421 > Lisān al-Mīzān IV 372, 15f.).
Interestingly, Kaʿbī took no notice of him. He is listed as a Qadarite in Ibn Qutayba
(Maʿārif 625, 9; also Taʾwīl 11, 6 = 10, 6f./transl. 9 para. 17, and 102, 7 = 85, –5/transl. 95
para. 122).
35 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān VII 203, 9f.
36 Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir IV 71, ult. ff. (with correction p. 349)/2IV 61 no. 157; also Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd,
ŠNB VII 112, 5ff. (where ʿAlī must be corrected to Abū ʿAlī).
37 Ibn al-Nadīm 205, 9f.
38 See p. 98f. below; regarding him GAS 9/49ff.
39 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 369, 1f. Or does kalām al-ʿArab refer to the sayings of pre-Islamic wise men
and khuṭabāʾ?
40 See p. 52 above.
41 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān VI 191, 4ff.
42 Regarding him IS VII2 19, 14ff.; Mīzān no. 3587.
43 Mīzān no. 6421; the hadith intended to tighten the purity laws.
44 Bayān I 369, 5f.: he never denounced or criticised anyone.
45 Ibid. I 367, 2ff.
46 Fihrist 205, 5f. > Lisān al-Mīzān IV 373, 9f.
47 Ibid. 205, 4f.
iraq 97
to be the most reliable report. Sulaymān was governor of Basra several times;
first briefly after 146, before Manṣūr transferred him to Kufa,48 then again in
160/777,49 as well as later under Hādī (169/785) and Hārūn al-Rashīd (from
170/786); he died in 173/789.50 It was in his presence that ʿAmr b. Fāʾid refuted
the Quran reciter Abū l-Mundhir Sallām b. Sulaymān al-Muzanī (d. 171/787–8),
a predestinarian.51
A clearly apocryphal story, on the other hand, has him as an old man who
found climbing stairs difficult, and links him to the father of this Abbasid,
who died in 142/759, and had been governor of Basra a little earlier, be-
tween 136/753 and 137/755 (cf. J. Lassner, The Shaping of Abbasid Rule,
index s. n., and H. Kennedy, The Early Abbasid Caliphate 75f.). It is report-
ed only in Muʿtazilite tradition (Faḍl 270, 9ff. > IM 60, 2ff.) and pursues
two tendencies: firstly to refute that a Qadarite like ʿAmr b. Fāʾid could not
agree with religious formulae such as lā ḥawla wa-lā quwwata ilā billāh,
which recognise God’s omnipotence: he used them himself. A story in a
similar style circulated among predestinarians: that the Qadarite Rabīʿ b.
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Barra did not want to say iʿṣimnī (see p. 364f. below).
Secondly, the objective was to invalidate the statement in sura 10:100
according to which humans are only believers “with God’s permission”.
ʿAmr b. Fāʾid is said to have countered it with sura 7:158, which implies
that at God’s command the prophet called all humans to become believ-
ers, and thus gave them the power of decision. Faith, it says, is there for
all those who have heard the message. Ḥasan al-Baṣrī was also said to
have explained God’s “leave” or “permission” in sura 10:100 as “command”
(Ṭūsī, Tibyān V 501, 1), and ʿAmr b. Fāʾid is unlikely to have understood
more than that God sent the prophet and thus made faith possible (more
detailed information on this exegesis may be found in Anfänge 73f.). The
story is nothing more than presenting a theological problem in literary
form. It cannot be redeemed, either, by substituting Sulaymān b. ʿAlī with
his son Muḥammad b. Sulaymān, as the editor of K. Faḍl al-iʿtizāl tried to
do. However, he only did it in one passage (270, –5), when it also need-
ed to be done in the immediately following one (270, pu.). Furthermore
this solution is contradicted by Ibn al-Murtaḍā’s text, which was based

49 Ibid. 671, 2f.
50 Ibid. 743, 3f. He was born 122/740 (ibid. 527, 9f.) and had fought against al-Nafs al-zakiyya
(ibid. 649f.). Regarding him cf. also TB V 291f.
51 Fihrist 205, 6f. Regarding Sallām b. Sulaymān see p. 439f. below .
98 chapter �
on Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, and finally the governor was not a friend of the
theologian like Muḥammad b. Sulaymān, but his opponent. The anec-
dote proves one single thing: that in Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s day people had
no concrete idea of who ʿAmr b. Fāʾid, the alleged Muʿtazilite, actually
had been.
According to the Qadarite Ibn Abī Khaythama’s (d. 279/892)52 Taʾrīkh, one
of ʿAmr b. Fāʾid’s pupils was a man from Mosul, ʿAfīf b. Sālim, a client of the
Bajīla, who travelled far and wide in matters relating to hadith, and became
a great authority in his native city. He died in 180/796 already, or shortly after-
wards, around the same time as Muʿāfā b. ʿImrān, the other eminent scholar
from Mosul at that time.53 There is no mention of this connection in the bio-
graphies the rijāl works dedicated to him;54 they were careful not to spoil the
traditionist’s reputation. Among the Uswārīs themselves, however, theologians
emerged who genuinely were Muʿtazilites: Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAmr al-Uswārī, who may
have been ʿAmr b. Fāʾid’s son, and ʿAlī b. Khālid al-Uswārī, who came under
Naẓẓām’s influence. They will be examined elsewhere.55
2.2.2.1.4 Qadarites among the Basran Grammarians

Like the traditionists, grammarians were the focus of scholarly interest, but
biographers emphasised different aspects. Their religious views are only ever
mentioned in passing. The Basran philologists’ interest in the Qadariyya was
noted first by their Kufan colleagues. Ibrāhīm b. Isḥāq al-Ḥarbī (198/814–Dhū
l-Ḥijja 285/December 898), originally from Marv,1 reported that in Basra only
four of them were not among the “heretics” (aṣḥāb al-ahwāʾ): Khalīl, Abū ʿAmr
Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, Yūnus b. Ḥabīb, and Aṣmaʿī. Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī quoted the
remark, substituting the Qadariyya for the aṣḥāb al-ahwāʾ, certainly quite
correctly.2 Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ was in fact very close to Murjiʾite views that
were popular in Kufa and seems to have spoken out against the Muʿtazila;
Aṣmaʿī was his pupil and circulated the relevant information concerning
52 See n. 24 above; regarding his works cf. GAS 1/319f.

53 Regarding him GAS 1/348.
54 TB XII 312ff. no. 6754; Mīzān no. 5680.
55 See p. 369f. and ch. C 3.2.2.2.7.1 below.
1 Regarding him see Qifṭī, Inbāh I 155ff. no. 93; TB VI 27ff.; listed as a Kufan “Sunnite” in
Baghdādī, Uṣūl al-dīn 316, 10 (which has incorrect al-Ḥ-r-tī instead of al-Ḥarbī).
2 TB X 418, 14ff. > Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir III 592, 8ff./2III 124 no. 420 (which has incorrect al-
Ḥarrānī instead of al-Ḥarbī).
iraq 99
his teacher.3 For the same reason he is said to have thrown Jāḥiẓ out of his
lectures.4 Yūnus b. Ḥabīb had also studied under Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, as well as under
Ḥammād b. Salama, a follower of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s “orthodox” opponents;5 peo-
ple said he had no wish to waste any thought on the problem of qadar.6 Khalīl
b. Aḥmad’s alleged theological naivety provoked the Muʿtazilites’ derision.7
We are able to verify Ibrāhīm al-Ḥarbī’s opinion in a few more cases. We
have already seen that a Qadarite traditionist such as Hārūn b. Mūsā al-ʿAtakī
could be a grammarian as well.8 The “middle” Akhfash (d. between 210/825 and
221/835) followed Abū Shamir’s doctrine, i.e. he was a Qadarite without being a
Muʿtazilite.9 Abū Zayd Saʿīd b. Aws al-Anṣārī, who died 214/830 or 215/831 at the
age of 93,10 was well-versed not only in grammar but also in hadith and appears
to have had no qualms about the Qadarites in this field: he transmitted from
ʿAwf al-Aʿrābī, Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba, and even from ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, but of course
also from his teacher Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ and other “orthodox” authorities.11
Consequently opinions on his affiliation are divided. Zubaydī12 and Yāqūt13 re-
marked that he was thought to be a Qadarite; Qifṭī even counted him among
the ahl al-ʿadl.14 The jarḥ wal-taʿdīl experts, on the other hand, attempted to
refute the accusations;15 his hadith appears to have generally been regarded
as good. Abū ʿUbayd (d. 224/838) was undoubtedly a Qadarite;16 but it would
probably be going too far to call him a Muʿtazilite as well.17 Muḥammad b.
Sallām al-Jumaḥī, the author of Ṭabaqāt al-shuʿarāʾ (d. 231/846) was consid-
ered trustworthy only as far as his poetical traditions went, but not with re-
gard to hadith, for the same reason.18 Aṣmāʿī accused Abū ʿUthmān al-Māzinī

4 Baghdādī, Uṣūl 316, 17f.
5 Regarding him see p. 427ff. below; also EI2, S 384b.
6 Qifṭī, Inbāh IV 68, 2, and 70, 5.
8 Cf. p. 89.
9 More details p. 209 below.
10 Cf. EI2 I 167b.
11 Qifṭī, Inbāh II 30, 9; Ṣafadī, Wāfī XV 201, 1f.
12 Ṭabaqāt al-naḥwiyyīn 182, 12.
13 Irshād IV 238, 17.
14 Also among the Shīʿites; cf. Inbāh II 33, 15. However, we must wonder whether ahl al-ʿadl
refers to something more than mere Qadarites in this context.
15 Mīzān no. 3141; TT IV 3, 15.
16 Lecomte in: Arabica 12/1965/161ff.
17 Lecomte 172. The basis of the verdict was probably his K. gharīb al-ḥadīth (cf. HT 107ff.).
18 Akhbār al-Zajjājī 90, 12ff.; Mīzān no. 7611. Also Faḍl 344, 3 > IM 139, 10.
100 chapter �
(d. 248/862?) of Qadarite and Muʿtazilite tendencies; later he was also believed
to have been a Murjiʾite.19
In his K. uṣūl al-dīn Baghdādī later tried to counterbalance these views.20 He
regarded the “middle” Akhfash as a Sunnite (probably because Abū Shamir
was a Murjiʾite, too), as well as the older grammarian of the same name, Abū
l-Khaṭṭāb ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. ʿAbd al-Majīd (d. 177/793). He also listed ʿAbdallāh
b. Abī Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī, who died in 117 on the same day as Qatāda,21 and ʿĪsā
b. ʿUmar al-Thaqafī (d. 149/766), a cousin of the “Murjiʾite” Muways b. ʿImrān;22
they are both reported to have reproached Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ for not accepting ʿAlī’s
and Ṭalḥa’s testimony.23 Among the scholars of the second century he finally
mentioned, besides Khalīl, Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ and Aṣmaʿī, Khalaf al-Aḥmar
(d. 180/796).24 Like the elder Akhfash, he was a pupil of Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ’s as well as
ʿĪsā b. ʿUmar al-Thaqafī’s. Consequently we have to expect a “Murjiʾite” minor-
ity among the Basran philologists, whose most vocal spokesperson was clear-
ly Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ. The middle Akhfash – and possibly others besides
him – then went to find a compromise in the company of Abū Shamir.
Muʿtazilite influence began to emerge towards the end of the century as
well. Quṭrub (d. 206/822) who, as we have seen,25 attacked the zanādiqa, had
been acquainted with Ḍirār b. ʿAmr who repeated to him a report on Wāṣil
b. ʿAṭāʾ.26 In a qaṣīda by Abū Dulaf, of whose circle he was a member, he was
praised for his great knowledge of “the teachings of Naẓẓām”.27 As his religious
convictions found expression in his Quran exegesis he had to be prepared for
protests when he intended to recite his tafsīr in the main mosque,28 and con-
sequently asked for police protection.29 Farrāʾ, who died only a year after him
19 Yāqūt, Irshād II 389, 10ff. and 381, 1. Both together would result, as in the case of Akhfash,
in the doctrine of Abū Shamir; al-Māzinī, however, was a Shīʿite, a follower of ʿAlī b.
Mītham (regarding him see p. 482ff. below). – Al-Manṣūr billāh also has a list of Qadarite
philologists (Shāfī I 154, 20ff.).
20 P. 316, 11ff.
21 Regarding him cf. Qifṭī, Inbāh II 104ff. no. 316. For Baghdādī we must add Abī.
22 Regarding him cf. Fück in EI2 IV 91a; regarding Muways b. ʿImrān see ch. C 2.5.1 below.
23 Uṣūl al-dīn 316, 14; cf. also p. 311f. below.
24 Regarding him cf. Pellat in EI2 IV 919a.
25 P. 46 above.
26 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 21, pu. ff.; cf. also p. 282, n. 1 below.
27 Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 174, 19. This does not necessarily imply anything above familiar-
ity with Muʿtazilite ideas.
28 Probably in Baghdad. Maybe in Ruṣāfa? (see ch. C 3.3 below).
29 Ibn al-Anbārī, Nuzhat al-alibbāʾ 91, 6ff.; cf. also Makdisi, Rise of Colleges 16f. Regarding
Quṭrub as a Muʿtazilite cf. Versteegh in: Historiographia Linguistica 8/1981/418 and 422,
iraq 101
(207/822), showed his rejection of determinism in his Maʿānī al-Qurʾān.30 He

was known to be favourably inclined towards the Muʿtazila;31 he was the tutor
of Maʾmūn’s two sons. When dictating he used “philosophical” terminology,32
but he had no talent for dialectical debate (kalām).33
2.2.2.2 Qadariyya and Asceticism

However influential Ḥasan al-Baṣrī was, it is not possible to see him as the an-
cestor of the Qadariyya. While it would be problematic to look beyond him fur-
ther into the past, there are others besides him who, although slightly younger,
probably did not learn their Qadarite creed from him. The ideal of piety they
adhered to also differed from his in some ways. They did share his trend to in-
dividualisation, but they ventured further forward: some to a personal love of
God, others to ostentatious “monkishness” that was a slap in the face of bour-
geois lifestyle, and sometimes also of pietistic devoutness.
In Basra in particular early signs of this development could be observed.
During ʿUthmān’s caliphate, ʿĀmir b. ʿAbd (al-)Qays al-ʿAnbarī – still a young
man at the time1 – had been posted to the Syrian military district under
Muʿāwiya because he refused to get married and was alleged to stay away from
Friday prayers.2 The governor may have feared that the defensive capability of
the only recently established army camp might be compromised, for ʿĀmir was
by no means the only one,3 and his tribe was very powerful.4 He had another
quirk as well: he did not eat meat or dairy products, unless they came from
n. 3; regarding his nickname “the werewolf” cf. Ullmann in: WZKM 68/1976/171ff., esp.
p. 179. General information in GAS 8/61ff. and 9/64ff.
30 In detail Abū Zayd, Al-ittijāh al-ʿaqlī 156ff.; also Beck in: Muséon 65/1951/187ff. Concerning
the work cf. Cerrahoğlu, Tefsir tarihi I 279ff.
31 Qifṭī, Inbāh IV 7, ult. He lived very close to Bishr al-Marīsī (regarding him see ch. C 2.4.1
below), but they did not influence one another (ibid. 8, 3f.).
32 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 73, 18f.
33 Regarding him R. Blachère in EI2 II 806ff.; GAS 8/123ff. and 9/131ff.
1 Despite the early date he was counted among the tābiʿun, e.g. by Ibn Saʿd. His father ap-
pears to have converted to Islam but continued to be called ʿAbdqays all the same (IS VII1
76 pu.). Biographical works on the ṣaḥāba do not mention him.
2 IS VII1 75, 4ff. and 21ff.; 77, 22ff.; 60, 23f.
3 Ibid. 78, 16, and 79, 14ff.
4 Regarding the Banū l-ʿAnbar see p. 178f. below; concerning the genealogy cf. Ibn Ḥazm,
Jamhara 208, 12ff. and 2f.
10� chapter �
irreproachable – by which he meant: Bedouin – production.5 Even so, the de-

fensive capability could not be preserved in the long run. While the majority of
the population did not become ascetics, they did become civilians.
As a result, the demeanour of the dissenters changed. Some neglected their
appearance and wore rags (taqashshuf); others wore only wool, such as the
poet Jaḥḥāf when he had had an awakening during Ḥajjāj’s time: he went on
the hajj with a group of people, dressed in wool and with a camel ring through
his nose.6 The “hair-shirt” was a sign of renouncing the world; beggars wore
wool.7 When Yazīd b. Marthad, apparently a rich Arab from the South,8 wanted
to demonstrate asceticism, he went into the street without footwear (khuff)
and wore his fur coat inside out – as it would be worn nowadays, with the
“wool” on the outside; as a consequence he was considered a lunatic.9 Until
the early Abbasid era, woollen clothing was also a sign of humiliation: Walīd
II had had Sulaymān b. Hishām flogged, shorn, and then condemned him to
wear a woollen garment;10 Yazīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik had already decreed similar
punishments,11 and when Manṣūr suspected ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Azdī of rebelling,
he was brought to Iraq sitting back-to-front on a camel and wearing a
woollen garment.12 Conversely, ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya dressed in woollen
clothes when he began his uprising in Kufa;13 punishment and protest were
close together.14
In Basra as elsewhere a positive appreciation of this “new look” was made
public through the medium of hadith, e.g. with authority from Abū Hurayra:
5 IS 74, apu. ff. (with the correction in the ʿAbbās edition, Beirut 1380/1960, VII 105, 2), and
77, 11ff.; also Ṭabarī I 2924, 7ff., and Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd 298, 8ff. In the city itself the
provision of foodstuffs was probably mainly in the hands of non-Muslims. For general
information see the extensive bibliography in Ibn ʿAsākir, TD, ed. Fayṣal 323ff.; Pellat in
EI2 I 441a with further references.
6 Agh. XII 203, ult. ff.; cf. also Goldziher, Ges. Schr. IV 163f.
7 Ṭabarī II 1452, 6f. The ring was probably meant to symbolise ʿubūdiyya.
9 Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya V 165, 10ff.
10 Balādhurī in Derenk, Walīd b. Yazīd 45, 8f.
11 Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh IV 143, 3f.
12 Daniel, Political and Social History of Khurasan 161, regarding him cf. also EI2 I 59.
13 Agh. XII 228, 13; cf. p. 699ff. below.
14 Cropping one’s beard was also a punishment as well as a sign of asceticism (see vol. I 124
above, and p. 436f. and 751 below). For more information on the subject cf. Goldziher,
Vorlesungen über den Islam 155. Regarding the possible influence of Christian asceticism
cf. Andrae, Zuhd und Mönchtum in: MO 25/1931/296ff., and Morony, Iraq 463; concerning
the term ṣūfī see Ogén in: AO 43/1982/33ff. and Meier, Bahāʾi Walad 73f.
iraq 103
“He who enjoys sitting with God should sit with those who wear wool”.15
However, the development is difficult to analyse in detail. The representatives
of the new and ostentatious piety saw themselves as “friends of God” (awliyāʾ
Allāh), in a reference to a Quranic phrase. However, they saw the phrase as an
absolute recalling John 15:15: “Henceforth I shall call you not servants, for a
servant does not know what his lord does: but I have called you friends”.16 The
more the taqashshuf became a symbol of their identity,17 however, the stronger
was the criticism levelled at them; frequently by the very persons who also
rejected the Qadariyya.18 Ḥasan could also serve as a reference point;19 after
all, he had visited the mosque wearing a state robe given to him by Maslama b.
ʿAbd al-Malik.20 In order to gain a clear picture, we must first distinguish the
different generations.
2.2.2.2.1 Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s Younger Contemporaries

We will start with a Qadarite who appears to have died between 110/729 and
120/738,1 surviving Ḥasan by only a few years, and who enjoyed great esteem
in the latter’s circle:2
Abū ʿAmr Yazīd b. Abān b. ʿAbdallāh al-Raqāshī.
He transmitted from Ḥasan and in turn passed hadith on to Qatāda. His father
Abān b. ʿAbdallāh had been a traditionist before him, but none of his material
had survived as Yazīd, who was the only one who preserved it, was not much
respected in matters of hadith.3 He was interested only in the substance;
15 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 264, 10ff.: Ḥasan > Mālik b. Dīnār.

16 The New Testament refers to Jewish usage; cf. Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar zum NT II
564f.
17 Observed in Ibn Qutayba, Ashriba 84, 4ff.
18 Cf. e.g. p. 391ff. below regarding al-Sakhtiyānī and his circle.
19 IS VII1 123, 5ff.
20 See p. 50 above.
1 TT XI 311, 7, after Bukhārī’s Taʾrīkh al-awsaṭ. Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ ranked him among the
fourth ṭabaqa of Basrans (Ṭab. 513 no. 1775). The year of his death 131/749 given by Pellat,
Milieu 101 and 113, originates with Massignon, Passion 1749/2III 218 and is probably due to
an error. The story in Masʿūdī, Murūj VI 137, 4ff./IV 117, 1ff., which linked Yazīd al-Raqāshī
with Saffāḥ, is apocryphal. Ibn Saʿd called him a Qadarite (VII2 13, 8f.), but had nothing
else to say about him.
2 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 308, 9ff.
3 Samʿānī, Ansāb VI 150, 10ff.; also Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 84, 2ff. > Mīzān no. 12.
104 chapter �
the source was of no relevance to him. People complained that he confused

everything, for instance tracing traditions from Ḥasan back to Anas b. Mālik.
He apparently spoke of the “substitutes” (abdāl) representing the community
before God in a special way, forty altogether, twenty-two in Syria and eighteen
in Iraq, whose number is restored every time one of them dies, until all of them
will be taken on the Day of Judgment.4 They also take upon themselves the ills
of all humanity, for “if God loves a man and has true affection for him, he will
shower him with trials . . .”.5 But “the prophets and those who fell in the holy
struggle will envy them, because (in paradise) they will sit near God on a dais
(? manābir) of light, where everyone can recognise them . . . They are the ones
who awaken love of God in humans, and love of humans in God, who walk the
earth dispensing wise counsel . . .”.6 They will be given gifts, and finally they
will look upon the face of God.7 Hardened sinners, on the other hand, will re-
main in hell forever;8 even the sun and the moon will be consumed by fire, like
“castrated bulls”.9 Ḥasan expressed his surprise at the last of these ideas: what
evil did sun and moon do?10 But for Yazīd b. Abān, this day of reckoning for all
creation seems to have been part of his Qadarite world view.
If he justified it from a Qadarite point of view, the punishment had to

be deserved, which it was because in Abraham’s day, sun and moon had
been objects of worship (Suyūṭī 82, apu. ff.). This probably referred to
sura 21:98: “You and everything you worship in God’s stead will (all) be
fuel for hell”. Similar considerations were already found in Judaism; but
the noticeable image of thawrān ʿaqīrān is not easy to explain (cf. D. J.
Halperin and G. D. Newby, Two Castrated Bulls. A Study in the Hggadah of
Kaʿb al-Aḥbār, in: JAOS 102/1982/631ff.). Ḥasan’s objection was – later? –
attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās; the Jewish origin of the phrase was noted
4 TD I 279, 19ff.; Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 332, 7 regarding 331, apu. ff. (after Anas b. Mālik). General:
Conc. I 153b. s. v. abdāl and TD I 277ff.; also Jāḥiẓ, Tarbīʿ 28, 2ff. para. 43/transl. Arabica
14/1967/35f., and Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, Khatm al-awliyāʾ 434, 5ff. Concerning the idea cf.
Goldziher in EI2 I 94f. s. v. Abdāl and Massignon, Essai2 132f., also M. Moosa, Extremist
Shiites 110ff.
5 Suyūṭī II 399, –4ff., also after Anas.
6 Makkī, Qūt al-qulūb I 222, 18ff.: the so-called ḥadīth al-ghibṭa. Cf. Massignon, Passion2
III 218/Engl. transl. III 206 and, with a related text, Graham, Divine Word 144f. A detailed
description of paradise in Suyūṭī, Laʾālī (where the text has been abridged).
7 Cf. the hadith in Qushayrī, Risāla 88, –ff./transl. Gramlich, Sendschreiben 275.
8 This is indicated by the statement in Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 262, 7ff. and III 159, 3f.
9 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 82, 5ff.
10 Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl mukhtalif al-ḥadīth 121, 7ff. = 101, 1ff./transl. 113 para. 141.
iraq 105
critically there (Ṭabarī I 62, 14ff./transl. Rosenthal, History I 232ff.).

Rosenthal translates thawrān ʿaqīrān as “two hamstrung oxen”, which
may be a closer interpretation of the meaning of the image: the two ham-
strung oxen will have fallen to their knees awaiting the butcher’s axe.
Yazīd was a mawlā. The clan he had joined, the Banū Raqāsh, was part of the
federation of the Shaybān, and bore the name of an ancestress to whom the
jurist Qatāda, among others, traced his genealogy.11 There were famous names
among the clients: the poet Abān al-Lāḥiqī for instance,12 but in particular nu-
merous traditionists13 as well as Yazīd b. Abān’s nephew Faḍl b. ʿĪsā, who would
later become an eminent theologian.14 They probably lived in the same quarter
of the city for a while and ensured a lively intellectual atmosphere. Yazīd b.
Abān was a qāṣṣ and khaṭīb;15 maybe he was even employed at the mosque of
the quarter. It was said that even ʿUmar II had allowed him to admonish him.16
Abū ʿUbayda’s explanation for his rhetorical skills was that his ancestors had
already held the office of khaṭīb under the Sasanids.17 Maybe they had been
intermediaries between the Arabs and the Iranian state authorities. Yazīd’s as-
cetic inclinations were emphasised by Abū Nuʿaym in particular;18 he was said
to have fasted even in the greatest heat.19
Regarding him cf. Jāḥiẓ, Bayān, Index s. n.; Bukhalāʾ 266f. no. 20; Ibn
Qutayba, ʿUyūn II 295, 7ff.; Bukhārī IV2 320 no. 3166; IAH IV2 251f. no. 1053;
ʿUqaylī IV 373f. no. 1983; Samʿānī, Ansāb VI 150, 15ff.; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh V
183, pu. ff., and Mīzān no. 9669; TT XI 309ff. no. 597; Pellat, Milieu 101. It
is interesting that a tradition survived among the Ibāḍites according to
which he refused to take literally that God sits on a throne (Khamīs b.
Saʿīd al-Shaqaṣī, Manhaj al-ṭālibīn I 334, 5ff., and 505, 8ff.).
The two verses Pellat quotes from Bayān I 404, 1ff., which are ad-
dressed to a certain, not further identified, Raqāshī do not refer, as Pellat
presumes, to Yazīd b. Abān but to one Faḍl al-Raqāshī, as proved by the
11 Agh. XXIV 155, 3f.; Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 317, 10ff. Regarding Qatāda see p. 156ff. below.
12 Regarding him Agh. XXIV 155f. and p. 41 above.
13 Samʿānī, Ansāb VI 149ff.
15 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 308, 9ff., and 353, ult. f.
16 Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Sīrat ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz 90, 6ff.; Ghazzālī, Iḥyāʾ, transl. Gramlich,
Stufen zur Gottesliebe 388.
17 Bayān I 308, 12ff.; transl. Goldziher, Muh. Studien I 198f.
18 Ḥilya III 50ff. > Ṣifat al-ṣafwa III 210f.
19 Ibid. 50, 12ff.; also Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn I 297, 9.
106 chapter �
parallel in Ibn ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd II 299, 5ff. The person of the poet should
have been enough to indicate this, for whoever among this dynasty of of-
ficials and poets was addressed as Ibn Abī Umayya (cf. GAS 2/607f.), they
would all have been too young to have been Yazīd b. Abān who died dur-
ing the Umayyad era. According to the parallel passage in ʿIqd the poem
was thought to be by Abū Nuwās. Consequently we can assume that this
refers to the poet Faḍl b. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad of whom we know that he did not
get along with Abū Nuwās (TB XII 345, 2f.; Agh. XVI 244; regarding him
see p. 193 below). – In his commentary on Bukhalāʾ 266 Ṭāhā al-Ḥājirī
made the same mistake as Pellat.
Abū Yaḥyā Mālik b. Dīnār al-Sāmī
(d. 127/745)20 appears to have developed independently of Ḥasan as well. He

was the client of a woman of the Banū Sāma b. Luʾayy. Kaʿbī’s numbering him
among the Qadarites was due to the fact that Mālik collected and then trans-
mitted Maʿbad al-Juhanī’s traditions.21 However, this is not sufficient evidence
by itself. It primarily informs us that at that time Maʿbad’s reputation had not
been completely ruined by the accusation that he was the first Qadarite; the
hadiths that survived from him did not exhibit any particular Qadarite ten-
dency.22 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār furnished another piece of evidence, Mālik’s ex-
hortation: “Do not blame your lord unjustly for your sins (dhunūb). He will
only punish you twice. Seek to be closer to him instead!”23 Ibn al-Jazarī reports
along similar lines that Mālik, when he missed out a piece while reciting the
Quran, said: “It was through my own fault (bi-dhanbin minnī)! God does not
wrong humans”,24 illustrating that due to his ascetic attitude he always par-
ticularly emphasised human responsibility. Interestingly he was the one (the
very first one?) to whom the call for jihād to be directed just as much – or
above all – against one’s own self, the “self that incites to evil”, was attributed.25
20 The precise date of his death is noted only in Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭabaqāt al-qurrāʾ no. 2643,
and Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab I 173, 3ff. Elsewhere it became customary to say,
following Ibn Saʿd and other early authorities, that he died “shortly before the pestilence”
(131/749; IS VII2 11, 19; Khalīfa, Ṭab. 518 no. 1792; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 470, 13f. etc.; also GAS
1/634). This was presumably where Ibn al-Nadīm deduced his date of 130 (Fihrist 9, apu.).
21 Maq. 89, 9, and 96, 2 > Faḍl 341, 12 > IM 137, 7f.; also Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh III 304, 11ff.
22 Cf. my article in: Festschrift Meier 56ff.
23 Faḍl 341, 12f. > IM 137, 8f.
24 Ṭabaqāt II 36, 7.
25 Ḥilya II 363, 6f.; following him Pellat, Milieu 99, and Reinert, Tawakkul 82. Much earlier,
certainly, than in Syria (see vol. I 164f. above).
iraq 107
He was not a political activist like Maʿbad al-Juhanī. He expressed a certain

respect for Ḥajjāj’s skills as an orator,26 and may have been paid by him;27 con-
sequently he would certainly not have supported Ibn al-Ashʿath’s uprising. In
legal matters, however, he was a rigorist;28 he was annoyed if people asked him
questions such as: whether a certain kind of nabīdh was permissible.29
He was a bookseller (warrāq)30 and was said to have made a living from
copying the Quran.31 Thus it is probably an exaggeration to claim, like Pellat,
that he preached absolute poverty;32 but a saying of his was preserved that “a
market makes fortune grow, and religion dwindle”.33 A certain renunciation of
worldly things was indeed attributed to him; he was thought to expect a truly
pious man to leave his wife behind, like a widow, as it were, and seek refuge
in the rubbish heap like a dog.34 It was said that he neglected his appearance
(yataqashshafu);35 another account specifies that he wore a woollen izār in the
summer, and a fur coat in the winter.36 Jāḥiẓ counted him among the ascetic
pulpit orators;37 he probably had in mind his invectives against the worldly
qurrāʾ of the kind that were preserved by pietistic tradition,38 as well as certain
contributions to the Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ quoted for instance by Ṭabarī.39 The notes
collected by Abū Nuʿaym convey the impression that he frequently argued
using apocryphal sayings of Jesus and pseudepigraphic quotations from
26 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 173, 4ff.; with a little distance also ibid. II 268, 9ff. (after Abū ʿUbayda) = 1
394, 6ff. = 193, 13ff.
27 Ibid. I 394, 9ff.
28 Dhahabī, Mīzān I 14, apu. f. (in the biography of Abān b. Abī ʿAyyāsh).
29 Ḥilya II 386, 1f.: nabīdh al-jarr, probably a particular preserving method (regarding the
issue see p. 134f. below).
30 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 577, 5.
31 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 9, –4f. Allegedly each copy took him four months, and he only
charged as much as he needed to live on (Ḥilya II 368, 17ff.). Regarding the duties of a
warrāq cf. Pedersen, Arabic Book 43ff., and Bosch/Carswell/Petherbridge, Islamic Bindings
and Bookmarking (Chicago 1981), p. 10f.
32 Milieu basrien 99f. as part of a more extensive “portrait”.
33 Ḥilya II 385, –3f.; also ibid. 360, 5ff., and Reinert, Tawakkul 185. It was possible to imagine
greater aloofness from earthly possessions than his, as illustrated by a dialogue between
him and his colleague Muḥammad b. Wāsiʿ, a pupil of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s (Fasawī II 253, 5ff.).
34 Ḥilya II 359, 4ff., probably an exaggeration once again.
35 Mīzān I 14, 9f.
36 Ḥilya II 368, 16f.
37 Bayān I 354, 1.
38 Ḥilya II 358, apu. ff.; also Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifa III 197, 5ff., and 198, ult. ff.
39 Taʾrīkh I 388, 11ff., and 518, 10ff.
108 chapter �
pre-Islamic holy texts.40 His dicta contain the term munāfiq, clearly used as
the opposite of muʾmin.41 “If the munāfiqūn had tails”, he was quoted as saying,
“then the believers would not have room to walk”.42
Regarding him cf. also IS VII2 11, 20ff.; Bukhārī IV1 309f. no. 1320; IAH IV1
208 no. 916; Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 235, 13 (the name only); IKh IV 139f.
no. 551; Mīzān no. 7016; TT X 14f. no. 15. Massignon, Essai2, Index s. v.;
Pellat in EI2 VI 266f. – In Essai, Massignon remarks without further ref-
erence that the Muslims on the Indian Malabar coast (i.e. present-day
Kerala), the so-called Māppiḷa, were converted to Islam by followers of
Mālik’s. However, tradition is vague and it is impossible to make a firm
statement. It is true that the Muslim community in Kerala is very old,
and a certain Mālik b. Dīnār features in its foundation myths; he is said
to have converted Cheraman Peramāl, a prince of the area, to Islam, and
then have stayed there as a qāḍī until the end of his life. His dates, on the
other hand, are controversial, and he is usually assumed to have lived
rather later. Cf. Roland E. Miller, Mappila Muslims of Kerala 39ff., and
Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment 84 (after
Massignon); more sceptically Cherian in: Indica 6/1969/1ff. Regarding the
religious ideas of the present-day Māppiḷa cf. G. Koovackal in: Islam in
India, ed. Troll, I 64ff.; more generally EI2 VI 206f. s. v. Malabar, and 458ff.
s. v. Mappila (where the early origins of the community are considered).
The man who was most noticeable in Ḥasan’s circle because of his woollen
jubba43 was
Abū Yaʿqūb Farqad b. Yaʿqūb al-Sabakhī,
d. 131/749 of the “pestilence”.44 Ḥasan held him up to ridicule when he was too
scrupulous to partake of some special delicacy.45 Kaʿbī was probably justified in
40 Ḥilya II 358, 7ff.; 359, 16ff.; 370, 15ff.; 376, 15ff.; 377, 5ff.; 381. 11ff.; 382, –6ff.
41 Ḥilya II 376, 10 and 13.
42 Ibid. 376, –4f.
43 Ḥilya III 47, apu.; Ibn al-Jawzī, Ādāb Ḥasan al-Baṣrī 43, 1f.; Ābī, Nathr al-durr V 199, 10ff.
Regarding the item of clothing cf. Dozy, Dictionnaire des vêtements 107ff.
44 IS VII2 11, 16ff.
45 IS VII1 128, 22ff.; slightly differently ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 459, 12ff.
iraq 109
naming him as a Qadarite;46 Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, opponent of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd,47

refused to recognise him as a transmitter.48 People generally respected his
piety, while his hadith was regarded with scepticism.49 Foreigners were unable
to hide their amazement at his attire: when Ḥammād b. Abī Sulaymān from
Kufa came to visit,50 he apparently advised him to “let go of his Christianity”,51
a reference to his past: he had converted to Islam and had moved to Basra
from Armenia.52 Among the Nestorians monks, priests, and itinerant scholars
wore woollen clothing as a sign of their spiritual calling.53 In fact, as in the
case of Mālik b. Dīnār, Farqad al-Sabakhī has many apocryphal references to
Jesus, or the “Torah” and the “Israelites”.54 But it is quite possible that his attire
simply symbolised his solidarity with the “working people”, for like Ḥasan he
had some influence on the mawālī. Yazīd b. al-Muhallab was said to have tried
in vain to obtain Farqad’s support for his uprising in 101/719. Yazīd’s brothers,
on the other hand, thought that such a request was really beyond the pale, as
Farqad was a weaver (ḥāʾik).55 But he was clearly not poor; he had bought his
freedom in his younger days56 and paid taxes on his professional activity.57
Regarding him cf. also Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifa III 195, 9ff., and Quṣṣāṣ 74, 10ff.;
Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 235, 9f. (after Jaʿfar al-Khuldī); Bukhārī IV1 131 no. 592;
IAH III2 81 no. 464; Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn II 204, ult. ff.; Dhahabī, Mīzān
no. 6699, and Taʾrīkh V 121, –5ff.; TT VIII 262ff. no. 486; Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-
buldān s. v. al-Sabakha. One qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ-tradition in Ṭabarī I 410, 6ff.
goes back to him (referring to the story of Josef). Cf. Massignon, Essai2,
Index s. n. Farqad; Pellat, Milieu 100f.
46 Maq. 97, 1f.

48 Muslim, Muqaddima 5 = I 27, 10f. ʿAbdalbāqī.
49 IAH III2 81f. no. 464.
50 See vol. I 211f. above.
51 Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn I 298, 9ff. = Ḥilya IV 221, ult. f.
52 ʿUqaylī III 459, 3.
53 Chronik von Seert in: PO XIII 4, p. 633, 1f.; generally on this custom of Christian asceticism
Ogén in: AO 43/1982/40ff.
54 Ḥilya III 45, 2ff.; 46, 1ff. and 8ff. etc.
55 Sayed, Ibn al-Ašʿaṯ 365f.; Juda, Aspekte der mawālī 169f. Regarding the social position of the
weavers see p. 274f. below.
56 IAH III2 82, 9.
57 Ḥilya III 47, 1.
110 chapter �
2.2.2.2.2 The Next Generation

The tendencies described developed in different directions in the following
generation, while at the same time there was an increasing desire to be seen
to be connected to Ḥasan; everyone tried to profit from his reputation. This is
illustrated by the case of
Khālid b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, called al-ʿAbd “the slave”,
a Qadarite1 who died after 148/766. Abū Juzayy and Mubārak b. Faḍāla,
Qadarites like him,2 agreed that they had never seen him in the presence of
their teacher.3 All the same, al-ʿAbd transmitted from him – allegedly from a
scroll (darj) written by someone more famous, namely Hishām b. Ḥassān al-
Qardūsī (d. 148/766),4 whose name al-ʿAbd had scratched out.5
Abū ʿAmr6 Aḥmad b. ʿAṭāʾ al-Hujaymī,
another active Qadarite (dāʿiya), transmitted from him. He was also accused
of transmitting from a scroll he had purchased, but not actually heard from
its original owner.7 He lectured in the mosque on Fridays, incorporating
Qadarite material into his talks. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Mahdī regarded this as an
infringement of convention and consequently advised against attending his
lectures: precisely because he was such a pious man, a pupil could not possibly
contradict him.8 Abū Saʿīd Ibn al-Aʿrābī (d. 341/952), who transmitted this in
his Ṭabaqāt al-nussāk,9 hastened to add that Hujaymī was indeed a Qadarite,
but not a Muʿtazilite. We will return to him once more in the context of ʿAbd
al-Wāḥid b. Zayd.10 He did not die until 200/815,11 and consequently belongs
to a later time. Here we are concerned with evidence that among the
1 Thus according to ʿUqaylī II 12 no. 417.

2 Regarding them see p. 79f. and 75f. above.
3 ʿUqaylī II 12, 10ff.
4 Regarding him Azmi, Studies 133 no. 101.
5 ʿUqaylī 12, –5ff.; Bukhārī II1 165f. no. 567; Ibn Ḥibbān I 280, –4ff.; also IAH I2 364, 3ff., and
Mīzān no. 2489; cf. Azmi 202, and also Mīzān no. 2438 and Azmi 83.
6 Thus according to Mīzān no. 468 (in the isnād). Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 286, 7, has Abū ʿUmar.
7 Dhahabī, Siyar IX 409, 6ff.; Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān I 221, 14ff. Was it the same one? Or is
it just the same tradition?
8 Siyar 408, 10ff.
9 Regarding him cf. GAS 1/660f.
11 Thus according to Siyar 409, –6.
iraq 111
traditionists who continued Ḥasan’s legacy the ascetics were gradually ac-
quiring the reputation of not playing according to the rules of scholarship.
The same was true of a man whose nisba recalled Yazīd b. Abān and who was
counted among the “friends of God”:12
Abū Ḥurra Wāṣil b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Raqāshī,
d. 152/769 or 153/770.13 Once again there were doubts as to whether he had

actually himself heard the traditions he transmitted from Ḥasan; the question
was whether the deception might, in fact, have been his successor’s fault.14 In
Kaʿbī’s opinion he, too, was a Qadarite,15 just like
Abū ʿUbayda Bakr b. (Abī) al-Aswad al-Nājī,
who transmitted from Ḥasan and Ibn Sīrīn and whose taqashshuf attracted
universal attention.16 How different this type was from that of the average tra-
ditionist is illustrated by the example of
Abū Muḥammad Ḥabīb b. Muḥammad al-ʿAjamī (also: al-Fārisī)
d. 156/772, a Persian ascetic who had been a merchant but apparently gave up
trading under Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s influence (i.e. in his youth). It was said about
him that his faith in God (tawakkul) was so great that he incurred debts “on
God’s account”, i.e. that he would take out a loan for some good cause, hoping
that God would enable him to pay it back somehow.17
A Qadarite according to Kaʿbī 99, 1 (who writes al-Aʿjamī) > Faḍl 343, 8 >
IM 138, 12f. (writes al-Aʿjam). Cf. also Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 364, 1; Abū Nuʿaym,
Ḥilya VI 149ff.; Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifa III 236ff.; Jullābī, Kashf al-maḥjūb 107, 2ff.;
Dhahabī, Mīzān no. 1721 and Taʾrīkh V 233, 14ff.; TT II 189 no. 347. Dhahabī
12 Thus in Mīzān no. 9324.

14 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 89 no. 518. Cf. also Fasawī II 633, 7; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ IV 326 no. 1930; TT XI
104f. no. 180 (where the nisba al-Raqāshī is denied him); Azmi, Studies 176. Cf. also Bukhārī
IV2 170f. no. 2582; IAH IV2 31 no. 141; Mīzān no. 9324.
15 Maq. 91, pu. f. (where there is a mistake in the kunya) > Faḍl 342, 2 > IM 137, 14. His brother
on his mother’s side was classified in the same way (see p. 364f. below).
16 Kaʿbī 97, 9ff. > Faḍl 343, 6; ʿUqaylī I 147 no. 182; Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 187, 4ff.; Mīzān
no. 1271; Lisān al-Mīzān II 47 no. 174.
17 Reinert, Tawakkul 270; also 172.
11� chapter �
and Ibn Ḥajar claimed that he transmitted hadith from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī
and Ibn Sīrīn, which Abū Nuʿaym denied; the muḥaddith is supposed to
have been Ḥabīb al-Muʿallim (Ḥilya VI 154, ult. f.; also Mīzān no. 1713). He
clearly spoke barely any Arabic (Ḥilya VI 149, –4ff.; Qushayrī, Risāla 177,
–8f./transl. Gramlich, Sendschreiben 527). In his list of ascetics Ibn al-
Nadīm wrote incorrectly: Muḥammad b. Ḥabīb al-Fārisī (Fihrist 235, 16).
The most important man among those who shifted Ḥasan’s teachings towards
Yazīd b. Abān’s ideas was
Abū ʿUbayda ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd,
a client of the Banū Jaḥdar18 and according to Kaʿbī an active Qadarite as well
(dāʿiya).19 In fact, Ashʿarī recorded the information from “some of his follow-
ers” that he rejected the idea that “something could be made incumbent on
someone if he was prevented from carrying it out”. Consequently he rejected
the taklīf mā lā yuṭāq and drew the conclusion that someone whose heart God
had “sealed” did not have a duty to genuine worship of God (ikhlāṣ) anymore.20
His opponents did not deny this, but added that ʿAbd al-Wāḥid did not follow
ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd either.21 This is not surprising, as he was not only a puritan and
pietist, but through the steadfastness of his internalised ideal of piety he also
emphasised the submission to God’s will (riḍā)22 and the faith in divine favour
(luṭf).23 His followers believed that depending on their actions humans would
see God in the otherworld; the more beautiful he was, the more devout they
had been in the world.24 As far the ethics of reward went, this corresponded
with Muʿtazilite doctrine, but the reward was described in entirely different
terms. The reward of seeing God is an existential necessity for those who love
God; otherwise they would die of sorrow.25
18 Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān 282, 8.

19 Maq. 96, pu. f. > Faḍl 343, 5.
20 Text VI 7, d–e.
21 Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 243, apu. ff.
22 Reinert, Tawakkul 121.
23 Thus at least according to Dhahabī (Taʾrīkh VI 244, 13).
24 Ashʿarī, Maq. 214, 7f.
25 Muḥāsibī, Al-qaṣd wal-rujūʿ ilā llāh 167, 9ff. Quwatlī: traced back from ʿAbd al-Wāḥid to
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.
iraq 113
The date of ʿAbd al-Wāḥid’s death is unknown. The date of 177/793 given
by Massignon and repeated elsewhere26 is based on an error.27 He probably
died as early as the middle of the second century, or shortly afterwards. After
a stroke he was immobile and bedridden towards the end of his life.28 The
mosque at which he taught was situated in the quarter of perfume bottle mak-
ers (aṣḥāb al-qamāqim).29 His main activity was as a qāṣṣ;30 Jāḥiẓ remarked on
his rhetorical talent.31 As a muḥaddith he was well-regarded only among the
ascetics; the experts shunned him.32
His spiritual profile is not easy to distinguish anymore. To Ibn al-Nadīm he
was merely one ascetic among many.33 Not even the traditions he quoted from
ʿAbd al-Wāḥid were particularly characteristic on the whole.34 Hadiths that
people said they had heard from him preached scrupulousness (waraʿ)35 or
to beware of sins of the mind such as vanity and pride.36 On the other hand,
there is the famous ḥadīth qudsī, ʿashiqanī wa-ʿashiqtuhū that was traced back
to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī through him.37 Some of his pupils obviously concluded from
this that it was possible to experience paradise on earth. There were attempts
26 Essai2 214 > Pellat, Milieu 102; also Reinert, Tawakkul 293; Gramlich, Derwischorden II 304,
n. 1621; Nwyia in EIran I 167.
27 Massignon himself warns of confusing him with the traditionist ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Ziyād
(Essai2 214, n. 1), but falls for it himself in the end. For 177/793 is the date of this very Ibn
Ziyād’s death (IS VII2 44, 11ff.; Khalīfa, Ṭab. 540 no. 1897 and Taʾrīkh 717, 5; Fasawī I 168,
11etc.). The same error is probably responsible for Dhahabī’s report (Duwal al-Islām I 83,
16, and ʿIbar I 270, 2ff.) on which Ritter bases his information in the Index on Ashʿarī’s
Maqālāt (p. 644). When Massignon has Ziyād die in 179 in order to distinguish between
the two men, this is simply misread for 177.
28 Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān 282, 5ff.
29 Ibid. 282, 8f.; qumqum is a brass flask used to sprinkle guests with rosewater (Goitein,
Mediterranean Society IV 149).
30 IAH III1 20 no. 107.
31 Bayān I 364, 3.
32 Cf. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Mahdī’s verdict (Fasawī III 61, 8; regarding him see p. 87f. above)
and that of Bukhārī (Taʾrīkh III2 62, no. 1713); more generally also Essai2 239.
33 Fihrist 235, 14.
34 Ḥilya VI 155ff.
35 “A body (jasad) nourished with forbidden foods will not enter into paradise”, marfūʿ trans-
mitted from Abū Bakr (!) (Mīzān no. 5288). Jāḥiẓ mocked the excessive waraʿ exhibited by
one of his youthful followers.
36 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 336, 4ff. after Thawr b. Yazīd (sic! Regarding him see vol. I 131ff. above).
When ʿAbd al-Wāḥid exhorted his pupils to be ashamed (Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 171, 10 = Ṣifat
al-ṣafwa III 241, 6ff.) he probably meant this with reference to their sins, too.
37 Ḥilya VI 165, 7.
114 chapter �
to absolve him from having a part in such excesses: when those pupils invited
him to share their visions, he immediately noticed that the maidens of paradise
had horses’ hooves.38 Still, he was said to have dreamt of them himself – just
like Abū Sulaymān al-Dārānī, who also transmitted this account from ʿAbd al-
Wāḥid.39 They apparently cured him of an illness in his sleep.40 Presumably he
imagined that the rūḥ left humans in their sleep and, if the human was one of
the “friends of God”, visited paradise temporarily during that time.41
The problem with the ḥadīth qudsī mentioned is not so much its attribu-
tion but rather what ʿishq actually means here. R. Gramlich was in favour
of interpreting it as “neither passion nor being in love nor, as Ritter appears
to assume (Meer der Seele 560), a heightened affection, but rather as un-
requited (on the side of humans) love, love at a bitter distance, unfulfilled
desire as opposed to the delights of love (Die schiitischen Derwischorden
Persiens II 304f., n. 1621). This interpretation, entirely on the side of hu-
mans, does not answer the question of whether it is possible for God’s
love to be unrequited, but it is supported by ʿAbd al-Wāḥid also having
used the phrase shawq ilā llāh “yearning for God” (Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifa III
242, 1). Massignon claims that ʿAbd al-Wāḥid avoided the word maḥabba
(Essai2 214); this, however, is incorrect (cf. Nwyia in: EIran I 168).
Jāḥiẓ preserved a list of his pupils.42 Most of them did not become well-known,
but the Qadarite Aḥmad b. ʿAṭāʾ al-Hujaymī was also among them.43 He shared
ʿAbd al-Wāḥid’s belief in divine favour and prayed, fasted and starved himself
in order to bring them about. He only ever ate a certain amount,44 and lived
on the labour of his own hands.45 In the quarter of the Balhujaym, of whom
he was a member or with whom he was associated as a client, he founded ac-
commodation for novices through a trust, where he himself would give edi-
fying lectures. According to Ibn al-Aʿrābī he was the first to take this kind of
38 Sarrāj, Lumaʿ 429, 2ff. Nicholson/transl. Gramlich 593f.

39 Ḥilya VI 157, apu. ff.; regarding Dārānī see vol. I 165 above.
40 Ibid. 161, 11ff.
41 Malaṭī, Tanbīh 73, 14ff./93, –5ff. also indicates this.
42 Burṣān 282, 9ff.; cf. also Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 245, 6f.
43 Abū Nuʿaym ignored him altogether, probably because of his views, but mentioned
him in the isnād of a tradition after ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd (Ḥilya VI 155, apu. ff.). The
most detailed biography is in Dhahabī’s Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ (IX 408f. no. 132). Cf. also
Massignon, Essai2 238f.
44 Al-maʿlūm min al-qūt. Or is he referring to ritually pure foods?
45 Siyar 408, 4ff.
iraq 115
initiative in Basra.46 Interestingly he is part of the isnād of the so-called ḥadīth

al-ikhlāṣ which was traced back through him and ʿAbd al-Wāḥid to Ḥasan al-
Baṣrī, and which spoke of the “secret” of genuine worship that God shared only
with his friends;47 the mystics would later feel reminded of the “esoteric mean-
ing” (bāṭin) of their devotion.48 Viewed from the outside, this appeared rather
different: Shahrastānī said of him that he admitted that God could shake his
“friends’” hand on earth, and they could embrace him here.49 This corresponds
to an account by the Ibāḍite Abū ʿAmmār ʿAbd al-Kāfī according to which ʿAbd
al-Wāḥid’s followers were convinced that God would not only be seen in the
otherworld, but also on earth; they are said to have based this on sura 53:6ff.
which describes a vision of Muḥammad’s.50 This passage was linked frequently
to Muḥammad’s journey to heaven.51 The rationalists, on the other hand, be-
lieved that Muḥammad did not see God in this instance but merely the angel
Gabriel.
Thus already presumed by Ibn Isḥāq, Sīra 153, 3ff.; cf. also Ṭabarī, Tafsīr
2XXVII 42, –8ff. Regarding the Muʿtazilite interpretation cf. Qāḍī ʿAbd al-
Jabbār, Tanzīh al-Qurʾān 405, 2ff., and Mutashābih al-Qurʾān 622, 2ff. (de-
scribing in detail the opposing view ascribed to “a few ignorant people”).
Regarding the Quranic passage itself see Paret, Kommentar 460f. When
ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd referred to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī concerning the vision
of God (see n. 25 above), this corresponds to the account that Ḥasan was
heard swearing that Muḥammad had seen his lord with his own eyes
(Abū l-Shaykh, Ṭabaqāt al-muḥaddithīn bi-Iṣbahān I 402, 3f.). People such
as Aḥmad b. ʿAṭāʾ al-Hujaymī may have found their own valid evidence in
the possibility of seeing God in a dream, just like the paradise maidens;
one instance adduced was the Kufan khāṭib Raqaba b. Maṣqala al-ʿAbdī
46 Ibid. 408, –4ff.

47 Quoted as ḥadīth qudsī in Qushayrī, Risāla 95, 22ff./transl. Gramlich, Sendschreiben 295f.
The next transmitter in the isnād, Aḥmad b. Ghassān, was also a Qadarite. However, he
protested against the khalq al-Qurʾān and was imprisoned during the miḥna because of
this. It is not clear whether these impressions influenced him to renounce his Qadarite
views (Siyar 409, –5ff.).
48 Thus according to a parallel drawn in the anonymous Adab al-mulūk, ed. Radtke 34, 15ff.,
where the hadith is mentioned as an ordinary prophetic dictum. Cf. also Massignon,
Passion2 I 595f./I 548f., and p. 51 above.
49 Milal 77, 2ff./174, 5ff.
50 Mūjaz II 267, pu. f.; cf. Ashʿarī, Maq. 438, 14ff., and Ibn Fūrak, Mujarrad 85, 17ff. (discussed
in Gimaret, Ashʿarī 344).
51 Abū ʿAwāna, Musnad I 136, 11f.; Qushayrī, K. al-Miʿrāj 54, 12f., and 94, apu. ff.
116 chapter �
(d. 129, 747; cf. Ashʿarī, Maq. 214, 9ff., and p. 420 below, for general infor-
mation also Ibn Fūrak, Mujarrad 85, ult. ff.). Nocturnal prayers of the kind
that were in vogue among ascetics at the time were presumably some-
times performed half asleep; apparitions could easily happen. The esca-
lations to which the subject lent itself can be observed in the astonishing
texts by Jalaluddin Rumi’s father (Meier, Bahāʾ-i Walad 344ff.). For more
information cf. ch. D 1.2.1.2 and 1.2.3.
The Shahrastānī passage poses several questions. Hujaymī appears in the

company of two other “anthropomorphists”; Shahrastānī refers to a passage
in Ashʿarī which the latter appears to have quoted from a text by a certain
Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā, i.e. probably Burghūth’s Maqālāt. This makes reasonable
sense as Burghūth was from Basra and chronologically close to the events;52
but Hujaymī does not refer to the parallel passage in Ashʿarī’s Maqālāt al-
Islāmiyyīn, which seems to be the one in question,53 and he does not mention
Burghūth, either.54 Of the two mushabbiha appearing by themselves, only one
can be proved to have been an immediate pupil of ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd’s, a
certain Muḍar, whom Abū Nuʿaym mentions as Muḍar al-Qāriʿ or Muḍar al-
ʿĀbid,55 bearing the kunya Abū Saʿīd.56 Still, we are not able to identify him
more precisely.57 The other one, Kahmas by name, does not seem to have been
a pupil at all, but rather a contemporary; not, however, the Qadarite Kahmas b.
al-Minhāl al-Sadūsī,58 but rather
52 Regarding him see ch. C. 5.2.2.1 below.

53 Maq. 214, 4ff.
54 Thus already noted in Gimaret, Livre des Religions 341, where Hujaymī is, however, identi-
fied wrongly in n. 14. Cf. also Ritter, Meer der Seele 450f., who points out a parallel in Kaʿbī;
he could have been the link between Burghūth and Ashʿarī.
55 Ḥilya VI 156, –5; 157, 17; 163, 6; cf. also 164, pu.
56 Ibid. 160, 13.
57 Ritter lists him with Ashʿarī in the index (p. 657), and in Meer der Seele identifies him as
the Quran reciter Muḍar b. Muḥammad b. Khālid al-Ḍabbī al-Asadī, quoting Ibn al-Jazarī,
Ṭabaqāt al-qurrāʾ II 299f. no. 3613. However, this one was called Abū Muḥammad, and he
was a Kufan.
58 Regarding him see p. 84 above.
iraq 117
Abū l-Ḥasan (?)59 Kahmas b. al-Ḥasan al-Qaysī al-Tamīmī al-Ḥanafī,
an ascetic of uncertain tribal affiliation,60 who transmitted from Ḥasan al-

Baṣrī61 and died in 149/767. He was associated with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd;62 he may
have been a Qadarite, too. The accounts of his scrupulousness and his su-
pererogatory prayer were nothing short of marvellous,63 but nowhere do we
find out how he imagined a personal meeting with God, the idea thanks to
which he was a heretic in Ashʿarī’s – and Burghūth’s? – eyes. Was he, too, think-
ing of dream apparitions or visions? He was reported to have said to God dur-
ing his nocturnal prayer: “Will you chastise me, even though you are the light
of my eyes, o beloved of (my) heart?”64 Later it was believed that God could
manifest himself in a boy’s beauty,65 in which case a handshake and an em-
brace would of course have had deeper meaning. But we would need explicit
evidence all the more in order to assume that this idea was already considered
by Kahmas.
We are not able to follow every member of the circle of pupils around
ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd. Like Kahmas, Riyāḥ b. ʿAmr al-Qaysī had connections
with the Qays. Another similarity they shared was the idea that the sins of a
true ascetic were part of his friendship with God.66 The one who reached the
greatest fame was a woman, called Rābiʿa al-Qaysiyya by Jāḥiẓ,67 and Rābiʿa
al-ʿAdawiyya elsewhere (d. 185/801). More than her contemporaries she
59 Thus according to Dhahabī, Siyar VI 316, 7. Ibn Ḥanbal has Abū l-Ḥusayn instead (ʿIlal 264
no. 1707); elsewhere we find Abū ʿAbdallāh (e.g. Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifat al-ṣafwa III 234, 3). The
former is more probable due to the correspondence with the father’s name. Regarding the
name cf. also Gramlich, Sendschreiben 174.
60 According to Ibn Ḥanbal he lived among the Qays (b. Thaʿlaba); according to Khalīfa, Ṭab.
531, ult., he was their mawlā. Abū Nuʿaym counted him among the Banū Ḥanīfa (Ḥilya
VI 212, 2). Ibn Saʿd gives him the nisba al-Qaysī only (VII2 31, 12); elsewhere the other two
nisbas are more prominent (e.g. in Dhahabī, Siyar).
61 Dhahabī, Siyar VI 316, 10.
62 Ḥilya VI 212, –8ff.
63 Cf. the entries Ḥilya VI 211ff. and Ṣifat al-ṣafwa III 234f.; Dhahabī, Siyar, loc. cit., and Mīzān
no. 6081.
64 Ibn al-Jawzī 235, 5f.
65 Ritter, Meer der Seele 470ff.
66 Cf. the negatively biased text in Malaṭī, Tanbīh 74, 1ff./94, 7ff. = Massignon, Recueil 7;
transl. Schacht, Islam 90. Regarding the correct reading of his name cf. Ritter, Meer der
Seele 749 and 751.
67 In his list Burṣān 282, 10.
118 chapter �
used poetry as well to express her mystic experiences. This was a brave step;
echoing love poems emotionalised the relationship with God even further,
profaning it unbearably in the eyes of the critics. Rābiʿa’s poetry and other
texts still await thorough examination with regard to their genuineness, but
it is remarkable in itself that a woman could play such a part at all. Rābiʿa
was, however, not alone, nor was she the beginning of a development; in fact,
she was closer to being its conclusion. During the first century Muʿādha b.
ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAdawiyya had been noted for her particular devotion; she was
the wife of Ṣila b. Ashyam, who was also known to be an ascetic and died
in 75/695 during a military campaign (in which he probably took part as
a volunteer).68 Her foster-daughter was an ascetic as well,69 as were two
sisters of Ibn Sīrīn’s.70 Ḥabīb al-ʿAjamī’s wife must be mentioned,71 and Rābiʿa
herself had a maidservant who was just as pious as her mistress.72 Members
of the Banū ʿAdī stand out here, and also among the Qadarites: in their
quarter, which even had its own mosque, asceticism appears to have been
endemic.73
On this subject cf. M. Smith’s dissertation Rābiʿa the Mystic and her Fellow-
Saints in Islam (where other female ascetics are discussed p. 137ff.), and
especially ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī, Shahīdat al-ʿishq al-ilāhī Rābiʿa al-
ʿAdawiyya (Cairo 1962, with a collection of texts); further Ritter, Meer
der Seele, Index s. n.; Smith in EI1 III 1177f., and A. Schimmel in: ER XII
193f. – Regarding a parallel development in Syria, which does, however,
seem to have been influenced by Basra, see vol. I 166 above. Regarding
female ascetics in Kufa ibid. 397f.; among the Khārijites cf. Jāḥiẓ, Bayān
I 365, 2.
68 Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifa IV 13ff.; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh III 304, 2ff.; TT XII 452 no. 2896; Pellat, Milieu
104 and 96f.; already mentioned in Jāḥiẓ, Bayān 364, 4. Qatāda transmitted from her (see
p. 161 below).
69 Ibn al-Jawzī IV 20, pu. ff.
70 Ibid. 15, 10ff.
71 Ibid. 23, 6ff.; regarding Ḥabīb al-ʿAjamī see p. 111f. above.
72 Ibid. 21, 5ff.; Rābiʿa was thus not necessarily poor.
73 See p. 80 above.
iraq 119
2.2.2.2.2.1 The Significance of ʿAbbādān

Massignon regarded ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd as the one who founded the
“agglomération cénobitique” in ʿAbbādān.1 This fact is not as well documented
as has been claimed since.2 It is certain that ʿAbd al-Wāḥid did visit ʿAbbādān,
but it is quite impossible to determine the extent to which he may have in-
fluenced the organisation of the place. Ibn Taymiyya described events rather
more prosaically: according to him some of ʿAbd al-Wāḥid’s pupils built the
first “hut” (duwayra) there for Sufis.3 This may not have been a “convent”, much
less an “agglomération cénobitique”,4 but the initiative soon found followers.
In a few verses Abū l-ʿAtāhiya invoked God’s blessing for ʿAbbādān and those
who had settled there.5 It seems that there were many Qadarites among them;
the Muʿtazila would later have a foothold there.6 When the predestinarians
began to spread, a man who had built a “house” (dār) – a simple hostel for
Sufis? – there at his own expense threatened to have it pulled down again.7
Later, people such as Abū Sulaymān al-Dārānī, Bishr al-Ḥāfī, Sarī al-Saqaṭī or
Sahl al-Tustarī used it as a temporary retreat.8
To us, the most important question is what could compel Basran ascetics
to go to ʿAbbādān. They might have been leaving urban life behind, as the ad-
jective “cénobitique” indicates, but there seems to have been a more pressing
motive. ʿAbbādān was situated on an island in the Persian Gulf, framed by the
Shatt al-Arab to the west, the Kārūn (Dujayl) to the north and the Bahmanshīr
to the east, a day and a half’s journey from Basra. It was the last settlement
before the open sea, of importance to shipping as it was possible to travel fur-
ther upriver on either side; Iṣṭakhrī reports wooden lighthouses on the bank of
the canal opposite the town.9 Early on, a small garrison had been established
1 Essai2 214.
2 Cf. e.g. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions 31.
3 Meier, Abū Saʿīd 304; in general Rubinacci in AIUON 10/1961/37ff.
4 Duwayra is more probably the diminutive form of dār rather than dayr (Meier, ibid., n. 70).
Homerin translates as “cloister” all the same” (Arabica 32/1985/223).
5 Dīwān, ed. Fayṣal 313 no. 321.
6 See ch. C 7.1 below.
7 Jāḥiẓ, Bukhalāʾ 209, pu. ff.; cf. also ch. C 2.3. below.
8 Böwering, Mystical Vision of Existence 47f.
9 For further details cf. Elwell-Sutton in: EIran I 51ff. s. v. Ābādān; Kaywānī in: GIE I 20ff.;
Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Khiṭaṭ al-Baṣra 220ff.; Krawulsky, Iran 460. The island is not surrounded by sea
any more nowadays, but situated ca. 50 km from the coast of the Persian Gulf; the delta of the
1�0 chapter �
there, presumably to protect Basra from pirates.10 Some of the warriors guard-
ing the place were probably volunteers; here, as in Syria, asceticism was linked
to the prospect – albeit comparatively remote – of jihad. Abū l-ʿAtāhiya calls
one who stayed in ʿAbbādān a murābiṭ.11 At least the place offered the opportu-
nity of preaching Islam, as there were unbelieving Indians living on the island.12
These may have been Zuṭṭ who had lived there for a long time,13 but it is also
possible that Indian merchants stopped over on the island before taking their
wares into Basra. The Zanj appear to have destroyed the settlement in 260/873.
The place name tells us something about its origins. It is one of the “false
dual forms” which were found frequently around Basra in names of latifundia:14
ʿAbbādān was named after ʿAbbād b. Ḥusayn al-Ḥabaṭī into whose ownership
it had passed during Ḥajjāj’s time.15 According to a piece of information by
Hishām al-Kalbī, quoted by Balādhurī,16 ʿAbbād b. Ḥusayn was in fact the first
person to “patrol the border” (rābaṭa) there. His initiative was followed by a
certain
Shatt al-Arab has shifted further out (cf. Lockhart in: EI2 I 5a). Modern Basra is different
from Old Basra (= al-Zubayr), too; cf. Hansman’s map in: Iranica Antiqua 7/1967/35.
10 Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī 220; Labib in: Der Islam 58/1981/1958.
11 Dīwān 313, apu.; also Jāḥiẓ, Bukhalāʾ 209, pu. Further records in EIran I 52b and in Ṣāliḥ
al-ʿAlī 221.
12 This is documented in hadiths (Mustawfī, Nuzhat al-qulūb 39).
13 Thus Pellat, Milieu basrien 37f.; cf. also the information in Crone, Meccan Trade 47.
Regarding the identity of the Zuṭṭ cf. EI2 II 488f. s. v. D̲ j̲āt; Henninger, Arabica Varia 262f.
14 Regarding the phenomenon cf. Nājī Maʿrūf in: Maj. Kull. al-Ādāb Baghdād 5/1962, Arabic
section, p. 5ff.; also Pellat, Milieu 12, n. 4, and Fück, Arabiya 8. It is delightful to observe the
thoughts of a visitor to the town such as Muqaddasī when he tried to explain these forms
(Aḥsan al-taqāsīm 412, ult. ff.).
15 Cf. briefly Balādhurī, Futūḥ 453 no. 913; more detailed in Yāqūt, Buldān s. v. ʿAbbādān.
ʿAbbād b. Ḥusayn had distinguished himself as commander of the shurṭa under Muṣʿab
b. al-Zubayr against Mukhtār, but he also supported Ḥajjāj against Ibn al-Ashʿath (Ṭabarī,
Index s. n.). The estate of Sulaymānān furnishes a parallel; it was named after an ascetic
called Sulaymān b. Jābir, who had retired to the border post there (Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-
Buldān I 435b, –4ff.). For other, less probable derivations cf. EIran and GIE, loc. cit.
16 Futūḥ 453, 12f.
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Abū Ḥafṣ Rabīʿ b. Ṣabīḥ (?)17 al-Saʿdī
in the first half of the second century. He was a mawlā of the Banū Saʿd of the
Tamīm18 and collected money from the inhabitants of Basra in order to be able
to fortify the settlement (or the island?), and manned the post himself (rābaṭa
fīhā). He had always had connections to India and may have travelled there
several times as a warrior for the faith (ghāzī).19 When the caliph al-Mahdī sent
an expedition across the sea to India in 159/776, Rabīʿ joined it, together with
many more volunteers (muṭṭawwiʿa) from Basra. On the return journey he fell
ill with a fever and died in 160/777; he was buried on an island along the way.20
But he was not merely a fire-eater. He was said to have been the first one in
Basra to arrange his hadiths into chapters according to the subject matter and
to compose a muṣannaf;21 and whatever the truth may be regarding the claim
that he was the first,22 there is no doubting his collector’s zeal. He transmitted
from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī as well as from Yazīd al-Raqāshī. Much of this material was
preserved by Abū Nuʿaym.23 Finding the word dhikr among these traditions
makes us listen more carefully;24 while it may not have referred to an institu-
tionalised practice yet, it does fit in with the report that Rabīʿ was said to have
17 The correct reading of the name is not determined. Balādhurī (loc. cit.) and Khalīfa
(Taʾrīkh 670, 9) have Ṣubḥ, but Ṣ-b-y-ḥ is most frequently documented: in Ibn Saʿd (VII2 36,
1), Wakīʿ (Akhbār al-quḍāt II 117, pu.), Ibn Ḥanbal (ʿIlal 135, 3, and 222 no. 1398), Ṭabarī (see
below), Kaʿbī (Maq. 93, 12; which includes the kunya), Abū Nuʿaym (Ḥilya VI 304f.), Fasawī
(Maʿrifa II 135, 6), Ibn Abī Ḥātim (Jarḥ I2 464 no. 2084), Ibn Ḥibbān (Majrūḥīn I 292, 2),
ʿUqaylī (Ḍuʿafāʾ II 52 no. 483), and Dhahabī (Mīzān no. 2741). This could of course read
Ṣubayḥ as well, and because of an ambiguous gloss in the MS this is how Guyard vocalises
it in the section of Ṭabarī edited by him (cf. III 460, n. h.), also F. Sezgin in Buhârîʾnin
kaynakları (p. 41 and 45). Ṣabīḥ, however, was the more common form, and Dhahabī does
not list our Rabīʿ among the exceptions in his Mushtabih (409, 6ff.). – The printed version
of Bukhārī’s Taʾrīkh al-kabīr has the incorrect Ṣabīʿ (II1 278 no. 952).
18 IS, loc. cit.
19 Balādhurī, ibid., presumably following IS VII2 36, 1ff. in part; also Mīzān no. 2741 after
Shāfiʿī. Cf. A. Noth, Heiliger Krieg 81 (using the form Rabīʿ b. Ṣubḥ) and D. N. Maclean,
Religion and Society in Arab Sind 101.
20 Ṭabarī III 460, 6ff. and 476, 16f.; regarding the date of his death see also Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh
670, 9. Regarding the expedition cf. Kennedy, Early Abbasid Caliphate 106.
21 Mīzān no. 2741; cf. also Sezgin, Buhârîʾnin kaynakları 41 and 45, and Azmi, Studies 159.
22 For divergent awāʾil traditions on this point cf. Rāmhurmuzī in Ibn Rajab, Sharḥ ʿilal
al-Tirmidhī 68, 3ff., evaluated by Juynboll in Muslim Tradition 22f., cf. also p. 72f. above.
23 Ḥilya VI 307, apu. ff.; in the main copied from Sufyān al-Thawrī.
24 Ibid. 309, 3.
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performed spiritual exercises at night (tahajjud).25 Another prophetic dictum

stating that pious women just like men would certainly enter paradise26 was
probably also typical of the ascetic environment.27 Rabīʿ was interested in legal
issues as well, following Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s example in this.28 He conveyed bidʿa
traditions to the Egyptian Asad b. Mūsā, who may have been born in Basra.29
It is not possible to determine with certainty whether he merely maintained
close relations with the Qadarites30 or whether he was a Qadarite himself;31 his
reputation was a matter of controversy from the first.32 Qadarites like Saʿīd b.
Abī ʿArūba and Mubārak b. Faḍāla were close to him,33 but the wider opinion
of him depended on how far the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth were willing to give in to the
ascetic trend.34
ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd was a contemporary of this man. He may have sup-
ported him, but there is no evidence that there was a time when he inherited
the influential traveller’s initiative. Kahmas b. al-Ḥasan was presumably also
a member of the inner circle; he had taken part in a campaign to Sind in his
youth in 93/711.35 ʿAbbādān was not entirely unattractive by that time; Muqātil
b. Sulaymān probably died there,36 but those who made it their home did not
stand in the limelight,37 as that wold have been contrary to their interest. Only
one of them attracted the attention of hadith experts:
25 Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 292, 2ff.

26 Ḥilya VI 308, 15ff.
27 Cf. also 308, 10ff.: children who died in a state of innocence will be servants of the blessed
in paradise (concerning the subject cf. Text IV 64, VIII 9, 10, and XXII 254, 5). The had-
iths Rabīʿ had heard from Yazīd al-Raqāshī were in part considered to be “well-known”
(mashhūr), and in part gharīb (ibid., 310, 12f.).
28 Ṭaḥāwī, K. al-shurūṭ al-kabīr in Wakin, Function of Documents I 1.7. Regarding ascetic tra-
ditions from Ḥasan cf. Ḥilya VI 304, –6ff.; according to Abū Nuʿaym, they were all isolated
(mafrūd; 310, 12f.).
29 Ibn Waḍḍāḥ, Bidaʿ II 2, 18, 19 etc.; regarding Asad b. Mūsā see p. 813f. below and EI2, Suppl.
87b.
30 Thus according to Ibn Baṭṭa, Al-ibāna al-kubrā 453, 2ff.
31 Thus according to the Muʿtazilite sources (Kaʿbī 93, 12f. > Faḍl 342, 6 > IM 137, 16).
32 Already in IS VII2 36, 4f.
33 IAH and Mīzān, loc. cit.; Ḥilya VI 305, 12ff.; ʿUqaylī II 52, 14ff.
34 Ibn Ḥanbal respected him (ʿIlal 135, 3f.; also Fasawī II 135, 3ff.).
35 Regarding these events, Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ refers to his son who reported information
from his father (Taʾrīkh 405, 8ff.; cf. also MacLean, Religion and Society 100). Regarding him
see p. 117f. above.
36 Faẓāʾil-i Balkh 89, pu. f. (where the date of his death is given as 158/775). Cf. p. 582 below.
37 Cf. the information in Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifa III 40ff.
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Abū ʿĀṣim ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUbaydallāh al-Murrī al-Baṣrī al-ʿAbbādānī.
Dhahabī called him a Qadarite,38 but this may be an error, as it is not men-
tioned elsewhere,39 and ʿUqaylī says this only of his teacher Faḍl al-Raqāshī.40
He was the only one to transmit a number of ascetic hadiths from the latter,
which Abū Nuʿaym preserved. Interestingly one of these mentions the vision
of God in paradise.41
2.2.2.2.3 Theological and Juristic Divergent Opinions within the Circle of

Basran Ascetics
Some ascetics, who were closer to ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd than others, occupied a spe-
cial position among Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s followers. They have suffered the usual
damnatio memoriae, but are remembered for a few customs and opinions
which were not shared by the majority. Apart from wearing woollen garments1
this was especially their affectation of putting on or keeping on their sandals
when praying. This was in fact an old custom; Wahb b. Munabbih had prayed
in his sandals,2 and Ḥasan al-Baṣrī was said to have worn them even in bed.3
The reason given was that the Jews – according to Ex. 3:5 – followed the op-
posite practice; it was said that Thawr b. Yazīd from Ḥimṣ had already urged
the Muslims not to have anything in common with them.4 Many hadiths sup-
ported the custom;5 after all, it has something to recommend it in an open
mosque where the ground was covered in pebbles. But it never became obliga-
tory; the Qadarite Ayyūb b. Khūṭ6 held against it that the prophet said that
keeping one’s sandals on in the mosque was as if one were still on horseback.7
Finally the opponents he was addressing did not insist that one should wear
38 Mīzān no. 4437.

39 Bukhārī III1 139f. no. 419; IAH II2 100f. no. 465.
40 Ḍuʿafāʾ II 274, –6. Regarding him see p. 192ff. below.
41 Ḥilya VI 208, pu. ff. = Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 461, 15ff.; cf. also ibid. 208, 9ff.; 209, –5ff. and 210, 2ff.;
also the remark 210, apu. ff.. They all share the same isnād: Abū ʿĀṣim < Jābir b. ʿAbdallāh
(al-Khazrajī, d. 78/697; probably following his Ṣaḥīfa, cf. GAS 1/85).

2 Rāzī, Taʾrīkh Ṣanʿāʾ 378, ult.
3 IS VII1 116, 21; Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 110, 6f.
4 Mīzān I 375, 11ff.; cf. Goldziher, Ges. Schr. II 89, and more recently Kister in: JSAI
12/1989/336ff. The Jews did not adhere to one uniform usage, either.
5 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf II 415ff.; Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 17, –4ff.
7 Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl 90, 1f. = 75, 4./transl. Lecomte 84 § 98.
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one’s sandals at all times, but that one should put them back on when praying;
while they were sitting they had the sandals on the ground in front of their
feet.8 One of them was a Sufi named Kilāb b. Jarī who was also known as a
mutakallim.9 We know rather more about
Hāshim (b.) al-Awqaṣ,10
in particular about his theological views. Like ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd he found it im-
possible to imagine that Quranic verses which contain judgments on the pros-
pects salvation of specific persons, such as Abū Lahab, were already contained
in the heavenly original.11 While this is a topos, and was also reported about
the Qadarite ʿUthmān b. Miqsam,12 Hāshim was certainly no determinist. He,
too, was considered to be a mutakallim,13 but he allowed tradition more scope
than e.g. Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ did. This was why he, reluctantly but unlike the latter,
admitted that both sides in the battle of the camel would go to paradise: ʿAlī
as well as Ṭalḥa and Zubayr had fought on Muḥammad’s side in the battle of
Badr. Consequently the concept widely documented in tradition applied to
them: that God had looked down onto the fighters at Badr and said: “Do what
you will; I have (already) forgiven you.” Hāshim knew that Ḥasan al-Baṣrī had
already described the three future enemies as “freed by God from the fires of
hell”. He was not happy about this, as “the followers perished while the lead-
ers were saved”.14 Thus his qualms were fundamentally the same as Wāṣil’s;
the civil war had clearly been a sin. Being a Basran he was not very favourably
inclined towards ʿAlī in any case; like ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd he thought it possible that
he falsified prophetic dicta.15
Still, he failed to make his mark as a muḥaddith. Like other ascetics, he
used his hadith to call for greater scrupulousness: “If someone buys a garment
for 10 dirham, and pays for (even) 1 dirham with something prohibited, his
prayer – which means, the prayer that is his duty (i.e. the obligatory prayer, not
8 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 110, 8.

9 Ibid. III 110, 10, and I 366, 1f.; regarding him cf. also Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifa III 289f.
10 The form without ibn is found in Ibn ʿAdī (d. 365/976); Jāḥiẓ, too, knew only this version.
With ibn cf. Mufīd, Al-fuṣūl al-mukhtāra II 35, 6/185, 4. Dhahabī lists both versions (Mīzān
no. 9180 and 9194). Awqaṣ is someone with a short neck, whose head is directly attached
to his torso (cf. Lisān s. v.). Cf. also Lisān al-Mīzān VI 185 no. 660.
11 Text VI 1; regarding the issue see also Gimaret, Livre des Religions 218, n. 83.
12 See p. 82 above.
13 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 366, 1f.; Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl 17, 5 = 14, ult. f./ transl. 16 § 24.
14 Text VI 15.
15 Text X 14 and p. 349 below.
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merely an occasional petitionary prayer) – will not be heard”.16 This may have
been more than just a reminder not to engage in unlawful business; being a
Sufi, Hāshim may have had a negative view of commerce in general. The force
of the criticism that he met may be gauged by his having Ibn ʿUmar, the alleged
source of the hadith, emphasise with an impressive gesture that the proph-
et said this not once only, but repeated it immediately. – A certain Ḥawshab
shared his opinions on the wearing of sandals and on the fighters of the battle
of the camel.17 This was probably not the Qadarite Ḥawshab b. ʿAqīl al-Jarmī,18
but rather
Abū Bishr Ḥawshab b. Muslim al-Thaqafī,
a mawlā of the Thaqīf and a Sufi,19 who was acquainted with ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b.
Zayd but died much earlier than he from the “pestilence”, presumably in 131.20
He was not impressed with the people of his time21 and called the predestinar-
ian Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī (who died in the same year as he,22 and besides was an
opponent of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s) “a wild beast”.23
2.2.2.2.3.1 The Bakriyya

Besides these two, a third one is deserving of separate and more detailed
discussion:
Bakr b. ukht ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd,
i.e. the mystic’s nephew and consequently certainly younger than the other
two. It was not transmitted whether he devoted any thought to the wearing
of sandals. On the other hand, he was a much more systematic thinker; he
gathered a school around him. The form of his name is unusual and proves
the extent to which ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd was his point of reference. Only
16 Mīzān no. 8720. I have clarified the translation slightly.

17 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 110, 9; Text VI 15.
18 Regarding him see p. 67f. above.
19 Fasawī II 240. The text once again says only Ḥawshab, but the editor is probably correct in
his identification (cf. TT III 66 no. 125).
20 Ḥilya VI 199, 6f.
21 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 155 no. 970, which has only Ḥawshab.
23 Fasawī II 240, 10ff.; Ḥawshab in conversation with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd cf. ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III
283, 14f.
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one passage tells us Bakr’s real name: Bakr b. ʿAbdrabbih.1 This is probably
also how he was remembered by the hadith experts: a traditionist of this name
transmitted from one of Makḥūl’s pupils.2 Ibn Qutayba called him Bakr al-
ʿAmmī once;3 this would mean that he was a member of the Banū l-ʿAmm of
the Tamīm.4 Still, this may be merely the result of a mistake.
He must in any case be distinguished from Bakr b. Muḥammad al-ʿAmmī,

a Ḥanafite who studied under Muḥammad b. Samāʿa (regarding him
IAH I 173 no. 382). Ibn Samāʿa died as late as 233/847 (GAS 1/435); this
would take us too far into the third century. – Nyberg’s identifying him
with Bakr b. Ziyād al-Bāhilī is also incorrect. The latter transmitted from
ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak (d. 181/797) and consequently would have died
around 200/815. This identification is simply the result of Nyberg’s read-
ing ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Ziyād rather than ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd (Khayyāṭ,
Intiṣār 218; Aʿsam, Faḍīḥat al-Muʿtazila 295, n. 221, also contradicts this).
In the context of the wearing of sandals Jāḥiẓ mentioned a certain Bakr
b. ʿAbdallāh; but this probably referred to Bakr b. ʿAbdallāh al-Muzanī, as
suggested by the editor, who died as early as 106/724 (Bayān III 110, 8).
He is also the person referred to as the fatā Baṣra named Bakr, who was
mentioned together with the shaykh Baṣra Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (cf. Bayān I 101,
2 and earlier).
His heyday was most probably during the second half of the second century. His
uncle’s dates seem to presuppose this; in addition, Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir (d. 210/
825) debated with him.5 There is no biography of him. Baghdādī was entirely in
the dark about him; he thought that Bakr, as well as Jahm b. Ṣafwān and Ḍirār
b. ʿAmr (!), was active during the time of Wāṣil.6 His teachings were influential
well into the third century. Hishām al-Fuwaṭī (d. before 230/845?) polemicised
against them.7 Jāḥiẓ remarked that the Muʿtazila had nothing but contempt
for them;8 like Hishām al-Fuwaṭī, Jāḥiẓ was still firmly rooted in Basra.9
1 Abū l-Muʿīn al-Nasafī, Tabṣirat al-adilla, fol. 323b, 16.

2 Mīzān no. 1288. Regarding his teacher ʿAlī b. Abī Sāra cf. ibid. no. 5846, and TT VII 324f.
no. 545.
3 Taʾwīl 17, 5 = 15, 1/transl. § 24.
4 Regarding them see p. 251 below.
5 Text VI 13, also 12.
6 Farq 16, 7f./22, 4.
7 Catalogue of Works XXIV, no. 7.
8 Khalq al-Qurʾān, in: Rasāʾil III 300, 2.
9 See ch. C. 4.1.1 and 4.2.4.1 below.
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Interestingly, his teachings were studied in the Maghreb as well: Muḥammad b.

Saḥnūn (202/817–256/870) wrote a K. al-radd ʿalā l-Bakriyya, as did his Mālikite
colleague Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī (d. 386/996), more than a century later.10
Ashʿarī listed the Bakriyya as an independent group11 as did Mufīd (d. 413/1022)
in his Awāʾil al-maqālāt.12 Afterwards people soon lost sight of it. Baghdādī re-
ported on the Bakriyya only second hand,13 Shahrastānī was not aware of it at
all. Ashʿarī is our main source; he seems to have had much information from
Zurqān,14 but also knew the movement from Basran tradition.15
The accounts we have of Bakr do not automatically form a coherent image;
we must decide how to arrange them. It may be advisable to start with the
environment we were discussing earlier. While Jāḥiẓ did not count him among
his uncle’s pupils as he was not a mystic, like his uncle he did believe that in
paradise one would see God in human form. This, he thought, was necessary,
as during the Last Judgment, God would talk to humans;16 where else would his
speech come from? But he will assume this form only at that moment; creating
it for himself like a mask, as it were.17 There was a time during the first decades
of the third century when certain Iranian Sufis believed that Jesus would be
this visible God;18 maybe this belief was beginning to take shape here. It might
also recall the Sālimiyya which, in Basra at the turn of the fourth century, fol-
lowed the doctrine that God would appear in the form of Muḥammad, which
was the same as Adam’s.19
At the same time this did, of course, affirm that it was not possible to behold
God on earth, as due to his essence he is everywhere.20 Still, some scope was
left for mystical experiences, as when the spirit left the body during a dream
or a vision, it could experience paradise and its inhabitants. Bakr interestingly
claimed that the spirit (rūḥ) was the true human, at a time – a generation
10 Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik III 106, 11; M. Manūnī in: Maj. Kull. al-Ādāb Ribāṭ 3–4/1978/94.
However, we do not know what exactly “Bakriyya” refers to here (see p. 135f. below).
11 Cf. Maq. 5,5 and the deliberations 286f.
12 P. 35, 3/transl. Sourdel 251.
13 Cf. the commentary on Text VI 3–4, 6, 8, 14–15, 17 and 19.
14 Text 2 and 7, b–d.
15 Text 7, e.
16 This is made clear in sura 2:174; see p. 306 below regarding Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ; also ch. D. 1.2.3
and 4.2.1.
17 Text 17.
18 See ch. C 3.2.2.2.7.3 below.
19 Ṣūra Ādamiyya Muḥammadiyya; cf. Abū Yaʿlā, Muʿtamad 217, ult., transl. in Böwering,
Mystical Vision of Existence 94.
20 Text 16.
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before Naẓẓām – when most theologians still got along very well without this
idea. Bakr felt that this further substrate was needed in order to explain why a
human lives, knows and acts: without a spirit, he would be a lifeless body. This
also means that the spirit is nothing specifically human; other living beings
only become what they are through the spirit.21
While knowledge and the faculty of action depend on the spirit, they are
not necessarily permanent. Like most of his contemporaries Bakr was thinking
of individual acts of knowledge and gradual actions of which humans might
be able. And it is significant that to Bakr the ability was presentbefore the ac-
tion took place,22 as it shows that he, too, thought in a Qadarite manner but
used the theoretical framework already customary at the time.23 He did agree
with his uncle in that genuine piety (ikhlāṣ) was not merely due to human
will, as God can “seal” someone’s heart so he will have the wrong faith in the
end. Ascetics at the time probably felt so close to monks in their demeanour
that they could not help asking why the latter had not become Muslims. It had
led ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd to conclude that sincerity in the sense of genuine
worship of the true God (ikhlāṣ) could not be a universal commandment; he
rejected taklīf mā lā yuṭāq.24 Bakr contradicted him: faith was a command-
ment applicable to all, even though God might have “sealed the hearts” of
some.25 This made him the more rigorous of the two, in fact; although in al-
lowing the possibility of taklīf mā lā yuṭāq he was very near to breaking out of
the Qadarite consensus.
This was probably not his intention, for he regarded “sealing” as being the
individual’s fault, as presumed by the Qadarites. Thus it could be punishment
for a Muslim, too.26 He would demonstrate it by persisting in sin. Sin does
not make him an unbeliever; he retains his status of muʾmīn, but he is called
something else: “hypocrite” (munāfiq). Everyone who commits a mortal sin or
lives in mortal sin is a “hypocrite”; he is denying God and serving Satan with
his actions.27 The terminology originated with Ḥasan al-Baṣrī; the ascetics
21 Text 3.
22 Text 2.
23 Cf. e.g. vol. I 480 regarding the Ibāḍite ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd. Ibn Qutayba linked Bakr closely
to the Muʿtazilites.
24 See p. 112 above.
25 Text 7 with commentary. Cf. also Simnānī, Bayān ʿan uṣūl al-īmān, fol. 66b, –7ff.
26 The supporting Quranic passage was apparently sura 7:100 (cf. Ṭūsī, Tibyān IV 515, 1f. with
Jubbāʾī’s subsequent objection). Elsewhere the phrase usually referred to the heathen
(e.g. in sura 4:155 and 7:101).
27 Text 8, a–b and d.
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adopted and extended it. Sura 19:44 stated that a sinner “serves Satan” and wor-
ships him rather than God; there, Abraham said it to his father who was an
unbeliever. Beyond Basra there was resistance against the idea that this phrase
might apply to Muslims as well; the K. al-ʿālim wal-mutaʿallim rejected it firmly
in Abū Ḥanīfa’s name.28
Just as sin perverts faith into nifāq, so does faith in its most perfect mani-
festation soar to the level of ikhlāṣ; this, too, a thought originating with Basran
zuhd that may have been given its first systematic framework by Bakr. The
state of nifāq may be reversed through repentance (tawba) in which the sinner
shows that he is aware of his sin and ashamed of it.29 Repenting before death
is thus essential for human salvation, for those who do not repent will die in
the state of obduracy, and to remain obdurate will result in eternal punish-
ment, even for a person who has formally remained a believer.30 And it makes
no difference how great the sin actually was;31 even someone who, one might
exaggerate, only stole a mustard seed,32 is doomed to this fate unless he re-
pents in time. Some would later be reminded of the Khārijites and group Bakr
with them,33 but this was incorrect in one essential point. While the Ibāḍites
did often call sinners munāfiq, and believed that they were doomed to eter-
nal punishment in hell, they regarded sinners as unbelievers, using the phrase
kufr nifāq.34
Whichever terminology was used, the result was rigorism every time. Even if
one’s stomach rumbled, one had to perform the minor ablution (wuḍūʾ) – just
as if the flatus ventris had already made its way outside and caused ritual impu-
rity. Above all, Bakr explicitly forbade eating garlic or onions, as one could not
even go near a mosque after eating them.35 This was the kind of waraʿ that de-
lighted the ascetics. The unpleasant smell caused by garlic or onions had been
obnoxious to others as well. Qatāda had been asked for an expert legal opinion
28 P. 122, pu. ff.; cf. also Schacht in: Oriens 17/1964/113 § 35.
29 Text 13, b–c.
30 Text 8, b. Cf. also Jāḥiẓ in Text IX 7, a.
31 Text 8, e.
32 Thus Ibn Qutayba or Ibn Ḥazm (cf. Text 9).
33 Ibn Ḥazm in the abovementioned passage (Fiṣal IV 191, –6ff.) and following him Saksakī,
Burhān 15, pu. ff.; Abū Yaʿlā in his Muʿtamad (122, 14ff.) and his son Ibn Abī Yaʿlā in his
Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila (I 34, 6).
34 See p. 262 below. The definition of faith which Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Al-baḥr al-zakhkhār I 86,
6, connects with the Bakriyya (and the Fuḍayliyya, see p. 205f. below) does not go into all
these differentiations.
35 Text 19.
130 chapter �
in the matter,36 and there were hadiths recommending that one should keep
away from the mosque in this situation and not turn the communal prayer into
a torment for others.37 Reference was made to antique texts which contained
the analogous instruction that someone who had eaten garlic should not enter
a temple.38 Bakr, however, provided the only instance of these recommenda-
tions becoming an outright prohibition. And of course it was never enforced.
A Muslim who obdurately persists in sinning does so in full awareness of
the punishment.39 Even if he does repent afterwards, God is not inclined to
heed him – like a father who, after constant disobedience from his son, finally
does not accept his excuses anymore.40 There even is one sin which is excluded
from repentance: murder.41 Parallel passages show that this refers to the mur-
der of a Muslim. Ḥasan al-Baṣrī had been of the same opinion,42 and we read
the same thing of Sufyān al-Thawrī later.43 Both based their conviction on sura
4:93: “And whoso slays a believer wilfully, his recompense is Gehenna, therein
to dwell forever”. This idea appears to go back deep into the first century; it
was linked to Ibn ʿAbbās; ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd, Zayd b. Thābit, and Ḍaḥḥāk b.
Muzāḥim (d. 105/723) were also mentioned.44 It probably reflected an ancient
Muslim sense of belonging together; in fact it was due to an unprejudiced
understanding of the text. Consequently it is not surprising that we find it in
hadith as well: “God may forgive every sin, except when someone dies an unbe-
liever, or wilfully kills a believer”.45 Murder was on a par with apostasy or idola-
try; Ibn ʿAbbās was believed to have called shirk and murder the “two unclear
things” (al-mubhamatān).46
36 Aqwāl Qatāda 74, –5f.; regarding the text see p. 165ff. below.
37 Cf. e.g. Bukhārī, Adhān 160 with several traditions; also Al-iʿtiṣām bil-sunna 24 and Aṭʿima
49; Muslim, Masājid 17; generally ending with an instruction: fal-yaʿtazilnā or fal-yaʿtazil
masjidanā (also: fa-lā yaqrabanna masjidanā). Further instances in Wensinck, Conc. I
314b and Handbook 155b. Regarding the Shīʿa cf. Majlisī, Biḥār LXVI 246ff.
38 Material may be found in Th. Wächter, Reinheitsvorschriften im griechischen Kult 105.
39 Thus Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s definition in Mughnī XIV 375, 3f., in a passage that is based on
the doctrine of the Bakriyya, as 374, 13f. suggests.
40 Ibid. 375, 9ff.
41 Text 11.
42 Abū Yaʿlā, Muʿtamad 201, ult. ff.; cf. also Sharīf al-Raḍī, Ḥaqāʾiq al-taʾwīl 363, 4ff.: according
to Ḥasan, a murderer faces eternal punishment in hell.
43 Cf. his Tafsīr 54, pu. ff.; also vol. I 259 and 261 above.
44 Ṭūsī, Tibyān III 285, 9ff.
45 Conc. II 186b.
46 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr 3IX 67, apu.
iraq 131
The latter also hints at the uncertainty people felt concerning this opin-
ion from the earliest time. In his commentary Ṭabarī transmitted several
qualifications with which to circumvent the radical message of sura 4:93:
the murderer will suffer eternal punishment in hell if he does not re-
pent (nadima),47 or when he believes the murder to be permitted,48 or if
God punishes at all, i.e. presumably: if he leaves Muslims in hell for
eternity.49 Even Sufyān al-Thawrī was thought to have added “if he does
not beg God for forgiveness” to his statement.50 Members of the circle
around the fiercely devout Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ disagreed, too.51 Muqātil
b. Sulaymān considered only the murder of a prophet inexpiable.52 Mufīd
linked Bakr’s teachings to only “a very few members of the Ḥashwiyya
and the common people (ʿāmma)”.53 Sufyān al-Thawrī pointed out that
the verse was not abrogated,54 which indicates that this was another way
in which people tried to circumvent it.55 However, this clearly lead into
a dead end: when the verses that might have abrogated the statement
were put in chronological order, it was found that they had been revealed
earlier: sura 19:60 one year earlier,56 and sura 25:70 all of eight years
earlier.57
This was a point at which the Muʿtazila directed criticism. While it had grown
from the same root, its understanding of sin was different. Instead of nifāq,
47 Ibid. 62, 6ff. no. 10187: Mujāhid amending a more rigorous dictum of Ibn ʿAbbās’. Cf. also
Ṭūsī, Tibyān III 295, 9f.
48 Ibid. 61, 11ff., with reference to a unique occurrence.
49 Ibid. 61, 5ff. no. 10184f.: after the Basran authorities Sulaymān al-Taymī and Shuʿba.
50 Ibid. 67, 10ff. no. 10201.
52 Tafsīr khamsmiʾat āya 152, 8ff.
53 Awāʾil al-maqālāt 63, 14/transl. Sourdel § 69. ʿāmma refers to the Sunnis.
54 Tafsīr 54, pu. ff.
55 This is documented elsewhere as well, e.g. in a tradition of Ibn ʿAbbās (Ṭabarī IX 63, 8ff.
no. 10188ff. in several variants, the clearest being no. 10195) and in one tradition in Abū
Dāwūd, Fitan (Bāb taʿẓīm qatl al-muʾminīn).
56 “ . . . save him who repents, and believes, and does a righteous deed; those – they shall
enter Paradise”.
57 “. . . save him who repents, and believes, and does righteous work – those, God will
change their evil deeds into good deeds (at the reckoning), for God is ever All-forgiving,
All-compassionate”. Just before this passage, verse 68 explicitly lists murder among those
transgressions to which the recommended “repentance” refers. Cf. Ṭabarī 66, pu. ff.
no. 10198ff. and 10206.
13� chapter �
Muʿtazilites used the term fisq.58 To them, a murderer had no special status;
Wāṣil apparently only concluded from sura 4:93 that someone who had com-
mitted a mortal sin would suffer eternal punishment in hell,59 and there were
no later amendments, either.60 Even someone who was “sealed” would be able
to be penitent, and God’s inclination would be to forgive every sin.61 In his dis-
cussion with Bakr Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir tried to refute the former’s doctrine of
obduracy by referring to the hoopoe in the legend of Solomon.
Solomon was gathering his “armies of ghosts, humans, and birds” around
him, and found that the hoopoe was missing. He meant to punish him
for being absent without permission unless “he can show good justifi-
cation”. The hoopoe claimed to have been to Sheba and seen the queen
worshipping the sun with her people, and he advised Solomon to con-
vert her and her subjects to the true faith (sura 27:21, quoted in Text 12, h;
cf. Speyer, Biblische Erzählungen im Qoran 389ff.). The decisive factor for
Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir was probably that the hoopoe had not “done pen-
ance”. He had been fully aware of the situation – i.e. responsible for his
own actions – when he disobeyed Solomon’s instruction not to leave his
place (Text 12, a–b). The fact that his action turned out to have been a
sensible one could not atone for the disobedience (c–d). Thus, in Bakr’s
terminology, he became and remained a munāfiq. Bakr, sharing as he did
Bishr’s interpretation of the Quranic pericope (e–f), ought to admit this
consequence, too. All the same, Solomon who was, after all, a prophet,
did not kill the hoopoe to punish him (i): he clearly did not believe in
his servant’s “obduracy”. Consequently Bakr’s theory could not be correct.
We do not know how Bishr himself resolved the question. He, too, took
for granted that the hoopoe had “transgressed” (c), and did not seem to
assume that the good intention justified the unauthorised disobedience
(d). It is probable that he simply did not believe that a venial sin which
one did not repent would automatically become a mortal sin; maybe he
did not believe that one must do penance for every individual sin, either.
In one of his didactic poems Bishr referred to this argumentation again, men-
tioning the “hoopoe whom Bakr considered to be an unbeliever”.62 These

60 Ṭūsī, Tibyān III 295, 1f. and 9f.; also Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mutashābih al-Qurʾān 201, 9ff.
61 Tibyān I 170, 5ff.
62 Text XVII 1, verse 25.
iraq 133
words do not do justice to Bakr: not even a murderer was an unbeliever in his
opinion. Bishr made the same mistake once again; clearly he wished to link
Bakr to the Khārijites.63 However, in the second instance the argument is used
in a different context, for Bakr, in order to rein in his rigorism, had clearly em-
phasised the principle of responsibility: while God does punish even nonde-
script transgressions he does so only in the case of people who are aware of
them.64 Bishr responded that in that case even a scorpion was deserving of
punishment, as it shows clearly by its demeanour in the moment of stinging
that it is afraid of being killed in retribution. Clearly, it must be aware of its
transgression, and consequently has to be called an unbeliever.65
While this example is rather scurrilous, the question remains of whether
Bakr could not simply have agreed? The Muʿtazilite text which is our source
does not transmit his reply, but he really was in a slightly unenviable position, as
he had assumed that children did not deserve punishment in any way and that
consequently should never be hurt; extending this view onto animals seemed
to suggest itself. He had hesitated to take this step: animals, he believed, are al-
lowed to feel pain so they can be led to the benefit of humans.66 Thus domesti-
cated animals, at least, are an exception: while they are “innocent”,67 pain does
not have the primary function of punishment in their case. This was too subtle
to survive transmission unscathed every time,68 and one of his pupils appears
clearly to have treated children and animals the same “because God cannot
treat anyone unjustly”.69
This explanation shows what was at the heart of the matter. Pain is ultimate-
ly created by God, in and of itself “out of nothing” and by no means caused by
the preceding blow or sting. Bakr also differed from Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir in that
he did not accept the latter’s tawallud theory.70 A blow is thus not necessarily
followed by pain, and in the case of children, Bakr continued, this is indeed
not the case. One should rather assume that they feel pleasure at being hit,
otherwise they would be punished by God, not by their parents.71 So why do
they cry? Obviously in order for the parents, whom this hurts, to be punished
63 Text 13, e; thus also Ibn Ḥazm in Text 10. Jāḥiẓ generalised in a similar way (Text IX 7, a).
64 Text 13, 1.
65 Ibid., b–f.
66 Text 5.
67 Text 13, a.
68 Ibid., g; also commentary on Text 4.
69 Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 191, apu. ff.; cf. p. 137 below.
70 Text 6l regarding tawallud in Bishr’s theories see ch. C 1.4.3.1.1.1 below.
71 Text 4.
134 chapter �
in their turn, presumably for older sins, or maybe by making them feel remorse
for having hurt them unjustly.72 For it is God who makes the children scream;
as they have no responsibility themselves they are automata, so to speak, and
led by God. We cannot fathom what they feel in this case;73 important is only
what emotions are triggered in us, the parents. Of course, the parents must not
see through the game; if they knew as much as Bakr, they would not need to
feel worried or punished.
This was the weakness of the construct; nowhere else in Islam the question
of theodicy was resolved in such radical – and naïve – terms. However, when
talking about pain Bakr may not have had those pains in mind that parents
might inflict on their children as educational measures. While the text does
speak of “blows”, it also mentions infants, “children in the cradle”.74 Pain being
caused by a blow was a topos at the time. Furthermore he does not say that the
blow came from the parents; “dismembering” and “shredding” are also men-
tioned. In any case, pain comes from God; illness should be listed here as well.75
Beating as educational measure would seem to be a more Western concept in
any case; a stick is used only once children start school.76
Bakr retracted his rigorism in two cases. We already know the first one:
the opponents in the battle of the camel. If we look at the behaviour of ʿAlī,
Ṭalḥa and Zubayr, they are in fact munāfiqān.77 Nothing is said of penance,
and as the death of many Muslims is on their conscience, their crime is near
to murder. But God himself absolved them, and the hadith stating this had
irrevocable authority for Bakr, as it had already had for Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.78 He
would probably have felt it a sacrilege if the fighters of the battle of Badr – and
possibly the companions of the prophet in general – had been condemned to
hell. This is remarked upon in particular with reference to ʿAlī. For Bakr was a
fierce opponent of the “Rāfiḍites”,79 which is clearly illustrated by the second
exception: he considered drinking date wine (nabīdh) to be in accordance with
72 Text 5, b–c.

73 Thus also Baghdādī, Farq 201, 5ff./213, 11ff.
74 Text 4, a–b.
75 Cf. Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 191, ult.
76 Regarding Ibn Saḥnūn cf. Lecomte in: REI 21/1953/86ff.; regarding Qābisī cf. A. F. al-Ahwānī,
Al-tarbiya fī l-Islām 313f. Concerning the question in general see Aḥmad Khālid, Al-ʿuqūba
ʿinda l-murabbīn al-Tūnisiyyīn fī l-qurūn al-wusṭā, in: Shahṣiyyāt wa-tayyārāt 46ff.
77 Text 14, a.
78 Text 14, b and 15. It is noticeable that not even he refers to the tradition of the ʿashara al-
mubashshara which would have served the same purpose (cf. vol. I 26f. above; also 542
below).
79 Khayyāṭ, Intiṣār 105, 6f.
iraq 135
the Sunna. This was linked to two further exceptions: he permitted masḥ ʿalā
l-khuffayn and the consumption of eel or catfish.80 The latter was indeed pro-
hibited among the Rāfiḍites only:81 in Kufa their hostility towards the Murjiʾa
and Abū Ḥanīfa had convinced them also to prohibit the drinking of date
wine.82 That Bakr, who was concerned about stomach rumbles, should be so
lenient in this instance, is indeed quite something.
The combination of the three things is part of the heresiographers’ com-

pendium of formulaic expression (cf. Text III 4, b). This explains that
Sufyān al-Thawrī’s attitude was described in the same words (Ḥilya VII
32, 4f., including the same error, writing jady instead of jirrī); but it can-
not prove a special link with the Bakriyya. – Bakr’s requirement that the
nabīdh should be fermented in a leather wineskin (siqāʾ) is probably
an expression of particular scrupulousness. The alternative would have
been fermentation in the hollowed-out trunk (naqīr) of a palm-tree; a
method apparently forbidden by the prophet because of the high alcohol
content resulting (Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, K. al-īmān no. 26; in general Conc. VI
533b). For Shīʿite hadiths on the subject cf. Kulīnī, Kāfī VI 416f. no. 4ff.,
and 418f. no. 1–3. In general cf. Goldziher, Vorlesungen 65f. – Incidentally,
wine was prepared in the same way in Central America. As the trunk of a
palm-tree is soft inside, it could be hollowed out above the root to make
a container for the tree sap to collect (cf. Esquemelin, Die amerikanischen
Seeräuber 84f.).
Bakr’s anti-Shīʿite attitude gave rise to a misunderstanding that would spread

over time. Later literature often regards as “Bakriyya” certain theologians who
defended Abū Bakr’s claim against ʿAlī’s.83 According to Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd they
even falsified hadiths in favour of Abū Bakr, and attacked ʿAlī with hadiths.84
Consequently they also put ʿĀʾisha above Fāṭima.85 Masʿūdī claimed that be-
sides the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth, the Bayhasiyya and others, the Bakriyya – “the fol-
lowers of Bakr b. ukht ʿAbd al-Wāḥid” – also believed that Abū Bakr’s caliphate
80 Text 18.

82 Cf. Majlisī, Biḥār LXXIX 166ff.; EI2 IV 996a s. v. K̲ h̲amr.
83 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mughnī XX1 130, 17, in comparison with 129, apu., and 130, 5; probably
also Mānkdīm, ShUKh 754, 4 and 761, 12; Ḥajūrī, Rawḍat al-akhbār, fol. 98b, 13ff. with refer-
ence to Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī and his school (see ch. C 6.3.2 below).
84 ShNB XI 49, 4ff.; examples also in Ibn al-Dāʿī, Tabṣira 226, 9ff.
85 Baghdādī, Uṣūl al-dīn 306, 11.
136 chapter �
was based on an explicit appointment (naṣṣ).86 It is true that ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b.

Zayd transmitted hadiths from Abū Bakr.87 As these are found hardly anywhere
else it is possible that there was a tendency linked to them, but we are probably
just looking at an optical illusion here. Neither Jāḥiẓ’ K. al-ʿUthmāniyya nor
Ashʿarī’s Maqālāt have any knowledge of this doctrine. Bakr does not appear in
the hadiths favouring Abū Bakr that were preserved in Mawḍūʿāt texts, either.88
The reinterpretation of the name was probably of Shīʿite origin. Ashʿarī seems
to have known it,89 but he distinguished clearly between the two meanings.
Masʿūdī, on the other hand, effected the contamination. Later it became barely
noticeable; in Ibn al-Murtaḍā’s view the Bakriyya was distinguished by two te-
nets: that children do not feel pain, and that Abū Bakr became caliph by naṣṣ.90
Ibn al-Murtaḍā even claimed that Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, too, had embraced
such a theory (Baḥr 94, 6); he had found this in Muʿtazilite tradition (cf.
Gimaret, loc. cit.). Strothmann, Staatsrecht der Zaiditen 29, n. 2, is critical
of this construct. As regards the Maghreb it is important that the term
Bakriyya was also used to denote the followers of Sufi al-Bakrī al-Ṣiqillī
(d. 386/996) who was attacked because of his views on miracles of the
saints (H. R. Idris in: Mélanges Massignon II 334). We may safely disregard
later uses of the term, e.g. to denote the dervish order of the same name
or the Egyptian Bakrī family of the nineteenth century (EI2 I 966a). – The
Bakriyya mentioned in Abū Makḥūl al-Nasafī, Al-radd ʿalā l-bidaʿ 104, 4ff.,
is a copyist’s error for Fikriyya, made clear from the description of its doc-
trine (cf. tafakkur in l. 6) and confirmed by the parallel in Tadhkirat al-
madhāhib (ed. Fijlālī in: IIED 2/1975/130, 5ff.).
Membership of the Bakriyya sadly never became a criterion for the experts of
jarḥ wal-taʿdīl; consequently there is barely any hope of identifying later follow-
ers of this school. Using the word munāfiq as a technical term is not sufficient
to set them aside; it is part of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s legacy.91 Only two of Bakr’s pupils
are named; one of them appears to have received his nisba from his teacher:
86 Tanbīh 337, 7f.; adopted by Gimaret, Ashʿarī 555.

87 See p. 113 n. 35 above.
88 E.g. Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 286ff.
89 Cf. Ibn Fūrak, Mujarrad 189, 3ff.
90 Al-baḥr al-zakhkhār I 42, –7f.; only slightly expanded in the commentary Al-munya wal-
amal 111, 6f. Similarly already al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī I 133, 1f.; possibly based on al-Ḥākim
al-Jushamī.
91 Thus when the ascetic Yūsuf b. Asbāṭ (d. 199/814–5) speaks of the munāfiqū hādhihī l-
umma (Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifa IV 237, pu. f.).
iraq 137
ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĪsā al-Bakrī.
According to Ibn Ḥazm he was the one who considered not only children and
animals but also mentally ill people to be equally innocent.92 Nothing more
can be discovered concerning his identity.92a The same is true of the second
pupil,
Abū ʿUbayd Muḥammad b. Sharīk (?) al-Mismaʿī,
whom Abū Yaʿlā mentioned together with ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĪsā. In another strand
of transmission that goes back to Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār he is called Muḥammad
b. Sahl and has the nisba al-Baṣrī.93 This is not surprising as the Mismaʿī family
was based in Basra.94 He maintained that a murderer’s repentance would not be
accepted; consequently the qāḍī believed him to be the head of a separate sect.
2.2.2.2.4 Asceticism and Rationality

The Muʿtazila became known for the regard in which it held reason. However,
it seems that there was little theorising on the matter; it was able to rely on a
broad consensus. This emerged especially in Basra, within the Qadariyya1 as
well as among the ascetics. Reason was not a universal principle, and did not
mainly convey intellectual insights, either, but provided help in everyday life
and answered the question of what God’s will might be in a particular situa-
tion. It could thus not be separated from ʿilm, the knowledge that, set down
in the Quran or in hadith, was an authority in itself and that reason could ap-
proach through exegesis only. Reason did not create its own foundations.2
It can hardly astonish that the roots of this concept were in fact spread more
widely. The Kufan Shīʿa, too, praised the ʿaql; but their traditions often exhib-
ited a more strongly gnostic tone.3 Above all, philosophical literature exerted
92 Fiṣal IV 191, apu. ff. > Saksakī, Burhān 14, –9f.; regarding him cf. also Abū Yaʿlā, Muʿtamad
202, 2f.
92a Unless he was the same as ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĪsā al-Khazzāz who transmitted hadith from
Yūnus b. ʿUbayd (see p. 401 below).
93 Ḥākim al-Jushamī, Sharḥ ʿuyūn al-masāʾil I, fol. 47b > Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Al-munya wal-amal,
121, 2f.
94 Samʿānī, Ansāb XII 263ff. no. 3783; cf. ch. C 4.2.4.3 below.
1 See p. 59 above; also p. 69 and 73.

2 As emphasised by e.g. Arkoun in: Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord 18/1979/305ff.
3 See vol. I 416 above; summarised in Majlisī, Biḥār I 82ff. For general information see
Rushdī ʿAlyān, Al-ʿaql ʿinda l-Shīʿa al-Imāmiyya (Baghdad 1973); however, the book is struc-
tured without concern for chronology.
138 chapter �
an influence. Hishām’s kātib Sālim Abū l-ʿAlāʾ produced an early translation of

a Hermetic logion calling reason the only possible way of approaching closer
to God.4 The introduction to Burzōye’s Kalīla wa-dimna included a praise of
reason;5 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ embraced this, speaking in his Risāla fī l-ṣaḥāba of
the relation between ʿaql and dīn.6 Sahl b. Hārūn illustrated the interaction be-
tween ʿaql and ʿilm for his readers in K. al-nimr wal-thaʿlab,7 explaining that in-
tellect is not a mere attribute but created to be innate in human nature.8 Ṣāliḥ
b. Janāḥ al-Lakhmī9 examined the relation between ʿaql and adab; it is similar
to that between nature and nurture.10 In Abū l-ʿAtāhiya’s view, everything good
resulted from intelligence, and everything bad from ignorance,11 a statement
already found in the Dēnkart;12 but it is probably too universally valid to be
only an Iranian legacy.
What distinguished Basra, on the other hand, was the attempt at basing this
ideal on a foundation of hadith. While the material was by no means exclu-
sively Basran, the collections were composed here. The attempt failed, as the
authors found no mercy before the emerging jarḥ wal-taʿdīl; probably because
they began their task too late. By this time, propaganda for the ʿaql was mis-
understood as propaganda for the Muʿtazila. Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn said of the most
important man,
Abū Sulaymān Dāwūd b. al-Muḥabbar b. Qahdham b. Sulaymān al-

Bakrāwī al-Ṭāʾī,
a Basran who died in Baghdad on 8 Jumādā I 206/9 Oct. 82113 and whom he
probably knew personally, that he had “kept company with a few Muʿtazilites”
who had “corrupted” him.14 Ibn Ḥanbal was said to have dismissed his traditions
with an ironic laugh.15 He had composed a K. al-ʿaql which Ibn Abī l-Dunyā
4 BEO 19/1965–66/75, 8; cf. also 77, 10f.

5 P. 99, 6ff.
6 § 18f. Pellat.
7 P. 129, 3ff./transl. 73f.
8 Ibid. 132, 11ff./transl. 72; cf. also 134, 6ff./70.
10 Al-adab wal-muruwwa 165, 11ff.
11 Cf. his Urjūza in: Dīwān 451 v. 59.
12 Transl. de Menasce 288 § 292 .
13 TB VIII 362, 1f.
14 TB VIII 360, 6ff. > Mīzān no. 2646 and TT III 199, pu.
15 ʿIlal 125 no. 750 > TB VIII 360, ult. ff. (where several original texts are quoted).
iraq 139
(d. 281/894),16 Jaʿfar al-Khuldī (d. 384/959)17 and Abū Nuʿaym18 quoted among
others. This shows the esteem in which the ascetics held him; after all, he
transmitted from Rabīʿ b. Ṣabīḥ19 and ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd.20 Not even Yaḥyā
b. Maʿīn regarded him as a malicious falsifier. Rather, he said, he studied in
Basra and then fell into the hands of the Sufis in ʿAbbādān where, with all the
weaving of rushes and palm leaves, he forgot his hadith. When he came to
Baghdad, people wanted to hear Basran traditions from him, and he repeated
them incorrectly.21 The number of authorities to whom he referred is indeed
impressive;22 comprising Qadarites as well as people like Muqātil b. Sulaymān23
and Muḥammad b. ʿUrwa, a great-grandson of ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr’s, who was a
companion of al-Mahdī and of Hārūn al-Rashīd.24 Hadith had been transmit-
ted in his family for generations.25 The nisba al-Bakrāwī suggests that the fore-
father was a client of the Basran prophet’s companion Abū Bakra al-Thaqafī.26
Dāwūd himself was probably not a Qadarite. One of his hadiths supported the
istithnāʾ;27 maybe he had been influenced by Sufyān al-Thawrī.28
Also typical of him is the prophetic dictum that someone who under-
stands the spirit of the Quran must not complain of poverty (Suyūṭī I
246, 7ff.). Regarding asceticism cf. also Tanūkhī, Faraj I 117, 3f. – Suyūṭī
also preserved some ʿaql hadiths from him (Laʾālī I 127, 3ff.; 127, –7ff.; 127,
–4ff.; 128, 10ff.); he transmitted the well-known tradition naming ʿaql as
God’s best-loved creation (see p. 196 below) in a particularly detailed
16 K. al-ʿaql wal-faḍlih 11, 10ff.; 13, pu. ff.; 27, 6ff. and 10ff.
17 TB VIII 359, ult. ff.
18 Ḥilya IV 26, 11ff., and 40, 18ff., in the section concerning Wahb b. Munabbih.
19 Regarding the border post in Qazwīn (Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 463, apu. ff.). Regarding Rabīʿ see
p. 121f. above.
20 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr 3XV 250f. no. 17979; Ḥilya VI 164, 6.
21 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 35 no. 458. ʿAbbādān was well known for the rush mats manufactured
there (Dietrich, Dioscurides triumphans 558).
22 Listed TB VIII 359, 15ff.
24 TB III 137, 5.
25 Regarding his father cf. ʿUqaylī IV 259f. no. 1860, and Mīzān no. 7080. ʿUqaylī also has a
Mahdī hadith going back via his father to his grandfather; it seems to be directed at al-
Nafs al-zakiyya. Regarding his great-grandfather Sulaymān b. Dhakwān al-Qahdhamī cf.
ʿUqaylī II 129 no. 613 and Mīzān no. 3458; he transmits from Anas b. Mālik.
26 Found only in ʿUqaylī.
27 Samʿānī, Ansāb II 294ff.
28 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 42, –8ff.; regarding istithnāʾ see vol. I 259 above.
140 chapter �
version (ibid. 130, 3ff.). Concerning the same subject cf. also al-Khaṭīb
al-Baghdādī, TB VIII 359, ult. ff., and Al-faqīh wal-mutafaqqih II 20, 13ff.
Traditions with different subject matter cf. Suyūṭī I 407, pu. ff., and II 414,
ult. ff.
Among Dāwūd’s authorities was
Maysara b. ʿAbdrabbih al-Tarrās al-Dawraqī,
a widely travelled Persian, a shield maker by profession, who circulated had-

iths praising the city of Qazwīn but also transmitted from Mālik b. Anas and
Awzāʿī. His gluttony earned him the nickname al-Akkāl.29 He went so far as to
have the prophet say that someone gifted with natural intellect could not be
harmed by his sins, as he would be intelligent enough to repent afterwards.
People claimed to have heard him admit to inventing hadiths purely because
of their paraenetic use.30 Consequently it may not have been entirely un-
founded that Dāraquṭnī claimed that everyone who quoted one of his ʿaql ha-
diths – which had also been collected into a “book” – added different isnāds.31
Besides Dāwūd al-Muḥabbar, two other muḥaddithūn were said to proceed in
the same way: Sulaymān b. ʿĪsā b. Najīḥ al-Sijzī, a pupil of ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn’s
(d. 151/768), who composed a K. tafḍīl al-ʿaql in two booklets,32 and Mālik b.
Anas’ pupil ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Abī Rajāʾ.33 We can see that Maysara’s material was
popular; the fact that he was still too close to ancient quṣṣāṣ tradition did not
become a problem until later. He had a partiality for rhapsodic narrative; an
account of Muḥammad’s journey to heaven that he traced back to Ḍaḥḥāk b.
Muzāḥim comprised 20 sheets,34 and his version of the prophet’s last sermon
described the punishment for various sins in Dantean detail in order to give
greater urgency to the call to repentance.35 He probably thought that the intel-
lect should look to these things as examples.
29 Regarding him Bukhārī II1 244 no. 838; IAH IV1 254 no. 1157; TB XIII 222ff. no. 8193; Samʿānī,
Ansāb V 391, 5ff.; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ IV 263f. no. 1868; Mīzān no. 8958.
30 ʿUqaylī > Mīzān.
31 TB VIII 360, 17ff., and Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 128, 15ff.; transl. Goldziher in: ZA 22/1907/341 = Ges.
Schr. V 131. In his K. al-Ḍuʿafāʾ wal-matrūkīn Dāraquṭnī consequently called Maysara the
true author of Ibn al-Muḥabbar’s K. al-ʿaql (373 no. 510).
32 Mīzān no. 3496.
33 Mīzān no. 5100 with a relevant hadith; also Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik I 270, 2f.
34 Preserved in its entirety in Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 63, 9ff.; cf. also Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn III 11, –5ff.
Cf. p. 573 below.
35 Suyūṭī II 361, –5ff.; quoted by Dāwūd b. al-Muḥabbar.
iraq 141
2.2.3 The Jurists

The development of legal practice and jurisprudence in Basra lies outside our
topic. However, it is relevant for several reasons. Basran theologians, especially
those of the Ibāḍiyya and the Muʿtazila, were jurists at the same time; within
a locally defined legal tradition of which we know barely anything.1 This is due
to Kufan influence which spread as early as the first half of the second century;
Abū Ḥanīfa was corresponding with the Basran ʿUthmān al-Battī, introducing
Murjiʿite thought in the city, which settled on top of the Qadarite substrate,
leading to a theological mixture that requires separate discussion.2 Jurists did
not form a theologically uniform group, but that was hardly to be expected.
All the same, we cannot simply assign them to the different schools, as one of
them, ʿUbaydallāh al-ʿAnbarī, raised this very lack of direction to the level of a
separate doctrine that would be influential for a long time to come.
It is also interesting for us to see to which social class the jurists belonged.
After the death of the great ʿAbdallāhs – Ibn ʿUmar, Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibn al-Zubayr
and Ibn ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ – the fiqh, it was said, ended up in the hands of the
mawālī.3 Clients, however, were prohibited from becoming judges, for while
a qāḍī was appointed by the governor,4 he also required the support of the
tribes. Clients could pronounce fatwās, but essentially they remained “devout
experts”,5 with little influence on official legal practice.6 Similarly, someone
who did not share the religious convictions of the majority could hardly be-
come qāḍī as the public had to be able to rely on his employing his authority
to exclude someone from bearing witness in a just fashion.7 Which makes it
all the more remarkable that the first mawlā to be appointed judge in Basra
was a Qadarite: Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. The fact seems certain, but remained unique
for a long time.8 As we have seen, in Basra membership of the Qadariyya was
not a flaw, but only ʿUmar II’s reign seems to have fulfilled all the conditions
necessary to defy social boundaries. The second qāḍī in office in Basra during
ʿUmar’s caliphate was probably not entirely “orthodox” in the sense it would be
understood later, either; he appears to have been close to the Ibāḍiyya. But at
least he was a free Arab: ʿIyās b. Muʿāwiya al-Muzanī.
1 Schacht, Origins of Muḥammadan Jurisprudence 229; Index s. v. Basrians.

3 Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 58, 9ff.; also ʿIqd III 415, pu. ff. Cf. vol. I 47 above.
4 The caliph did not usually do this during the Umayyad era (cf. R. G. Khoury in: Festschrift
Spuler 197ff.).
5 This phrase was used by Schacht, Introduction to Islamic Law 27.
6 Unless they were present as advisors during the hearing (see p. 154 below).
7 In his K. al-umm Shāfiʿī discussed the question of when sectarians would be permitted as
witnesses (VI 210f.).
8 As emphasised by Fasawī II 244, 8.
14� chapter �
Regarding the authenticity of Ḥasan’s appointment as judge see p. 48

above; cf. also p. 146f. below. If ʿUmar II had appointed him, this raises
the question in retrospect of why he did not proceed in the same way
with Makḥūl in Syria who after all enjoyed a similarly good reputation.
The explanation offered was that Makḥūl rejected the caliph’s offer, refer-
ring to a prophetic dictum according to which only “a man of the nobility
(dhū sharaf) should judge humans” (Ibn ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd I 22, 6ff.). The
classic case bearing on the issue had been decades earlier: it was said
that when Ḥajjāj became governor in Kufa he intended to appoint Saʿīd
b. Jubayr, a freedman (mawlā al-ʿitāqa), to the office of judge, as he could
rely on him more than on a member of his tribe. He failed because of the
objection of the ashrāf (Mubarrad, Kāmil 439, 7ff. = Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif
446, 3ff.; also Sayed, Ibn al-Ašʿaṯ 352f.). In Mosul the first client to become
qāḍī was not documented until AH 140 (Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 173, 8); his
successor was also a mawlā (ibid. 181, 6f.). On the issue in general cf. Juda,
Soziale und wirtschaftliche Aspekte der Mawālī 183f.
It was claimed later that Ḥasan al-Baṣrī had already been appointed
army judge by Ibn al-Ashʿath (Wakīʿ, Akhbār I 307, –4f.). Experts, however,
doubted this (ibid. 308, 2) – and that probably with justification: it is like-
ly that Ḥasan did not take part in the uprising at all (see p. 47 above). The
first Qadarite to become a judge in Basra after him was ʿAbbād b. Manṣūr
at the time of Yazīd III (regarding him see p. 177f. and 381ff. below). – Ṣāliḥ
al-ʿAlī collated Basran qāḍī lists in Al-tanẓīmāt al-ijtimāʿiyya 296ff. (for the
first century), as does Ch. Pellat, Milieu basrien 288ff. (for the time up to
250/864), and D. Sourdel in: Arabica 2/1955/111 (after Wakīʿ). Regarding
the origins of the office of qāḍī and the practice of early quḍāt cf. Schacht,
Introduction 25f.; Coulson, History of Islamic Law 28ff. and 120 ff.; P. G.
Dannhauer, Untersuchungen zur frühen Geschichte des Qāḍī-Amtes (PhD
thesis, Bonn 1975); Gaudefroy-Demombynes in: Festschrift Dussaud 823ff.;
Morony, Iraq 437ff.; Ẓāfir al-Qāsimī, Al-qaḍāʾ qabla l-Islām wa-baʿdahū, in:
Waqāʾiʿ wa-muḥāḍarāt al-muʿtamar al-ʿālamī 403ff. A primary source to
be adduced now, too, is Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī, Awāʾil II 111ff., which lists the
men who were the first qāḍīs in the cities discussed. Regarding Spain cf.
Ridha Hadi Abbas, Los cadies y el cadiazgo en al-Andalus desde la conquis-
ta hasta el reino nazarí (92–635/711–1237), PhD thesis, Granada 1980, and
M. J. Viguera in: al-Qanṭara 5/1984/123ff. Regarding the duties of a judge
in general see Falaturi/May in: Beiträge zu islamischem Rechtsdenken
47ff. and I. Schneider, Das Bild des Richters in der ‘Adab al-qāḍī’-Literatur,
Frankfurt 1990.
iraq 143
2.2.3.1 The Case of Iyās b. Muʿāwiya

If the qāḍī was not selected from among the “pious experts”, this also meant
that the categories of his administration of justice did not necessarily corre-
spond to theirs. During the sixties of the first century a settled Bedouin (aʿrābī
madarī) was a – successful, we are told – judge in Egypt, although he was un-
able to write and had not mastered the Quran.1
Even in the second half of the second century, during the time of the caliph
al-Mahdī, the qāḍī Khālid b. Ṭalīq was accused of being ignorant in his own
field: he did not even know the name of Muḥammad’s mother.2 He was, how-
ever, an educated man – but a genealogist and historian (akhbārī), not a jurist.3
Half a century earlier, he would probably not have shocked anyone.
The tribes in which these men had gathered their experience followed a
different legal tradition. Differences would have been settled by the ʿarīf, on
the basis of ʿurf.4 The qāḍī would have been approached only in exceptional
cases, and if he was consulted, his function would have been like that of the
ḥakam, the arbitrator who would have been the expert in pre-Islamic times.5
The institution of the ḥakam had by no means vanished among the settled
tribes; after all, the office of qāḍī evolved out of it.6 When we occasionally
read of a tribal qāḍī,7 this is probably exactly what the author meant. Not even
members of religious groups who ought to have been committed to the new
ideal always turned to the superior public authority. The Ibāḍites had their
own authorities,8 and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq appears to have been put out when two
1 Kindī, Quḍāt Miṣr 312, 9ff.

2 Wakīʿ, Akhbār II 127, 12, and 130, 12f.
3 Ibn al-Nadīm, FIhrist 107, 9ff.
4 Cf. EI2 I 629f. s. v. ʿArīf, and Serjeant in: JSS 29/1984/73.
5 Thus e.g. Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (cf. Wakīʿ I 309. 8ff.) or a generation later Sawwār b. ʿAbdallāh
al-ʿAnbarī (Fasawī II 247, 1; regarding him see p. 178 below).
6 As Kindī puts it, ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ was said to have appointed a former ḥakam qāḍī in Egypt
(Quḍāt Miṣr 305, 2ff.). Concerning the ḥakam in general cf. E. Tyan in EI2 III 72 s. v.; also
G. Jacob, Beduinenleben 217f.; Schacht, Introduction 8; Muh. Ibrahim el-Shoush, The Nature of
Authority in Arabia at the Advent of Islam (PhD thesis, London 1959), p. 214ff.; W. Reiner, Das
Recht in der altarabischen Poesie (PhD thesis Cologne 1963), p. 42ff.; Dannhauer, Qāḍī-Amt
12ff.; Ph. Rancillac in: MIDEO 13/1977/147ff.; Morony, Iraq 440; Chelhod in: SI 64/1986/22ff.
and 31f.; also my own thoughts in: La notion de liberté au Moyen Age 25ff. Concerning the
continued existence of the ḥakam in present-day Yemen cf. Chelhod, L’Arabie du Sud III 149ff.
7 Thus said of a “qāḍī of the Tamīm” in Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya III 110, 12.
8 See p. 529 below.
144 chapter �
Shīʿites brought their quarrel before the qāḍī, who was not a Shīʿite.9 A good
example of the type of judge who came from the older background was
Abū Wāthila Iyās b. Muʿāwiya b. Qurra al-Muzanī,
d. 122/740 at the age of 76.10 His talent as a judge was beyond doubt, but there
is no evidence that he relied in any great degree on the Quran, let alone pro-
phetic tradition.11 He had no time for people who devoted themselves to tafsīr
or hadith.12 He relied entirely on his common sense and on his knowledge
of human nature. And he was inspired; he became the ideal exponent of the
firāsa, a kind of Solomon, as Ch. Pellat put it,13 and was remembered in the
proverbial phrase azkan min Iyās “of greater perspicacity than Iyās”.
Cf. Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī, Al-durra al-fākhira 215f. no. 294 > Maydānī, Amthāl
I 325 no. 1754; also Freytag, Proverbia I 593. Wakīʿ I 328, 4ff. and 361ff. has
some anecdotes on the subject; TTD III 178ff.; Thaʿālibī, Thimār al-qulūb
92ff. no. 134; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Al-ṭuruq al-ḥikmiyya fī l-siyāsa
al-sharʿiyya (Cairo 1317), p. 25 and 31ff. The ultimate source is probably
mainly Madāʾinī, K. akhbār Iyās b. Muʿāwiya (Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 117, 5)
or K. zakan Iyās (Ḥamza, Durra 215, ult. > Maydānī I 326a, 12ff.); it is also
the source of the MS Azhar, majmūʿ 1182 (fol. 93a–99a) mentioned in GAS
3/357. Similar stories have been told about some Bedouin judges until the
present day (cf. Gräf, Das Rechtswesen der heutigen Beduinen 102ff.).
As his talent of observation and deduction frequently proved successful

around animals as well, Jāḥiẓ included some of this material in K. al-Ḥayawān.14
However, he also noted Iyās’ mistakes;15 the methodological carelessness came
at a price. Jāḥiẓ thought his vanity led him to jump to conclusions; he also
9 Kulīnī, Kāfī I 67, 11ff. Even in the most recent past it was taboo among the Tahtacı in
Turkey to consult a secular court; differences were arbitrated by a dede (Kehl, Die Tahtacı
48). Concerning arbitration as a characteristic of legal systems in societies predating high
civilisation cf. in general K. Eder, Die Entstehung staatlich organisierter Gesellschaften 159f.
10 Wakīʿ I 373, apu. ff.; 121/739 as claimed by Ṣafadī, Wāfī IX 465, 4, is probably an error.
11 An isolated opinion on a problem of exegesis (sura 13:2) has been preserved in Ṭūsī,
Ṭibyān VI 213, 8f.
12 Wakīʿ I 371, 6ff.
13 EI2 IV 291. Cf. also F. Malti-Douglas in: Arabica 35/1988/68f.
14 Cf. e.g. II 75, apu. ff. and VI 481, 2ff.; also VI 19, 1ff.
15 Ibid. I 149, 3ff. = VI 18, 6ff.; V 368, ult. ff.
iraq 145
talked too much.16 This was an old accusation; it was said that he had coun-
tered it himself with a witty remark. Later, even this would be interpreted in his
favour, as if he had realised his complacency – reason enough for Abū Nuʿaym
to include him in Ḥilya.17 His intuitive approach to legal practice contradicted
later norms in many ways, and was believed to be due to the fact that while
he considered Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Ibn Sīrīn to be the best scholars of the law
in Basra, he never went to any of their lectures.18 There is no proof that he re-
ally thought so highly of those two. In two instances he recommended some-
one as the best person to consult for legal advice, and in both of these the
men named were other fuqahāʾ, true Arabs who had been qāḍī themselves:
ʿAbdallāh b. Yaʿlā, who became judge under Ibn Hubayra in 103,19 and ʿAbbād b.
Manṣūr, who did not achieve this honour until much later.20 At the time when
he was learning from others, Ḥasan and Ibn Sīrīn were not yet influential; the
only jurisconsult (muftī) in Basra at the time was, he said, Jābir b. Zayd al-Azdī.21
He was an Ibāḍite;22 Iyās himself was also named as one, but only in Ibāḍite
sources.23 This may have led to a degree of detachment, which people could
not understand later: Ibn Qutayba reported that he named Ḥasan al-Baṣrī not
only as his own but also his father’s (!) teacher.24
The latter had himself been qāḍī in Basra.25 He came from an old-estab-
lished family in the city; the grandfather Qurra b. Iyās, who traced his geneal-
ogy back to ʿAmr b. Udd, the forefather of the Muzayna, had seen the prophet
and settled in Basra, presumably shortly after its foundation. The Muzayna
were among the ahl al-ʿĀliya, the central Arabian tribes whose houses were
situated close to the chief mosque.26 Qurra was murdered by Nāfiʿ b. al-Azraq
and his rebels when they invaded the city in 65/685; his son was among the
16 Ibid. I 150, 7ff.; also Bayān I 98, 14ff.

17 III 123, 9ff.; also IS VII2 5, 8ff. The entire material collected by Abū Nuʿaym is tenuous; it
is impossible to make an ascetic out of Iyās. There was no tradition of this, anyway; Abū
Nuʿaym’s opinion is derived and based on purely literary considerations. Ibn al-Jawzī’s
biography in Ṣifat al-ṣafwa III 187f. is based entirely on that found in Ḥilya.
18 Ibn ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd I 19, 8ff.
19 Wakīʿ II 17, 3f., and 19, 17f.
20 Ibid. II 44, 14f.; regarding him see p. 381 below.
21 Ibid. I 360, 9f.
23 Darjīnī, Ṭab. 236f.; Shammākhī, Siyar 81, –4ff.; based on him Lewicki in: RO 11/1935/158.
24 ʿUyūn al-akhbār I 62, 11.
25 Maybe only within his tribe (Balādhurī, Ansāb V 254, 10; Ṭabarī II 723, 13 for the year
67/687, but as a general remark).
26 Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Khiṭaṭ al-Baṣra 82.
146 chapter �
defenders outside the gates.27 Even so, Iyās would later be arrested by al-Ḥakam
b. Ayyūb al-Thaqafī, governor of the city in Ḥajjāj’s service since 75/695,28 ac-
cused of Khārijite subversion.29 None of which would be surprising in the case
of an Ibāḍite.
His mother came from Khorasan,30 which probably explains why he knew
Persian31 and had some knowledge of Persian heroic poetry.32 However, he
was born in the Yamāma and grew up in the market town of Uḍākh.33 He was
said to have gone to school in Syria, interestingly with a Christian teacher.34
People remembered that he was short of stature.35 He had sat in judgment in
the market square in Basra.36 He had been appointed to his office in a decree
written by ʿUmar II after he came to power in 99/717.37 However that may have
been, it is certain that tradition did not assume that the caliph would have
preferred a mawlā like Ḥasan al-Baṣrī in his stead.38 If the latter did become
qāḍī after Iyās this was because it was the governor ʿAdī b. Arṭāt’s wish; as we
have seen, Ḥasan assisted him later during a mission to the Muhallabids.39 The
position had fallen vacant because Iyās had incurred the governor’s displea-
sure: he had to flee the city after an awkward legal ruling – a divorce case in
which relatives of the Muhallabids were once again involved on both sides.40
27 Ṭabarī II 580, ult. ff.; IS VII1 20, pu. ff.; Khalīfa, Ṭab. 85 no. 240, and 415 no. 1366; Ibn ʿAbd
al-Barr, Istīʿāb 1280 no. 2110; Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 203, 4ff.; also EI2 I 810 s. v. Azāriḳa.
28 Regarding him cf. the details in: MUSJ 50/1984/734; he lost his position under Walīd (who
became caliph in 86/705).
29 Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn I 202, 1ff. = Tawḥidī, Baṣāʾir III 541, 1ff./2III 90 no. 292; also Wakīʿ I 359,
apu. ff.
30 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 508 no. 1747; also Wakīʿ I 344, 3ff.
31 Wakīʿ I 328, 3.
32 Ibid. I 352, 1, and Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn I 18, 8.
34 TTD III 177, 5ff., and Wakīʿ I 373, 6f.: maktab rajul min ahl al-dhimma.
35 Jāḥiẓ, Tarbīʿ 17, 2, and 16, –5f.
36 Wakīʿ I 339, –4f.; also Chalmeta, Señor del zoco 342. Cf. also Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 292, 1f. Later
theorists recommended that a judge should not be seen in the market to avoid suspicion
that he himself was engaged in trade (Ibn Abī l-Dam, Adab al-qāḍī 68, 10).
37 I cannot find any record of the date 95/713 which Sourdel states in Arabica 2/1955/112.
38 According to Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 100, 12ff., he wished for a qāḍī from the Muzayna. Differently,
and more legendary, in Wakīʿ I 312, 4ff.; Ibn ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd I 19, 8ff.; Murtaḍā, Amālī I 285,
11ff.; Darjīnī, Ṭab. 236, 10ff. (after Tanūkhī).
39 See p. 49 above.
40 Wakīʿ I 313, apu. ff.; Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 468, 3f.; TTD III 175, 9f. and 176, 3ff.
iraq 147
He retired to the Wāsiṭ region where he had a country estate (ḍayʿa).41 By

that time the storm clouds were gathering around Yazīd b. al-Muhallab. The
Muhallabids were linked to the Ibāḍites;42 consequently it may have been wise
to distance oneself and thus avoid suspicion. This may be why Iyās could be
found in Damascus soon afterwards;43 ʿUmar II held him in great esteem.44
According to Wakīʿ’s version, Ḥasan was merely the candidate with whom
ʿAdī tried to make the new appointments look appealing to the caliph;
ʿUmar accepted the decision without ever openly identifying with it. This
corresponds to the tenor of one of the letters he was said to have sent to
ʿAdī b. Arṭāt, where he calls the appointment of a free Arab to the office of
judge “desirable” (Wakīʿ I 77, apu. ff.). He also considered intermarriages
between free Arabs and mawālī as an inevitable ill (Juda, Aspekte 180).
Apparently Iyās b. Muʿāwiya advised ʿAdī b. Arṭāt to look no further than
the great old-established families (buyūtāt) when toying with the idea of
appointing qurrāʾ to offices (Ibn ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd I 20, 4ff.). It would seem
that Ḥasan’s appointment was controversial. It was idealised later; show-
ing a connection between the most eminent exponent of Basran piety
and the ideal ruler suggested itself. The edifying letters Ḥasan was said
to have addressed to the caliph bear witness to this (cf. the collection in
ʿAbbās, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī 51; also GAS 1/593 no. 11). Other elements of legend
were added, too. Thus Ḥasan was said not to have accepted the salary the
governor paid him (Wakīʿ II 8, 14ff., and 11, 8ff.); Iyās on the other hand
received 100 dirham a month (TTD III 176, 14f.).
The fact as such is independent of these added elements. If it is true,
as Wakīʿ (II 9, 3ff.) claims, that Ḥasan was qāḍī twice, it would be more
convincing that he was indeed the governor’s candidate. ʿAdī would have
appointed him directly after assuming office – maybe to keep the influ-
ence of the tribes at bay – and then revoked the decision once the ca-
liph’s contrary decree arrived. But it is possible that this report is only a
later inference. The reports according to which Ḥasan succeeded Iyās as
41 Wakīʿ 315, 5. We cannot rule out that Iyās acquired it only later. Regarding the country
estate TTD III 185, 9f.; it was called ʿAbdasī and situated in the Kaskar district (Ibn Durayd,
Ishtiqāq 181, pu.; Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān s. n.). Concerning the meaning of ḍayʿa cf.
Morony’s discussion in: The Islamic Middle East, ed. Udovitch p. 147f.; it usually referred to
a village with the surrounding arable land. Morony translates “estate”.
43 TTD III 175, 9f.
148 chapter �
qāḍī (e.g. Wakīʿ II 8, 7f.) contradict others stating that he preceded him
(thus ibid. 307, apu.; also Ṭabarī II 1347, 1ff., and Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 142, 14f.).
There were also voices claiming that he was in fact appointed by Yazīd b.
al-Muhallab or his brother Marwān (Wakīʿ II 307, ult f.).
Iyās does not seem to have returned to Basra. In the long run he became over-
seer of the market (wālī al-sūq)45 in Wāsiṭ under ʿUmar b. Hubayra, governor of
Iraq since 102/720.46 He received an earnest of 2,000 dirham from the governor;
later he was said not to have accepted such “gifts” anymore.47 His duties were
extensive; he was responsible for all trade as well as having to oversee dam
building.48 This was not something a nobleman would normally do; people
criticised him for stooping to the level of the “lower orders”.49 In fact he got
on well with merchants;50 in his opinion, commercial experience would have
stood any lawyer in good stead.51 This would suit an Ibāḍite, but there was
something more. It seems that as far as legal matters were concerned, Wāsiṭ
was entirely under the influence of ʿAbdallāh b. Shubruma, the qāḍī of Kufa,
at the time,52 while Iyās was seen as a representative of Basran jurisprudence.53
Ibn Hubayra was a member of the Qaysite–North Arabian party and could
not get along with the Yaman who had their base in Kufa. Consequently Iyās
did not have good relations with Khālid al-Qasrī, under whom the political
climate changed once more in 105/724;54 it may be that he was dismissed from
office at the time. Ibn Hubayra’s son Yūsuf who succeeded Khālid al-Qasrī in
45 Baḥshal, Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 93, 3f.; Ibn Hubayra had appointed someone else first (Wakīʿ I 353,
8f.).
46 EI2 III 802 s. n. Ibn Hubayra.
47 Wakīʿ I 352, 5 and 11ff.; of course he had his salary (the amount of which is unknown) and
his ʿaṭāʾ (354, 2). He was, however, quoted as saying that he had not had a fortune until he
received the 2,000 dirham.
48 Baḥshal, Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 140, –5f. Regarding the overseer of the market in the Islamic world
cf. P. Chalmeta, El ‘señor del zoco’ en España; also P. Crone, Roman, provincial and Islamic
law 107f.
49 Wakīʿ I 316, apu. f.
50 Ibid. 351, 1ff.
51 Ibid. 350, 12ff. When he lectured in the Umayyad mosque in Damascus he had been
noticeable due to his simple attire (thiyāb al-sūqa; TTD III 176, 8f.); cf. also Ābī, Nathr
al-durr V 154, ult.
52 Regarding him cf. Wakīʿ III 36ff. and p. 326 below.
53 IS VII2 5, 12ff., and Wakīʿ I 358, apu. ff.; also TTD III 176, –5ff.
54 Wakīʿ I 364, 2f.
iraq 149
120/71855 certainly tried later to persuade him to take up his old position again.
Iyās declined; after all, he was well over seventy by that time. The governor
condemned him to 56 lashes.56
Reports of his legal practice are often stylised. He was regarded as one of
those highly intelligent men of whom there is only one every hundred years.57
His ability to see through people and situations is documented with topoi;
widely known concepts, such as the comparison of the Arab ecumene – or the
world in general – to a bird are traced back to him.58 Still, it is possible to say
where he deviated from later practice: in the fields of testimony and of conclu-
sion by analogy. It was well-known that he did not think much of testimony;
there were three categories of persons he would not admit at all: seafarers,
because their faith might have been corrupted in India – the usual destina-
tion of Basran trade ships – and also because they were looking for profit and
consequently open to bribery; merchants who controlled the overland trade
to Iran, as the Zoroastrians might have given them a taste for taking interest;
and finally the Iraqi notables (ashrāf), because their sense of tribal solidarity
meant that would testify in favour of anyone.59 He clearly disliked being put
under pressure by influential people; after all, testimony did not concern the
facts of the case to be investigated but only the reliability of a defendant or an
opponent. This is illustrated by an anecdote according to which he stopped
someone whom he esteemed personally from testifying to someone’s char-
acter where he could not have rejected it, giving the reason that only clients
and non-Arabs – according to another version: freedmen, merchants, and
plebs – testify on behalf of others.60 It is interesting that the story presumes
that the person thus addressed believed him. The inference is that testimony
among Arabs was a recent phenomenon that had become relevant only in
the anonymity of the city; within a tribe, everyone would have known every-
body else. It would be wrong to conclude that Iyās accepted the testimony of

56 Wakīʿ I 352, –6ff., and 353, 9ff.; also IS VII2 5, 22f. Cf. also Chalmeta 345.
57 Fasawī II 93, pu. ff.
58 Wakīʿ I 355, 13ff.; Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 171, 17f. Regarding the continued existence
of the motif cf. Gruber, Verdienst und Rang 75f., and Miquel, Géographie humaine II 29
and Index 616 s. v. oiseau-carte; a witty version is quoted in Norris, The Berbers in Arabic
Literature xxiv, after K. mafākhir al-Barbar.
60 Mubarrad, Kāmil 389, –5ff.; Livre des Ruses, transl. Khawam, p. 384. When Farazdaq ap-
peared before him as a witness, he was said to have employed a ruse to avoid him testify-
ing (Wakīʿ I 333, pu. ff.; Agh. XXI 399. 8ff.).
150 chapter �
common people; nor did he admit that of slaves.61 Later, people would be as-
tounded how he could have acted so clearly contrary to Quranic rules: sura
2:282 positively stipulated testimony. However, they thought they remembered
him pointing out the wording, as the passage refers to men and women “that
you approve of”.
Wakīʿ I 337, 10ff.; Mubarrad, Kāmil 390, 3ff.; Ibn ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd I 89, 13ff. =
III 11, 15ff.; Khaṣṣāf, Adab al-qāḍī 289 § 327. The same passage records
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, on the other hand, as having admitted every Muslim as a
witness on the basis of a prophetic dictum. Regarding the law of testimo-
ny and the qāḍī’s right to refuse a witness cf. Tyan, Organisation judiciaire
I 350ff.; regarding Iraqi usage of the time (which Iyās adhered to), with
the oath and one witness being sufficient, cf. Dannhauer 47ff.
Iyās did not yet accept the conclusion by analogy, either.62 His reason appears
to be expressed in the following saying: “If you took a piece of wood (ʿūd) and
compared it to another (qāsa) until there finally was no difference between
the two (anymore), then compared the second one to a third one, the third one
to a fourth one and so one up to a tenth one, if you then compared the tenth
one to the first one, you would find a clear difference between (these) two”.63
What he meant was presumably that an analogy, even if carried out carefully,
always concentrates on certain partial aspects, neglecting differences in other
areas; in the long run, however, these differences add up to a more extensive
discrepancy which will make the conclusion by analogy impossible. A remark
he apparently addressed to Rabīʿa b. Abī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, i.e. Rabīʿat al-raʾy
(d. 136/753), Abū Ḥanīfa’s teacher, was probably also made in this context: “No
building that was erected on a crooked foundation can stand straight”.64
We can assume that all the stories about him concerning theological sub-
jects are of a paradigmatic nature. He was said to have refuted his Christian
teacher while still at school; the latter had mocked the idea that in the Muslim
view, the blessed take nourishment in paradise, as they would have to excrete
it subsequently. Iyās countered this by pointing out that even the earthly body
uses part of the nourishment; in paradise it would use all of it.65 This was an

62 Zubaydī, Ṭabaqāt al-naḥwiyyīn 45, 5, after Aṣmaʿī.
63 Wakīʿ I 351, 12ff., after Khalīl.
64 Ibid. 356, 5ff.; slightly different AZ 427 no. 1028 > al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Al-Faqīh wal-
mutafaqqih II 184, 3f.; Ibn Manẓūr, Mukhtaṣar TD VIII 289, 11f.
65 Wakīʿ I 373, 4ff.; TTD III 177, 5ff.; Majālis Thaʿlab 10, –5ff.
iraq 151
old bone of contention. The Baḥīrā apocalypse showed already that it was a
starting point for Christian polemic; Muslim reactions are found in hadith and
the relevant prophetic dicta can be traced back to Hammām b. Munabbih’s
ṣaḥīfa and possibly even to Jābir b. ʿAbdallāh’s (d. 78/697).66 A fictitious debate
between the Umayyad prince Khālid b. al-Yazīd and a monk picked up on the
question as well;67 it lent itself to illustrating Iyās’ precocious cleverness.
When he went to visit ʿUmar II in Damascus, he debated with Ghaylān there.
The three conversations transmitted by Ibn ʿAsākir – one of them in the pres-
ence of the caliph – are remarkable because Iyās is always the one asking the
questions and consequently guiding the course of the debate. The arguments
he used are documented elsewhere, too; Ghaylān was unable to counter them
from the first.68 It looks as though Iyās had been pitted against the “Syrian”
Ghaylān by the Basran side; similar intellectual competition appears to have
been at the back of another, theologically “harmless” anecdote transmitted by
Jāḥiẓ.69 He was thought to have studied hadith under Ayyūb b. Sakhtiyānī;70
this takes us close to the circles where falsifications might have originated. The
Qadariyya defended itself with contrary traditions, which would subsequently
reappeared in Muʿtazilite sources, but these can be easily distinguished as sec-
ondary.71 The starting point of the development may have been the news that
in a conversation with ʿUmar II Iyās quoted a hadith which stated that “reason
belongs to faith”; he had heard it via his father from his grandfather, and the
caliph was said to have liked it so much that he made a note of it.72 This may
sound Qadarite, but it could be interpreted differently as well. Some people
believed that Iyās argued with Qadarites – whom he mainly found among the
asāwira – in Basra, too. He was said to have respected their intelligence, but he
did not agree with them.73 If he was indeed an Ibadite, this is not surprising.74
66 Cf. in detail, with more material, J. Aguadé in: WO 10/1979/61ff.

67 Ibn Manẓūr, Mukhtaṣar TD VIII 34, 7ff.; also Abyaḍ, Tarbiya 105.
68 TTD III 177, 13ff.; 177, ult. ff., and 178, 7ff. In the first story the argument put in Iyās’ mouth
is one that is also found in the context of Awzāʿī and others (Anfänge 211); regarding 177,
ult. ff. cf. Anfänge 201; regarding 178, 7ff. cf. Anfänge 52.
69 Ḥayawān II 75, apu. ff. This is one of the best-known firāsa stories.
70 Fasawī II 94, –7ff.
71 Anfänge 202f.; as a source of Ibn al-Murtaḍā who was quoted there, cf. Faḍl 341, 15ff.
72 Fasawī I 311, 2ff., and Ḥilya III 125, 11ff.; the version in Ibn ʿAsākir (TTD III 175, 10ff.) shows
that ʿaql would soon be replaced with ʿamal.
73 Wakīʿ I 345, 6ff. and 2f.; similarly Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn II 143, 1ff. Cf. also the parallels I cited
Anfänge 202.
15� chapter �
2.2.3.2 Early Theoretical Texts

There are two apocryphal texts, in the form of a caliph’s official letter, which
throw some light on issues of legal practice discussed in the first half of the
second century in Basra. The first one is the well-known letter from ʿUmar to
Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī. Much has been written about it ever since D. Margoliouth
published it in 1910,1 but it was a study by R. Serjeant2 that clarified the cir-
cumstances of the transmission. Two versions of the text are extant of which
only the longer one was known until recently. The shorter one is older; it was
transmitted not only as a letter addressed to Abū Mūsā in Basra but also to
Muʿāwiya in Syria.3 The second, and much more widely known, version was
based on this one, with many additions and corrections. It may have been cir-
culated by Bilāl b. Abī Burda, Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī’s grandson; he was qāḍī of
Basra between 110/728 and 120/738 with extensive powers.4 The first literary
record of this text is in Jāḥiẓ’ K. al-Bayān;5 the two isnāds via which Jāḥiẓ heard
it are Basran. The first one begins with Qatāda who was in close contact with
Bilāl b. Abī Burda.6
There are, however, other filiations as well. Abū Mūsā and his son Abū
Burda, Bilāl’s father, had lived in Kufa; Abū Burda had been one of the
first quḍāt there (EI2 I 693f.). A brother of Bilāl’s, named Saʿīd, is the
starting point of the isnād via which Wakīʿ received the text (Akhbār I
70, apu. ff.). Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn al-akhbār I 66, 6ff., relies on Syrian
authorities: Jaʿfar b. Burqān (d. 154/771), qāḍī in Raqqa > Kuthaiyir b.
Hishām (d. 207/822–23 in Fam al-Silḥ in Iraq). In the end the isnād
was omitted entirely; Mubarrad did this in Kāmil (14, 4ff.), also Ibn
ʿAbdrabbih (ʿIqd I 86, 7ff.), Ibn al-Ukhuwwa (Maʿālim al-qurba 202, 5ff.)
etc. – Margoliouth as well as Serjeant have an English translation of the
text; a French one may be found in Tyan, Organisation judiciaire I 23,
1 In: JRAS 1910, p. 307ff.

2 In: JSS 29/1984/85ff.
3 Wakīʿ I 74, 1ff.; while the letter to Abū Mūsā has a longer preamble (Serjeant 68ff.).
4 Pellat, Milieu 289; Sourdel in: Arabica 2/1955/112.
5 II 48, 6ff.
6 See p. 158 below. The second one begins with Abū l-Malīḥ Usāma al-Hudhalī (Basran accord-
ing to TT XII 246, 2ff.) and ends with Yaʿqūb b. Ibrāhīm al-Madanī (d. 208/823–4 in Iraq; cf.
TB XIV 268f.). The Qatāda isnād ends with Sufyān b. ʿUyayna, who is also the source for Ibn
ʿAbdrabbih’s version of the text (ʿIqd I 86, 7ff.). Cf. Pellat, Milieu 283f.
iraq 153
n. 3. For older literature cf. Tyan, Organisation 106ff.; Schacht, Origins

104; Hamidullah in: Journal of Pakistan History 19/1971/1ff., Majmūʿat
al-wathāʾiq 316ff., and Maʿdin al-jawāhir (Islamabad 1973), p. 96ff.;
Dannhauer, Qāḍī-Amt 23ff.; also Serjeant in: CHAL I 147f.
As far as the subject matter is concerned we shall concentrate on the points we

have already emphasised in the case of Iyās b. Muʿāwiya. Regarding the law of
testimony the later of the two versions stated: “(All) Muslims are of blameless
reputation (ʿudūl, and as such competent to testify) in each other’s eyes, with
the exception of someone who has been flogged for ḥadd punishment, who
has been proven to have given false testimony, or who is suspected to be in a re-
lation of kinship or clientship (with one of the parties in the case)”.7 Regarding
the conclusion by analogy it explains: “Keep a clear head when something stirs
in your heart (ṣadr) that is not known to you from the Quran or the proph-
et’s Sunna. Familiarise yourself with similar and identical cases (al-amthāl
wal-ashbāh) and deal with things by analogy [. . .]”8 Both these instances are far
removed from the practice transmitted from Iyās; these are postulates pointing
to the future. The demand that all Muslims of blameless reputation should be
allowed to testify was formulated among clients; interestingly, it was said to
originate with Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.9 The word ʿudūl used by the text in this context
would later become the term for professional witnesses.10 However, the analogy
recommended here was the same that Iyās had rejected in his example of the
pieces of wood. It did not have any fixed rules but was simply based on “paral-
lels” (amthāl wa-ashbāh) that had to be “put side by side”, similar to Talmudic
hiqqīsh. The comparison should then result in determining that option which
“is closest to justice within the given circumstances” (ashbāh al-amrayn bil-
ʿadl), as Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Risāla fi l-ṣaḥāba says in one place.11
7 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 49, 12f.

8 Ibid. 49, 7ff.; cf. also Serjeant 67.
9 See p. 150 above.
10 According to Dannhauer the development that would lead to professional witnesses
being required began around the middle of the second century; the first documented
record of ʿudūl meaning shuhūd he found was in a libellous verse composed between
174/790 and 177/793 (p. 26).
11 P. 45, 7, Pellat.
154 chapter �
The two passages were already linked by Wansbrough, Quranic Studies

166f. The connection with Talmudic hiqqīsh was first pointed out by
Margoliouth, op. cit. 320; Arabic qāsa/qiyās is a secondary derivation
from this term, with a change of radicals (cf. also Schacht, Origins 99,
and J. R. Wegner in: The American Journal of Legal History 26/1982/46).
The collocation ashbāh wa-amthāl is also found in the works of the
Ibāḍite jurist Abū l-Muʾarrij al-Sadūsī (Ṭālibī in: Abū ʿAmmār, Mūjaz II
213, n. 6; regarding him see p. 240 below) around the middle of the sec-
ond century. Cf. also, in this case using the new lexical root, the phrase
al-naẓāʾir wal-maqāyīs in a verse by the Kufan qāḍī Ibn Shubruma
(Wakīʿ III 97, 13). Later, such cases were described as qiyās al-shabah;
native scholarship also recognised it as a looser pre-form of the strict
conclusion by analogy following ratio legis (Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mughnī
XVII 330, 16ff. and 353ff.; Ghazzālī, Mustaṣfā II 81, –13ff. etc.); cf. also
Schacht, Origins 106ff.; Ahmad Hasan, The Early Development of Islamic
Jurisprudence 136ff.; Erkenntnislehre 386f. Chain analogies like the one
described by Iyās would continue to be rejected later (Ghazzālī, Mustaṣfā
II 87, 18ff.).
The second text we shall consult shows how controversial analogy still was
at the time. This is one of the numerous letters ʿUmar II was said to have ad-
dressed to ʿAdī b. Arṭāt. The addressee leads us to assume a Basran origin for
this text as well:
The cornerstones of the office of judge are to adhere to what is set down
in scripture. Thereafter (i.e. if nothing is found there) one must judge ac-
cording to the prophet’s Sunna, then the verdicts of the guiding caliphs
(the caliphs guiding us to true faith? al-aʾimma al-hudāt), then the advice
of experts (thumma istishārat dhawī l-raʾy wal-ʿilm). (It is also important)
that you show no preference for one over another, and that you admin-
ister the law among humans knowing on what basis you administer the
law. Do not search for analogies! For he who seeks analogies without
being in possession of the (requisite) knowledge is like a blind man walk-
ing on a path in the night without seeing (and getting lost). If he does find
the right way, he does so without knowing it; if he misses it, this is due to
him (fa-nazala bi-manzilihī dhāka ḥīna) trying to do something of which
he has no knowledge. In this way he will perish, and (at the same time)
doom all those who are with him. Whenever you have to judge among
iraq 155
people concerning a matter of which you have no knowledge, consult

someone who has knowledge (of it)! For if you know nothing of a matter,
but consult someone who does know, you, too, will be one who knows.
(Wakīʿ I 77, 4ff.).
However, qiyās is rejected here due to reasons different from Iyās b. Muʿāwiya’s.
The basis of finding justice is not discrimination and common sense here, but
the Quran and “the prophet’s Sunna”. The text probably originated among the
ahl al-ḥadīth. “Beware of qiyās! Those who apply it are enemies of the tradi-
tions”, Ibāḍite tradition quotes Ibn ʿAbbās as saying.12 In Kufa as well as in
Basra people said, citing Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Ibn Sīrīn as authorities, that Satan
was the first one to draw a conclusion by analogy.13 And where the prophetic
tradition is not enough, it is the caliph according to this text who must de-
cide the case. This is archaic; a view that was hardly held anymore after Ibn
al-Muqaffaʿ’s Risāla fī l-ṣaḥāba.
The caliph already has the experts (dhawū l-raʾy wal-ʿilm) by his side, whom
the judge should consult. Examples were found in the ideal past: historians
reported that ʿUmar discussed important matters with the leaders of the com-
panions of the prophet and the aʿlām al-ʿArab; the latter were described as ahl
al-raʾy.14 In Kufa, Muḥārib b. Dithār appears to have surrounded himself with
a consilium,15 and it was reported that Iyās b. Muʿāwiya and Ḥasan al-Baṣrī pro-
ceeded to do the same in Basra,16 although it is reliably documented only for
ʿAbdallāh b. Sawwār al-ʿAnbarī who was appointed as judge in Basra by Hārūn
al-Rashīd in 192/808.17
2.2.3.3 Experts and Jurisconsults

We probably must imagine the advisers of this kind to have been the “pious
experts” who had long since been giving legal opinions, fatāwā, as they were
called, privately; similar to the responsa (teshūḇōt) with which Jewish gaonim
12 Cuperly, Introduction 172, n. 22.

13 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr 3XII 328 no. 14355f.; regarding Kufa see vol. I 218, n. 38 above. In general:
Erkenntnislehre 389.
14 Ṭabarī I 2213, 7ff.
16 Ḥalīmī, Al-minhāj fī shuʿab al-īmān III 204, 10ff.
17 Wakīʿ II 155, 11ff.; regarding the consilium in Muslim Spain cf. Marín in: SI 62/1985/31ff.
General information in Tyan, Organisation I 339ff.
156 chapter �
answered the inquiries (sheʾelōt) of their fellow believers.1 The population

trusted them, which is part of the explanation of why so many of them were
mawālī. The first one to be discussed here, however, did not entirely conform to
the rule; he was a free Arab and would, under ordinary circumstances, have be-
come qāḍī. But he was blind from birth, and thus not suitable for that position:
Abū l-Khaṭṭāb Qatāda b. Diʿāma al-Sadūsī.2
He had studied under Ḥasan al-Baṣrī for twelve years, three of which he spent
in close contact with his teacher as a guest in his house. After his death he
continued the study circle;3 but died himself only seven years later from the
“pestilence” during a stay in Wāsiṭ. He was in his prime then, between 55 and
57 years old.
This is probably the most reliable information we have (IAH III2 133, 6,
and 135, 5). The date of his death is not always the same: 116/734 accord-
ing to Hārūn b. Ḥātim al-Tamīmī’s Taʾrīkh (in: RAAD 53/1978/138, 9); 117
according to the majority of the sources (e.g. Ibn al-Madīnī, ʿIlal 40, 4f.;
Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 514, 15, and Ṭab. 511 no. 1784); 118 according to Abū Zurʿa
(Taʾrīkh 301, 7). Ibn Saʿd leaves open whether he died in 117 or 118 (VII2 2,
27ff.). According to Qifṭī, Inbāh II 108, 3f., Qatāda died on the same day
as the grammarian ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī in 117. The year of
his birth is given as AH 61 (TT VIII 355, 6), but it is probably only count-
ed backwards, as there was another report according to which Qatāda
was only seven or eight years older than Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī, who died
around 153/770 at the age of 78 (see p. 69 above). Consequently he would
have been born after AH 65, and lived to be only around 50. – Regarding
the “pestilence” mentioned cf. Conrad in: SI 54/1981/71ff. with reference
to p. 67 and 69.
1 Cf. N. Stillman, Jews in Arab Lands 32; H. Krüger, Fetwa und Siyar 66 (also 67, concerning the
parallel with the responsa prudentium in Roman law).
2 Concerning his genealogy cf. Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 318 12ff.; regarding his blindness Yāqūt,
Irshād VI 202, 5; Ṣafadī, Nakt al-himyān 230, 15ff. Darjīnī’s claim, Ṭab. 209, –8f., that Qatāda
“had already gone blind” at the time of Jābir b. Zayd’s death, belongs in a mythical context.
Stories that presuppose his blindness: Fasawī 278, 2ff. and pu. ff. For general information on
him see G. Vitestam in: Akten V. Kongreß UEAI Brüssel, p. 489ff.; GAS 1/31f.; Pellat in EI2 IV 748.
3 IS VII2 1, 12f. > Fasawī, Maʿrifa II 279, –4ff.
iraq 157
There is documentary evidence for two sons of Qatāda’s: Khaṭṭāb b.

Qatāda, probably the firstborn, as the father took his kunya from him (s.
n. 20 below), and Abū l-Khaṭṭāb Yazīd b. Qatāda, to whom Jāḥiẓ referred
in one passage in his Risālat manāqib al-Turk (Rasāʾil I 57, –4f.).
He compensated for his disability with his unusually – even for the time –
trained memory. “What you memorise in your youth is as if engraved in stone”
he was reported to have said;4 he was thought to remember everything the
first time.5 Detractors did, however, point out his absent-mindedness.6 Despite
his disability he travelled widely. He had heard much material from Saʿīd b.
al-Musayyab (d. 94/713),7 but also from Sulaymān b. Yasār (d. between 104/722
and 107/726),8 in Mecca apparently also from ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ (d. 114/732 or
115/733).9 This had probably been during a pilgrimage; his stay in Mecca is doc-
umented during the time when Khālid al-Qasrī was governor there, i.e. before
96/715.10 He visited Kufa twice; during first visit Abū Ḥanīfa – who would, how-
ever, have been very young at the time – appears to have annoyed him with
his questions.11 He himself profited at the time from the Syrian scholar Rajāʿ
b. Ḥaywa’s presence in the city, requesting to hear hadiths from him.12 The fol-
lowers of the Shīʿite extremist Abū l-Khaṭṭāb claimed that when Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq
cursed their master, he was in fact referring to Qatāda; they both bore the same
kunya.13 In his youth he had written to Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī (d. 96/715) asking for
juristic information.14
4 IS VII2 1, 5.
5 Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya II 334, 3; TH 123, 2f.
6 Ibn ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd II 218, 12f. and 219, 6f.
7 IS 2, 9ff.; TT VIII 352, –6ff.; cf. also his juristic traditions collected in Wakīʿ II 259, 11ff., also
Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl 298, 3ff. = 235, 6ff./transl. 260 § 262c.
8 Shīrāzī, Ṭabaqāt 61, 1f.; apparently mainly concerning marital law.
9 Ibid. 69, 7f., concerning pilgrims’ rites (manāsik). Regarding him see p. 718f. below.
10 Kulīnī, Kāfī VIII 111, 1ff.; regarding the dates of governorship cf. EI2 IV 926.
11 Kardarī, Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa I 158, 1ff. and –4; cf. Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir 2VI 81 no. 272.
12 Fasawī II 368, apu. ff.; his stay in Kufa is mentioned elsewhere as well (AZ 300, 3ff.).
13 Qummī, Maq. 55, 3ff. If we read subsequently that Qatāda was acquainted with
Muḥammad al-Bāqir and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq this is an anachronism in the case of the latter,
and, considering the date of Qatāda’s journey, probably fiction in the case of the former,
too (cf. Kulīnī VIII 311, 1ff.; Biḥār XLVI 349f. no. 2).
14 Wakīʿ, Akhbār II 204, 1ff.
158 chapter �
It was emphasised that he spoke pure Arabic.15 His father had lived in the
desert; his mother had grown up as a slave only among Arabs (muwallada).16
He set great store by class distinctions, and when ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn, himself
a mawlā and probably considerably younger, had married a woman from the
Sadūs tribe of which Qatāda was also a member, Qatāda appealed to Bilāl b.
Abī Burda and insisted that Ibn ʿAwn was flogged and forced him to divorce the
woman.17 The affair caused quite a sensation, and was probably aggravated be-
cause both opponents were adherents of different theological views. ʿAbdallāh
b. ʿAwn was an opponent of the Qadarites.18 Maybe Qatāda was a difficult man
in any case. Yaḥyā b. Abī Kathīr (d. 129/746?), whose home was in Basra, left
the city because he could not get along with him.19 He even complained about
Bilāl b. Abī Burda to Khālid al-Qasrī in Wāsiṭ regarding an irrelevant private
matter; the governor wrote back ensuring that Bilāl conceded the case.20
As regards qadar he did not go beyond Ḥasan al-Baṣrī: everything is pre-
destined, except sin.21 From sura 19:83 he concluded that devils incite the
unbelievers to be obdurate.22 Satan cuts every newborn child’s side with a
spear, instilling in it a certain predisposition to sin.23 Consequently Qatāda
may be found in the isnād of hadiths with which the predestinarians proved
their point,24 and it is not surprising that even Awzāʿī referred to him as an
authority;25 the Qadarites Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī and Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba were
among his Basran pupils as well as the “orthodox” Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj.26 Later a
15 IS VII2 2, 20f.

16 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 462, 13ff.; also Yāqūt, Irshād VI 202, 5.
17 Wakīʿ II 28, 6ff.; cf. also Fasawī II 63, 11ff., and p. 414 below.
19 Fasawī II 466, 5f.; regarding him see p. 751f. below.
20 Wakīʿ II 39, 9ff.; the issue was that an Arab had slapped Qatāda’s son Khaṭṭāb.
21 Thus explicitly Lālakāʾī, Sharḥ uṣūl iʿtiqād ahl al-sunna 699, no. 1296. The correspondence
with Ḥasan al-Baṣrī was noted by Dhahabī (Taʾrīkh IV 106, 1f., and 296, –5f. > Ṣafadī, Nakt
231, 3f.); cf. IS 1, 4: kāna yaqūlu bi-shayʾinmin al-qadar. Also Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 625, 9;
Mīzān no. 6864; TT VIII 353, 9ff.; Hady al-sārī II 157, apu.
22 AZ 400, 4ff.; Ṣanʿānī, Muṣannaf XI 120 no. 20088. Sura 28:15 and 7:16 could also be adduced
to this exegesis (cf. M. Schwarz in: Oriens 20/1967/19). This idea is also found in a non-
theological context, and earlier, e.g. with regard to a rebellion in ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Yaḥyā,
Rasāʾil 210, 1ff.
23 Andrae, Islamische Mystiker 22.
24 Thus Ṣanʿānī, Muṣannaf XI 118 no. 20082; cf. also HT 81.
25 AZ 721, 9f.
26 Fasawī II 140, ult. ff.; regarding Shuʿba specifically, ibid. II 277, 9f. = II 647, 5f. = III 30, –4ff.;
also Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn II 44, 3f. Shuʿba, however, considered the Meccan
ʿAmr b. Dīnār (d. 126/743) to be even more reliable (Fasawī II 20, 7f., and 21, 9f.).
iraq 159
remark by a certain ʿAbdallāh b. Shawdhab from Balkh, who had visited Basra
for a while,27 was quoted frequently, to the effect that Qatāda did not rest until
he had “trumpeted” his Qadarite convictions in the mosque in Basra,28 but no-
body ever called him dāʿiya. He was said to have criticised ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.29
The conservative Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ respected him, although he did not like
his Qadarite inclination.30 Maʿmar b. Rāshid transmitted his Tafsīr and met
criticism only outside Basra, from Mālik b. Anas.31 Beyond the city limits things
looked different anyway: Shaʿbī (d. 103/721) in Kufa32 and Ṭāwūs b. Kaysān
(d. 106/725) in Yemen33 had, as was reported, kept their distance. Later, posi-
tions became more rigid everywhere: Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān (d. 198/813) was
said to have rejected everything transmitted by Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba from Qatāda
with the latter’s personal Qadarite slant;34 Ibn al-Madīnī (d. 234/849) belittled
him compared to his contemporaries.35
Nobody was shocked by Qatāda’s Qadarite opinions during his lifetime, as
is clearly shown by his good relations with the authorities. Like Ḥasan al-Baṣrī
he was an ʿUthmānite; Jāḥiẓ emphasised that he was a reliable, i.e. not a Shīʿite,
transmitter of historical information.36 It is doubtful whether he really con-
ducted a debate with Zuhrī at the invitation of the caliph Sulaymān (r. 96/715–
99/717) as Jāḥiẓ claimed; he would have been quite young at the time. But if
he emerged victorious, it was not, as Jāḥiẓ’ Basran source sneered, because
he was such a great jurist, but because he was an unquestioning supporter of
the Quraysh.37 When Yazīd b. al-Muhallab rose against ʿUmar II, Qatāda was
firmly on the side of the authorities. The Muhallabids deported him to Ahwāz
27 Regarding him see vol. I. 135f. above; much quoted by Fasawī (cf. Index s. n., with the same
isnād every time).
28 Fasawī II 280, apu. f., and 281, 13f.; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh III 296, –4.
29 Ḥilya II 335, 3ff.; also Trad. Polemik 18. Cf. p. 385 and 339 below.
30 IKh IV 85, 7ff.; regarding Abū ʿAmr see p. 421 below.
31 Fasawī II 280, 6f.; also Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 396, 6f.
32 Cf., very drastic, Ibn ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd II 377, 12f.; also Fasawī II 277, apu. ff. (using a phrase
which Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 443, 4ff., has Aṣmaʿī say).
33 ʿIqd II 231, 10f. and 337, 10f.; the story presumes that a meeting between the two would
have been possible, and is consequently possibly apocryphal.
34 Fasawī II 144, pu. f.
36 K. al-Bighāl in: Rasāʾil II 226, 6 and earlier. Regarding Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s opinions cf. ʿAbbās
158f.
37 Bayān I 243, 1ff. The tradition itself may well be merely a more concrete representation of
the argument over which of the two was the better scholar in his time (cf. Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān
VII 7, ult.; also Fasawī II 165, 1f.). Cf. also Eisener, Zwischen Faktum und Fiktion 189.
160 chapter �
and imprisoned him there.38 Unlike most Iraqi intellectuals he did not regard
the Syrians as loathed oppressors, but as champions of the faith.39 We know
that he supported Abū Bakr’s claim against the Shīʿites.40 He awarded the
share of the loot of the dhū l-qurbā, the allocation of which had been contested
between the dynasty and the prophet’s family ever since the beginning of the
Umayyad era, to those who ruled after the prophet, i.e. the Umayyads.41
He was valuable to them also as an expert in genealogy and other historical
facts;42 it was thought that he had studied under the well-known genealogist
Daghfal.43 Members of the ruling family are said to have sought his advice fre-
quently; there were times when a mounted messenger visited his house every
day.44 He did not die in Basra but in Wāsiṭ where the governor had his resi-
dence. He was not much liked there; people found him a nuisance and would
have liked to send him home.45 In his Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ Baḥshal preserved some
hadiths transmitted from him in the city,46 but did not say anything about his
stay there.47
In Ibn al-Madīnī’s eyes, Qatāda and his rival Yaḥyā b. Abī Kathīr – who
probably disagreed with him fundamentally as he was an opponent of the
Umayyads48 – were the source of all hadith scholarship in Basra.49 Besides
Zuhrī, Qatāda said with professorial modesty, there was only one “other” who
38 Al-ʿuyūn wal-ḥadāʾiq 66, 6ff. The rather unclear reports in Abū l-ʿArab, Miḥan 392, 1, and
462, 5, probably refer to this as well (in which case the first passage would have to be read
in the passive voice; Ḥajjāj’s also banishing Qatāda is quite unlikely, not least because of
the chronology).
39 Cf. his exegesis of sura 37:173 in Fasawī III 366, 3f.
40 Jāḥiẓ, ʿUthmāniyya 106, 10ff., and 227, pu. ff.
41 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr 3XIII 555 no. 16118 regarding sura 8:41; concerning the issue in general cf.
Anfänge 8f.
42 Yāqūt, Irshād VI 202, 10ff.; Jāḥiẓ also calls him ṣāḥib al-akhbār in his Risāla fī l-ḥakamayn
(Mashriq 52/1958/475, ult.). Statistical information on ʿUthmān and his caliphate may be
found in e.g. Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 40, 11f.
43 IKh IV 85, 11ff. This is improbable; Daghfal lost his life in Persia as early as 65/685 (GAS
1/263f.). Furthermore, he was a member of a neighbouring tribe (Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 319,
3f.). – Qatāda the expert in nasab is also referred to in Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān III 210, 5, and Bayān
I 356, ult.; similar Suyūṭī, Muzhir II 334, 5ff.
44 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 27, 1ff.; Yāqūt, Irshād, loc. cit.
45 Fasawī II 277, ult. f.; the account is not quite clear and cannot be dated with any certainty.
46 P. 128ff.
47 Cf. only 261, 13f.
49 ʿIlal 40, 3ff. and earlier; after him Fasawī I 621, 7ff.
iraq 161
had real insight into the subject – and Zuhrī was a long way away.50 Saʿīd b.
Abī ʿArūba in particular collected and transmitted his traditions.51 He seems to
have started to manage Qatāda’s “archive” during the latter’s lifetime, as Qatāda
himself was of course unable to look things up if his memory failed him.52 It
was only due to his blindness that he did not write things down; he was defi-
nitely in favour of putting prophetic traditions in writing, giving as his reason
that according to sura 20:51f. God himself had set down the “knowledge” of
the “first generations” in a “scripture”.53 He appears to have known Sulaymān
al-Yashkurī’s ṣaḥīfa, and had had the traditions of Jābir b. ʿAbdallāh read to him
from a written source.54 He did not yet set great store by precise isnāds; his fol-
lowers believed him to be a sufficiently reliable authority.55 We have examples
to prove this.56 He transmitted from Mujāhid and Saʿīd b. Jubayr without ever
having met them in person.57 However, people would later believe that when
Ḥammād b. Abī Sulaymān from Kufa introduced the isnād to Basra, Qatāda ad-
opted the custom, too.58 It was said that it was possible to distinguish whether
he had heard something himself or not by the transmission formulae used; in
the former case he would use ḥaddathanā, and in the latter qāla.59 It is worth
noting that he included material from a woman,60 Muʿādha bt. ʿAbdallāh al-
ʿAdawiyya, a Basran ascetic.61 He did not think much, however, of the material
transmitted by Yazīd al-Raqāshī.62
50 Fasawī I 640, 12ff., and 642, 1ff.

51 Ibn al-Madīnī 41, 4ff.; Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān 136, 1f. Cf. p. 164f. below, and in particular the numer-
ous traditions in ʿUmāra b. Wathīma (see n. 76 below), also the poem by Abū Nuwās
quoted in Wagner, Abū Nuwās 35. Different Fasawī II 285, 3ff. Regarding the presumably
apocryphal conversation between Qatāda and Ibn Abī ʿArūba in ʿIqd II 380, 15ff. see p. 73,
n. 56 above.
53 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Taqyīd al-ʿilm 103, 11ff.
54 Ḥilya II 334, –4, and TT VIII 355, 1f.; also Goldziher, Muh. Stud. II 10, n. 9 after Tirmidhī;
also GAS 1/85 and Azmi, Studies 52f. and 71.
55 IS VII2 2, 3ff. > Fasawī II 278, 8ff.
56 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān IV 293, pu. f., and 294, 1f., where he transmits directly from the prophet or
from ʿĀʾisha; also p. 165f. below.
57 TH 123, 13f.
58 IS VII2 2, 21ff. > Fasawī II 282, 4ff.; regarding Ḥammād’s visit to Basra see vol. I 211 above.
59 AZ 456 no. 1157 = Fasawī III 209, 10ff. In his surviving writings this nicety cannot be docu-
mented (see p. 165 below).
60 These traditions are considered not particularly reliable (Fasawī III 612, ult. f.).
61 D. 83/702. Regarding her see p. 118 above.
16� chapter �
Qatāda studied the Quran in great detail. His exegesis was influential far
beyond Basra. Maʿmar b. Rāshid introduced the text to Yemen; it can still be
detected in ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī’s recension.63 It also became known in
Syria through Saʿīd b. Bashīr (d. between 168/785 and 170/787).64 Both these
transmitters were Qadarites. Thaʿlabī knew of an additional, Kufan, strand
of transmission via Shaybān b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Tamīmī (d. 164/781) who
came from Basra and later became tutor to the princes in Baghdad.65 Saʿīd
b. Abī ʿArūba had also recorded the text for a Kufan, another Tamīmī named
Abū Maʿshar Ziyād b. Kulayb,66 who died in the prime of his life in 120/738.67
It was even more momentous that the jurist Khārija b. Muṣʿab al-Sarakhsī
(d. 168/785) received the text from him: in this way the work became known in
eastern Iran.68 Through Saʿīd b. Bashīr the material reached Ṭabarī who would
use the isnād over 3000 times.69 The individual redactions differed;70 they were
probably based on lecture notes. Quotations illustrate that Qatāda, like other
exegetes of his time, paid more attention to the content than to the linguistic
form. The Quran had left no room for doubt that the Jews had disregarded the
teachings of their scripture; the Muslims had to take care that they did not
lapse into unbelief in the same way.71
However, the boundary marking extra-Quranic material had not yet been
drawn clearly at the time. Deliberations on geographical ideas in the Quran72
were linked to speculation regarding the extent of the world in general;73 his-
torical explanations74 were based on knowledge of the prophet’s biography;75
63 Ibn al-Nadīm 36, pu. f.; cf. also Stauth, Muǧāhid 135, and p. 794 below.
64 Cf. vol. I 137 above.
65 Al-kashf wal-bayān, intro., ed. Goldfeld 35, 6ff.; regarding Shaybān cf. TB IX 271ff. no. 4835,
and Qifṭī, Inbāh II 72f.
66 IS VII2 33, 12f. > Fasawī II 285, 3ff.
67 Mīzān no. 2959.
68 He added ca. 1000 hadiths (Thaʿlabī 34, 5ff.). Regarding him cf. ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 25f.
no. 446; further sources see p. 623 below.
69 Cf. Horst in: ZDMG 103/1953/301.
70 TB XIII 486, 9f.
71 Cf. the exegesis of sura 5:44 in Wakīʿ, Akhbār I 43, 11ff.
72 Jāḥiẓ, K. al-Awṭān wal-buldān, in: Rasāʾil III 131, 6ff., and 134, 10f.
73 ʿIqd VI 247, 17ff.
74 Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī, Muʿtamad 596, 10ff. regarding sura 49:6, after ʿUmar b. Shabba’s
(d. 264/877, cf. GAS 1/345f.) K. Kūfa.
75 AZ 151, 2ff. regarding the prophet’s age; Maqdisī, Badʾ II 154, 10ff., and 212, ult. ff.; IV, 139,
5ff.; V 10, 7f. regarding the chronology, the number of the prophet’s children etc.; Fasawī
III 255, 8ff., and 265, 11ff.
iraq 163
the exegesis of these events gave way to qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ.76 Later generations
would indeed regard him as a qāṣṣ.77 He himself is unlikely to have perceived
the difference between Midrash and history yet; before the horizon of salva-
tion history the two would have seemed to merge. Apocryphal quotations from
the Torah were attributed to him as well.78 Such was the style of the ascetics
of his time; it does not surprise us to find that pietistic–ascetic interpretations
were attributed to him as well.79 From sura 33:7 he inferred Muḥammad’s pre-
existence;80 regarding sura 53:13 he thought that during his journey to heaven
the prophet had beheld God as a great light.81 Later this mixture would not be
to everyone’s taste.82 It is noticeable that he did not transmit Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s
Tafsīr. There is no doubt that he studied under Ḥasan, but he did not keep the
material separate.
While this wealth of material, is as yet difficult to survey,83 a short text on
the problem of abrogation has recently been excerpted and edited.84 Later
versions were usually quoted after Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba or Maʿmar b. Rāshid’s
versions, but this one is based on a recension by the Basran Hammām b.
Yaḥyā al-ʿAwdhī (d. 164/781),85 who incorporated remarks by Kalbī, i.e. Kufan
material.86 Its exegetic origin is obvious as there is a complete absence of the-
76 Cf. e.g. Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir II 332, 2f./2VIII 35 no. 101 (concerning sura 11:46) or Suyūṭī, Muzhir
I 29, 11ff. (concerning sura 2:31); also the wealth of material ʿUmāra b. Wathīma preserved
from him not only via Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba but also via Saʿīd b. Bashīr (Khoury, Légendes
prophétiques, Index s. n.), or the story of David, also transmitted via Saʿīd b. Bashīr in
Papyrus PSR Heid Arab 23 (ed. Khoury, Wahb b. Munabbih I 34ff.; I consider Khoury’s at-
tempt p. 185 at tracing all of this back to Wahb b. Munabbih to have failed). Ṭabarī quoted
Qatāda very frequently in the first volumes of his Taʾrīkh (cf. Index s. n.); also Maqdisī,
Badʾ III 57, 9ff.
77 Ibn al-Jawzī, Quṣṣāṣ 71f. § 140–42; also Fasawī II 633, pu. ff.
78 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 104, 8f.
79 Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya II 340, –4ff. On the occasion of his funeral not only the fuqahāʾ but also
the nussāk are said to have joined the procession (Qifṭī, Inbāh II 108, 3f.).
80 Cf. Rubin in: IOS 5/1975/69f.
81 Ibn Khuzayma, Tawḥīd 135, 15f., and 244, 12: with qualification in Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, Īmān
291f.
82 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 169 no. 1044.
83 Cf. in general ʿAbdallāh Abū l-Suʿūd Badr, Tafsīr Qatāda. Dirāsa lil-mufassir wa-minhāj
tafsīrihī (Cairo 1399/1979).
84 K. al-nāsikh wal-mansūkh, ed. Ḥātim Ṣāliḥ al-Ḍāmin in: Mawrid 9/1980, issue 4/478ff.;
separately also Beirut 1984.
85 He was a Qadarite (see p. 81f. above).
86 This led Qaḥṭān ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Dūrī to conclude that this was Hammām’s work
(Mawrid 11/1982, issue 2/185ff.). This is only partially correct: there were probably several
164 chapter �
ory; the text simply lists relevant Quranic verses (on the change of the qibla,
on martial law, on the prohibition of wine). However, any decision in these
matters presupposed a chronology of suras. A list of the Medinan suras taught
by Qatāda in his lectures has come down to us, once again in two versions:
through Maʿmar b. Rāshid and through Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba.87 The latter is slight-
ly more detailed, also distinguishing Medinan sections within Meccan suras.
It is noticeable that the suras do not always have their own names; sometimes
they are marked solely by their initial sentence.88 The same collection of indi-
vidual studies also survives from Zuhrī: a K. al-nāsikh wal-mansūkh89 and a K.
tanzīl al-Qurʾān which distinguishes between Meccan and Medinan suras in a
bare list.90 Jābir b. Zayd al-Azdī was said to have taken first steps in the latter
discipline in Basra.91
Another text transmitted from Qatāda is a list of the ʿawāshir, those groups
of ten verses into which the Quran was divided to facilitate learning it by heart.
This method was still controversial at the time; Qatāda’s Syrian contemporary
Maymūn b. Mihrān (d. 117/735)92 disapproved of it.93 Qatāda was rather an
expert in Quran readings, following the lead of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Ibn Sīrīn.94
However, in the science of the readings (ḥurūf) he would be overshadowed in
Basra one generation later by Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ.95
Too little attention has so far been paid to Qatāda’s significance as a jurist.
Among the Kufan Shīʿites he was regarded as faqīh ahl al-Baṣra.96 While the
meaning of the word was wider then than it would become later, there is no
doubt that when it came to the law, Qatāda did not limit himself to Quran
different lectures on the same subject. However, as C. Gilliot has shown, the individual
versions do not exactly correspond (Aspects de l’imaginaire islamique commun dans le
Commentaire de Ṭabarī, PhD thesis, Paris 1987, p. 421ff.).
87 Preserved in Muḥāsibī, Fahm al-Qurʾān 395, 1ff. Saʿīd refers to Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba here,
rather than Saʿīd b. Bashīr, as he is followed in the isnād by a Basran: ʿAbdallāh b. Bakr al-
Bāhilī, d. 208/823. Cf. also Ṭūsī, Tibyān VI 211, 2f.
88 This was also sometimes the case later. The name of one sura was apparently already
named in the K. al-irjāʾ (Text II 1, d; cf. the commentary). For more information see Paret,
Kommentar 545ff.
89 See vol. I 40, n. 16 above.
90 Ed. Munajjid in: Rasāʾil wa-nuṣūṣ 3 (Beirut 1963).
92 Regarding him see vol. I. 25, n. 4 above.
93 Qushayrī, Taʾrīkh Raqqa 33, 5f.
94 Yāqūt, Irshād VI 202, 9.
95 Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭab. II 25f. no. 2611; Pellat, Milieu 76ff.
96 Biḥār XLVI 349f. no. 2; cf. also ʿIqd II 231, 10f. = 377, 10f.
iraq 165
and hadith. It was known that he continued to apply conclusions by analogy

building on everything he had learnt in Medina from Saʿīd b. al-Musayyab.97
Wakīʿ’s Akhbār al-quḍāt show that he was well-informed regarding juristic
tradition and relevant precedents.98 He transmitted ʿUmar’s alleged letter to
Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī.99 He was of course at odds with Kufan practice, claim-
ing that he had never reached a decision based on mere raʾy.100 We know that
his decision differed in some cases from that of his Kufan contemporary Ibn
Shubruma.101 Although he visited Kufa twice, his teachings were not transmit-
ted directly from him there, but only through intermediaries.102
His text on the pilgrims’ rites (K. al-manāsik) is part of his juristic writings;
once again the text survives in Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba’s recension. It consists in its
entirety of hadiths introduced without isnāds, simply with the words dhukira
lanā anna nabī Allāh. . . . Saʿīd occasionally incorporated traditions after Ayyūb
al-Sakhtiyānī as well.103 Among his contemporaries Qatāda was well known
above all because of his expert opinions. They are occasionally quoted in later
sources as well,104 but they survive as a collection – and apparently compara-
tively complete – in the so-called Aqwāl Qatāda which have been preserved in
Ibāḍite tradition.
I know of two manuscripts of these, both in private ownership on the is-

land of Djerba, one in the Maktaba al-Bārūniyya (the only one accessible
to me), the other in the library of the shaykh Sālim b. Yaʿqūb (cf. ZDMG
126/1976/31). A third one is in Cairo (cf. Ennami, Studies in Ibāḍism 159ff.).
They do not all contain the same recension. I gave an account of this on
the occasion of a conference in Djerba in 1982, cf. now my Kleine Schriften,
vol. II 809–817. The text is being edited by Abdulrahman al-Salimi.
Qatāda himself was obviously not an Ibāḍite; later Ibāḍite Ṭabaqāt works
counted neither him nor Ḥasan al-Baṣrī among their number, but they were
not hostile to him, either. They were certain that he had had great respect for
97 IS VII2 2, 18f.

98 On the quḍāt among the prophet’s companions (I 105, 1ff.); on his contemporary Iyās b.
Muʿāwiya (I 330, 12ff.); on Shurayḥ (I 298, 6ff.; II 331m 11ff.; 383, 12ff.; 388, 5ff. etc.); further
precedents (I 279, 9ff.; 280, 8ff.; 290, pu. ff.).
100 IS VII2 1, 6ff. > Fasawī II 280, 5ff.
101 Wakīʿ III 128, 3ff., and 129, 6ff.
102 AZ 300, 3ff.
103 Cf. the Ẓāhiriyya MS mentioned in GAS 1/32: Majm. 41/12 (c. fol. 163b, 12ff., or 165a, 2f.).
104 Thus e.g. a fatwā regarding ritual slaughter in Ibn al-Madīnī, ʿIlal 56, 3ff.
166 chapter �
Jābir b. Zayd.105 This is quite probable, as Jābir enjoyed a good reputation in

Basra.106 There were several Khārijites among Qatāda’s pupils.107 However, a
later and not always reliable source claimed that he called the Ibāḍites the
“Zoroastrians of this community”;108 he interpreted sura 11:108 as meaning that
God allows some sinners to exchange hell for paradise, thus distancing himself
from Khārijite rigorism.109 He transmitted from ʿIkrima (who was loosely asso-
ciated with the Khārijites),110 but was said to have advised to consult him only
regarding the Quran and not with reference to his other religious opinions.111
After the Ibāḍites had left Basra, they probably saw in him a symbol of their
lost past. Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb studied under him112 and was probably substantially
involved in the creation of the Aqwāl.
The extant versions, however, are of rather more complex appearance.

The copy in the Maktaba al-Bārūniyya occasionally mentions Rabīʿ as
an authority (e.g. fol. 7, –4, and 9, 10: ḥaddathanā l-Rabīʿ); but the redac-
tor was clearly one of his pupils, possibly Bishr b. Ghānim al-Khurāsānī,
which is what shaykh Sālim b. Yaʿqūb’s MS claims (ZDMG 126/1976/31).
The text comprises seven ajzāʾ of which only the first four appear to have
survived uncorrupted; the copyist of the Bārūniyya MS laments that from
juzʾ 5 onwards the text was barely legible in passages, and it is true that
we find interpolations there that have nothing to do with Qatāda: expert
opinions on marital law by Jābir b. Zayd al-Azdī etc. It is said that Jābir’s
K. al-ṣalāt was added at the end of most of the original versions.
The text discusses the entire field of Islamic law in a rather loose and not
always systematic arrangement. If Qatāda appears, it is always as part of an
isnād; which means that what was transmitted from him was not so much his
expert opinion but rather precedents handed down in the form of prophetic
hadith, or of a khabar from a later authority. In some instances the isnāds are
as brief as those in the K. al-manāsik. If other persons are mentioned, they are
105 Darjīnī, Ṭab. 209, –8ff.; Bishr b. Ghānim, Al-mudawwana al-kubrā II 310, 7ff.
108 Abū Muṭīʿ al-Nasafī, Radd 70, 17; regarding the expression see p. 60 above.
109 Ṭūsī, Tibyān VI 68, 7ff.
110 Cf. p. 734 below.
112 Pellat, Milieu 214; cf. p. 228 below.
iraq 167
linked by ʿan only; sometimes a generation is left out.113 Among the authorities
quoted by Qatāda we find not only Basrans but also Meccans like Saʿīd b. al-
Musayyab or, with an intermediary in every case, ʿIkrima and Ibn ʿAbbās, and
even Kufans like Ibrāhīm al-Nakhāʾī or ʿAlqama. Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, on the other
hand, appears only rarely; from a Basran background we also find Ibn Sīrīn and
even the ascetic Farqad al-Sabakhī,114 and above all, more frequently than the
others, Jābir b. Zayd.
The quality of the contents varies; like all collections of fatwās the Aqwāl
Qatāda are a source of supreme value as a contribution to cultural history. They
are not arranged as clearly as we are accustomed to in later texts; opinions re-
garding the prohibition of wine, slavery, marital law and limited partnership
(muḍāraba) are listed next to each other.115 Once again the question of who
is entitled to the dhū l-qurbā share in the booty is discussed,116 but also who
would be entitled to a dihqān’s lands after he had converted to Islam.117 A ran-
dom selection produces: the amount of blood money in the case of incidental
medical malpractice or of abortion by means of drugs;118 the punishment for
pederasty,119 and the minimum of goods stolen for the ḥadd punishment to
be applied;120 the prohibition of images,121 and an assessment of games – in
general, not only games of chance;122 the ritual permissibility of horse meat
or garlic and onions, about which Bakr b. ukht ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd had also
expressed an opinion.123 The material is awaiting more in-depth examination.
It also shows that there were large areas where qāḍī and muftī did not inter-
fere with one another. Many issues were beyond the qāḍī’s authority; in other
cases, people were only looking for a private expert opinion. People had always
striven to suit their actions to tradition, but while a man like Jābir b. Zayd in the
113 Cf. 14, –5f.: ʿan Qatāda ʿan al-Ḥasan anna rasūl Allāh qāla; also 15, 12.
115 Thus e.g. p. 46 in the Maktaba Bārūniyya MS.
116 Ibid. 27, –10ff.; cf. p. 160 above.
117 P. 32, 20f.
118 P. 63 in the chapter on diya (p. 58ff.).
119 P. 65, pu. f.; regarding the issue see ch. C 2.3 below (Thumāma).
120 P. 71, 15f.: a third of a dirham. Regarding the issue cf. Schacht, Origins 107, and ch. C
1.4.3.1.1.3 and 3.2.1.3.5 below.
121 P. 73, –7ff.
122 Qatāda even loathed games played with pebbles (p. 42, –8).
123 P. 74, –6ff.; cf. p. 129 above. Regarding the permissibility of horse meat cf. Damīrī, Ḥayāt
al-ḥayawān II 217, 24ff. s. v. faras. For this reason Ḥasan al-Baṣrī emphasised that he had
eaten horsemeat at the time when he was a soldier in eastern Iran (Bayhaqī, Sunan IX 327,
pu.).
168 chapter �
first century decided purely according to “his knowledge and his conscience”,124
Qatāda now always referred to the prophet and the religious tradition. In this
way he turned the function of adviser into a science; consequently the muftī’s
importance increased steadily until the Ottoman era.125 In 307/919 the prefect
of Baghdad decreed that the police would in future have to comply with the
fatwās pronounced by the fuqahāʾ of the respective quarters.126 Law was never
codified in a unified form; it would forever remain the reflection of a segment-
ed society. One generation after Qatāda there were at least two competing
muftīs in Basra, whose religious views probably differed as well: one Qadarite,
Ismāʿīl b. Muslim al-Makkī, about whose juristic views we know hardly any-
thing – for that reason?127 – and the one with whom Abū Ḥanīfa entered into
correspondence:
Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān b. Sulaymān b. Jurmūz al-Battī,
d. 143/760.128 There is some confusion regarding the names of his father and
grandfather. The oldest sources confirm the above form: Ibn Saʿd,129 Khalīfa b.
Khayyāṭ,130 Ibn Qutayba131 and Shīrāzī.132 Later, however, we find ʿUthmān b.
Muslim b. Hurmuz;133 Dhahabī claimed to have seen him referred to as Aslam
as well as Muslim.134 However, he appears to have mistaken him for a certain
ʿUthmān b. Muslim b. Hurmuz al-Makkī, whom Ibn Ḥajar mentioned shortly
before.135 Al-Battī was not a native of Basra; he had had a business in Kufa, but

125 For general information see G. Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges 197ff., and in: La notion de
liberté 79ff.; H. Krüger, Fetwa und Siyar 42ff.; L. Schatkowski-Schilcher, Families in Politics
118.
126 Sabari, Mouvements populaires 10.
128 Regarding the date cf. Shīrāzī, Ṭabaqāt 91, 1f.; also GAS 1/410. Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ has: “be-
fore 148/765” (Taʾrīkh 654, 14).
129 VII2 21, 14ff.
130 Ṭab. 526, 1.
131 Maʿārif 596, 16.
132 Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ 91, 1f. (without the grandfather’s name). The kunya is noted explicitly
in Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 55, 1.
133 Ibn Mākūlā, Ikmāl I 378, 2 > Samʿānī, Ansāb II 82, 7; Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān VI 303
no. 4022.
134 Mīzān no. 5580; Siyar VI 148, ult.
135 Lisān no. 4014; also Mīzān no. 5561, but without the nisba. Another mistake happened in
Masʿūdī, Tanbīh 342, 11, where ʿUthmān b. ʿAmr al-Battī should be read, following one of
iraq 169
decided to move.136 However, he seems to have studied in Basra; he was

thought to have met Anas b. Mālik, the last of the prophet’s Basran compan-
ions, who probably died between 91/709 and 93/711, in person.137 He dealt in
garments made from rough wool (batt); hence his nisba.138 He had joined the
Banū Zuhra as a client, in particular the family of Akhnas b. Sharīq al-Thaqafī.
During the battle of Badr the latter and his retinue had deserted the heathen
Quraysh, but he had never become a Muslim himself.139
As muftī he was one of the dignitaries. When the Muhallabid Sufyān b.
Muʿāwiya declared himself for the Abbasids in 132/750, and put pressure on
Salm b. Qutayba, who was governing the city on behalf of Yūsuf b. ʿUmar b.
Hubayra, al-Battī and Ismāʿīl b. Muslim were among those mediating between
the two.140 Ḥajjāj b. Arṭāt, the first qāḍī appointed by the Abbasids in Basra
who was, in fact, a man from Kufa,141 attended his lectures.142 When his suc-
cessor ʿUmar b. ʿĀmir al-Sulamī died in 139/756–57,143 it was al-Battī to whom
the Abbasid governor Sulaymān b. ʿAlī came for advice.144 Wakīʿ transmitted
some of his expert opinions, in which he distanced himself from ʿAbdallāh b.
Shubruma, who was qāḍī in Kufa at the time.145 He was a grammarian and
considered to possess great eloquence;146 due to his perfect Arabic he was
the MSS, as ʿUthmān b. ʿUmar al-Taymī (d. c. 145/762; cf. Ziriklī, Aʿlām IV 374). Thus also
Tanbīh 328, 15f.
136 IS VII2 21, 16f.; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 596, 16f. > Mīzān no. 4480.
137 Ibn Mākūlā, Ikmāl I 478, 2 etc.
138 Ṭaylasāns were sometimes made from this material; later, Sufis in particular liked to wear
it (IS VII2 21, 18; Maʿārif 596, 17f.; Suyūṭī, Aḥādīth al-ḥisān 67, 9ff.; cf. also Dozy, Vêtements
54). – Ṣamʿānī tried, with some reluctance, to explain the nisba in connection with a town
near Basra called Batt (Ansāb II 81f. no. 378). But ʿUthmān came from Kufa; Yāqūt located
the town in the vicinity of Baghdad, and also thought the verses that Samʿānī quoted in
support referred to Baghdad (Muʿjam al-buldān s. v.).
139 IS VII2 21, 17; Maʿārif 596, 17, and 153, 11 (and earlier).
140 Balādhurī, Ansāb (Beirut) III 174, 12ff.; shorter Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 610, 9ff.
142 Wakīʿ II 50, 9.
143 See p. 179 and 191 below.
144 Wakīʿ II 56, 6.
145 Akhbār III 85, 8ff., and 84, 1ff. (which has ʿUthmān al-Mutanabbī rather than ʿUthmān al-
Battī!). Regarding the influence of Ibn Shubruma see also p. 148 above and p. 326 below.
146 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 18, 11f. after Yūnus b. Ḥabīb > Jumaḥī. However, Jāḥiẓ misread the name
al-Battī and wrote al-nabī instead, which he then replaced with rasūl Allāh. Ibn Durayd
noticed the mistake (Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī, Taṣḥīf 91, apu. ff.), as did a reader of the MS of
Bayān (cf. the gloss in Bayān IV 393; cf. Pellat in: Arabica 27/1980/2, n. 7). The same mis-
take was made elsewhere, too (cf. TB II 80, 6ff.).
170 chapter �
given the nickname ʿUthmān al-ʿArabī.147 He is the source for some historical
information, too.148 His positive assessment of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ is particularly
noticeable;149 clearly he did not consider him to be a heretic.
It may be that his Kufan connections earned him the Abbasids’ trust. It
seems that he did indeed position himself between local traditions. In Kufa
he would later be regarded as an exponent of Basran thought. Aʿmash was
reported to have named him in the same breath as Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, Ibn Sīrīn
and Qatāda.150 Masʿūdī, too, saw him as a typical representative of the Basran
school.151 He was thought to have had great respect for Ḥasan,152 although
when it came to the judicial practice, he preferred Ibn Sīrīn despite the fact
that, unlike Ḥasan, he had never been qāḍī.153 In Basra, on the other hand,
he gave offence because he was too familiar with Kufan methods. Ayyūb al-
Sakhtiyānī thought as little of him as of Abū Ḥanīfa and of Rabīʿat al-raʾy;154
when at the suggestion of Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd al-Madanī155 he went to Medina to
study under Rabīʿa he found that the latter’s approach was known to him al-
ready as he had encountered it when studying with ʿUthmān al-Battī in Basra.156
Sufyān b. ʿUyayna (d. 196/812) would later claim that ʿUthmān was the first in
Basra to employ the principle of raʾy; his explanation of this unsuitable innova-
tion was that al-Battī, Rabīʿat al-raʾy and Abū Ḥanīfa had all been “descendants
of female slaves captured during the war”.157 He was rumoured to have praised
the Kufan “school”,158 and traditions survive which he had heard from Ibn Sīrīn
147 Thus in Abū Aḥmad al-ʿAskarī’s K. al-Taṣḥīf, p. 53 (quoted in Ḥamza, Taṣḥīf 92, n. 1); ad-
opted by Qifṭī, Inbāh II 344, 6ff. Aṣmaʿī had met him (cf. Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir 2III 42 no. 103).
148 Ṭabarī II 437, 15ff.: on a canvasser for ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr’s cause visiting Basra.
149 Balādhurī, Ansāb III 220, ult. Dūrī.
150 Muwaffaq b. Aḥmad, Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa II 101, 2ff. As he is named as a pupil of Ibn Sīrīn
and a certain Ḥusayn al-Muʿtazili in a parallel text (Kardarī, Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa II 83, pu.
ff.), we may assume that the latter may in fact have been Ḥasan al-Baṣrī; but cf. p. 359f.
below.
151 Tanbīh 356, 12 f.
152 Kaʿbī, Maqālāt 87, 7f.; also Fasawī II 42, ult. f.
153 Samʿānī, Ansāb II 82, 10f.
155 D. 143/760 in Basra; cf. GAS 1/407.
156 Fasawī III 20, 12f.; Ibn ʿAbd al-barr, Jāmiʿ II 44, 10f., tells us that Ayyūb had consulted
al-Battī.
157 Ibid. III 21, 2f.; AZ 508, 3ff.; also Kister in: IOS 2/1072/232, and my thoughts in MUSJ
50/1984/739. The same idea was expressed in a letter allegedly from ʿUthmān (Ṭabarī I
2803, 16f.).
158 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 292, no. 1898.
iraq 171
and which follow Kufan raʾy.159 He was believed to have said that Ḥammād b.
Abī Sulaymān, Abū Ḥanīfa’s teacher, always found the right solution when he
relied on his own raʾy, but went wrong when he referred to his teacher Ibrāhīm
al-Nakhaʿī.160 Mālik b. Anas apparently called him a “comparatist”.161 However,
from faraway Medina he would not have been able to discern what was hap-
pening in any case.
But what had actually happened? After all, Jābir b. Zayd had followed his
raʾy, too, but there is no straight line leading from him to al-Battī. In Qatāda’s
case it had looked rather as if the entirety of the law were covered by prophetic
tradition. This development was now interrupted by Kufan influence. The con-
clusion by analogy began to establish itself, and that not only in the form of
qiyās al-shabah; al-Battī was quoted as saying that a qiyās was possible only if
an ʿilla could be derived from the basic norm (aṣl) given.162
When it came to legal subject matter he followed the Basran tradition very
closely. Like Iyās b. Muʿāwiya he considered an oath of repudiation to be invalid
if it was tied to a condition that was not mentioned explicitly.163 Furthermore,
it was impossible, he found, to divorce a woman unless the marriage had been
consummated.164 Even if both spouses had cursed one another, the mar-
riage still held165 – a paradigm with which Muʿtazilite theology had wrestled
since Wāṣil’s time.166 In other matters he agreed with Sawwār b. ʿAbdallāh al-
ʿAnbarī who had held the office of judge in Basra during the last years of his
life (137/754–144/761), disagreeing with Abū Ḥanīfa, Zufar and Abū Yūsuf, who
were of a different opinion.167 As regards the law of testimony he followed the
idealising tendency of the letter to Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī: a slave, too, can pos-
sess the quality of ʿadāla, as long as he is a Muslim.168 He did not allow, on the
159 Ibid. 219, 10f.

161 Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Ādāb al-Shāfiʿī 211, 2.
162 Ghazzālī, Shifāʾ al-ghalīl 639, ult. ff.; Rāzī, Maḥṣūl II2 493, 6f. His opposition to the qiyās
al-shabah can probably be deduced from the remark in Shīrāzī, Sharḥ al-Lumaʿ 1050, 2ff.
163 I.e.: “ . . . she will be divorced if . . .” (Wakīʿ I 323, 5f.).
164 This was also Abū Ḥanīfa’s view (Kautharī, Taʾnīb 208).
165 EI1 III 27a = EI2 V 731a.
166 See p. 311 and 350, also ch. C 1.3.1.6 below .
167 Ṭaḥāwī, Al-shurūṭ al-kabīr in Wakin, Function of Documents I 2.214ff., and 6.19; Al-shurūṭ
al-ṣaghīr I 60, 24ff.
168 Ṭūsī, Tibyān II 373, 5, regarding sura 2:282. After al-Battī this exegesis was supported by
Shurayḥ (maybe Shurayḥ b. Yūnus, d. 235/849; cf. GAS 1/521) and Abū Thawr (d. 240/854;
cf. GAS 1/491), both of whom were a century younger than he; unlike Mujāhid (d. 104/722).
17� chapter �
other hand, that someone should testify for his father, believing a person in
this position to be biased.169
The passage quoted above also tells us that he respected ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn,
while entertaining more distant relations with the latter’s arch-nemesis ʿAmr b.
ʿUbayd; when he heard that he had received 50 quaestiones regarding divorce
law from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, he expressed doubt that these were really from Ḥasan.
However, he seems to have believed it in the end; the source reporting this is
Muʿtazilite.170 The Muʿtazilites made no effort to claim him as their own, but
he shared some of their views which were considered good form in Basra. We
can see this when we compare the letter he received from Abū Ḥanīfa, a re-
sponse to al-Battī’s letter consulting him regarding his “desire to do good and
give sound advice”, and asking why he called a sinful Muslim a believer who
had merely erred.171 To him, this was clearly a contradiction in terms: belief
is inseparable from fulfilling commandments, and “erring” leads to unbelief.172
While he did not, like the Muʿtazilites, refer to sinners as fāsiq,173 Abū Ḥanīfa
could not resist pointing to the Muʿtazilites as hair-splitting innovators.174 In a
second epistle, the authenticity of which is not certain, the latter informed him
of the correct attitude towards qadar,175 but al-Battī clearly was no Qadarite.
Cf. the story in IS VII2 2 142, 15ff. Further biographical notes about him,
which do not, however, contain anything new, are found in Qifṭī, Inbāh
II 343f. no. 513; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh V 276, apu. ff., and Siyar VI 148f. no. 60;
TT VII 153f.
It was an honour to have studied under him, so much so that it was said even
about Yaḥyā b. Aktham (d. Dhū l-Ḥijja 242/April 857), even though this is
chronologically impossible.176 The latter was qāḍī but a stranger in the city
and presumably in need of support.177 However, significant changes took place
after al-Battī’s death. In the fifties a pupil of Abū Ḥanīfa’s, Zufar b. al-Hudhayl
(d. 158/775) succeeded in infiltrating his circle and attracting some people who
169 IS VII2 27, 20f. = Ḥilya III 38, pu. f.

170 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 242, 4ff.
171 Text II 5, b–c; cf. vol. I 221ff. above.
172 Ibid., m, and p. 196.
175 Text II 8; cf. vol. I 234ff.
176 Masʿūdī, Murūj VII 48, ult. ff./IV 319, 7f.
177 Cf. ch. C 3.3.5 below.
iraq 173
had studied under him. There were probably practical reasons for this; Zufar
was a member of the Banū l-ʿAnbar who were holding firmly on to the office
of judge in the city.178 We hear of two renegades, a certain ʿUbaydallāh b. ʿAbd
al-Majīd179 and Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Anṣārī, a descendant of Anas b.
Mālik.180 We do not know much about the former,181 but the latter became
qāḍī in the city under Hārūn al-Rashīd.182 At first this had no negative effect on
al-Battī’s reputation; Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh continued to refer to him, and
even Ṭaḥāwī preserved some of his teachings in his Ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ.183 Still,
Basran tradition was weakened. Once Abū Yūsuf had become chief qāḍī under
Hārūn al-Rashīd, the Ḥanafites were able to exert political influence beyond
Kufa. The situation is put into sharp relief in the example of
Abū Khālid Yūsuf b. Khālid b. ʿUmayr al-Samtī al-Laythī,
d. Rajab 189/June 805 at the age of 69.184 His grandfather ʿUmayr had been
freed185 by the prophet’s companion Sahl b. Ṣakhr b. Wāqid Ibn Layth;186 he
had moved to Basra and built a house by the Dār al-Iṣbahānī gate.187 The grand-
son was born in the same city in 120/738; he, too, was a mawlā of the same
family and lived in their neighbourhood (dār).188 He was given the name Yūsuf
after the governor at the time, Yūsuf b. ʿUmar al-Thaqafī, who had taken office
178 See vol. I 246 above and p. 177ff. below; also Ṣaymarī, Akhbār Abī Ḥanīfa 104, –5ff.
179 Ṣaymarī 157, 14f.
180 Ibid. 157, 13, and TB V 408, 18f.
181 Regarding him see IAW I 338 no. 926; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 123 no. 1105; Mīzān no. 5381;
Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 139, 7 (which has ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd instead of ʿAbd al-Majīd).
182 Regarding him Wakīʿ II 154f. and 157ff.; TB V 408ff. no. 2920; Pellat, Milieu 290. He was not
the first Ḥanafite qāḍī in the city, but his predecessor only lasted four months in office
(Wakīʿ II 142, 1f.).
183 Cf. the index of Maʿṣūmī’s edition (Islamabad 1391/1971).
184 IS VII2 47, 11f. > Samʿānī, Ansāb VII 132, –4; TT XI 412, 5 (where the age, a common error,
is given as 67 rather than 69). Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ has the rather approximate date of
190/805–6 (possibly due to looking at dates by decades?) (Taʾrīkh 737, 9, and Ṭab. 543, 9f.
no. 1914 > TT XI 412, 6f.).
185 IS VII2 47, 2ff., from where I adopt the reading ʿUmayr (also in TT XI 411, 8); Samʿānī, Ansāb
and Ibn Abī l-Wafāʾ (II 227, 12) have ʿUmar instead, but this is probably merely a simplify-
ing secondary error.
186 IS VII1 45, 4ff.; Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Istīʿāb 665 no. 1091. He was apparently best known from
al-Samtī’s traditions.
187 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 67, 1f.; regarding the location cf. Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Khiṭaṭ al-Baṣra 56 and 93.
188 IS VII2 47, 4f. and 10f.
174 chapter �
that very year.189 He was given the nisba al-Samtī thanks to his composure and
his gravitas (samt); in later years he wore a beard.190
During his youth he had studied under ʿUthmān al-Battī,191 but then joined
Abū Ḥanīfa,192 who died when Yūsuf was not yet thirty, but this had been suf-
ficient time to influence him significantly. In his two Shurūṭ books Ṭaḥāwī fre-
quently noted his views besides those of Abū Ḥanīfa and Abū Yūsuf;193 in fact,
the first book of this genre was said to be by him.194 Another surviving text is a
Waṣiyya allegedly addressed to him by Abū Ḥanīfa.195 He hoped that with this
first-class education he would be able to cut a dash in his home town. Kufa felt
superior to the Basrans when it came to the law. When he began his studies
there, Aʿmash196 had told him quite frankly that in his view there were only
quṣṣāṣ and interpreters of dreams in Basra.197 This was aimed at Ḥasan al-Baṣrī
and Ibn Sīrīn; they should not, he meant to say, be role models for a progressive
young man.
Abū Ḥanīfa, on the other hand, was said to have warned him against using
his name too openly after his return.198 This was reported retrospectively, for
when Yūsuf returned to the environment from which he came, he was not
exactly received with open arms. ʿUthmān al-Battī had been dead for several
years, and people may have felt that the “Kufan” was an intruder. He was beat-
en up and chased out of the mosque.199 Some time later, the atmosphere im-
proved; possibly due to Zufar b. Hudhayl’s influence, or maybe because al-Samtī
did, after all, come from an old-established family. In 167/783 he, as well as the
189 Ibid. 47, 5; also p. 9 above.

190 Ibid. 47, 10; also Samʿānī VII 132, 14 etc. Another Samtī is known from Baghdad (cf. Samʿānī
133, 11ff., which has the date of death as the impossible 128).
191 Ṣaymarī 54, –7ff.
192 Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 136, 11; Kardarī, Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa II 14, 7; IAW II 277f. no. 711.
193 K. al-shurūṭ al-ṣaghīr, Index 1196f. s. n.; K. al-shurūṭ al-kabīr in J. Wakin, The Function of
Documents, Ar. text, passim. P. 17 of the Introduction has general information on the per-
son (with a few mistakes).
194 TT XI 412, 11; also the reference in Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān I 92, 10. The K. al-rahn which J. Wakin
attributes to him is due to a misunderstanding; it is in fact attributed to Abū Ḥanīfa (IAW
II 227, 13ff.).
195 Cf. GAS 1/417. Whether it is genuine remains to be examined. It seems surprising that Abū
Ḥanīfa should have addressed such a text to someone who was presumably with him until
his death, and whom he might have admonished orally. Circumstances are different in
the case of the Risāla to ʿUthmān al-Battī.
197 Kardarī, Manāqib II 83, pu. ff.
198 Ṣaymarī 104, 8ff.
199 Ibid. 150, apu. f.; Muwaffaq b. Aḥmad, Manāqib II 101, 2ff.
iraq 175
Muʿtazilite ʿĪsā b. Ḥāḍir,200 was among the Basran notables who embarked on
a journey from Basra to Baghdad with the objective of making a complaint
about the qāḍī Khālid b. Ṭalīq al-Khuzāʿī to al-Mahdī.201 But when he suggest-
ed the abovementioned Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Anṣārī as the dismissed
Khālid b. Ṭalīq’s successor, he met with resistance: his ideas, people believed,
were influenced by Abū Ḥanīfa, and if he administered the law on the basis
of this, there would be a bad outcome “and our possessions would be lost”.202
Only when Abū Yūsuf visited the city of Basra together with the caliph did his
reputation among the people improve again;203 the august visitors probably
honoured him in some special way. But this was only a brief time before his
death; it can have been only during Abū Yūsuf’s first visit to Basra in 186/802.204
Yūsuf is believed to have spent the remaining years in solitary devotion.205
The traditionists were at the root of the resistance against his Kufan educa-
tion; consequently he could not find anyone interested in his hadith – because
of his raʾy, as Ibn Saʿd emphasised.206 It made no difference that he had also
studied under some “orthodox” experts who would later be widely respected,
such as ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn or Yūnus b. ʿUbayd.207 ʿUthmān al-Battī was consid-
ered reliable; he was not.208 It was even rumoured that he circulated hadith
from people under whom he might have studied, but from whom he had not
heard the relevant hadiths.209 Thus he seems to have taken a “book” from Mūsā
b. ʿUqba (d. 141/758 in Medina), presumably without ever having received
the ijāza.210
Consequently people looked particularly critically at his theological views,
too. He was quite outspoken about them, being an enthusiastic dialectician
and debating with Jews and Christians;211 after winning such an argument he
apparently offered to his opponents that they could now take his position and

201 Wakīʿ II 128, 7ff.; a courtier described the group as ʿuyūn ahl miṣrikum (ibid. 131, 5). Cf.
p. 142 above.
202 Ibid. 131, 8ff.
203 Ṣaymarī 150, pu. ff.
204 Schacht in EI2 I 164a.
205 Ṣaymarī, ibid.
206 IS VII2 47, 9; Fasawī II 655, ult. f.; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ IV 453 no. 2082.
207 IS VII2 47, 6; regarding the two authorities see p. 404ff. and 400ff. below.
208 Mīzān no. 9863.
209 Samʿānī, Ansāb VII 132, apu. f.
211 Wakīʿ II 130, 6f.
176 chapter �
defend it against him.212 But he could not please the Basrans. While one would
think the determinism he had learnt from Abū Ḥanīfa met the predestinar-
ians halfway, they complained that he denied “the scales and the resurrection”.
Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 277/890) still claimed to have seen a book by al-Samtī
stating this; he called it “Jahmite”.213 In actual fact the combination was
probably Kufan; “denying the resurrection” may have meant that he did not
believe in the perpetuity of paradise.214 Ibn al-Madīnī (d. 234/849), who appar-
ently met him once in Mecca215 or maybe knew him from Basra, called him an
“enemy of God” and a “heretic” (zindīq).216
The Qadarites, on the other hand, took umbrage at his tenet that “if God
knows of an unbeliever that he will never believe, if the latter were able to
believe after all, he could act against (even) divine predestination (qaḍāʾ Allāh
wa-qadaruhū)”. In al-Samtī’s view, God’s prescience implied predestination.
The Qadarites turned the tables on him: al-Samtī, too, had to admit that hu-
mans were obliged to believe; an unbeliever would thus have a duty that he
was unable to perform. This contradicts the principle of ultra posse nemo ob-
ligatur. What was attacked was probably once again Abū Ḥanīfa’s doctrine; the
source, however, sneers that al-Samtī learned this in Wāsiṭ from a zindīq and
dualist named Ḍarīr.217 This marked him as a heretic in the Qadarites’ eyes
as well.218 Where fiqh was concerned they did not follow him anyway. ʿAmr b.
ʿUbayd was said to have explained to him that he had to learn to speak Arabic
properly before he could consult him concerning points of law.219 He was prob-
ably one of those who prepared the ground for Najjār’s theology.220
212 TT 412, 13ff. I do not know what is meant by Wakīʿ’s remark in this context that Yūsuf “sold
(or bought?) churches and synagogues” (loc. cit.). Regarding Yūsuf’s moustache fashion,
mentioned there as well, see p. 439 below.
213 IAH IV2 222, 2f. > TT XI 411, –4ff., and 412, –4.
214 See ch. C 1.3.1.5.1 and D 3 below; regarding the Jahmiyya p. 568 below. Basran Qadarites did
not necessarily believe in the scales, either (see p. 82 above).
215 Samʿānī, Ansāb VII 133, –5f.
216 TT XI 411, 13ff.
217 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 148, 8ff.; also Mughnī VIII 4, 8; similarly Ḥajūrī, Rawḍat al-akhbār,
fol. 146a, 12ff. The source they shared was probably Kaʿbī.
218 During a visit to Kufa when he was a young man, the Medinan Muḥammad b. ʿAjlān (re-
garding him see p. 761ff. below) was said to have foretold him that he would be suspected
of being a heretic before he died (Mīzān III 645, apu. ff.).
219 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 212, 5ff. with two further traditions of this kind. Cf. the positive comments
on the language employed by ʿUthmān al-Battī (p. 169 above).
220 Thus Sharīf al-Murtaḍā, Inqādh al-bashar (in: Rasāʾil al-ʿadl wal-tawḥīd, ed. ʿImāra, I) 259,
8ff.
iraq 177
One of his pupils was his son Abū l-Rabīʿ Khālid b. Yūsuf al-Samtī (d. 249/
863), who is also considered a Basran Ḥanafite. Regarding him cf. Samʿānī,
Ansāb VII 133, 7; IAW I 230 no. 581; Mīzān no. 2488. According to Ṣaymarī,
Akhbār Abī Ḥanīfa 151, 3ff. Hilāl al-raʾy (d. 245/859 in Basra; GAS 1/435f.)
was in contact with him.
2.2.3.4 Kullu mujtahid muṣīb

Even before Abū Ḥanīfa became known beyond Kufa, a Kufan had been qāḍī
in Basra for a short time:
al-Ḥajjāj b. Arṭāt al-Nakhaʿī.
The Abbasids had appointed him immediately after seizing power; they prob-
ably would not have trusted a Basran.1 He possessed a healthy self-confidence:
when, dressed all in black, he visited ʿUthmān al-Battī’s teaching circle for the
first time and the latter offered him the seat of honour, he said that wherever
he sat would be the seat of honour.2 He could boast of having pronounced his
first fatwā at the age of 16.3 He did not stay in Basra long; after only a month
Sulaymān b. ʿAlī, who took over the administration of the city from his brother
al-Saffāḥ, seems to have removed him from office.4 He had not dared to take
part in the Friday prayer;5 when he rode out he was preceded by kāfirkūbāt, the
dreaded club-bearers who were also Abū Muslim’s entourage.6 The population
did not like him and it was said that he had been the first to take bribes.7 And
in the end the governor appointed a man from before the revolution: ʿAbbād b.
Manṣūr al-Nājī, a Qadarite who had been appointed to the position during the
time of Yazīd III.8 He was one of the old guard of anti-Umayyads, with Ḥajjāj b.
Arṭāt being another one; he had been prefect of police in Kufa under Yazīd III,
or rather his governor ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.9 However, loyalties
were distributed differently in the case of a Basran: in 145 ʿAbbād b. Manṣūr
1 Wakīʿ II 50, 8ff.; regarding his Kufan origins ibid. 50, pu., and 51, 7f. General information re-
garding him IS VI 250, 10ff.; Mīzān no. 1726 etc.
2 Wakīʿ II 50, 9f.
3 Ibid. 50, 15f.
4 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 634, 3ff.
5 Wakīʿ II 52, 15 and n.
6 Ibid. 51, pu.; regarding the kāfirkūbāt cf. EI2 IV 411 s. v.
7 Ibid. 51, –5f.; regarding the phenomenon as such cf. F. Rosenthal, Gifts and Bribes in: Proc.
Amer. Philos. Soc. 108/1964/135ff., and Tyan, Organisation judiciaire I 425ff.
8 Sourdel in: Arabica 2/1955/113. Regarding him see p. 381 below.
9 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 559, 4, and 578, 6; Wakīʿ II 54, 4f.
178 chapter �
had Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh appoint him qāḍī, proving that he felt closer to the
Qadarites than to the Abbasids.10
The failure of the uprising was the last reason why a man who had already
been a judge in Basra for some years earlier reached the pinnacle of his power;
a Basran like ʿAbbād b. Manṣūr, but without ties to any religious groups:
Sawwār b. ʿAbdallāh b. Qudāma al-ʿAnbarī.
Manṣūr had appointed him in 138/755–6.11 He was the first qāḍī to have been
chosen by the caliph himself,12 but also the “first Tamīmite to preach from a
Basran pulpit”.13 He had to preach because he took charge of, first temporar-
ily and after 145 permanently, “the prayer” besides the office of judge; in prac-
tice this meant that he was the governor at the same time.14 He was the “first
Tamīmite” because he was one of the Banū l-ʿAnbar; his family would soon be so
powerful in Basra that he made a point of being a member of the Quraysh, and
for this reason rearranged their genealogy, or had it rearranged.15 Afterwards
the clan would not relinquish their hold on the office of judge for some
centuries.16 Sawwār himself had earlier, since 137/754–5, shared the post with
another; a strange and apparently never-repeated arrangement. They presided
over trials together, but he only listened.17 This may have been due to him being
the younger one, but there may have been a different reason: his colleague, ʿUmar
b. ʿĀmir al-Sulamī, was believed to be a Murjiʾite,18 while Sawwār considered
Abū Ḥanīfa, and consequently Murjiʾites in general, to be heterodox.19 Later,

11 Wakīʿ II 80, 11ff. after Abū ʿUbayda; less precise ibid. 56, pu. ff. Regarding him also Sourdel
in: Arabica 2/1955/113.
12 Ibid. 57, –7.
13 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 294, 8f.
14 Wakīʿ II 80, 11ff., and 91, 15f.; Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 665, 3; Ṭabarī 378, ult. f.; Balādhurī, Ansāb III
257, 13ff. Dūrī.
15 Baghdādī, Uṣūl al-dīn 276, pu. ff., where other Basran scholars are named who did the
same thing; nearly all of them, however, younger.
16 Regarding Sawwār’s genealogy cf. Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 209, 1ff. Regarding his son ʿAbdallāh
b. Sawwār see p. 155 above and p. 447 below.
17 Wakīʿ II 55, 2ff.; Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 634, 7f. Shortly after the turn of the century there had
been two qāḍīs in Kufa (see vol. I 193, n. 37 above), but they did not work together. In the
anecdote TB X 307, 14ff. > Ibn al-Jawzī, Adhkiyāʾ 69, apu. ff. this fact has been transferred
onto his successor ʿUbaydallāh b. al-Ḥasan al-ʿAnbarī by mistake.
19 Wakīʿ II 65, –7ff.
iraq 179
when he was his own master, he once rejected Sayyid al-Ḥimyarī’s testimony,
because the latter believed in the rajʿa; as a result he was made the butt of
some polemic poetry.20 When he died at the end of Dhū l-Ḥijja II 156/Nov. 773,21
ʿUbaydallāh22 b. al-Ḥasan b. al-Ḥusayn b. Abī l-Ḥurr al-ʿAnbarī
became his successor. He was a member of the same tribe, but from a differ-
ent family.23 His grandfather al-Ḥusayn b. Abī l-Ḥurr had taken part in the
conquest, although he was not mentioned among the companions of the
prophet. Khālid b. al-Walīd had granted him a share in the sawād of Ubulla;24
in 29/649 ʿUthmān had awarded him the sawād of Basra.25 He was a tax official
under Ziyād;26 according to Ibn Ḥazm he governed Mesene for 40 years.27 His
grandson, born 105/724 or 106/72528 was certainly not without possessions and
influence.
He was so influential, in fact, that he inherited his predecessor’s com-
bination of offices unchanged; he was directly responsible to the caliph.29
According to Aṣmaʿī he took office at the end of 156, according to Abū ʿUbayda
this was not until Muḥarram 157/Nov.–Dec. 723; it is certain that the transi-
tion was seamless.30 The precise wording of the letter of appointment Manṣūr
sent him survives.31 His assumption of office was such a significant event that
20 Ibid. 70, 13ff., and 75, 3ff.; Agh. VII 254, 6ff.; also Akhbār Yamūt b. Muzarriʿ in: RAAD
54/1979/683, 3f. He did not accept the testimony of an elementary school teacher because
he was paid for his work (Ibn Abī ʿAwn, Al-ajwiba al-muskita 92 no. 545).
22 The sources frequently write incorrectly ʿAbdallāh rather than ʿUbaydallāh.
23 Regarding the genealogy IS VII2 42, 1ff.; Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 209, 3ff. (with a mistake in Abū
l-Ḥurr); TB X 307, 2f. (also corrupt).
24 Ṭabarī I 2057, ult. f.
25 Ibid. I 2829, 5; cf. also 2549, 1f. for the year 17/638 (sojourn in Iraq) and 2923, 12f. for the
year 33. He was one of those who had had a bathhouse built in Basra at their own expense
(Balādhurī, Futūḥ al-buldān 434, 13f.).
26 Agh. XII 207, 6ff.: he had treated Abū l-Aswad al-Duʾalī badly and was attacked by him.
27 Jamhara 209, 5. Among his clients was a noble Persian named Pērōz who was called
Fayrūz Ḥusayn after him (Mubarrad, Kāmil 1104, –6ff.).
28 TT VII 7, 4ff.; cf. also TB X 306, 21, which, however, has “105” rather than “100”, presumably
due to a confusion of numerals.
29 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 666, 6. According to Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 294, 10f., there were four quḍāt ʿumarāʾ
in all in Basra; cf. Pellat, Milieu 117.
30 Wakīʿ II 91, 4ff.; the date 157, which is more realistic in any case, is also found in Ṭabarī III
380, 3f., and TB X 301, 6f.
180 chapter �
it was celebrated in poems.32 Like his predecessor he received a salary of 200

dirhams,33 a handsome amount considering that a construction worker at the
time was paid between one and two dirhams a month, and even the privileged
Khorasanian soldiers, as far as they were included in the dīwān, only 80 dir-
hams.34 While he was said to have fled from those who wanted to appoint him
qāḍī,35 we can be fairly certain that this belongs in the realm of pious legend;
the stereotypical character of this behaviour would have been well known.
Cf. the story reported by Wakīʿ II 140, 11ff., esp. 15ff. A. J. Wensinck examined
the topos in: Festschrift E. G. Browne 491ff., and Goitein in Studies 205ff.;
cf. also the examples in Munir-ud-Din Ahmad, Muslim Education and the
Scholars’ Social Status 227ff. – Concerning judges’ salaries cf. Moukdad,
Richteramt 56ff., and Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Baghdād I1 218. Iyās b. Muʿāwiya had
received only 100 dirhams (see p. 148 above); Shurayḥ on the other hand,
who died as early as 78/697, allegedly 500 dirhams a month (IS VI 95, 16f.).
Of course one must always regard such figures with caution; the informa-
tion does not refer to the same period, either. However, it does seem that
ministry officials were overall more highly paid than judges (Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī,
op. cit. 212f.). For general information cf. Ashtor, Prix et salaires 65ff., and
Sabari, Mouvements populaires 36 and 39f.
The obligation of preaching the khuṭba on Fridays presupposed a certain rhe-

torical skill, which was not required of a qāḍī otherwise. ʿAnbarī possessed this
to a high degree. We are told that during the Festival of the Sacrifice he recited
paraenetic poetry from the pulpit, attempting to stir up his listeners with the
Ubi sunt qui ante nos motif;36 his sophisticated, sometimes even mannered
style gave rise to a number of anecdotes.37 A special occasion to unfurl his
art occurred when he appeared at court in Baghdad as the envoy of his city
at al-Mahdī’s accession to the throne in 158/775. He had to express his con-
dolences to the young caliph on the death of his father, and at the same time
32 Ibid. II 121, 6ff.

33 Ibid. II 121, ult., and 86, apu.
34 Kennedy, Abbasid Caliphate 78.
35 TB X 307, 7ff.
36 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 120, 1ff. (after Madāʾinī; for identification cf. I 295, 1) = Wakīʿ II 112, 4ff. = Ibn
ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd III 202, 17ff. K. al-Aghānī offers further confirmation that he had some
knowledge of poetry (cf. Index s. n., esp. IX 289, 1ff.; XII 307, 15ff. and earlier; XIV 167, 4ff.)
Regarding the Ubi sunt qui ante nos motif cf. C. H. Becker’s essay in: Islamstudien I 501ff.
37 Wakīʿ II 109, 1ff.: a physician, maybe not a Muslim, does not understand him and answers
in his own jargon. II 108, 11 confirms that he employed iʿrāb.
iraq 181
congratulate him on his accession; in Abū ʿUbaydallāh al-Kātib’s view – and

being al-Mahdī’s secretary he would know – he combined the subtlety of
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s exhortations and Ghaylān al-Dimashqī’s letters in his orato-
ry.38 Clearly he was a master of paraenesis – and showed that at the very least
Ghaylān’s style could still be used as inspiration.39 The deputy he left behind
was, in fact, a grandson of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s.40
All the same, he was not able to forge a good relationship with al-Mahdī in
the long term. Maybe it was his own fault: his demeanour was most superior.
In Ṣafar 159/Oct. 775 he addressed a long letter to the caliph the exact wording
of which survives; (a copy of?) it was preserved by the family, and later recited
by his son in Samarra, apparently before a circle of friends.41 ʿUbaydallāh per-
mitted himself, after a goodly portion of rhetoric, concrete admonition: the
caliph should be just, look after the border regions (thughūr)42 and make sure
tax policy was administered properly, especially in fayʾ lands.43 He made use
of the chiliastic spirit of change that dominated the early days of al-Mahdī’s
caliphate;44 he quoted hadiths according to which the end of time was
near.45 This reminded the caliph of his responsibilities even more. Whether
ʿUbaydallāh did indeed, as people said, reject letters from al-Mahdī’s chancel-
lery with the comment that they were composed in bad Arabic,46 cannot be
said for sure. But we do know he was removed from both his positions in 159.47
He did not remain out of favour with the caliph for long; one year later he
was qāḍī once more,48 although he did not become governor again; in 160/777
38 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 295, 1ff. after Madāʾinī; Wakīʿ II 108, 5ff.; TB X 308, 21ff. after Jumaḥī; Zubayr
b. Bakkār, Muwaffaqiyyāt 207f. no. 124. Linking the two intentions named was also a re-
quirement of the taʿziya poems (Wagner, Grundzüge der klass. arab. Dichtung 131).
39 Cf. vol. I 153f. above.
41 Ibid. II 97, 4ff.; regarding the date cf. 107, apu.
42 Ibid. 100, –5ff. Does this refer to the jihad against Byzantium, in which Hārūn al-Rashīd
in particular was involved? Or maybe to the border regions in central Asia, where Basran
interests were also involved? It is even possible that it simply refers to ʿAbbādān.
43 Ibid. 102, 4ff: with concrete complaints and details.
44 More detail ch. C 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 below.
46 TB X 308, 14ff.
47 Ṭabarī III 466, 3f.
48 Ibid. III 484, 9. When ibid. 470, 2f. names him as qāḍī in the year 159, this is presumably
based on a different source than 466, namely the list of offices of the respective year; the
previous note is in the context of the actual report.
18� chapter �
Muḥammad b. Sulaymān b. ʿAlī was appointed to this office and retained it

until 165/782.49
It was not until 166/783, when al-Mahdī visited the city of Basra, that ʿAnbarī
lost the office of qāḍī for good,50 as more cause for conflict had accumulated in
the meantime. The caliph had instructed him to take care of the compensation
for old injustice (maẓālim), whereupon he took on a case of landed property
that had been simmering in the city for an entire generation.51 Saffāḥ had given
a piece of land in tenure (iqṭāʿ) to a certain Sulaymān b. ʿUbaydallāh, grand-
son of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥārith b. Nawfal, known as Babba (d. 83/702 or 84/703).52
This was a piece of land the Umayyad caliph Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Malik had
taken from Ḥajjāj’s family, and when Ḥajjāj’s descendants filed a claim for it,
al-ʿAnbarī decided to return it to them. He had corresponded with the caliph
beforehand and been granted the authority to proceed in this manner, unless
Sulaymān b. ʿUbaydallāh’s son, who had inherited the estate from his father,
should be able to produce a document in legitimation. It was later claimed that
ʿAnbarī suppressed this clause in the hearing before the Basran dignitaries, but
that the accused had heard about it and refuted him publicly, in addition pro-
ducing al-Saffāḥ’s original document of transfer. When ʿAnbarī insisted on his
decision the current owner complained to the caliph, succeeding in captur-
ing his attention during the hajj. Al-Mahdī considered ʿAnbarī’s proceeding a
personal insult: the qāḍī had described crown property (ṣawāfī) as unlawful
possession (maẓālim). ʿAnbarī had to retract his verdict.53
It is difficult to determine the true facts of the case. One has the impression
that Muḥammad b. Sulaymān, the Abbasid governor of the city, had a hand
in it; he appears to have arranged the meeting with the caliph in Mecca. Of
course the beneficiary of the scandal was related to the Abbasids; Sulaymān b.
ʿUbaydallāh traced his genealogy back to ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib; furthermore he was
related by marriage to al-Saffāḥ – through of his great-aunts, Umm al-Ḥakam,
the daughter of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥārith b. Nawfal.54 And finally the account on
49 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 671, 2f., and 689, 7; also 695, 8ff. Cf. also Kennedy, Abbasid Caliphate, Index
s. n. Muḥammad b. Sulaymān b. ʿAlī.
50 Wakīʿ II 91, 3ff.; Ṭabarī III 506, 7.
51 Regarding the resumption of the maẓālim practice under al-Mahdī see ch. C 1.2.2 below. It
affected land rights in particular, as the authorities had their own interests here (Coulson,
History of Islamic Law 128).
52 Regarding him cf. in detail Madelung in: JNES 40/1981/292f. and 297ff.; also p. 761 below.
53 Wakīʿ II 92, 8ff., esp. 92, –4, and 92, 7ff.; also 122, 5. Cf. the interpretation in Dannhauer,
Qāḍī-Amt 105ff.
54 Zubayrī, Nasab Quraysh 30, 19ff., and 86, 1ff.; also Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 70, 6f. Regarding
Umm al-Ḥakam cf. also Akhbār al-ʿAbbās 228.
iraq 183
which we are basing our observations was from the pen of his grandson ʿAlī
b. Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Nawfalī,55 the son of the owner at the time; we
should not really expect an impartial record.
The account is still more questionable because al-Mahdī only led the pil-
grimage in person in 160/776 (Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 670, 4). Even if we were to
date the events described above earlier, this would be the least suitable
of all years: al-ʿAnbarī had just been reinstated in his office. Maybe we
should assume 165/782 as the actual date; this would immediately pre-
cede his losing his position in 166/783, and the historians do not record
the pilgrimage for that year at all.
Maybe a note in Taʾrīkh Baghdād can help clarify ʿAnbarī’s motives: it states
that he resisted the order from al-Mahdī to find in favour of a military leader
(qāʾid) against a merchant in court, and was dismissed because of this.56 This
case also concerned landed property, and there is reason to assume that it
was in fact the same case, which would imply that Ḥajjāj’s descendants were
Basran merchants, and ʿAnbarī championed their interests against the enrich-
ment policy adopted by the powerful families. However, the hypothesis suffers
slightly because none of Sulaymān b. ʿUbaydallāh’s descendants made a name
for himself in the sources as a military leader, but it is possible that qāʾid simply
referred to an influential man at court, which his son Muḥammad b. Sulaymān
undoubtedly was.57
In Jāḥiẓ’ K. al-bukhalāʾ we find a remark confirming that ʿAnbarī looked after
the interests of his city, in the famous passage on the problems of home owners,
which goes back to a certain al-Kindī, possibly the philosopher; ʿUbaydallāh
says that the true source of wealth is in agriculture and animal husbandry rath-
er than renting out houses, or owning palm groves.58 The qāḍī appears to have
understood that the powerful classes’ speculation in real estate was taking
its toll, with agriculture suffering as a consequence. He saw himself as the
55 Wakīʿ 93, 7; see also p. 535 below.

56 TB X 309, 8ff.
57 Cf. Ṭabarī, Index s. n. Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Nawfalī. Accounts cover the time of al-
Manṣūr and al-Mahdī (II 534, 1ff. reports a maẓālim judgment of al-Mahdī’s at which he
was present). They were collected by his abovementioned son ʿAlī, who was well-known
as a historian (cf. GAS 1/312).
58 Bukhalāʾ 87, 13f./transl. Pellat 124; copied by Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn I 252, 14f.; Ibn ʿAbdrabbih,
ʿIqd III 32, 10f. Also translated by Gabrieli in: Rendiconti Lincei, ser. 8, VI 203ff.; cf.
Brunschvig in: SI 52/1980/5f.
184 chapter �
advocate of the population; he had been governor for a reason. But his person
in particular illustrates the change. As the qāḍī was appointed and paid direct-
ly by the caliph, he was dependent on Baghdad; if he wished to pursue his own
policies, he would be removed from office. Later generations would remember
ʿAnbarī for trying to maintain the independence of his office: when he had to
judge in a case involving the caliph, he was said to have remained seated when
the caliph entered the room, and merely lowered his gaze. Only once the case
had been heard did he pay his respects.59
Further biographical notes, which do not add anything to the above:

Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 91, 4f.; Samʿānī, Ansāb IX 383, 6f., and 384, 10ff.; Ibn Kathīr,
Bidāya X 151, 5ff.; TT VII 7f. no. 12; Marṣafī, Raghbat al-āmil min K. al-
kāmil IV 165. Praise of beautiful handwriting is found in Tawḥīdī, Fī ʿilm
al-kitāba in: Ars Islamica 13–14/1948/19 and 27, no. 93. – A son named
Aḥmad is noted in Wakīʿ II 97, 4f.; a nephew named al-Ḥasan b. ʿAbdallāh
b. al-Ḥasan al-ʿAnbarī was qāḍī in Basra during Muʿtaṣim’s time between
221/835 and 223/838 (Wakīʿ II 172ff.). An uncle who bore the same kunya
as the ancestor Abū l-Ḥurr was an Ibāḍite (see p. 736f. below).
We might expect such a man to be mainly practically oriented. And indeed,

concerning furūʿ we are told above all how he decided in individual cases. He
did not, for instance, punish the consumption of nabīdh.60 He only accepted
Bakr b. Bakkār (d. 206/821), a traditionist who transmitted Mujāhid’s Tafsīr
among other works,61 as a witness once he had assured him, that the public ac-
cusation of homosexuality against him was untrue.62 He did not admit the phi-
lologist Abū ʿUbayda, apparently because of the same suspicion.63 He did not
accept ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn because he had scolded his nephew using a phrase
that was obviously considered blasphemous.64 It seems that his value judg-
ments had a moral rather than a social basis. He did not accept the testimony
59 Māwardī, Adab al-qāḍī I 248, 5ff.; Ibn Abī l-Dam, Adab al-qāḍī 85, 9ff. – Regarding his rela-
tionship with al-Mahdī cf. also Wakīʿ II 117, 3ff., and 96, apu. ff. In the anecdote Agh. XVIII
199, 1ff. his removal from office is dated to early; cf. Wakīʿ II 126, 11ff.
61 Agh. XVIII 187, 1f.; regarding him GAS 1/98.
62 Ibid. 185, 5ff. (where al-ʿAnbarī is the correct reading, rather than al-ʿAnazī) and Wakīʿ II
114, –4ff.
63 Qifṭī, Inbāh III 282, 11f. and 1.
64 Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn II 200, 11ff. Elsewhere, however, we find that he esteemed him greatly
and set only the fighters of the battle of Badr above him (Wakīʿ II 118, –4f.).
iraq 185
of a stupid man, even though he was quite devout.65 As opposed to later cus-
tom he still attached some importance to written information; he judged on
the basis of a letter sent to him by the judge of Ubulla and Ahwāz, without de-
manding an additional oral testimony,66 although he did consider it necessary
that he should recognise the author’s handwriting and that the letter had to
be sealed. His reasoning was that the prophet, too, had proceeded in the same
way, and that in similar cases witnesses were difficult to come by.67 This was
Basran tradition to a degree; Ḥasan al-Baṣrī was said to have taken the same
decision,68 also Sawwār b. ʿAbdallāh and, later, Abū Yūsuf and others; Abū
Ḥanīfa and Shāfiʿī, on the other hand, considered two witnesses necessary.69
In the later tradition, however, all this would be overshadowed by a maxim
that leads us entirely into the realm of legal theory: kullu mujtahid muṣīb, “he
who administers the law is right”. It goes far beyond this area, in fact, for ʿAnbarī
was not thinking of judgments only but of rational decisions of all kinds, even
if they related to matters of faith. Consequently a more exact translation would
be “wherever someone makes an independent judgment, he will hit on some-
thing that is right”. This is clear in the account by Ibn Qutayba, which puts theo-
logical examples first.70 For instance, the Quran does not say clearly whether
humans determine their own actions, or whether they are determined by God.
There is documentary evidence for both positions; consequently the determin-
ists and the Qadarites are both right. It only depends on the perspective: “The
ones emphasise God’s sublime nature, the others wish to keep God untouched
(by any responsibility for evil)”. How to classify a hardened sinner is also a “pri-
vate matter”; scripture has a basis for Muʿtazilites as well as Murjiʾites and all
others. This does not mean that scripture contradicts itself; the problem, in
fact, lies with the exegesis, as one and the same verse may sometimes be inter-
preted differently.71 There is no method of reaching a clear conclusion based
on a given text every time.
ʿAnbarī also applied the maxim to legal usage (sunan). It is the exegesis
that is controversial, with the result that it is not always possible to reach a
65 Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn I 71, 4ff.

66 Wakīʿ II 119, 13f.
67 Was he thinking of material witnesses? Presumably not; he probably only meant that
nobody could be found who could testify to the authorship and authenticity of the letter,
i.e. a professional witness.
68 Wakīʿ II 11, –7ff., where Ḥasan did not even ask for proof of authenticity.
69 Regarding the entire subject cf. Māwardī, Adab al-qāḍī II 96, 3ff.; in general also Sarakhsī,
Mabsūṭ XVI 95ff. Other material in Māwardī, ibid., n. 2. Cf. also Dannhauer, Qāḍī-Amt 57ff.
70 Text VII 1. Regarding the classification cf. Schacht in EI2 IV 1101 s. v. K̲ h̲aṭaʾ.
71 Text VII 1, b.
186 chapter �
unanimous decision. The jurist has to depend on himself, and there will be
something to be said for each alternative he might choose.72 ʿAnbarī was prob-
ably not – or not exclusively – thinking of unclear or contradictory hadiths,
but of cases in which customary law had not resulted in a uniform course of
action.73 What is essential is that he was not aware of the concept of leading
decisions, and neither does ijmāʿ seem to have played a part in his decisions.
Interestingly he left it to the individual whether to perform ritual cleansing of
the feet or whether to perform an alternative rub-down (masḥ ʿalā l-khuffayn).
This was a legal controversy that also divided the denominations; he did not
want it to become a shibboleth.74
After all, the same principle must apply in cases decided not on the basis of
exegesis but purely speculatively. We cannot know whether a murderer is con-
demned to hell, for we do not know the future. Consequently it makes no differ-
ence whether we say he is in hell or in paradise or whether, like the Murjiʾites,
we reserve judgment until the Day of Judgment, for in any case we are express-
ing that it is God who will dispose. We must allow that the past is similar: we
lack the criteria necessary for us to take the side of ʿAlī, or Ṭalḥa and Zubayr
in the battle of the camel. Both sides were right; consequently what they did,
was correct (“work of obedience”) and by no means a sin.75 Consequently one
cannot impose on anyone to side with either; it seems logical that the view that
even in matters of dogma unreflected adoption of a given doctrine – in fact,
all doctrines as long as they have a basis in the Quran – was permitted, should
have been attributed to ʿAnbarī.76
It is due to these examples that ʿAnbarī, however much he may have been a
jurist, deserves a place in this history of theology as well. We might have pre-
sumed that a maxim like “he who administers the law is right” supported the
qāḍī’s authority, rejecting attempts at introducing unified legislation. There
cannot be much doubt that the dictum was conceived out of ancient legal tra-
dition. The “Iraqis” did not consider a verdict invalid even if it was regarded
72 Ibid., k–n.

73 While Lecomte referred to the relevant hadiths in the context of the examples mentioned
(Taʾwīl 51, n. 3–5), the text does not name these explicitly – contrary to the impression
given by the translation. They reflect the problem, but there is no reason to assume that
ʿAnbarī based his decisions on them.
74 Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī, Muʿtamad 856, 2f., where this is traced back to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.
75 Text VII 1, o–s. We do not know whether the text is deliberately limited to this case, and
whether ʿAnbarī would have assessed the situation differently in the case of Ṣiffīn, but it
does not really seem probable.
76 Text VII 2.
iraq 187
to be unjust.77 This is reflected in hadith in the debate on whether a judge who

makes a wrong ruling will be called to account for it in the afterlife at least;
the majority rejected this, confirming that he would merely receive a lesser
reward.78 ʿAnbarī had studied under Iyās b. Muʿāwiya;79 he appears to have prac-
tised a rather cavalier approach to the conclusion by analogy.80
But his objective went beyond this juristic approach. It was irenic, and at the
same time slightly sceptical; he saw how adherents of different dogmas fought
one another using Quranic arguments, and had to realise that neither exegesis
nor tradition allowed of a decision in favour of one of the two. Basically, his
categories were his attempt at a compromise, like the Murjiʾa and the Muʿtazila
before him, even though he was an adherent of neither of these. If he had been
a Muʿtazilite, he would have expressed different views on the battle of the
camel or on the manzila bayna l-manzilatayn.81 He did not want to practise
ἐποχή like the Murjiʾites; not because he thought it was impossible to reach a
verdict, but because it was impossible to reach one verdict, and because conse-
quently everyone was right and it was possible to follow everybody’s opinions.
The Murjiʾite solution, too, was only one among many in his view.82 He was
probably simply a free spirit and did not want to constrain anyone to follow
a particular opinion. Ibn Qutayba’s counting him among the ahl al-kalām is
fundamentally correct,83 but we have no evidence of him ever engaging in dia-
lectical discussions or having close contact with theologians.
A delightful exchange between him and Khalīl b. Aḥmad, who was

around the same age, was recorded, on whether human speech was cre-
ated or uncreated (Wakīʿ II 111, 11ff.). Here, however, it was Khalīl who
applied theological thought (regarding the issue see also Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān
198, 12f.; regarding Khalīl see p. 253ff. below). – His relationship with the
ahl al-ḥadīth also remains indistinct. It was known that he had transmit-
ted hadith, and he was even considered reliable (TB X 306, 18ff.; Mīzān
77 Shāfiʿī, Ikhtilāf al-ḥadīth, in the margin of K. al-umm VII 54, 12ff.; quoted by Schacht,
Origins 103.
78 For general information see my essay in: La notion de liberté au Moyen Age 25ff. (Arabic
version in: Dirāsāt islāmiyya, ed. F. Jadʿān 123ff).
79 Wakīʿ I 350, 12.
80 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān I 345, apu. ff. Like Iyās he was considered to be very intelligent (Jāḥiẓ,
Bayān I 275, 10f.).
81 Text VII 1, s and e.
82 Ibid., d and q.
83 Ta’wīl mukhtalif al-ḥadīth 57, 5f. = 46, 7f./transl. Lecomte 50.
188 chapter �
no. 5353). But Wakīʿ found that these were only very few traditions (II 88,
13ff.; with examples). Ibn Saʿd noted that he was an expert on the rijāl
(VII2 42, 1ff.). – He probably did not have any contact with ascetics, al-
though one of his female slaves, whom he freed because of her piety, was
listed among the unknown ʿābidāt of Basra by Ibn al-Jawzī (Ṣifat al-ṣafwa
IV 31, 5ff.).
Later, when there was greater understanding of logic and of epistemology, it

was barely possible to imagine such a viewpoint. Not that it was rejected out-
right – after all, in individual problems of Islamic law, competing schools of
thought remained permitted, and the Shīʿa in particular never put a stop to
the mujtahidūn’s independence. Where there were “eternal truths” at stake,
however, namely in theology, ʿAnbarī’s maxim was seen as too subjectivist.
Consequently the systematists attempted to reinterpret it,84 and Ibn Ḥajar ex-
pressed his astonishment at Ibn Qutayba’s account quite freely.85 These very
corrections, however, confirmed the fundamental correctness of Ibn Qutayba’s
account: something had to be removed, and by distinguishing between uṣūl
and furūʿ, one could clearly state what that was.86
At the beginning, the development was moving in the opposite direc-
tion – more evidence that Ibn Qutayba was right. ʿAnbarī’s maxim appealed
especially to those outside jurisprudence, in political theory and wherever
people hoped to arbitrate between opposing factions,87 or to offer an option
to more than one competitor.88 Fiqh experts rejected them to begin with, first
Aṣamm, then Ibn ʿUlayya.89 The discussion of the Basran law school ought to
continue with Aṣamm; however, being a Muʿtazilite he will be presented else-
where.90 Following the same local tradition, Jāḥiẓ would later modify ʿAnbarī’s
principle.91
84 Cf. the commentary on Text VII 1.

85 TT VII 7, 8f. In his Taqrīb he mentions explicitly takāfuʾ al-adilla (I 531 no. 1434).
86 Cf. also Turki, Polémiques 184f.
87 Thus e.g. Walīd al-Karābīsī (see p. 497 below); maybe also Shīrāzī, Ishāra ilā madhhab ahl
al-ḥaqq 42, –4f., where the maxim even appears as a hadith.
88 Thus e.g. in Zaydite imamate doctrine, e.g. in Sulaymān b. Jarīr (see p. 540 below).
89 See p. 470 below. Also Bernand in: Arabica 37/1990/158f.
91 Ghazzālī, Mustaṣfā II 106, 18f.; Rāzī, Maḥṣūl II3 41, 5f.
iraq 189
The first to accept the principle were not Basrans, but rather the Ḥanafites92
and Shāfiʿī;93 probably in effect implementing ancient Iraqi tradition.94 The
Ḥanafites would soon attribute the maxim to Abū Ḥanīfa himself. Maybe it
also shows that outside Basra people had less faith in the power of human
intelligence.
Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī would later be said to have applied the principle to

theological issues. Bāqillānī, a jurist, who said this of him (in Ibn al-Ahdhal,
Kashf al-ghiṭāʾ 243, 3ff.), adhered to it as well (Gimaret, Livre des Religions
578, n. 76). Māturīdī debated the subject with ʿAlī b. Saʿīd al-Rustughfanī
from Samarqand (IAW I 362, pu. ff. = II 310, 12f.). Regarding the individual
positions in this argument cf. Shahrastānī 155, –4ff./455, 1ff.; Bājī, Iḥkām
al-fuṣūl 707ff.; Shīrāzī, Sharḥ al-Lumaʿ 1043ff. etc.; also Gimaret, Ashʿarī
545f.
2.2.4 Murjiʾites in Basra. The “Ghaylāniyya”

Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq was reported to have cast aspersions on the Basrans: they were
all unbelievers, to wit, Murjiʾites, Qadarites and Khārijites.1 Of course, this was
the Kufan view of things: the Shīʿites there regarded the Murjiʾa as the arch-
enemy, which is why they named it first. If we look at the jarḥ wal-taʿdīl works,
on the other hand, the impression we get is that in fact there were barely any
Murjiʾites in the city. Basrans who moved to Kufa would of course adapt, e.g.
Ṭalq b. Ḥabīb2 or Bashīr b. al-Muhājir al-Ghanawī, a mawlā who had prob-
ably studied under Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and later lived in Kufa among the Banū
Ghanī.3 In Basra itself, the names of only three Azdites have been transmitted,
who appear to have been tolerated by their fellow tribesmen the majority of
92 Khaṣṣāf, Adab al-qāḍī 35, 7f.; IAW I 363, 1f.; cf. Bernand in: JAOS 105/1985/627.
93 Cf. the translation of the relevant passage from Shāfiʿī’s Risāla in Calder in: SI 58/1983/64ff.
Calder, in his habitual scepticism, dates the origin of the maxim far too late (p. 67). Later
people were less like to attribute it to Shāfiʿī (cf. Bernand in: Arabica 37/1990/153f.).
1 Kulīnī, Kāfī II 387, 11f.

2 Regarding him see vol. I 181f. above.
3 Murjiʾite according to ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 144, 1 > TT I 486f. no. 867. Regarding him also IS VI
251, 4f.; Bukhārī I2 101f. no. 1839; IAH I1 378 no. 1472; Mīzān no. 1243. Regarding a pupil of
Ḥasan’s who remained a Qadarite even in Kufa see vol. I 264f. above.
190 chapter �
whom were Ibāḍites, Ibāḍites and Murjiʾites having cooperated during Yazīd b.
al-Muhallab’s uprising.4 The first one among them,
Abū Shuʿayb Ṣalt b. Dīnār al-Hunāʾī al-Azdī al-Majnūn,
had even attended Iyās b. Muʿāwiya’s5 lectures, but had been conspicuous
mainly because he was continually speaking out of turn.6 He later studied
under Ḥammād b. Abī Sulaymān, probably at a time when he had come from
Kufa to give a guest lecture.7 He railed so much against ʿAlī and the ahl al-bayt
that even the Basrans who, after all, were mostly of an ʿUthmānite inclination,
found it excessive.8 – The second one,
Abū l-Mughīra al-Qāsim b. al-Faḍl b. Maʿdān al-Ḥuddānī,
d. 167/784, had become known mainly by transmitting a controversial pro-

phetic miracle.9 He had settled with the Ḥuddān in Basra, although he actually
belonged to a different branch of the Azd.10 The third one,
ʿUthmān b. Ghiyāth al-Rāsibī al-Zahrānī,
transmitted that the angels on both sides of the bridge of hell would intercede
on behalf of the faithful.11 Like Ḥuddān, the Zahrān were part of the Azd.12 His
Khārijite connections may explain why he had got his hands on a “book” by
ʿIkrima who had not authorised it for Basran listeners.13 They all lived during

8 ʿUqaylī II 209, 11ff.; Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 375, –5ff. > Samʿānī, Ansāb XIII 430, ult. ff.
Fasawī III 63, ult., and TT IV 434f. no. 752 mention him as a Murjiʾite. Cf. also IS VII2 37,
12f.; Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 348 no. 2291; Bukhārī II2 304 no. 2917; IAH II1 437f. no. 1919; Mīzān
no. 3906.
9 ʿUqaylī III 477f. no. 1535. Murjiʾite according to Mīzān no. 6931 and TT VIII 329f. no. 594.
Nothing in IS VII2 40, 4ff.; Bukhārī IV1 169 no. 760 and IAH III2 116f. no. 668.
10 Samʿānī, Ansāb IV 84, 4ff.
11 ʿUqaylī III 214, 1ff.
12 Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Khiṭaṭ al-Baṣra 98.
13 ʿUqaylī 213, pu. f.; Azmi, Studies 66. He was a Murjiʾite according to a verdict by Ibn Ḥanbal
(ʿIlal 288 no. 1863 > IAH III1 164 no. 898; Kaʿbī, Qabūl 216, 12f.; Mīzān no. 5561; TT VII 146f.
no. 293).
iraq 191
the first half of the second century; afterwards the information from this group
of sources dried up.
Still, we do know that Abū Ḥanīfa’s doctrine was able to gain a foothold
in Basra through Zufar b. al-Hudhayl. The influence of Kufan jurisprudence
was, in fact, of a rather older date. While Ḥajjāj b Arṭāt, whom the Abbasids
appointed as the first qāḍī, was unlikely to have received much of a welcome,14
one of his early successors in office,
Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar b. ʿĀmir al-Sulamī,
who shared the office with Sawwār15 and was a member of a respected Basran
tribe,16 was considered to be not only a Qadarite17 but also a Murjiʾite.18 This
combination was found in Basra as well as in Kufa,19 and at the time it was
already characteristic of a theological school of thought which adopted Ḥasan
al-Baṣrī’s legacy independently, to stand beside the Muʿtazila and the Bakriyya,
which survived until at least the end of the second century. It seems that the
members of this school referred to Ghaylān al-Dimashqī for their innovations,
especially the Murjiʾite element in their doctrine. Heresiographers frequently
name them in the same breath as Ghaylān;20 however, this seems to have been
mainly projection. Ghaylān’s followers who had escaped to Basra21 spread an
idealised image of their master there, which was a very suitable vehicle for new
ideas.22 Being a Qadarite Ghaylān enjoyed respect in Basra; ideas that would
never have been accepted if they had been introduced as Kufan appeared in a
much more favourable light. After all, nothing precise was known about him,
unlike Maʿbad al-Juhanī, which probably explains why no positive Maʿbad leg-
end ever became established. Those who idealised Maʿbad criticised Ḥasan

16 The Sulaym were part of the ahl al-ʿĀliya (Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Khiṭaṭ al-Baṣra 82; also Index s. n.).
Ṭabarī lists him as qāḍī in the year 137/754–55 (III 121, 9); Sulaymān b. ʿAlī was said to have
appointed him at the time (Wakīʿ II 55, 3f.). On the other hand there is information that
he died as early as 136, during Saffāḥ’s caliphate (Khalīfa, Ṭab. 526 bi, 1830; Taʾrīkh 628,
12f.). In any case he did not practise for long.
17 Thus according to Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shāfiʿī (Kaʿbī 99, 10ff. > Faḍl 343, 9 > IM 138, 15).
18 Thus according to Ibn Ḥanbal’s verdict (ʿUqaylī III 183, ult., and TT VII 467, –5f.). Nothing
in IS VII2 32, 15; Bukhārī III2 181 no. 2104; IAH III1 126f. no. 689; Mīzān no. 6152.
19 Regarding Kufa see vol. I 184f. above.
20 Cf. Text II 12, g; II 14 with commentary; II 15, d.
21 Regarding them vol. I 122f. and 119f.
22 Regarding the Iraqi Ghaylān legend see vol. I 153f. above.
19� chapter �
al-Baṣrī at the same time, because he did not join in Ibn al-Ashʿath’s uprising.
Maʿbad was discovered later by anti-Qadarite circles who intended to enlist
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī for their own objectives.23
2.2.4.1 Faḍl al-Raqāshī

The heresiographers did not see through the projection; consequently we
find ourselves in the realm of hypothesis when it comes to the actual origins
of the neo-Ghaylāniyya. It had been possible to prove quite early on1 in the
context of political theory that those theologians went beyond Ghaylān in
typically Iraqi fashion. They appear to have been the first to have refined his
theory to the effect that the caliph might also be from a non-Arab, i.e. presum-
ably: Persian, dynasty. While this idea had originally been Syrian, it was now
meant to contradict Kufan ideas; Abū Ḥanīfa’s school presumed that only the
Quraysh could govern.2 In Kufa this was based on the well-known hadiths
which later acquired canonical validity; these very hadiths were reinterpreted
by the Ghaylāniyya in Basra, or contrasted with others which justified a rebel-
lion against the Quraysh, at least if the latter were to abuse their power.
This issue demonstrates Basran self-assurance referring to Syrian tradition
in a debate with Kufa. Circumstances are less clear in other parts of the system.
For the time being we can only state that we are looking at an Iraqi phenom-
enon; otherwise Abū l-Hudhayl would hardly have made the effort of refuting
the Ghaylāniyya.3 We will have to look at each theologoumenon separately;
however, the best place to start is the person who was the first head of the
school,
Abū ʿĪsā al-Faḍl ʿĪsā b. Abān al-Raqāshī.
He was a nephew of Yazīd b. Abān al-Raqāshī, who is assumed to have died

between 110/729 and 120/738.4 He himself was probably of the same generation
23 See vol. I 83. Cf., however, Faḍl 334, 12ff.
1 Vol. I 149ff.
3 Cf. Catalogue of works XXI, no. 28. In Mafātīḥ 20, pu. f. Khwārizmī traces the Murjiʾite
Ghaylāniyya back to a certain Ghaylān b. Kharasha al-Ḍabbī. He probably perceived the
difficulty arising in the case of Ghaylān al-Dimashqī. However, his suggestion is not a
solution, Ghaylān b. Kharasha was active during the first half of the first century and is
consequently far too early (cf. Anfänge 245).
4 More precisely: the son of one of his sisters (Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn II 210, ult.). Regarding
the date see p. 103 above.
iraq 193
as Wāṣil and ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd. He was with Wāṣil when the latter made his ap-
pearance before ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz;5 Wāṣil’s pupil ʿĪsā b. Ḥāḍir
appears to have been more closely acquainted with him.6 ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd as
well as two other ascetic pupils of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s attended his lectures;7 all
these may have been slightly younger than he. One of them, Hishām b. Ḥassān
al-Qardūsī, died at the beginning of Ṣafar 148/April 765,8 ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd died
144/761; consequently it seems reasonable to assume that Faḍl died before
140/757. His daughter Sawāda was married to Sulaymān b. Ṭarkhān al-Taymī
(d. 143/760); Faḍl as well as his son-in-law were still living at the time of her
death.9 He had no high opinion of Salm, Qutayba b. Muslim’s son, who was
briefly governor of Basra twice, once in 132 as deputy of ʿUmar b. Hubayra,10
and for two months in 140 under Manṣūr.11 The derogatory remark he made
about him12 was probably uttered during the first term of government and
may have been recalled during the second one when he himself was already
dead. He had two well-known grandchildren: by his daughter, the traditionist
Muʿtamir b. Sulaymān (d. 187/833),13 and by his son ʿAbd al-Ṣamad the poet Faḍl
b. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-Raqāshī who wrote poems in praise of Hārūn al-Rashīd14
and is easily confused with his grandfather. When some verses of Kisāʾī’s
(c. 119/737–189/805) console a certain Raqāshī because his followers were just
as mad and muddy as Kisāʾī’s own, this may refer to the grandson, but certainly
not to Faḍl b. ʿĪsā.
Ibn ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd II 299, 14ff. Previously, he quotes the two verses
which, as we have seen on p. 105 above, also attack Faḍl b. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad,
and according to which he had a majlis, presumably a circle of pupils,
as well. Abū Nuwās, who seems to have been their author, ridiculed him
more generally elsewhere (cf. the Dīwān in Ṣūlī’s riwāya 680, 4ff.). – Some
confusion also found its way into the biographical note in Ritter,
Geheimnisse 19, n. 1: the passage in Marzubānī’s Muwashshaḥ 456f. refers
5 See p. 278 below.

6 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 307, 3 and 11. Regarding ʿĪsā b. Ḥāḍir see p. 361 below.
7 Ibid. I 290, ult. f. = 306, 10f.
8 Mīzān no. 9220; regarding him see p. 110 above.
9 Bayān I 306, ult. f.; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 476, 1f. Cf. also p. 418 below.
10 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 610, 11, and 615, 9f.
11 Ibid. 652, 15, and 175, 2. Sulaymān b. ʿAlī (d. 142/759), on the other hand, attended his lec-
tures (Balādhurī, Ansāb III 111, 8).
12 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 307, 9f. = Ḥayawān VII 204, 10f.
13 Cf. also IAH III2 64 no. 367.
194 chapter �
to the grandson (although it might be that the first anecdote listed there
was attributed wrongly, in which case it could indeed refer to the grandfa-
ther). The kinship ties are muddled slightly differently in Goldziher, Muh.
Stud. I 198. All of Faḍl’s brothers were poets as well (Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist
186b, –7ff.; Ṣafadī, Wāfī VII 66 no. 3002).
He was a qāṣṣ. Like his son ʿAbd al-Ṣamad after him he was most accomplished
in handling the form of rhyming prose; posterity would remember a teleologi-
cal proof of God’s existence which he wove into his qiṣaṣ in this form.15 The
Fihrist lists him among the bulaghāʾ, the language virtuosos, as distinct from
the khuṭabāʾ, the preachers.16 There is no firm evidence, however, as to whether
he, like his uncle Yazīd b. Abān, was an ascetic. While it was noted that he rode
only on donkeys, the fact that he rode at all shows that he did not necessarily
embrace poverty, and his reason for it was entirely worldly, too.17 Of course he
was compared to Jesus, Balaam and ʿUzayr, and he himself saw it as a sign of
taʾalluh, moving closer to God.18 Still, it is impossible to determine whether
Abū Nuʿaym was right to include him in the Ḥilya even with reference to the
material he himself adduced.19
He may have had links to Kufan Murjiʾites; there is an anecdote that con-
nects him with ʿUmar b. Dharr, but this time in Mecca.20 He had studied under
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. Consequently he was usually counted among the Qadarites;21
15 Bayān I 308, 4f. = Ḥayawān I 35, 1f. = Jurjānī, Asrār al-balāgha 12, 6ff. (transl. Ritter,
Geheimnisse 19). Regarding his use of sajʿ cf. also Bayān I 290, ult.; also the letter in Ḥilya
VI 206, 16ff.
16 139, 17, where al-Raqāshī probably refers to him.
17 Bayān I 307, 3ff.
18 Ibid. 307, pu. ff. The strange term taʾalluh, which was later generally avoided, deserves
more in-depth examination. Is it related to ὁμοίωσις θεῳ̃ as mentioned by Plato (Theaetet
176 B) and later adopted by the Church Fathers (cf. H. Merki, Ὁμοίωσις θεῳ̃. Von der pla-
tonischen Angleichung an Gott zur Gottesähnlichkeit bei Gregor von Nyssa)? Or to θέωσις,
man becoming God, in a process which, according to Clement of Alexandria, is a conse-
quence of the knowledge of salvation (Pelikan, Christian Tradition I 155; cf. also ibid. II 10
concerning the concept of deificatio according to Maximus Confessor)?
19 Ḥilya VI 206ff.; this consists nearly exclusively of hadiths transmitted from him by Abū
ʿĀṣim al-ʿAbbādānī (see p. 123f. above).
20 Ḥilya 113, 7ff. He is listed among the Murjiʾites by Nawbakhtī, Firaq al-Shīʿa 9, 14f.; Maqdisī,
Badʾ V 144, 8, and Shahrastānī 106, 1/267, 3 (cf. also ibid. 103, 7/253, ult., and also Gimaret,
Livre des Religions 416, n. 17).
21 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 625, 8f.; Bukhārī IV1 118 no. 528; IAH III2 64 no. 367; Ibn Ḥibbān,
Majrūḥīn II 211, 2; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 442f. no. 1490 > Mīzān no. 6740; Kaʿbī 96, 8ff. > ? > IM
128, 4f., and 138, 6.
iraq 195
some sources even regarded him as a Muʿtazilite.22 In actual fact he went his
own way. He was a mutakallim23 and had followers who were usually called
Faḍliyya24 or, in one instance, Raqāshiyya.25 He adopted Ḥasan’s belief that hu-
mans have the freedom of doing evil, and he was the first to attempt to frame
the consequences for divine will in the form of a theory. Only a single heresio-
graphical account survives, and it is anything but clear.26 We are most likely to
understand it if we presume that, like the Kufan Shīʿites, Faḍl – or rather, his
school – understood the act of divine volition as being contemporaneous with
the event, with the consequence that God does not will anything in advance,
not even that which is good (d). In the actual moment when things happen
circumstances are, however, different: if a human does good, it will be said that
God willed it; but if he does evil, it will be said that God did not will it (b). This
is probably just sanctioning language usage common among the Qadarites:
one must not ascribe anything evil to God, although after the event it is per-
mitted to say that God willed the actions of humans in general (a); after all,
he is the master of all things. He is indeed, but under a different aspect. If his
works are the focus, it is clear that what he does not will, cannot happen (e);
but if the focus is on the freedom of human actions, it is perfectly possible to
say that things happen which he did not will (c).27 Still, they do happen as a
result of his works; consequently it is possible to say that he effects thing that
he did not will (f).28
If this is a correct reconstruction of Faḍl’s theory, it was paving the way for
synergism as proposed by Ḍirār b. ʿAmr – he, too, a theologian on the border
between Basra and Kufa – and later adopted by Najjār, a Basran Murjiʾite like
Faḍl.29 There was not, at that time, a doctrine of attributes in the background;
this theory was not related to the Muʿtazilite belief that divine volition was an
attribute of act evolved in time, despite partial factual agreement. Even when
Ashʿarī said in conclusion that “there were similar reports about Ghaylān”, he
was probably only creating a phantom. At best, Ghaylān provided some starting
22 Fasawī III 139, 4f. > TT VIII 284, 6; Ashʿarī, Maq. 514, 8; also Ibn Ḥazm, Naqṭ al-ʿarūs 246, 22.
24 Ibid. I 307, 11, and Khalq al-Qurʾān in: Rasāʾil III 300, 2; also Ashʿarī, Maq. 513, 5, and 514, 8.
25 Maqdisī, Badʾ V145, 2.
26 Text II 12 with commentary.
27 If this sentence was transmitted correctly; cf. the commentary.
28 In an earlier interpretation of this passage (Anfänge 242ff.) I assumed that it referred to
effects outside human actions, afflictions such as illness etc. However, this is not explicit
in the text, and it is possible to work without this hypothesis. Cf. also the cautious hint by
Watt, Free Will 41f.
29 See ch. C 1.3.1.3 and 5.2.1 below.
196 chapter �
points for Faḍl. He was probably emphasising the part played by reason, on
which the human faculty of decision is based.30 Interestingly Faḍl passed on
the well-known hadith according to which God named ʿaql as his best-loved
creation, regarding it with pleasure from the front and the back.31 We come
up against the issue of divine will in the case where a “follower of Ghaylān’s”
raised the question of how God could will unbelief, as that would fulfil the
will of Satan rather than that of the prophet.32 However, he was said to have
pressed Abū Ḥanīfa hard with this question; which means that the tradition
originated in Iraq.
It was probably a recent development that Faḍl al-Raqāshī was able to

trace the ʿaql hadith via the Basran Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī (d. c. 100/720;
cf. TH 65f. no. 56) to Abū Hurayra; in another place it is referred to (prob-
ably more realistically) as a saying by Kurayb (d. 98/716–7), a mawlā of
Ibn ʿAbbās (Ibn Abī Dunyā, Al-ʿaql wa-faḍluh 12, –4ff.; regarding Kurayb
cf. TT VIII 433 no. 793). The Shīʿites traced it back to Muḥammad al-Bāqir
or Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (Kulīnī, Kāfī I 10, 2ff., and 20, ult. ff.). – In one instance
(Text XVII 47) Ashʿarī attributed the doctrine that the faculty of action
consisted in physical capability (and was thus permanent) to Ghaylān as
well as Thumāma and Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir; in the case of Ghaylān, this
was probably projection. It was not even said of Faḍl.
In Faḍl’s view the human faculty of decision implied that believers and unbe-
lievers had nothing in common. Faith was indivisible; no heathen, however
much he recognised God as ḥanīf, could be called a believer.33 This had two
consequences. The first one, once again Kufan and Murjiʾite, was that every
Muslim will go to paradise. We do not know precisely how Faḍl imagined this
in detail. Maqdisī presented it as if a Muslim would not be punished by God
at all.34 This would be the position allegedly maintained by ʿUbayd al-Muk-
tib in Kufa around this time,35 but presumably Maqdisī merely gave in to his
30 TH 147, 3f.; generally Anfänge 56ff.

31 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 129, 1ff.; abridged also Mīzān no. 6740. Cf. vol. I 416 and p. 139 above.
There is no indication that he understood ʿaql to mean λόγος here (cf. Goldziher in: ZA
22/1907/318f. = Ges. Schr. V 108f.); we would not find neo-Platonic implications until at
least a century later, in Text XXIII27, h (cf. ch. C 3.2.2.2.7.3).
32 Pazdawī, Uṣūl al-dīn 48, 6ff.
33 Thus said of the “Ghaylāniyya” and its Basran successors in text II 15, i–k.
34 Text II 13.
iraq 197
Muʿtazilite outrage in this case. It would have been difficult for this kind of
doctrine to gain a foothold in Basra, where people believed they were continu-
ing Ghaylān al-Dimashqī’s tradition. He, too, was thought not to have come to
a conclusion regarding how God would deal with a hardened sinner: he might
punish him, or he might pardon him, he only had to be consistent.36 Here, the
idea of divine justice was added to the debate, entirely in the Basran sense. It
did not contradict the doctrine of divine volition.37
The second consequence is quite idiosyncratic. As there were undeniably
heathens who recognised God, it was necessary to separate knowledge of God
from faith. While of course there is no faith without knowledge of God, knowl-
edge of God may exist even if it is not based on the revelation. The one is a
priori, the other, however, is “acquired”.38 One of the doxographers, himself a
Basran “Murjiʾite”,39 explained the essence of a priori knowledge of God: un-
derstanding that things develop within time and that they follow a reasonable
plan, in other words, experiencing the contingency and the order of the world
which lead to the need for a higher being, to create and rule (e).40 This is far
too vague to be faith (c and m). Only the prophet, and this apparently refers
exclusively to Muḥammad and not also to Moses or Jesus, furnishes scripture
containing what must be believed. The only remaining difficulty is its exegesis:
of the Quran one must believe that which it states according to the consen-
sus of all Muslims (g). This includes God’s oneness and uniqueness, but also
that he must be loved that humility must be shown to him.41 The profession
of faith is just as important: the shahāda and other declarations which affirm
certain points of faith to be correct (taṣdīq). Simply assuming things to be cor-
rect (taṣdīq) in one’s own heart is not enough.42
The doxographer once again sees this as merely the doctrine of the
Ghaylāniyya, but another source informs us that Faḍl al-Raqāshī adhered to
it as well;43 it is obviously not of Syrian origin. The idea of a natural revela-
tion was hinted at in the second Risāla Abū Ḥanīfa appears to have addressed
36 Text II 14 with commentary.

37 Consequently it seems to me to be unnecessary to postulate two different men named
Faḍl al-Raqāshī as F. Meier does (Abū Saʿīd 169).
38 Text II 15.
39 Regarding Muḥammad b. Shabīb in 15, d, see ch. C 5.1.1 below.
40 Baghdādī interpreted this as experiencing creaturehood (Text II 16).
41 Text 15, a, and 16, b.
42 Ibid., l–m with commentary. Cf. Pessagno in JAOS 95/1975/387f., which corrects the mis-
taken accent suggested by Izutsu, Concept of Belief 107.
43 Abū Yaʿlā, Muʿtamad 30, 2ff. (= Text XXIII 15); slightly different: Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Al-munya
wal-amal , MS Berlin 4908, fol. 35b, 10ff.
198 chapter �
to ʿUthmān al-Battī.44 Independently of whether this is genuine, it provides a

source locating it in the Murjiʾa’s environment. It was also a consequence of
the approach supported by Abū Ḥanīfa,45 but it did not give rise to a discus-
sion within the Kufan Murjiʾa. We do know, on the other hand, that the Basran
and the Kufan Ibāḍiyya considered it;46 the fiṭra debate within the Qadariyya
also pointed in this direction.47 Ḥammād b. Salama (d. 167/783–4 in Basra) ap-
pears to have applied the same distinction in the last-named point; the fiṭra
before the revelation was not yet Islam.48 Unlike Abū Ḥanīfa he thus expands
the range of the faith; love and humility are added to the knowledge of God.
This indicates an ascetic environment; as Madelung has already pointed out49
the word khuḍūʿ used here to denote humility only occurred in the Quran with
negative meaning and was reinterpreted by the ascetics. This would fit in
with Basra.
Still, we are once again unable to prove that Faḍl already used the word
khuḍūʿ in this context; after all, the Ghaylāniyya, to whom it is attrib-
uted, continued to exist. It is also remarkable that love is emphasised
so strongly (cf. Gimaret, Livre des Religions 421, n. 22); this would not
have happened later. However, I do not share Madelung’s hypothesis of
Christian influence (Qāsim 239); it was advanced based on the assump-
tion that the Ghaylāniyya was located in Syria. M. Seale may be closer
to the truth when he regards the doctrine of dual knowledge of God as
a reflex of Origenist thought (Muslim Theology 18ff.; cf. also my remarks
in: Islam and the Medieval West, ed. Semaan, 66f.). These expansions of
the concept of faith were not entirely uncommon at the time, as had-
ith illustrates. Ḥammād b. Salama transmitted from an authority whose
name he did not – maybe did not want to? – give, that faith was only per-
fect if it comprised five elements: trust in God, entrusting one’s affairs
to God, submission to God’s orders, acceptance of God’s resolution, and
patience when he visited one suffering an affliction (Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 43,
5ff.). Parallels in Murjiʾite circles can also be found for the subsequent

45 See vol. I 224 and 232 above.
46 See vol. I 483f. above and p. 264 below.
47 Cf. HT 101ff.
48 See p. 428f. below. Cf. also the distinction between a first and a second “covenant” (mīthāq)
with God that was traced back to Ḍaḥḥāk b. Muzāḥim (HT 113). Cf. also the hadith in
Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ, Janna 63; also Ibn Qaiyim al-Jawziyya, Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma 536, 4ff.
49 Qāsim 239.
iraq 199
classification of these elements under love and hate “for God’s sake” (cf.
Mīzān no. 1311 concerning the Khorasanian Murjiʾite Bukayr b. Maʿrūf; re-
garding him see p. 679 below).
Faḍl al-Raqāshī’s definition of faith must in any case be distinguished
from that of a certain Faḍliyya which regarded faith as the sum of one’s
acts of faith (Abū ʿUbayd, Īmān 102, 5ff.). The latter were Khārijite follow-
ers of a certain Faḍl b. ʿAbdallāh (Khwārizmī, Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm 19, 13) who
are usually regarded as part of the Ṣufriyya (cf. the reports in Nashwān
al-Ḥimyarī, Ḥūr 177, 13ff., probably following Kaʿbī > differently abbrevi-
ated in Ashʿarī, Maq. 118, 11ff. [= Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 190, apu. ff. = Nashwān
274, pu. ff.] and Malaṭī, Tanbīh 136, 20ff./179, 11ff.; also Nashwān 273, pu.
ff.). Ibn Ḥazm, loc. cit., and Nashwān 274, pu., have Fuḍayliyya instead of
Faḍliyya; thus also in the title listed in the Catalogue of Works XV, no. 32.
Cf. also Madelung in: SI 32/1970/252ff. – I do not know who were the
“Sunni” Faḍliyyūn who, according to Muqaddasī’s account, fought with
the Shīʿites in Ahwāz.
Over time they drifted apart from the Muʿtazila altogether; Jāḥiẓ emphasised
that in his circle people looked down on the Faḍliyya with contempt.50 At first,
however, resistance had come from another quarter: the predestinarian Ayyūb
al-Sakhtiyānī avoided Faḍl because of his Qadarite inclination,51 and his fel-
low-believer Dāwūd b. Abī Hind52 also took exception to this, accusing Faḍl
of interpreting the Quran according to his own ideas.53 Even Faḍl’s son-in-law
Sulaymān al-Taymī did not want to walk with him in the funeral cortege for his
wife;54 like Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī he was an opponent of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.55 If Faḍl’s
son ʿAbd al-Ṣamad, or even his grandson Faḍl, shared his views – which we
50 Khalq al-Qurʾān in: Rasāʾil III 300, 2f.

51 IAH III2 64, 16f.; regarding him see p. 391ff. below.
52 Regarding him cf. HT 158 and Anfänge 202.
53 Bayān I 291, 1ff.; cf. also Pellat, Milieu 113, where the reference has been interpreted along
the same lines. I am not quite sure that Jāḥiẓ, as Pellat suggests, explained Dāwūd b. Abī
Hind’s reservation differently, referring to Faḍl’s penchant for eschatological verse, i.e.
his qāṣṣ style. Jāḥiẓ only insinuated this; what he actually said was that by emphasising
death and judgment Faḍl illuminated the dimension of Quranic commandments and
prohibitions.
54 Bayān I 307, 1f. Or does “he let him walk ahead” express the respect he felt for him despite
all their disagreements?
55 See p. 389f. below. Cf. also the remark by Sallām b. Abī Muṭīʿ, a pupil of Qatāda’s, quoted
by Bukhārī, K. al-Ḍuʿafāʾ al-ṣaghīr 475 no. 296 > Dhahabī, Mīzān III 356, 4f.; Sallām did not
have much time for ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, either (ibid. II 181, 15f.).
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do not know – Kisāʾī’s remark quoted above might refer to one of them in this
context. Being a Kufan, and Hārūn al-Rashīd’s tutor, Kisāʾī did not have much
time for Qadarite theology, and in his last verse he pointed out that however
much they agreed in their contempt of hangers-on, his own point of view was
“beyond reproach” whereas al-Raqāshī’s was an “affliction”.
All we hear about ʿAbd al-Ṣamad is that he was even more accomplished
in the khaṭīb’s art than his father (Bayān I 308, 6); this probably means
that his use of sajʿ was even more perfect (ibid. I 287, 5ff.). All jurists of
the city were said to have attended his sermons (ibid. I 291, 5f.). His spend-
ing three lectures exclusively on the creation of the gnat (ibid. I 308, 7f.)
could be an indication that he thought about theodicy and the purpose
of “vermin” (see p. 59f. above). – It seems improbable that his son Faḍl,
who was regarded to be shāʿir mājin khalīʿ, was greatly interested in theol-
ogy. However, as we have seen above (p. 193), he apparently gave lectures.
2.2.4.2 Abū Shamir and His School

Jāḥiẓ’ derogatory remark proves that the Faḍliyya was still to be found in Basra
at his time, i.e. around the turn of the third century. Within the Ghaylāniyya,
however, another theologian, who differed from Faḍl al-Raqāshī in many ways,
had assumed the leadership:
Abū Shamir Sālim b. Shamir al-Ḥanafī.
Many sources confirm that he was an adherent of the neo-Ghaylānite tradition,1

occupying the same political position.2 An account from an unnamed source
quoted by Ashʿarī,3 which described the definition of faith which he embraced,
is similar in points to what he subsequently reported of the Ghaylānites.4 Abū
Shamir agreed with them that humility and love were constituent parts of
1 Cf. the commentary on Text II 14. Also Baghdādī, Farq 190, 5f./202, 5, and 193, 7f./205, 9;
Pazdawī, Uṣūl 252, 17ff.
2 Nawbakhtī, Firaq 9, 14ff.
3 Text II 17, a–g.
4 Text II 15. He did not – certainly not always – use the same source in the two sections, as 15,
d–h was based on Ibn Shabīb, while the latter was deliberately not quoted in 17, a–g (cf. the
commentary on the passage).
iraq �01
faith;5 and he, too, taught that faith was indivisible.6 One always possesses
faith in its entirety, and consequently someone who does not believe is whol-
ly an unbeliever; one cannot believe just a little bit.7 Abū Shamir compared
this – and this seems to be his one original contribution to the topic – to the
markings of a horse: one calls it piebald only if it is white as well as black in
places; similarly faith is faith only when all its constituents are realised by a
human.8
Abū Shamir expanded the list of these constituents beyond what the
Ghaylāniyya had thought essential. He added the profession of God’s oneness
in the sense of a rejection of anthropomorphism, and divine justice in the
sense of a profession of liberum arbitrium.9 This opened the door to Muʿtazilite
axioms; they superseded the emotional component Abū Shamir had inherited
from the neo-Ghaylāniyya’s ascetic tradition, ultimately leading to a shift in the
existing dichotomy between first and second knowledge of God. The axioms
mentioned were rational and, in Abū Shamir’s view, on the same level as the
proof of God’s existence; on the other hand they were so specifically Islamic
that it would not have been possible to exclude them from the act of faith.
Consequently Abū Shamir rejected the doctrine that assumed a knowledge of
God that was not yet faith;10 instead, he distinguished between faith before the
prophets, and since their time. Everything that could be comprehended ratio-
nally did not actually require revelation; the prophet brought only additions,
especially the law.11 Once he appeared it was one’s duty to acknowledge him
(iqrār) and agree with him (taṣdīq); faith without him would not be possible
5 Cf. 15, a, with 17, a. It is noticeable that the parallel text 17, i, does not use these terms. We
have to ask ourselves whether this is a case of contamination; 15, a, and 17, a, could origi-
nate in the same source. Text 22 proves that pupils of Yūnus’, mentioned in 17, a, together
with Abū Shamir, supported the same definition; thus it may have been characteristic of
the former rather than the latter.
6 Cf. 15, d and k with 17, g.
7 Text 15, i, and 17, d and f.
8 Text 17, e. The comparison with a piebald would be used later, in different contexts, by
Ḥanafite jurists (cf. e.g. Sarakhsī, Mabsūṭ XXIV 5, 2ff.).
9 Text 17, a and i; cf. Nashwān, Ḥūr 203, ult. Justice being mentioned in i only may be due to
the fact that the parallel text a mentions not only Abū Shamir but also Yūnus (b. ʿAwn);
the latter, however, was no Qadarite (cf. my commentary on the passage). Abū Shamir was
a Qadarite, as explicitly stated in Maq. 477, 9; regarding Yūnus see p. 210f. below.
10 At least the heresiographical accounts do not mention it. It would theoretically be pos-
sible that he prefaced it to his two-grade system and that the heresiographers, namely the
two accounts quoted by Ashʿarī, presume this. It is not, however, probable.
11 That “which came from God”; cf. commentary on Text 15, a, and 17, c.
�0� chapter �
afterwards.12 In both instances the acknowledgment requires a profession of

faith; knowledge by itself would not yet be faith.13 Until then the Ghaylāniyya
had concluded that only in the “second knowledge of God” would recognition
and profession of faith come together to result in faith. Abū Shamir made a
different distinction: knowledge of the law, at which one arrives through the
prophet, is not part of faith. We are not told why he thought this, but the reason
that suggests itself is that law cannot be grasped through reason; one can only
profess allegiance.14 Instead of “not yet” he sees “not any more”.
Abū Shamir regarded those who doubted tawḥīd and ʿadl as unbelievers;
he even condemned those who believed this to be too harsh.15 This shows
how close he was to the Muʿtazila; later we hear similar reports of Murdār.16
Kaʿbī thought he diverged from the Muʿtazila only when it came to waʿīd and
manzila bayna l-manzilatayn.17 These, in fact, were the two issues which were
problematic to a Murjiʾite. Should a Muslim die in the state of mortal sin, it
must be left to God to decide how to treat him: he could condemn him for eter-
nity, or punish him for a limited time in purgatory, but he could even pardon
him immediately.18 Abū Shamir certainly expected, like the other Ghaylānites,
that God would be just and apply the rule, once determined, to everyone.19
Regarding the “intermediate state” he only adopted the term introduced by the
Muʿtazilites in this context: he who commits mortal sin is a fāsiq; however, only
with regard to the respective case, not his salvational status in general. The
“state of faith” is not abolished; mortal sin is merely added to it as an attribute.20
Abū Shamir had grown up with Muʿtazilites. Like Muʿammar and Aṣamm
he had been one of the “assistants” of the Basran natural philosopher Abū
l-Ashʿath21 and had met the historian Madāʾinī in the same way. From Abū
l-Ashʿath he learnt that one must not eat beans, and developed a new rea-
soning to back up this ancient taboo,22 in accordance with his personal ra-
tionalistic approach: one can observe that flies crawl out of beans; as flies are
12 Text 17, a–b.

13 Text 17, m.
14 Text 17, c with commentary. It may be that Shahrastānī 104, 9f./ 260, 6ff., could be inter-
preted as an explanation of this, albeit with reference to the Yūnusiyya in this context.
15 Text 17, 1.
16 See ch. C 1.4.3.2.1 below, after text XVIII 4, g–h.
17 Maq. 74, apu. f..; cf. also Intiṣār 93, 6f., and Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 268, 5.
18 Text 18 (where the third possibility is not named, merely implied).
20 Text 17, h.
22 Cf. p. 42f. above.
iraq �03
disgusting, beans must be disgusting, too. For if one thing generates another, it
will be of the same kind. Consequently it is not surprising that beans thicken
the blood and cause melancholy (sawdāʾ); they are a harmful substance, rotten
and corrupt by nature.23 Characteristically they grow head-down; therefore
they harm people’s intelligence – that is, they harm the nerves, and through
them the intelligence.24 This had long been confirmed by experience: sesame
is not grown together with beans, as the latter are suspected of attacking the
nose, the ear canal, and ultimately the brain; someone who spends 40 days
in a bean field will contract a chronic disease.25 Some of these ideas also ap-
plied to other agricultural crops. Not only beans but also aubergines grow
head-down; consequently they are bad for people’s intelligence, as, indeed,
are onions. The Malacca bean (balādhur), on the other hand, is good for one’s
nerves and thus strengthens the memory.26
Abū Shamir was thus not only a theologian, he was also a man with some
practical sense, albeit maybe a little eccentric. He may have had some knowl-
edge of pharmacology, which would not have been unusual in the circles in
which he moved. He certainly captured the interest of high society. It was said
that he had been Ayyūb b. Jaʿfar b. Sulaymān’s teacher,27 an Abbasid whose
family was very influential in Basra.28 If he met with scholars,29 Abū Shamir
would join the company, even after Ayyūb had become governor. He was a
man who inspired respect, as Jāḥiẓ would later confirm: taciturn, serious, and
clearly very knowledgeable.30 He would remain entirely calm in discussions,
neither gesticulating nor shrugging his shoulders, rolling his eyes or moving
his head. This was clearly unusual; “his speech was as if it came out of a crevice
among rocks”, Jāḥiẓ said. Abū Shamir even had an explanation: “Lucid remarks
23 Text 19, a–d, k–l. Abū Shamir believed in abiogenesis; regarding this idea in Islamic theol-
ogy see p. 517f. below.
24 Ibid., e and i.
25 Ibid., f–h. Regarding favism see p. 43, n. 14 above.
26 Ibid., e and i. Cf. EI2 I 971 b s. v. Balādhurī, and Siggel, Wörterbuch der Stoffe s. v. balāḏur.
27 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 268, 7f. > IM 57, 10ff., where there is a mistake in the name. The
correct reading becomes clear in the parallel in Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 91, 10ff. > Bāqillānī, Nukat
al-intiṣār 255, 1ff. (regarding the issue cf. my Der Ṭailasān des Ibn Ḥarb 15, n. 67).
28 His grandfather Sulaymān b. ʿAlī, an uncle of the first two Abbasid caliphs, had been
governor of Basra, as had his father Jaʿfar and his brother Qutham (cf. my account in:
Festschrift Hourani 15f.). Regarding Ayyūb cf. also Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 34, –7.
29 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān VI 78, 1, shows that he had nudamāʾ.
30 Bayān I 92, 2f.
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require no support”, which he had learnt from Abū l-Ashʿath as well.31 However,
the context must be taken into consideration, as Jāḥiẓ provides all this informa-
tion as the foil for an anecdote according to which Naẓẓām, who would have
been quite young at the time, succeeded in pressing Abū Shamir so hard dur-
ing a debate that the latter abandoned his calm, “loosened the loop of cloth”
(ḥalla ḥubwatahū)32 and took hold of his hands. This was why Ayyūb b. Jaʿfar
changed sides and went over to Naẓẓām; here the Muʿtazila emerged victori-
ous over Abū Shamir’s school. This is purely tendentious, and furthermore a
topos. It was well-known that Ayyūb himself was powerfully eloquent,33 which
makes it all the more easily imaginable how taken aback he must have been
when his teacher behaved so out of character.
The question is how sceptical one ought to be. There is some doubt as to
whether Ayyūb was ever governor of Basra at all. He was awarded this title
(al-amīr) in ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s version only; Jāḥiẓ did not mention it. The histori-
ans only noted that he once governed Yemen and later died during the journey
to India where he was supposed to take the same office – at some point not too
long before the end of Hārūn al-Rashīd’s caliphate in 193/809.34 Furthermore,
only the later version recorded that Abū Shamir was his teacher.35 On the other
hand, Naẓẓām was said to have been friendly with Abū Shamir in Baghdad.36 If
the Muʿtazilites narrated the story of how he defeated him here, this was prob-
ably also due to their urgent need of such a success, for Abū Shamir – whose
approach was continued by others37 – remained a threat for a long time. Abū
31 Ibid. 91, 8ff. Thumāma also stated that gesticulation during speech was not necessarily
desirable, although possibly inevitable (Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī, K. al-Ṣināʿatayn 21, 1f.).
32 This should probably be interpreted metaphorically (regarding the usage cf. Seidensticker,
Shamardal 125 ad 12/21). A ḥubwa is a loop of cloth to sling around one’s knees and back,
when sitting on the ground with knees pulled up, to prevent feeling tired too soon. The
“block statue” of Ancient Egyptian art provides the best illustration of the position. The
parallel in Faḍl, however, presumes that Abū Shamir did indeed use such a ḥubwa (yajlisu
fī majlis al-amīr muḥtabiyan); but it is secondary in any case.
33 Bayān I 115, 7, in the view of Muways b. ʿImrān, a fellow-believer of Abū Shamir’s (regard-
ing him see ch. C 2.5.1 below); also 333, 9f. Cf. Nagel, Untersuchungen 28f.
34 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 742, 17, and 746, 18f. In the past I concluded erroneously from the latter
passage (Ṭaylasān, loc. cit.) that he died in 193.
35 And not even quite clearly. It would be just about possible to read into the passage
that Naẓẓām was Abū Shamir’s teacher. Maybe this is the origin of reports such as in
Shahrastānī 18, 13/30, 13, and 41, –4f./86, 9f., according to which Abū Shamir was a follower
of Naẓẓām.
36 TB VI 98, 7ff.
iraq �05
l-Hudhayl and Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir wrote refutations;38 the former was said to
have debated with him before Maʾmūn.39 Jāḥiẓ noted that he had numerous
followers who were entirely devoted to him.40 This was proposed as an expla-
nation of why Naẓẓām’s attack came as such a surprise, but it also proves that
the Muʿtazila had to continue to watch out for him. While the interaction grew
less frequent, and the theological substance may have decreased as well,41 even
beyond the turn of the third century a certain Yazīd b. Hāshim was able to play
the Shamiriyya off against the Muʿtazila.42
There is no doubt regarding Abū Shamir’s acquaintance with Ayyūb, even
if the latter may have been only a distinguished citizen of Basra. It is possible
that Abū Shamir met Khalīl b. Aḥmad in his company, as Ayyūb owned his
K. al-tawḥīd, the only quotation from which survives in this context.43 If, how-
ever, we are to believe Naẓẓām, Ayyūb really only read it for the laughs. Abū
Shamir also complained of the pretentious and obscure style of the book. The
two of them clearly had entirely divergent concepts of science: Abū Shamir
advocated functionality and clarity, while Khalīl was of the opinion that the
language and objective of science did not need to follow everyday usage. This
resulted in the argument of whether, as Khalīl thought, one ought to learn un-
important grammatical minutiae in order to understand the essence of things.
Abū Shamir considered this to be absurd: why should something one does not
need suddenly be required after all?44
Khalīl was an Ibāḍite, and it seems that Abū Shamir debated with Ibāḍites
on other occasions, too; it was not unusual in Basra. The Ibāḍites had raised a
noteworthy issue (there?). How should one judge a situation where someone
walks into someone else’s plantation or seed plot (zarʿ) without the owner’s
permission, trampling some of the plants? There can be no doubt that he is
38 Catalogue of Works XXI, no. 29, and XVII, no. 34.
39 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 256, 12, and 257, 1. The context, however, is fictitious in both
instances.
41 Thus Jāḥiẓ in: Rasāʾil III 300, 2ff.
42 Is this what Jāḥiẓ meant with yuʿayyinu in Bukhalāʾ 210, 3f.? Or did he have them spy on
the Muʿtazila? Unfortunately we do not know who this Yazīd b. Hāshim was. In his trans-
lation (Avares 301f.) Pellat erroneously reads Hishām instead of Hāshim and consequently
adduces the wrong sources. The person referred to is not, of course, Yazīd b. Hāshim b.
Harmala al-Murrī who is mentioned in Agh. XII 274, 8f., as Shabīb b. al-Barṣāʾ, who asked
for his daughter in marriage, lived during the Umayyad era (cf. GAS 2/386f.).
44 Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī, Taṣḥīf 121, 3ff. Regarding the latter cf. also Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān I 38, 1f.; Ibn
ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd III 23, 17ff., Ibn Abī ʿAwn, Al-ajwiba al-muskita 151 no. 906.
�06 chapter �
guilty of wrongdoing; however, if he then leaves the plot, he will cause even
more damage; consequently he ought to leave the plot but also stay where
he is. He must and at the same time must not leave, illustrating how one and
the same situation can be assessed differently.45 This was very nearly proof of
the Muʿtazilite manzila bayna l-manzilatayn – or rather its complementary
opposite: an action can be good as well as bad. Abū Shamir viewed the prob-
lem differently: there are situations in which every action is wrong. Thus, with
reference to this particular case: one’s duty is not at the same time to stay and
to leave, but one is forbidden to stop as well as to move forward or back, i.e.
even if one regrets entering the plot, one will sin again and afterwards be justly
regarded as a wrongdoer.46 In this way he resolved the ambiguity in the con-
cept of sin, but it is not surprising that “someone else” simply said that one
ought to repent and later pay damages for everything one destroyed,47 presum-
ably expressing the practical point of view of all those who did not feel im-
pelled to theological musings by the example. Abū Shamir, on the other hand,
responded ad hoc.
We may wonder whether he did so because of masochistic inclinations
similar to those of the Ibāḍites, although it does not seem very likely consid-
ering what we have heard about him so far. On the other hand he did, unlike
the majority of Muslims,48 believe that if one performed a prayer on illegally
acquired ground, one would have to repeat it. Everything one does there, even
just staying there, is sin and cannot be compensated by prayer.49 Only ascet-
ics were similarly rigorous, paying close attention to whether someone who
dedicated a mosque had possibly taken possession of the land illegally.50 There
were also prayer rooms in private houses, and the state above all was known
not to be too particular in matters of ownership. Still, as we have seen Abū
Shamir did have some dealings with the authorities. If he was an ascetic all the
same, it would explain why despite his rationalism his definition of faith did
not suppress the emotional components (love and humility). It would also en-
courage us to identify him as the very Abū Shamir of whom Abū Dulaf said in
45 Text VIII 6.

46 Text II 20.
47 Ashʿarī, Maq. 255, ult.
48 Ibid. 450, 10.
49 Text II 21; also XXII 258, c, where the opposite opinion is supported by Naẓẓām. The prob-
lem was revived by Abū Hāshim (Nagel, Festung des Glaubens 218).
50 Regarding the concept of illegal seizure of land or usurpation (ghaṣb) cf. EI2 II 1020 s. v.;
also Johansen, The Islamic Law on Land Tax and Rent, passim.
iraq �07
his Qaṣīda Sāsāniyya that he was the first person to go begging on the pretext
of wanting to go on jihad.51
Taking all this into account it becomes easier to narrow Abū Shamir’s
dates. He may have lived into the third century; if he really debated with Abū
l-Hudhayl before Maʾmūn, this is likely to have taken place after the latter en-
tered Baghdad in 204/819. However, this conclusion rests on an insecure basis
as the anecdotes on which it relies are on the whole paradigmatic. There can
be no real doubt that his main activity was before 190/806: if he and Khalīl de-
bated before Ayyūb b. Jaʿfar, it would have to have been earlier than 175/791, the
latest possible date of Khalīl’s death.52 He probably did not live as long as his
fellow student Muʿammar who did not die until 215/830. If he does appear to
agree with Naẓẓām in a few points of the theory of motion,53 he was Naẓẓām’s
predecessor rather than his pupil. Only Khwārizmī gives his name as Sālim b.
Shamir.54 Shamir was a Southern Arab name,55 which leads us to assume that
he did not bear the nisba al-Ḥanafī because he belonged to the school of Abū
Ḥanīfa but rather because he was a member of the Banū Ḥanīfa, or associated
with them as mawlā. Only his definition of faith linked him to Abū Ḥanīfa; we
do not know anything about his juristic interests.
Regarding the reading of the name cf. Ibn Ḥajar, Tabṣīr al-muntabih 788,
5ff.: it was usually pronounced Shimr, but among the Southern Arabs
Shamir was also current. Fīrūzābādī’s explanation in his Qāmūs distin-
guishes between shimr, which could be an adjective (meaning “agile,
clever, reacting quickly”) as well as a proper name, while Shamir was only
used as a proper name. Samʿānī read the nisba as Shimrī (Ansāb VII 384).
51 Cf. Bosworth, Underworld II 194 and 225, where the person is not identified. – This would
even show the ḥubwa in a different light. When absorbed in contemplation or in mourn-
ing, ascetics were accustomed to rest their “head upon the knees” (cf. R. Mach and J. H.
Marks, The Head upon the Knees, in: Studies in honor of Ph. Hitti 68ff.). On the other hand
there is no reason to assume that they used a ḥubwa in these cases, and, after all, in the
earlier version by Jāḥiẓ the phrase was presumably used metaphorically.
53 Cf. Text XXII 24 and the use of the word iʿtimād in Text II 21, c.
54 Mafātīḥ 21, 3.
55 Cf. Y. Abdallah, Die Personennamen in al-Hamdānī’s al-Iklīl 70; also Lisān al-ʿArab IV 428a,
apu. ff., and 429a, 16ff. (after Ibn Sīda).
�08 chapter �
After Abū Shamir’s death,
Abū ʿAmr Kulthūm b. Ḥabīb b. Unayf al-Maraʾī al-Baṣrī
succeeded him as head of the school. He was a member of the Banū Imraʾalqays
b. Tamīm, hence his nisba.56 We would not know anything else about him if he
had not limped and consequently found his way into Jāḥiẓ’ K. al-burṣān wal-
ʿurjān.57 His grandfather Unayf had been a canvasser for the Abbasids, but is
not mentioned in any other sources, either. He himself had a connection with
Yaḥyā b. Khālid, the Barmakid vizier;58 maybe he was employed in the admin-
istration. This could explain why Amīn chose him and a certain Saʿīd b. Jubayr
al-Ḥimyarī as negotiators between him and his brother Maʾmūn. It would not
be a surprise to find that he was not in favour with the latter any more after
that; there are no references of him appearing at court in Baghdad, unlike his
teacher, even though he would have been in the capital during the civil war. On
the other hand there are more reliable references to him debating with Abū
l-Hudhayl. He probably retired to Basra, where he led the life of a rich citizen,
receiving and entertaining visitors until late at night.
Khayyāṭ mentioned him as well as Abū Shamir among those who disagreed
with the Muʿtazila on the concept of sin.59 He was not the only one to abbre-
viate the name to Kulthūm which, however, led to confusion. Abū l-Ḥusayn
Kulthūm b. Ḥabīb al-Muhallabī, listed by Shahrastānī together with him, was
probably only a doublet.60 The poet Kulthūm b. ʿAmr al-ʿAttābī also entered
the picture. Kulthūm b. Ḥabīb bore the kunya Abū ʿAmr; if it was postposed,
the name could easily be read as Kulthūm b. ʿAmr, which might explain why,
in a context similar to that in Khayyāṭ’s text, Kaʿbī had a list of names begin-
ning with Abū Shamir and ending with al-ʿAttābī.61 Sezgin concluded similarly
prematurely when he said in GAS 2/541 that Abū l-Hudhayl and Bishr b. al-
Muʿtamir composed refutations of the poet. Bishr did polemicise against a cer-
tain Kulthūm “and his school”,62 probably referring to our Kulthūm b. Ḥabīb,
56 It is occasionally written with alif bearing hamza (cf. Dhahabī, Mushtabih 586, 5ff.; also
Shahrastānī 103, 10/254, 4f.).
57 Cf. ibid. 246, 1ff.
59 Intiṣār 93, 6.
60 103, 4/253, 5f.; cf. also Gimaret, Livre des Religions 416f., n. 17 and 21.
61 Maq. 74, ult.
62 Catalogue of Works XVII, no. 18.
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for he, too, wrote “proper books”,63 but in the text by Abū l-Hudhayl the op-
ponent’s name cannot be deciphered reliably; Dodge’s English translation is
the only one to suggest al-ʿAttābī.64 Bishr and Abū l-Hudhayl might have disap-
proved of the fact that Kulthūm was moving closer to Ḍirār,65 but the poet, too,
was a prominent ascetic and theologian.66 – Another pupil of Abū Shamir’s
was the philologist
Abū l-Ḥasan Saʿīd b. Masʿada al-Ahkfash,
the “middle” Akhfash, who died between 210/825 and 221/835.67 According to
Abū ʿUthmān al-Māzinī (d. 233/848) he was well-versed in kalām and a skil-
ful dialectician.68 He saw himself as a grammarian above all, never making a
secret of the fact that Naẓẓām’s and other theologians’ writings went over his
head.69 His K. maʿānī al-Qurʾān was edited recently,70 and it is indeed limited
to straightforward philological explanation, avoiding exegesis on the whole.
He did, however, make some statements in passing: that the speech with which
God addressed Moses was created;71 that God sitting on the throne must be
understood figuratively, and that even on the Day of Judgment when according
to sura 75:23 the blessed will “gaze upon their Lord”, they will perceive only his
mercy;72 and that “to create” (khalaqa) meant no more than “to make” (ṣanaʿa)
and consequently applied to humans as well.73 He had written the book for
Kisāʾī. According to Qiftī it became the model for Farrāʾ’s work of the same
63 kutub jiyād; thus Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān 246, 3f.

64 P. 389. Regarding the issue cf. Catalogue of Works XXI, no. 49. Furthermore it really is a
“response” (jawāb) rather than a “refutation”.
65 Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 192, 5f.
67 Marzubānī even described him as Abū Shamir’s ghulām (Nūr al-qabas 87, 16; following
him also Ṣafadī, Wāfī XV 259, 1, and Suyūṭī, Muzhir II 405, 17ff.). Cf. Qifṭī, Inbāh II 38, 4f. =
Zubaydī, Ṭab. 76, 4ff. Regarding him cf. EI2 I 321 b, and GAS 8/80.
68 Marzubānī 97, 15f. = Qifṭī II 39, 10f.
69 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān I 92, 7ff.
70 Twice, in fact: Kuwait 1400/1979 (ed. Fāʾiz Fāris, 1–2) and Beirut 1405/1985. I am quoting
from the former, as the latter edition was not available to me.
71 P. 248, pu. f.
72 P. 55, pu. ff., and 406, ult. f.; p. 518, 4ff.
73 P. 417, 4; linking it with sura 23:14 as ʿAbbād b. Sulaymān did later, who was of the opposing
view (see ch. C 4.1.2.1.1.5 below).
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name, but it is impossible to detect any direct influence.74 – Another, rather

mysterious person who belonged in the same circle was
Yūnus,
whom Ashʿarī quoted besides Abū Shamir on the definition of faith.75 Shortly
before,76 he was mentioned with the nisba al-S-m-rī, which should most like-
ly be read as al-Shamirī, as Ibn al-Dāʿī77 and Ṣamʿānī78 did. Shahrastānī on the
other hand changed it to al-Numayrī,79 and ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī to al-Barrī.80
Baghdādī extended the name to read Yūnus b. ʿAwn,81 while Maqrīzī had Yūnus
b. ʿAmr,82 but it is not worthwhile to continue speculating; it is not possible to
identify the person more clearly either way. The school of this Yūnus had tested
the definition of faith against the case of Satan: Satan had true knowledge of
God, but he did not have the humility that is also part of faith; his pride caused
him to become an unbeliever. This is what the Quran says, in sura 2:34: Satan
“refused, and waxed proud, and so he became one of the unbelievers”.83 In
this case the consequence was that his unbelief was due to his realising only
one of its components, pride, while faith only exists when all of its compo-
nents come together.84 Actually this followed the ancient definition of faith, as
long as one did not presume a manzila bayna l-manzilatayn. Maybe it was, in
fact, the reason why humility had been included in the definition, but it seems
that only at this late date was it expressed explicitly. One wonders whether
74 Cf. Inbāh II 37, 12ff., and 38, 6 > Ṣafadī, Wāfī XV 259, 15ff. Farrāʾ himself died as early as
207/822, but did not write his K. maʿānī al-Qurʾān until shortly before his death, around
204/819 (cf. Blachère in EI2 II 807 b). The book was edited by Aḥmad Najātī, Muḥammad
ʿAlī al-Najjār and ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Ismāʿīl Shalabī (1–3, Cairo 1374/1955–1972). See also p. 100
above.
75 134, 1; cf. Text II 17 and commentary.
76 133, 9 = Text II 22, d.
77 Tabṣirat ul-ʿawāmm 59, 4.
78 Ansāb 603 b, 11 Margoliouth.
79 Milal 104, 7/260, 1; quoted by Āmidī and Ījī (cf. Gimaret, Livre 421, n. 20). The new Samʿānī
edition has disimproved Shamirī to Numayrī accordingly (XIII 537, ult.).
80 Ghunya 91, 5. We must also be careful not to confuse him with al-Shimmazī (thus Jāḥiẓ,
Bayān I 16, 15; see p. 366, n. 2 below).
81 Farq 191, 3/202, ult. > Isfarāʾīnī, Tabṣīr 90, 12/97, ult.
82 Khiṭaṭ II 350, 3.
83 Shahrastānī pointed out the connection (104, 11f./260, 9f.).
84 Text 22, c–e.
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Yūnus’ followers may have been ascetics who already regarded Satan as the
true muwaḥḥid, perfect as far as knowledge is concerned. It has generally been
assumed that this idea was raised only by Ḥallāj.85 Furthermore the first paral-
lel was found with another “Murjiʾite”, Muḥammad b. Shabīb who lived during
the first third of the third century;86 he was as close to the Muʿtazila as Abū
Shamir had been.87 He, and other theologians who were the latter’s successors,
will be discussed below.
See ch. C 5.1.1–3 below. Another Basran Murjiʾite whose ideas were close
to those of Abū Shamir, Abū Muʿādh al-Tūmanī, may have had contacts
in Egypt (see p. 823ff. below). There does not seem to be more docu-
mentary evidence for two further theologians, who also appear to come
from this background, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Abī Ruʾba and Abū l-Mughīra
al-Baṣrī (according to Gimaret in: JA 173/1985/243 mentioned by Ashʿarī;
regarding the former cf. also vol. I 189, n. 38 above). Qudayd b. Jaʿfar, a
pupil of Abū Ḥanīfa’s against whom Bishr b. al Muʿtamir seems to have
written a treatise (Catalogue of Works XVII, no. 7) was probably based
in Baghdad. There is no further documentary evidence for al-Ṣabbāḥ b.
al-Walīd al-Murjiʾī except Masʿūdī, Murūj VI 374, 9/IV 240 apu. > Ibn al-
ʿArabī, ʿAwāṣim 83, 4ff., according to which he took part in the majālis of
the Barmakids.
2.2.4.3 “Jahmites”
There were also some Murjiʾites who were not Qadarites. Once again we have
to make the effort to disentangle the heresiographers’ terminology. Some pre-
destinarians, such as the philologist Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, were only secondari-
ly labelled as “Murjiʾites”,1 while other Murjiʾites are listed, here as elsewhere,2
as Jahmites, especially if they objected to anthropomorphism, as Abū Shamir
did. An entirely Murjiʾite doctrine was that of e.g. a Jahmite named
85 Cf. P. J. Awn, Satan’s Tragedy and Redemption. Iblīs in Sufi psychology (Leiden 1983).
86 Text XXXI 21, c–d.
87 He, too, used the term fāsiq (ibid., i). He was also the doxographer who is the source for
some accounts of the neo-Ghaylānite school (cf. Text II 15, d, and 17, i).
1 See p. 426 below.

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Ibn al-Ṭaḥḥān al-Ḍarīr al-Baṣrī,
which Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī described as follows: “On the day of resurrec-
tion God will replace believers’ wrongdoings with good deeds. They will feel
remorse because of the delights and lustful experiences they (as they assume)
are missing; they had expected punishment. Then they will achieve reward
(instead). When the conversation came to this subject, he would always recite
sura 25:70: ‘God will change their evil deeds into good deeds’.”3 Ibn al-Ṭaḥḥān
was apparently blind (ḍarīr), but that is all we know about him. He does not
seem to be linked to the dualist Ḍarīr from Wāsiṭ from whom Yūsuf al-Samtī
learned his “Jahmite” views.4 – Another person who was noticed due to his
anti-anthropomorphist views was
Abū ʿAmr al-Ḥaddād al-Jadalī.
When the governor Muhallab b. al-Mughīra, a descendant of Muhallab b. Abī

Ṣufra, was looking after the business of ʿĪsā b. Jaʿfar, one of Manṣūr’s grand-
sons, al-Ḥaddād replied to his question rather too candidly that he considered
God’s name to be created; he was flogged for this and died from his injuries.
Once again this account is found in one source only, and that a late one,5 and
once again it is impossible to find out anything more about the person.6 But
we do know that ʿĪsā b. Jaʿfar was governor of the city twice under Hārūn with
Muhallab as his deputy.7 He became governor of Khorasan in 180/796,8 and
died in Iran in 192/808.9 The episode described would thus have taken place
during the seventies. – Another mutakallim about whom we know just as little,
mourned al-Ḥaddād in an elegy:
3 Imtāʾ III 196, 13ff.

4 See p. 176 above.
5 Ṣafadī, Wāfī X 149, ult. ff.; the kunya is found at 150, 8.
6 He is not the same as the jurist Ḥasan b. Aḥmad al-Ḥaddād al-Baṣrī whom Shīrāzī mentioned
(Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ 120, 1f.); for the jurist’s K. adab al-qaḍāʾ discusses the generation follow-
ing Ibn Ḥanbal (cf. Subkī, Ṭabaqāt III 255, 10ff.).
7 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 743m 7ff. and 20f. Ṣafadī names Muhallab’s son Saʿīd instead of the father, but
the son does not seem to have held this office at all. Regarding both cf. Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara
369, pu. ff.
8 Ṭabarī III 644, 17.
9 Ibid. III 733, 1 = Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 739, 12.
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Bishr b. Shabīb al-Baṣrī.
He made use of strong words in his poem: “The breasts of all men are nowa-
days open to unbelief, with the exception of only very few. They worship what
they can shape (with their hands) and do not distinguish between a symbol
(dalīl) and that which it represents”,10 i.e. they imagine God to be like the things
they see on earth, when they should only deduce his existence from them.
Al-Ḥaddād, he continued, died for tawḥīd; he defended a non-anthropomor-
phic image of God and thus stood up for the true faith.11 Interestingly there
is another poem by Bishr b. Shabīb in which he attacked the qāḍī Muʿādh b.
Muʿādh for his incompetence in office;12 the latter was an anthropomorphist.13
Neither of the two mutakallimūn are linked to a particular group, but it is
unlikely that they were Muʿtazilites; otherwise we might expect that at least
the martyr Ḥaddād would have found his way into their Ṭabaqāt works. It
is interesting that the old Ibāḍite ʿaqīda, which ʿUmar b. Jumayʿ translated
into Arabic, spoke out vehemently against the doctrine of the createdness
of God’s names,14 as did the Egypt-based Ibāḍite theologian ʿĪsā b. ʿAlqama
who was probably a contemporary of these events;15 it was always possible
that a Muhallabid had links with the Ibāḍiyya.16 The theologoumenon was
not given much notice elsewhere, although it would be regarded as typical-
ly Jahmite later.17 In the later view this also put a stop to the argument that
the Quran, which includes the names of God, must be as eternal as the
names themselves. – A Basran traditionist who was suspected of being a
Jahmite was
10 Wāfī X 150, 6f.

11 qatīl al-tawḥīd or thāʾir al-dīn in 150, 8 and 10.
12 Wakīʿ, Akhbār II 148, –7ff.
14 Muqaddimat al-tawḥīd 111, 1f.; Cuperly, Introduction 65.
16 See p. 220f. below. Ibn Ḥazm (Jamhara, loc. cit.) describes Muhallab as a fanatic opponent
of the Muʿtazila. It is, however, unlikely that Ibn Ḥazm would have distinguished entirely
sharply between Muʿtazilites and “Jahmites”, especially in the context of Basra.
17 Cf. Text XX 1. In general also ch. D 1.3.
�14 chapter �
Abū ʿAmr Bishr al-Sarī b. Muslim18 al-Afwah,
d. 195/811 or 196/812 at the age of 63.19 He seems to have acquired his reputa-
tion in Mecca where he preached repentance. He was a member of Sufyān b.
ʿUyayna’s circle20 and was said to have incurred the latter’s wrath for joining
a certain Qaddāḥ who apparently believed that it was possible to be a devout
Muslim without knowing whether the Kaʿba was in Mecca or in Medina.21 This
was exactly the sort of thing theologians’ gossip expected of a Murjiʾite.22 He
had already “spoken about the Quran”, which probably means that he consid-
ered it to have been created like everything else. He met the hadith al-nuzūl
with a critical question, and dismissed out of hand another prophetic dictum
that was to become chief witness for the visio beatifica.23 The latter episode
was said to have been reported by Ibn Ḥanbal who, however, commented posi-
tively on him elsewhere.24 Thus Bishr’s reputation was hardly threatened in
Iraq. He is an authority in all four canonical collections. – Some sources also
considered
Jaʿfar b. ʿĪsā al-Ḥasanī,
a great-grandson of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s, to be a “Jahmite”. By his time what had

been marginal for Bishr al-Sarī had become essential: in 218, when al-Maʾmūn
opened the miḥna, he was qāḍī in Baghdad and became one of the first to pro-
fess the new dogma.25 Thus his being a Jahmite may not have had anything to
do with Basra; he had been qāḍī in Rayy before.26
18 The grandfather’s name according to Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 546, 8ff.

19 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 143, no. 175; Mīzān no. 1195; TH 355f. no. 345; TT I 450f. no. 825; Suyūṭī,
Tadrīb al-rāwī I 329, 8f. Cf. also Bukhārī I2 75 no. 1741; IAH I1 358 no. 1363; Ṣafadī, Wāfī X 149
no. 4608.
20 Fasawī I 718, –4ff.; II 691, 9ff.; as a Meccan also IS V 367, 1.
21 Fasawī I 724, pu. ff.
23 ʿUqaylī and Mīzān, loc. cit.
24 ʿIlal 102 no. 610.
25 Ṭabarī III 1120, 9ff. Regarding him TB VI 160ff. no. 3608, and Mīzān no. 1515.
26 TB 161, 4; also ch. C 3.3.1, end, below.
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2.2.5 The Ibāḍiyya

The Ibāḍite community in Basra has only recently emerged from the obscurity
of history. For a long time Tadeusz Lewicki was the only one to advance this
development;1 in recent decades English, French and German disserta-
tions have been added.2 The marginal existence into which the Ibāḍites
were pushed over the centuries had led to original sources being hardly ever
accessible; manuscripts were kept in remote places and the lithographs of
the Bārūniyya Press in Cairo and of Algerian publishing houses were diffi-
cult to find. If this state of affairs is slowly changing due to new editions, and
to Ibāḍite scholars being included in international research, we must not
forget in our delight at the accessibility of a new body of sources that these
offer only a one-sided image, especially as regards Basra. Ibāḍite historians
composed their works in the Maghreb or in Oman; Basra was barely more
than an ideal past. Consequently what information there was has only been
repeated through the centuries; there were no new traditions, and for ideo-
logical reasons non-Ibāḍite works of history as well as heresiography would
not have been adduced. The result was the fiction of a straightforward, “or-
thodox” development, which only took limited notice of what happened
around it.
2.2.5.1 The Case of ʿAbdallāh b. Ibāḍ

Tradition did not follow this concept entirely. Some reports that were not
brought into line have survived, and lacunae that were already extant in an-
cient material could not be camouflaged later, either. This is particularly no-
ticeable in the case of the sect’s heros eponymos, ʿAbdallāh b. Ibāḍ. Ibāḍite
historiography knows barely anything about him; according to Ibn Ḥazm he
was completely unknown among his Spanish followers (Nukkār?).1 This prob-
lem went back a long way, for what Ṭabarī reported about him in the context
of the events of the year 64 with reference to Abū Mikhnaf’s K. al-Azāriqa was,
1 Cf. in summary his article Ibāḍiyya in EI2 III 648ff., and his essay The Ibāḍites in Arabia and
Africa in: Cahiers d’Histoire Mondiale 13/1971/51ff. A bibliography of his works may be found
in FO 11/1969/7ff.
2 The indispensable study is A. Kh. Ennami (al-Nāmī), Studies in Ibadism, PhD Cambridge
1971. Other important studies are by Cuperly, Rebstock and Schwartz, also ʿIwaḍ Khulayfāt
(A. M. Khleifat), Nashʾat al-ḥaraka al-Ibāḍiyya (Amman 1978). See below for more details.
1 Fiṣal IV 191, 10ff.

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being contrived interaction between the three founders of sects ʿAbdallāh b.

Ibāḍ, ʿAbdallāh b. Ṣaffār and Nāfiʿ b. al-Azraq, barely more than mythology.2
Within the school, juristic doctrine and hadiths were only ever traced back
to or via Jābir b. Zayd al-Azdī, who belonged to the subsequent generation.
This fact has been emphasised several times in recent years and has not been
denied even by Ibāḍite authors such as Ennami. J. C. Wilkinson was the one
to draw the clearest conclusions,3 stating that until the second century one
cannot yet speak of a coherent Ibāḍiyya; the movement that seemed, to later
perspective from exile, to have already delimited itself at the time was in
fact still open to kindred ideas in its surroundings. Even within the Khārijite
sphere of influence the lines were not drawn as definitively as later heresiog-
raphers would have us believe. Ibāḍiyya and Ṣufriyya were well-nigh impos-
sible to separate, and their contemporaries do not seem to have made a clear
distinction, either.4 It is really only possible to distinguish between secession-
ists who were looking for salvation in a new hijra and others who hoped to
preserve the unity of the dār al-Islām and were looking to effect a reform from
the inside out.
The only documents that were believed to help illuminate the past were
two letters said to have sent by ʿAbdallāh b. Ibāḍ to ʿAbd al-Malik. However,
M. Cook’s research has cast their authenticity into considerable doubt.5 One
of them is documented only very late, and it is possible that Barrādī (second
half of the eighth/fourteenth century) believed it to be a letter from Jābir b.
Zayd to a Shīʿite; Cook, who rejects this attribution as well, presumes the mid-
dle of the second century as the terminus ante quem. The second one, which
had been believed genuine so far,6 was in fact, and as suspected by Cook,
penned by Jābir b. Zayd and addressed not to ʿAbd al-Malik but to ʿAbd al-
Malik b. al-Muhallab. This, however, affects the chronological considerations
rather less than Cook assumed, as ʿAbd al-Malik b. al-Muhallab was ṣāḥib
2 Cf. II 517, 13ff.; regarding the source U. Sezgin, Abū Miḫnaf 100. A certain Ḥanẓala b. Bayhas
is also mentioned, probably with the intention of presenting him as the founder of the
Bayhasiyya (see p. 666, n. 7 below). Abū Mikhnaf/ Ṭabarī were probably also the source of
the information found in genealogical works by Ibn al-Kalbī (cf. Caskel, Ǧamhara II 113a), Ibn
Ḥazm, Jamharat al-nasab 218, 2) or Ibn Durayd (Ishtiqāq 249, apu.).
3 Cf. his essay in: Studies in the First Century of Islamic Society, ed. Juynboll, p. 125ff.; esp. p. 131ff.
4 In one place Jāḥiẓ describes Abū ʿUbayda al-Tamīmī as Ibāḍī min ʿulamāʾ al-Ṣufriyya (Bayān I
347, 6f.; cf. also Ḥayawān III 402, 6).
5 Dogma 53ff.
6 Cf. the overview of research in Cook, 57f.
iraq �17
al-shurṭa in Basra between 75 and 86 and frequently took the governor’s place;
he would probably have received the letter during that time.7 But it means
that the last detail that could have illuminated Ibn Ibāḍ’s personality has now
become invalid.
It is not possible to pursue the matter further here, but it is unlikely that
anything would be gained if we were to go so far as to doubt Ibn Ibāḍ’s very ex-
istence as a consequence;8 this would only result in new difficulties. It is worth-
while, on the other hand, to research where the name Ibāḍiyya occurred for
the first time. It does not appear as an autonym until late; Ennami locates the
first recorded instance in the Uṣūl al-daynūna al-ṣāfiya by the Berber ʿAmrūs b.
Fatḥ (d. 283/896).9 This is not surprising as the Ibāḍites referred to themselves
simply as muslimūn,10 even though they were aware that the name Ibāḍiyya
was in use outside their own circle. As early as the end of the second/eighth
century the historian Abū Sufyān11 has the caliph al-Manṣūr using it.12 Al-Nafs
al-zakiyya was also said to have used it.13 Ashʿarī used the term like all her-
esiographers; his sources date back to at least the first half of the third/ninth
century.14 In Oman it was used even by the Ibāḍites themselves in isolated
7 Thus Crone/Hinds, God’s Caliph 61, n. 21. The letter had always been dated to the year 76
or shortly afterwards.
8 Thus Cook 64f. Both Wilkinson and Cook toyed with the idea that the name might be
part of the range of colours from Ibn al-Azraq/Azraqiyya to Ibn al-Aṣfar/Ṣufriyya, but
Cook himself retracted this as ibāḍ is not linked to the root of abyaḍ (cf. p. 182, n. 96,
with reference to Lane, Lexicon 6 s. v.). According to Ṭabarī the founder of the Ṣufriyya
was not called Ibn al-Aṣfar anyway, but Ibn al-Ṣaffār, which would make him the son of
a coppersmith. For general information on Ibn Ibāḍ cf. also Khulayfāt, Nashʾa 75ff., and
Fārūq ʿUmar, Al-khalīj al-ʿarabī 84ff., which presents the material with greater faith in
the sources. How little was actually known about him is illustrated by the story told in
Marzubānī’s Akhbār al-Sayyid al-Ḥimyarī as quoted in ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad al-Amīnī,
Al-ghadīr fī l-kitāb wal-sunna wal-adab II 228, ult. ff., which dates him to the time of
Manṣūr. Nouiouat, reviewing this in REI 48/1980/82, promptly goes on to confuse him
with the theologian ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd (vol. I 477ff. above).
9 Studies in Ibadism 5, quoted in Cook 64. Regarding Amrūs see p. 676 below.
10 Cf. Schwartz, Anfänge der Ibāḍiten 22f.
12 Cook, Dogma 182, n. 104, with a further source.
13 In his K. al-siyar, if the extant version of this text is indeed genuine (cf. R. al-Sayyid’s edi-
tion in: Maj. Kull. al-Ādāb Ṣanʿāʾ 11/1990, p. 120, –8).
14 Malaṭī’s deriving the name from one Ibāḍ b. ʿAmr (Tanbīh 42, 5/52, 10) was probably mere-
ly an error.
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instances.15 The impression conveyed is that at the beginning it referred to one

particular group only, the followers of a certain Ḥārith b. Mazyad who might
have been a contemporary of Abū Sufyān’s.16 He is frequently named simply as
Ḥārith al-Ibāḍī,17 and Maqdisī even changed his name to Ḥārith b. Ibāḍ in order
to explain why his followers were called Ibāḍiyya rather than Ḥārithiyya.18 The
true reason was that after the first muḥakkima they worshipped only Ibn Ibāḍ
as their imam.19
It does seem that they did this because they were Qadarites.20 Consequently
we must ask whether this could not have been true of Ibn Ibāḍ as well, which
might be a reason why he was mentioned so little by his predestinarian suc-
cessors. It cannot be proven, but there is at least one indication that this
might have been the case, for Ibn Ḥazm preserved the report that Ibn Ibāḍ
changed sides and went over to the Thaʿāliba, a sub-group of the ʿAjradiyya.21
Kaʿbī presented it, entirely anachronistically, as though he converted to the
Muʿtazila; he also claims that this was the reason why his reputation was
rather negligible among his fellow members.22 The Thaʿāliba, followers of
a certain Thaʿlaba who would later be living near Nishapur, did not believe
in the predestination of human action.23 The question remains of how Ibn
Ibāḍ would have arrived in Iran, and for the time being it is impossible to
answer.
2.2.5.2 The Development of the Basran Community

When referring to themselves the Ibāḍite majority in the Maghreb used the
term Wahbiyya, recalling ʿAbdallāh b. Wahb al-Rāsibī, an early Iraqi Khārijite
who had been much respected due to his piousness and died in the battle of
15 Al-siyar wal-jawābāt I 209, –7ff., together with an honourable mention of Ibn Ibāḍ.
17 Thus Ashʿarī, Maq. 104, 6; Shahrastānī 101, –4/247, 10.
18 Badʾ V 138, pu. f.; cf. also Samʿānī, Ansāb I 87, 1ff.
19 Baghdādī, Farq 84, 12ff./105, 8ff. Cf. also ʿUmar, Khalīj 81f.
21 Fiṣal IV 191, 10.
22 Quoted by Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī, Ḥūr 173, 7ff., and Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Al-baḫr al-zakhkhār I
49, 14f.
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Nahrawān.1 This had no basis in history either. The person around whom the
community tradition took on a more concrete form was not older than Ibn
Ibāḍ but a generation younger:
Abū l-Shaʿthāʾ Jābir b. Zayd al-Azdī al-Jawfī,2
a member – or mawlā3 – of the Banū Yaḥmad, i.e. the Azd Shanūʾa. Born near
Nazwā in Oman4 he probably settled in the city5 around the year 60/679, when
the Azd migrated to Basra in large numbers.6 He died there in 93/712; it was not
until later that the date of his death was gradually moved forward an entire de-
cade. This was the result of idealising his biography, probably instigated by the
Ibāḍite historian Abū Sufyān and surviving in Shammākhī’s K. al-siyar.7 He was
not yet a “pure” Ibāḍite; non-Ibāḍite historians, too, regarded him as an uncon-
tested authority;8 possible reservations were stifled by having him refuse to be
called an Ibāḍite.9 This may have been behind accounts of him agreeing with
the K. al-irjāʾ, too,10 as the spirit of this text was not really compatible with con-
sistently Ibāḍite views. It was known that he had enjoyed great esteem in the
city earlier than Ḥasan al-Baṣrī due to his expert legal opinions;11 in fact, Ḥasan
referred to his opinions from time to time.12 Later it was said that Ḥasan’s fame
1 Regarding him EI2 I 54 s. n. Ibn Ḥawqal’s giving his birthplace, as well as that of ʿAbdallāh
b. Ibāḍ, as Jabal Nafūsa (Ṣūrat al-arḍ 37, 9f.) is probably a reflection of local tradition.
2 This nisba is found only in non-Ibāḍite sources (TT II 38f. no. 61).
3 Thus according to Masʿūdī, Murūj V 462, 1f./IV 39, 2f.
4 Wilkinson, The Imamite Tradition of Oman 149; cf. also Khamīs b. Saʿīd al-Shaqaṣī, Manhaj
al-ṭālibīn I 615, –6ff.
5 Did he get his nisba from the Darb al-Jawf in Basra? It was more likely the other way
around; the Jawf was a region in Oman (cf. Samʿānī, Ansāb III 416, 1ff.).
6 See p. 2 above.
7 Cf. p. 70, 10ff.; also Wilkinson in: Studies 133ff. The earlier date of his death was confirmed
not only by old sources such as Khalīfa, Ṭab. 502f. no. 1729, or AZ 241 no. 276, but also by
indirect dates in Fasawī II 54, 4ff.
8 Cf. the biographies in IS VII1 130ff.; Fasawī II 12ff.; Abū Nuʿaym III 85ff. etc.; further refer-
ences in GAS 1/586. For general information on Jābir cf. Khulayfāt 86ff., and Rubinacci in
EI2 359.
9 IS VII1 132, 5f.
10 Fasawī II 13, 3ff.; also Arabica 21/1974/40f., and Cook 74f.
11 See p. 144f. above; also Fasawī II 48, 7ff.
12 Aqwāl Qatāda 79, 6f.
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surpassed his,13 but it had to be admitted that Jābir had been able to express
himself more freely during the last years before his death. Ḥasan had been
silenced under Ḥajjāj from 83/702 onwards,14 while Jābir prayed behind the
governor every Friday like a good citizen.15 His influence continued beyond
his own and Ḥasan’s death and in non-Ibāḍite circles, too, as illustrated by the
Aqwāl Qatāda which draw on him much more regularly than on Ḥasan.16 Like
Qatāda, Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, another of Ḥasan’s pupils,17 had nothing but
praise for him.18 One of his works that was preserved was one of the oldest
attempts to determine the chronological order of the suras.19
Jābir’s approach to points of law comes alive in his “letters”, in reality written
expert opinions; they survived in a manuscript that has yet to be edited and ap-
pear to be genuine.20 He relied mainly on his common sense (raʾy); occasion-
ally he referred to Ibn ʿAbbās under whom he had studied. He did not quote
hadith or the Quran, in the case of the latter probably only because it would
not have helped in the issues under discussion. This tells us implicitly that it
did not occur to him to use analogy to expand the propositions of scripture.
It is interesting that several items among the correspondence were addressed
to Muhallabids, including women of the family; proof of the shared origin of
the Azd ʿUmān. There were also enquiries from Oman itself: such as whether
someone wass guilty of wrongdoing for not going to Friday prayers because he
had not heard the call.21 He also wrote a Risālat al-rajūf; unfortunately we do
13 Kaʿbī, Maq. 86, –5f., and Fasawī II 48, 7ff. Regarding an Ibāḍite view cf. Wilkinson 243f.,
n. 23.
14 See p. 48 above.
15 Not even Ibāḍite sources denied this (cf. Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl, Sīra ilā ahl Ḥaḍramawt in:
al-Siyar wal-jawābāt I 291, –5f.); for general information see Wilkinson 136. According to
Darjīnī, Ṭab. 207, 7ff., Ḥasan was in hiding when Jābir died.
16 See p. 166 above. His rapport with Qatāda was still presumed in Ḥilya III 86, 17f.
18 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 242 no. 1529, and 387 no. 2584 = Fasawī II 12, 5ff. – Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, too,
continued to be respected by the Ibāḍites (cf. the biography in the late Ṣaḥīfa Qaḥṭāniyya,
MS Rhodes House, Afr. S 3, fol. 240a). Rabīʿ b. Ṣabīḥ quoted him.
19 Suyūṭī, Itqān I 25, 8ff., cf. p. 164 above.
20 Cf. Ennami inL JSS 15/1871/61f., and the detailed analysis of the subject matter in his dis-
sertation, p. 75ff.; also ZDMG 126/1976/27ff., and 127/1977/226f. Not even Cook has any
doubts concerning their authenticity (Dogma 63 and 66).
21 Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl, Sīra 309, 10ff.
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not know anything about its contents.22 It seems that his Dīwān, presumably
a collection of fatwās, was still in use in Baghdad in the third/ninth century.23
Soon after Jābir’s death those who had joined the Muhallabid cause because
of their tribal affiliation or their religious conviction would have to make sac-
rifices. When Yazīd b. Muhallab’s uprising failed, his followers in Basra, includ-
ing the Ibāḍites, were persecuted by the authorities.24 – The most important
of the scholars of the time whose memory survived in later Ibāḍite tradition
was probably
Ḍumām25 b. al-Sāʾib al-ʿAbdī
who had studied under Jābir, and whose riwāya of his traditions survives to the
present day.26 Like Jābir he came from Oman, from a Bedouin family, but was
born in Basra. –
Abū Nūḥ Ṣāliḥ b. Ibrāhīm al-Bāhilī al-Dahhān
came from another tribal federation. He was an oil merchant, and may not
have had any links to Oman at all. Consequently Ibāḍite tradition paid him
less attention, referring to him as Abū Nūḥ Ṣāliḥ al-Dahhān;27 Wisyānī wrote
his name incorrectly as Ṣāliḥ b. Nūḥ.28 Sunni sources, on the other hand, were
22 Ibid. 315, pu.

23 Abū Zakariyāʾ, Siyar al-aʾimma 94, apu. ff./transl. Le Tourneau in: Revue Africaine
104/1960/326ff., and Darjīnī, Ṭab. 80, 11f., although the context is fictitious. Cf. ZDMG
126/1976/52, n. 51, and Wilkinson in: Der Islam 62/1985/245f. Jābir’s statements concern-
ing juristic doctrine, insofar as they were quoted in later texts, have been collected in a
commendable fashion by Yaḥyā Muḥammad Bakkūsh, Fiqh al-imām Jābir b. Zayd, 1–2,
2(Algiers?) 1988.
24 See p. 146f. and 190 above. In general on the importance of the family cf. Nāfiʿ Tawfīq
ʿAbbūd, Āl Muhallab b. Abī Ṣufra wa-dawruhum fī l-taʾrīkh ḥattā muntaṣif al-qarn al-rābiʿ
al-hijrī (Baghdād 1979), and P. Crone in EI2 VII 358ff. s. v. Muhallabids.
25 I vocalise thus in agreement with Wilkinson who probably bases his decision on the cur-
rent pronunciation in Oman. Ḍimām is another possibility (cf. Lane 1801c). Lewicki (REI
8/1934/71) reads Ḍummām but without giving an explanation why.
26 Ennami in: JSS 15/1970/68 no. 3–1; Wilkinson in: Studies 135 and 138; Khulayfāt 103. Cf. also
Darjīnī, Ṭab. 246ff.; Shammākhī, Siyar 86, –4ff.; Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 231, pu. f.
27 Darjīnī, Ṭab. 254, apu. ff.; Shammākhī, Siyar 88, –6ff.
28 Siyar, MS Smogorzewski 277, I 37, 2ff.; following him Rebstock 178, n. 6, and probably also
Schwartz 42. [The second half of Wisyānī’s work was edited by Ismāʿīl al-ʿArabī in Algiers
in 1985; the first half, where our quotation originates, does not seem to survive in the
libraries of the Mzab.].
�� chapter �
rather better informed regarding him. Kaʿbī used the form of the name chosen
here and also preserved the – albeit vague – tradition that he was an Ibāḍite.29
For the rest, a degree of chaos reigns. Besides the kunya Abū Nūḥ, Kaʿbī
also mentions Abū l-Azhar. Bukhārī names the father as Dirham rath-
er than Ibrāhīm (II2 278 no. 2801 > TT IV 388f. no. 651). Ibn Abī Ḥātim
turned the information into two people – this being the customary way
out for rijāl experts (II2 393 no. 1722, and 400 no. 1755); according to Ibn
Ḥibbān Abū l-Azhar Ṣāliḥ b. Dirham was from Medina while Abū Nūḥ
was a Basran (Bukhārī, loc. cit., n. 1). But according to Ibn Abī Ḥātim
this very Ṣāliḥ b. Dirham had a son named Ibrāhīm (regarding him ibid.
I1 106 no. 302; TT I 128 no. 228), and the Basran Shuʿba transmits from
Abū l-Azhar Ṣāliḥ b. Dirham, the putative Medinan (Fasawī II 112, 5).
Presumably Dirham and Ibrāhīm (written incorrectly) were mistaken
for one another. – Regarding Abū Nūḥ and Ḍumām b. al-Sāʾib see also
Ennami, Studies 114f.
Ṣāliḥ met Jābir b. Zayd in person and transmitted from him;30 he was also
active as a jurist in the community.31 However, his public activities were over-
shadowed by a pupil of Ḍumām’s who may have been slightly younger:
Abū ʿUbayda Muslim b. Abī Karīma al-Tamīmī,
who guided the fortunes of the community until the time of al-Manṣūr, and
especially during the troubles towards the end of the Umayyad era.32 This was
the time when the community developed its own character; Abū Mikhnaf
who, as we have seen, defined Ibn Ibāḍ’s role through his description of Ibn
al-Azraq, also died during al-Manṣūr’s caliphate, in 157/775.
It is noticeable that Abū ʿUbayda, like Ḍumām b. al-Sāʾib and unlike Jābir,
disappeared entirely from the non-Ibāḍite sources. The Ibāḍites themselves
claimed that he had taught only in secret in Basra.33 Of course, his was a dif-
29 Qabūl al-akhbār 214, –6f.; cf. also Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān III 178 no. 820.
30 Darjīnī, loc. cit.; Fasawī II 15, 9ff.; Dawlābī, Kunā II 141, 17.
31 Kitāb Ibn Sallām 114, 1; Ibn Khalfūn, Ajwiba 35, 8f., and 63, 1.
32 For general information regarding him see Lewicki in EI2, loc. cit.; Khulayfāt 103ff.; Sālim
b. Ḥammūd al-Sayyābī, Izālat al-waʿthāʾ 33ff.
33 Abū Zakariyāʾ, Siyar al-aʾimma 36, 5ff./transl. Revue Africaine 104/1960/110.
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ferent social environment: he was a mawlā34 trading in baskets and basket

coracles.35 Attempts to build on the works of genuine Arabs like Ibn Ibāḍ and
maybe also Jābir b. Zayd was not successful with his generation; people were
too well-informed. In his younger days under Ḥajjāj he had been in prison, but
over time he rose to become the most powerful man within the movement.
Ibāḍite texts regarded him as the head of the jamāʿat al-muslimīn, the “commu-
nity of Muslims”, which they interpreted as a senate of their more influential
members, a council of presbyters, as it were.36 The static image they present
may have to be modified slightly. Abū ʿUbayda certainly did not play that part
from the beginning; it is more probable that he grew into it in the course of
the noticeable radicalisation that took hold of Basran circles far beyond the
Ibāḍiyya during the 220s AH. At first he had proposed views that would later be
felt to be “unorthodox”,37 while the public face at the time was a certain Abū
Muḥammad al-Nahdī, a pulpit orator (khaṭīb) who had been converted to the
cause of the Ibāḍiyya. The qāḍī Bilāl b. Abī Burda, who was running the admin-
istration of the city at the time,38 condoned his verbal attacks on the governor
Khālid al-Qasrī in Wāsiṭ.39 The development linked to Abū ʿUbayda’s name, on
the other hand, concerns the Ibāḍite mission.
It has already been shown that this phenomenon was not limited to the
Ibāḍiyya.40 The name ḥamalat al-ʿilm “bearer of knowledge” to describe the
envoys can also be found in non-Ibāḍite literature;41 even more so the term ahl
34 Jāḥiẓ described him as a client of ʿUrwa b. Udayya’s, presumably the poet of this name
(Bayān III 265, 6f., and GAS 2/425). This does not fit in with Shammākhī’s information,
Siyar 83, 7f., that he was a mawlā of the Tamīm, because ʿUrwa was a member of the
ʿAbdmanāt b. Kināna (Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 181, apu. f.). Of course Shammākhī based his
account on the fact that Abū ʿUbayda’s nisba was al-Tamīmī. – Jāḥiẓ also mentioned him,
as a rāwī of the Khārijites, in his Risāla fī l-ḥakamayn (Mashriq 52/1958/476, 12).
35 qaffāf (cf. Wilkinson 137 and Schwartz 113). Quffa means “basket”, but in Basra specifically
refers to a round basket-woven vessel waterproofed with bitumen, used to cross the Shatt
al-Arab (Dozy, Suppl. s. v., and Kindermann, Schiff im Arabischen 83f.; also Ritter in: Der
Islam 9/1919/139f. with plates 23–27).
36 The term may, of course, also refer to the Ibāḍite community per se.
37 Schwartz 102ff.
39 Darjīnī, Ṭab. 257f. = Shammākhī 97, 1ff. He was a Southern Arab (cf. Lewicki in: FO
1/1959/15), like Bilāl b. Abī Burda; this may explain their agreement and his aggression.
40 Vol. I 51f. above.
41 In the sense of “experts, experienced people” (Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 42, 5).
��4 chapter �
al-daʿwa that was used in the same context.42 There is no reason to assume
that Abū ʿUbayda deliberately planned the development.43 He was asked for
advice because Basra was the centre of Ibāḍite scholarship at the time, but he
did not necessarily dispatch the ḥamalat al-ʿilm himself. Nor was he the only
one to nourish similar thoughts; this was probably the time when Hishām al-
Dastuwāʾī distributed garments among the Bedouin on behalf of his Ibāḍite
patrons in order to convert them to a more devout lifestyle and at the same
time to the ideas of the Ibāḍiyya.44 And finally we do not know exactly what
the Basran headquarters hoped to achieve in the long run. While Abū ʿUbayda
charged some of the “bearers of knowledge” – but not all of them! – to pro-
nounce fatwās, and thus pledged them to a cultural mission,45 circumstances
show that political unrest must have been discussed as well.
What is noticeable is the range of the enterprise. The envoys went not only,
like Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī, to the pastures of the Kalb between Iraq and Syria,
or to traditionally Arab areas like the Hijaz, South Arabia and Bahrain, but also
to Ghadames, the region of the Sadrāta and Nafzāwa Berbers, and elsewhere
in North Africa, to Egypt, Khorāsān, Khwārizm and even India.46 This does of
course presuppose a certain basis of operations on which they could rely and
which allowed these journeys and gave them a purpose. T. Lewicki in particu-
lar has brought this infrastructure to light: the Ibāḍites were merchants on a
grand scale, controlling the overseas trade all the way to India and China.47
Consequently the jamāʿat al-muslimīn is likely to have been more than the
centre of a trade network. It recalls the kind of circumstances that would cen-
turies later obtain in the merchant state of Timbuctoo.48 Still, we must not
overlook that the social status of merchants in Basra was still quite precarious
at the time. Furthermore the Azd were late arrivals and difficult to integrate
due to their South Arabian affiliation.49 There is a lot to be said for Wilkinson’s
suggestion that there were people even among the early Khārijites who, despite
being Arabs, never succeeded in escaping the low social status imposed on
42 Thus e.g. Shammākhī 123, ult. f.; also Lewicki in SI 9/1958/73.
43 As emphasised in particular by Schwartz (cf. e.g. Anfänge 97f., 114f., 118, and 266ff.). Cf. also
Rebstock, Ibāḍiten 15ff.
44 See p. 70 above.
45 Schwartz 116f.
46 Cf. Wilkinson in: Studies 138f.
47 Cf. e.g. his essay Les premiers commerçants arabes en Chine, in: RO 9/1935/173ff.
48 There was a jamāʿa of scholars here, too (Saad, Social History 120ff.).
49 See p. 2 above.
iraq ��5
them under the Sasanids.50 When Muhallab went to war against the Azraqites
he had spies report from their camp that they comprised fullers, dyers and
smiths, a rabble with whom nobody else would want to be connected.51 The
tribe of which Ibn Ibāḍ as well as Ibn Ṣaffār were members, according to Abū
Mikhnaf, was not much respected, either. This explains, more than any other
reason, why the Khārijites were such dedicated defenders of equality.
This is probably also linked to the fact that women had relatively high
influence among the early Ibāḍites (see p. 220 above and 233 below; cf.
F. ʿUmar, Al-khalīj al-ʿarabī 112f.). This has been observed among other
Khārijite groups as well (cf. Jāḥiẓ’ list in Bayān I 365, 2). Shabīb b. Yazīd
al-Shaybānī even allowed his mother (or his wife) to preach in Kufa
(see p. 521 below).
This very commitment on behalf of those who were badly treated was in fact
the main message in the propaganda of the ḥamalat al-ʿilm. They preached
barāʾa, rejection of those who did not keep the commandments, and walāya,
friendship and solidarity with all those who lived their lives according to the
spirit of Islam.52 Those who did not keep the commandments were, of course,
government representatives, their governors and tax farmers; but God is the
friend of the believers and the god-fearing,53 and those whose friend he is form
a great community where there are no differences any more. Here, leadership
is not due to precedence of bloodlines but that of piousness and virtue (faḍl).54
Madāʾinī’s account of Ṭālib al-ḥaqq’s visit to Ṣanʿāʾ in 129 tells us how others
saw them;55 he called people to the Quran and the Sunna of the prophet,56
“to profess the oneness of the Lord and the certainty of (God’s) threats and
50 In: Studies 128ff. using Khirrīt b. Rāshid’s revolt of AH 38 as an example; also The Imamite
Tradition of Oman 95f. Similarly, though with a slightly different emphasis, E. Ashtor,
Social History 31f., who pointed out that Nāfiʿ b. al-Azraq was the son of a smith who was
a freedman of Greek descent, i.e. a “proletarian”. We have reason to believe that many
Khārijites were not accepted into the army dīwān or received only a minimal ʿaṭāʾ (Sayed,
Ibn al-Ašʿaṯ 33).
51 Mubarrad, Kāmil 629, 4 Wright/1062, apu. f. Mubārak; transl. in Rescher, Khāridschiten 138.
52 Cf. in more detail p. 258ff. below.
53 Cf. sura 3:68 and 45:19.
54 Cf. Wilkinson in: Studies 136f. after manuscript sources. This attitude in turn contributed
to blurring social differences; Jāḥiẓ already noted this (Manāqib al-Turk, in: Rasāʾil I 51,
6ff.; quoted in Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership 162).
55 Agh. XXIII 224ff.; regarding the event see p. 736 and 796 below.
56 Ibid. 226, 11ff.
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promises, to obey the commandments and to command what is right and re-
ject what is nefarious, to friendship with those who have God as a friend, and
to enmity towards those who have God as an enemy”.57 He called adulterers,
thieves and wine drinkers infidels,58 and his followers spread terror with their
Yemeni hatred of the Quraysh.59 They did, however, take great care that the
outrage did not become indiscriminate slaughter as with the Azāriqa; Ṭālib al-
ḥaqq did indeed spare many a political opponent quite ostentatiously.60 The
Ibāḍites were known for never pursuing a Muslim who had turned and fled,61
for to them even non-conforming Muslims were members of the ahl al-qibla;
they did not leave the Muslim community behind, as the Azraqites had done
with their hijra ideal, but attempted to reform it. They were puritans, but they
always preserved a certain liberalism.
But we anticipate: the revolts had yet to take place. For the time being the
organisation devoured money that had to be procured somehow by the com-
munity. To this end a fund was set up into which wealthy merchants, but also
people of small income, could pay.62 It was administered by
Abū Mawdūd Ḥājib al-Ṭāʾī al-Azdī,
a merchant of Omani descent who was born in Basra, and who stands beside
Abū ʿUbayda as a further person of significance.63 He, too, was not merely a
political agitator but also a scrupulously devout man and expert in theology.
His house was the scene of religious discussion and meditation sessions,64
and people recalled that he, surpassing Abū ʿUbayda’s conscientiousness, re-
peated his prayer on the occasion when on their travels the two of them had
prayed behind a non-Ibāḍite imam who had inserted words (qunūt) after the
57 Ibid. 227, 1f.

58 Ibid. 226, 15f.
59 Ibid. 230, 10f.
60 Ibid. 226, 6ff.; also 227, 7f. Cf. Lewicki in: FO 1/1959/7.
61 Ashʿarī, Maq. 109, 10f.; cf. also Schwartz, Anfänge der Ibāḍiten 209.
62 Cf. Lewicki in: Cahiers 73f., and Wilkinson in: Studies 139 with further details. The first
Rustamid imam, who lived in most primitive circumstances in Tāhart, received financial
support from Basra (Ibn Ṣaghīr, Chronik 10, 14ff.).
63 Regarding him see Darjīnī 248ff.; Shammākhī 90, –4ff.; ʿUmar, Khalīj 109ff. He seems to
have had a son named Ḥayyān (Darjīnī 275, 9); regarding a grandson called Ḥabīb b. Ḥafṣ
cf. Khamīs b. Saʿīd, Manhaj I 619, –4.
64 Darjīnī 248, pu. ff. = Shammākhī, ibid.; also Shammākhī 84, pu. ff.; 111, 5; 118, 7f.
iraq ��7
second rakʿa.65 Even the orthodox sources named him as a muḥaddith, albeit
with every indication of disapproval; it was known that he had transmitted
from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī as well as Jābir b. Zayd. At his death he left heavy debts; he
probably overstretched himself in the service of the movement.
Shammākhī 106, 11ff. Regarding him cf. Bukhārī II1 79 no. 284; Ibn Ḥibbān,
Majrūḥīn I 269, apu. ff. > Mīzān no. 1605. Ibn Ḥibbān wrote his name as
Ḥājib b. Abī l-Shaʿthāʾ, but it is most unlikely that he could have been
a son of Jābir b. Zayd, who bore this kunya. Surely the Ibāḍite sources
would not have overlooked this. It should probably read, as in Bukhārī, K.
al-ḍuʿafāʾ al-ṣaghīr 426 no. 92, and Mīzān, loc. cit., Ḥājib ʿan Abī l-Shaʿthāʾ
(similarly in ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 298 no. 371: Ḥājib ʿan Jābir b. Zayd). – Ibn
Ḥajar’s quoting Sājī (d. 208/920–1) in TT II 133 no. 222 to the effect that
a certain Ḥājib b. ʿUmar al-Thaqafī (d. 158/775) was an Ibāḍite, may also
be due to a misunderstanding. This refers to Abū Khushayna b. Ḥājib, a
brother of the grammarian ʿĪsā b. ʿUmar al-Thaqafī (regarding him see
p. 100 above). As Ḥājib al-Ṭāʾī is occasionally referred to by his ism only,
Ibn Ḥajar probably confused the two.
The various outposts of the Ibāḍite community will engage our attention
elsewhere.66 Revolts during the late Umayyad era from 122/739–40 onwards
took place only there: in the Maghreb, Yemen, and Oman.67 Developments
were different in Basra; even during times of the greatest troubles surveillance
was far too close. At its centre the Ibāḍite movement never left the stage of
“secrecy” (kitmān). Once the Abbasids held the reins firmly in their hands, it
was once again women who provided the link with the new regime and who
may have used their influence to support the community. We know of two such
cases in al-Manṣūr’s time; the Azd and in particular the Muhallabids were still
good for a political marriage.68 It is remarkable that al-Manṣūr had an Ibāḍite
of all people as a Quran reciter at his court.69 We do not hear much more about
65 Ibid. 91, apu. ff.; cf. EI2 V 395 s. v. Ḳunūt and my K. an-Nakth des Naẓẓām 69, also Watt-
Welsh, Islam I 288f.
66 Regarding the Hijaz see p. 735ff. and 746ff. below; Oman and Ḥaḍramawt: p. 796ff.; Mosul:
p. 527ff.; Khorasan: p. 674ff.; Egypt: p. 806ff.; Kufa: vol. I 475ff. Only the Maghreb will not be
discussed separately; cf. Rebstock’s and Schwartz’s works, also M. Talbī, Etudes d’histoire
ifrīqiyenne 13ff.
67 It is once again difficult to distinguish between Ṣufrite and Ibāḍite movements.
68 Cf. Lewicki in: Cahiers 78f.
��8 chapter �
Abū ʿUbayda; towards the end of his life he suffered from apoplexy70 and died
during al-Manṣūr’s caliphate.71
If the sources sometimes dated his death to a later time this was because,
due to the general ignorance of circumstances in the east that prevailed
in the Maghreb, Abū ʿUbayda was linked to later events as well. Thus
a delegation from Oman visiting the imam ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Rustam
(160/777–168/784) in Tāhart was believed to have set out during his life-
time (Abū Zakariyyāʾ, Siyar 54, 5f./transl. Revue Afr. 104/1860/131). A let-
ter from his hand addressed to the latter’s son ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān (168/784–108/823) was also believed to exist. The latter case
is probably due to him being mistaken for Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb (cf. Wilkinson
in: Arab. Studies 4/1978/193). The authenticity of a long missive on the
subject of zakāt practices addressed by Abū ʿUbayda to a community in
the diaspora remains to be established. He comments on questions such
as who had to pay the tithe (ʿushr) and among which needy persons it
should be distributed. The text contains no indications to help with our
chronological problem as it is not dated. Khulayfāt regarded the com-
munity in Tripoli as the addressee and dated the text to the time of Abū
l-Khaṭṭāb al-Maʿāfirī, i.e. between 140 and 144 (Nashʾa 149). This assump-
tion appears on the title page of the recent printed version: Risālat [Ibn]
Abī Karīma fī l-zakāt lil-imām Abī l-Khaṭṭāb al-Maʿāfirī (Oman 1982).
It seems that the Ibāḍiyya did not get involved in Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh’s up-
rising, maybe with good reason, as someone had leaked the most important
names of the organisation to al-Manṣūr.72 However, it would probably not have
been interested in cooperating with an ʿAlid. Consequently
Abū ʿAmr al-Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb b. ʿAmr al-Farāhīdī
was probably able to succeed Abū ʿUbayda peacefully. As the nisba shows he
came from Oman, where he seems to have been active in his younger days
on Abū ʿUbayda’s instruction.73 His father Ḥabīb b. ʿAmr had been a pupil of
Jābir b. Zayd’s,74 and would have had some connection with Basra. He himself
70 Darjīnī, Ṭab. 276, 6.

71 Shammākhī 91, 13ff.
72 Shammākhī 108, apu. ff.
73 Wilkinson in: Studies 142. Regarding the Farāhīd see p. 253 below.
74 Sālim b. Ḥamad al-Ḥārithī, Al-ʿuqūd al-fiḍḍiyya fī uṣūl al-Ibāḍiyya (Beirut 1974), p. 149ff.
iraq ��9
studied under Qatāda and, at the request of Abū ʿUbayda, had taken over his
pupils.75 He lived in the Khurayba quarter in northwest Basra, where the Battle
of the Camel had taken place more than a century earlier.76 We do not hear
much about mission during his time; the Ibāḍiyya had become firmly estab-
lished in Oman and in Tāhart. Interestingly he was believed to have considered
the contemporaneous existence of two imams to be possible, as long as their
spheres of influence did not touch.77 In the end it was a political issue in the
context of which he, by that time approaching old age, stepped into the lime-
light. The first of the Rustamids, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Rustam had died in Tāhart
in 168/784. His succession was difficult; there were two candidates, of whom
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s son ʿAbd al-Wahhāb had less support. He was only successful
because he granted the tribes a voice, and because he promised that in case
they were dissatisfied he would resign in favour of a better candidate (afḍal).
Once he had assumed power, however, he had no intention of abiding by the
two conditions and called on the community elders, who were in Mecca at the
time (presumably for the hajj) for a decision. The majority of them supported
him: once elected an imam has unlimited authority, being responsible only
to God. Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb was among those who composed the fatwā. This led to
a division in the Maghreb. Opponents rallied around Yazīd b. Fandīn of the
Banū Ifrān, a Berber who had been a member of the electorate. They suffered
defeat, but where the Rustamid power did not reach, the Nukkār – the “chal-
lengers” – would remain in the majority even later.78
Rabīʿ’s partisanship had financial rewards as the imam bought merchan-
dise for Tāhart through him.79 Later he was said to have called on him for
an expert opinion,80 at the time when ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was staying in Jabal
Nafūsa preparing the siege of Tripoli; this takes us to the years around 190.81
Consequently it would not be possible to date Rabīʿ’s death to around 170/786,
75 Kitāb Ibn Sallām 110, 6ff. Further teachers are listed in Bishr b. Ghānim, Al-mudawwana
al-kubrā 307, 11ff.
76 F. ʿUmar, Al-khalīj al-ʿarabī 115 after ʿAwtabī; also Darjīnī 276, ult., but misspelt here.
Regarding Khurayba cf. Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Khiṭaṭ al-Baṣra 122ff.
77 Maḥmūd Ismāʿīl, Al-Khawārij fī l-maghrib al-Islāmī (Beirut 1976), p. 122, n. 395.
78 In detail Rebstock 163ff., citing the relevant sources; also Lewicki in EI1, Suppl. s. v. Nukkār.
For Spain cf. Ibn Ḥazm’s remark, Fiṣal IV 191, 8f. It is worth noting that in the Quran the
root n-k-r has negative connotations in form I as well; cf. nakirahum “he found them sus-
picious” in sura 11:70, and shayʾ nuk(u)r “something atrocious” in sura 18:74 and 54:6.
79 Kitāb Ibn Sallām 110, 10ff.
80 Abū Zakariyāʾ 76, 14ff./transl. 156; Darjīnī 66, 9ff.
81 Rebstock 222ff.
�30 chapter �
as Brockelmann82 and more recently Wilkinson have done;83 but we would

have to allow him a long life. What is certain is that he had passed away by the
end of the century when Khalaf b. al-Samḥ and his followers had seceded from
the Rustamids.84 Before his death he had returned to his home in Oman.85 A
certain Abū l-Mundhir al-Nazwānī was already circulating his traditions at the
time, and at his request.86
These traditions have kept his name alive in the Ibāḍiyya to this day. He
collected them in a Musnad which unfortunately survives only in a later and
entirely reorganised redaction, Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf b. Ibrāhīm al-Warglānī’s (d.
570/1174) Tartīb. But the decision in favour of traditionalism had been made;
unlike the Muʿtazila, the Ibāḍiyya did not reject hadith. At the same time it
becomes clear to what extent it retired into itself, like the Shīʿa. Rabīʿ quoted
several authorities in the first generation: ʿĀʾisha, Anas b. Mālik, Abū Hurayra,
Abū Saʿīd al-Khuḍrī and above all Ibn ʿAbbās; originally his Musnad had been
arranged according to their names. Subsequently, however, everything would
be transmitted through Jābir b. Zayd, and often also Abū ʿUbayda, and, more
significantly: hardly anything was added after Rabīʿ. The Ibāḍiyya did not play
a part in the development of hadith science, then in its earliest stages. This also
explains the large number of incomplete isnāds.
I examined the work in more detail in ZDMG 126/1976/34ff.; Wilkinson pro-
vided further valuable information in a more recent essay.87 Consequently I can
limit myself to the most relevant information here. The first two books, com-
prising a total of 742 hadiths, contain the traditions Rabīʿ traced back to Jābir
via Abū ʿUbayda; according to Rabīʿ’s commentary they are a selection from
82 GAL S 2/823, following Masqueray.

83 In: Studies 142; also in: Der Islam 62/1985/233f.
84 Abū Zakariyāʾ 81, 1ff./transl. 162. Regarding the Khalafiyya cf. Lewicki in SI 9/1958/79f., and
EI2 III 659b: Rebstock 239ff. It survived on Djerba (cf. Abū Zakariyāʾ, transl. Revue Afr.
105/1961/141).
85 Wilkinson, ibid. Regarding the problem of dates cf. also Cook, Dogma 56f.
86 Cf. ZDMG 126.1976/33, n. 21. In general also Lewicki in: Cahiers 79 and EI2 III 651a.
87 In: Der Islam 62/1985/231ff.; cf. also Studies 245f., n. 30. Also the remarks by Talbi, Etudes
d’histoire ifrīqiyenne 36ff. It should be added to the bibliographical information that the
Damascene reprint of the two-volume edition with the gloss of Sālimī I mentioned on
p. 34, n. 23 a, was edited by ʿIzzaddīn al-Tanūkhī; it is divided into three volumes but does
not contain more text than the original, two-volume edition. All four parts are extant not
only in the printed version (Cairo 1349/1930) but also in a Jerusalem edition of 1381/1961–2
and a Damascene edition of 1388/1968 which was reprinted in 1985 in Masqat.
iraq �31
ca. 4000 dicta of the prophet and his companions. Book 3 (hadiths no. 743–
882) mainly contains material Rabīʿ collected from other sources; the hadiths
are mostly arranged according to theological considerations, thus e.g. in a Bāb
al-Qadar wal-ḥidhr wal-taṭayyur that reflects the contemporary discussion
of this issue.88 Book 4 (no. 883–1005) was added by Warglānī. It added Jābir
traditions with incomplete isnāds (maqṭūʿ), as well as some traditions by Abū
Sufyān Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl, Rabīʿ’s successor; also an additional section (ziyād)
by the Rustamid imam Aflaḥ b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (208/823–258/872), with a
commentary on juristic hadiths from a book (the Mudawwana?) by Bishr b.
Ghānim al-Khurāsānī.89
A manuscript on Djerba furthermore preserves the so-called Āthār al-Rabīʿ.
They are not linked to the Musnad at all, being juristic material connected in
some way or another with Rabīʿ himself: expert opinions he had given himself,
and others that he collected from Jābir b. Zayd via Ḍumām b. al-Sāʾib. Together
with the Aqwāl Qatāda and other writings, some once again traced back to
Jābir b. Zayd, these were part of a greater corpus known under the name Al-
dīwān al-maʿrūḍ ʿalā ʿulamāʾ al-Ibāḍiyya, possibly an edited version of the
Dīwān Jābir.90 In Oman it was known as the K. Abī Ṣufra after Abū Ṣufra ʿAbd
al-Malik b. Ṣufra who seems to have edited it around 235/850, and who was the
final point of the line of Basran ʿulamāʾ.91
Heresiographical reports confirm that the Ibāḍiyya did not die out in Iraq
immediately after Rabīʿ’s return home. However, the theologians of whom
we have accounts over the following decades, until the miḥna, were based in
Baghdad rather than in Basra; they did not object to being in touch with the
Abbasid court.92As for Basra, most scholars seem to have emigrated by the
end of the seventies, around the same time as Rabīʿ.93 His successor
88 No. 796–820; transl. Cuperly, Introduction 286ff.

89 This work also includes references to later authorities such as Bishr al-Marīsī (d. 218/833),
which I have discussed in ZDMG 126/1976/35f. They do not necessarily raise chronological
problems. Bishr al-Ghānim quoted Bishr al-Marīsī elsewhere, too (see p. 676 below).
91 In detail cf. Wilkinson in: Der Islam 62/1985/241ff.
92 For more information see ch. C 5.3 below.
93 Cf. Lewicki in: Cahiers 79 and EI2 III 651a.
�3� chapter �
Abū Sufyān Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl b. Sayf (?) b. Hubayra al-ʿAbdī al-Makhzūmī
apparently already had a “second home” in Oman,94 but when a dogma-related

controversy was causing unrest in the communities in Oman and Ḥaḍramawt,
he still intervened with missives presumably sent from Basra.95 He was a
Quraysh96 and appears to have been related to Rabīʿ.97 He would become im-
portant especially to historians as he – presumably realising that Basra was ir-
revocably lost to the community – wrote the history of the Basran shuyūkh on
which all later accounts, by Darjīnī, Shammākhī and others would be based.98
The work spread an image of history that found favour especially in the
Maghreb; less so in Oman at first.99 The author, however, was so little known
in the Maghreb that it was possible, against all chronological probabilities, to
attribute a letter to him that he was said to have written to Ṭālib al-ḥaqq, who
had been active in Yemen in AH 129.100
Sunni historiography did not take note of the Ibāḍite exodus; one genera-
tion after the foundation of Baghdad, Basra had become irrelevant altogether.
Rabīʿ’s Musnad did not leave any traces, either; to this day no-one in Damascus
knows that the book has been reprinted there. The experts of jarḥ wal-taʿdīl
were unable to classify Rabīʿ’s name; the sources teem with mistakes and
false hypotheses.101 The move underground and the subsequent separation of
Ibāḍite and “Sunni” sources that had first begun to take shape during the 220s
had now been concluded. Shammākhī, in fact, did not know anything about
names such as Qatāda or Sallām b. Miskīn, from whom Rabīʿ had transmit-
ted.102 Otherwise he would probably have suppressed them as they were both
Qadarites and did not conform to the Ibāḍite line any more at all.103
94 Wilkinson 244, n. 25; in more detail Lewicki in EI2 V 1230. To this day families in Ṣuḥār
trace their genealogies back to him (cf. Khamīs b. Saʿīd, Manhaj I 122, n. 1). His genealogy
has not been established with complete certainty (cf. divergent information in Lewicki,
in Khamīs b. Saʿīd 619, pu., and in ʿUbaydilī, Kashf al-ghumma 299, n. 3).
95 For more information see p. 244 and 797 below. References in Wilkinson (Arabian Studies
4/1978/193 and 196).
96 Al-siyar wal-jawābāt, ed. Kāshif, 276, n. 1.
97 Thus at least if Shammākhī’s slightly surprising remark is correct: that his mother (later?)
married Rabīʿ (Siyar 118, apu. f.). He was indeed regarded as the latter’s foster son (Khamīs
b. Saʿīd, loc. cit.).
98 Cf. Lewicki in: FO 3/1961/19, and Schwartz 31.
99 Cf. in detail Wilkinson in: Der Islam 62/1985/250 and 252f.
100 Darjīnī, Ṭab. 279, 13ff.; in part translated in Cuperly, Introduction 29f. Regarding the chron-
ological problem cf. Rebstock 242, n. 2; regarding the subject matter see p. 258 below.
101 Cf. ZDMG 126/1976/33f.
102 Cf. Siyar 121, 11 and 14f.
103 Regarding Sallām b. Miskīn see p. 78 above.
iraq �33
2.2.5.3 The Question of qadar

The culture of secret societies and seclusion led to rigorous discipline almost
as a matter of course. Abū ʿUbayda excommunicated members,1 and seems to
have been generally very autocratic where they were concerned.2 He could rely
on widespread approval; the only argument concerned whether those excom-
municated should afterwards be readmitted or not.3 The Qadarites were the
first to feel his rage. Originally, Qadarite teachings had not been considered
offensive among the Ibāḍites. They had collaborated with Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī
and transmitted Qatāda’s expert opinions; according to a Sunni record4 Abū
Nūḥ Ṣāliḥ al-Dahhān had been a Qadarite. So, too, had Ḥājib al-Ṭāʾī; he had ap-
proved of the maxim that good came from God, evil on the other hand came
from humans, thus standing in the tradition of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. It was not until
later that he retracted this out of solidarity with Abū ʿUbayda; the Qadarites
accused him of inconsistency.5 The “Ṣufriyya”, too, remained Qadarite.6
Unfortunately, Ibāḍite sources do not contain information on the dissidents’
views, but we do learn some details about their personalities. Firstly there was
Ḥamza al-Kūfī,
who was probably not very well received in Basra because he came from the
neighbouring city, which makes his Qadarite involvement even more astonish-
ing, as this was not very widely practised in Kufa. He had influential patrons:
Saʿīda, the wife of Manṣūr’s brother-in-law ʿAbdallāh b. al-Rabīʿ al-Ḥārithī in-
vited him to stay in her house after the altercation with Abū ʿUbayda.7 She
was herself a member of the community; she probably was the daughter of
Ḥalbiyya, a Muhallabid who had supported Ibāḍite circles during the Umayyad
era.8 She had to have the boycott pointed out to her; she clearly did not con-
sider Qadarite teachings dangerous, and the practice of excluding people from
the community was probably unknown to her, too. After she finally banned
1 Cf. Shammākhī 113, –6f.; also Text VII 1, i.

2 Ibid. 110, 11f.; he determined whether someone was permitted to go on pilgrimage. Maybe the
community financed their members’ hajj.
3 Abū Nūḥ Ṣāliḥ al-Dahhān’s answer was negative; Abū ʿUbayda himself was more generous
(Wisyānī, Siyar I 37, 2ff.; also vol. I 483 above).
4 Ibn ʿAdī in Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān III 178 no. 820.
5 Cf. the instructive account in Darjīnī 243, –4ff. = Shammākhī 84, pu. ff. (where the affiliation
of people is not quite so clear); transl. in Cuperly, Introduction 28, n. 66. Quoted in parts in an
anonymous text from Oman, Al-siyar al-jawābāt I 384, –6ff.
6 See p. 252 below. Regarding Medina cf. p. 746f. below.
7 Shammākhī 120, 8ff.
8 Cf. Lewicki in: Cahiers 78f. and 71; also EI2 III 649b.
�34 chapter �
Ḥamza from her house he went to Mosul trying to settle in the community
there;9 once again he seems to have made sure to acquire the support of an
influential woman, a certain Umm Shihāb. Someone was sent after him from
Basra in order to “warn people” there, i.e. spread counter-propaganda.10
This took place in the forties at the earliest, for we know that Ḥamza was
in contact with the qāḍī Sawwār b. ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAnbarī11 in Basra after AH 140.
ʿAbd al-Malik al-Ṭawīl, another Basran Ibāḍite of this time,12 had incurred
Abū ʿUbayda’s displeasure at the time, because he testified to the dissenter’s
good character before the judge.13 Maybe we should move forward as far as
the beginning of the second half of the century, as even Shuʿayb b. Maʿrūf and
ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, both of whom were members of Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb’s gen-
eration, claimed to have debated with him.14 At that time, towards the end of
his life, Abū ʿUbayda probably enjoyed the respect required for him to see the
power struggle through. Like others, this account frequently mentions a sec-
ond Qadarite besides Ḥamza, who may have come from the Jazīra:
ʿAṭiyya.
He had a son named Abraha who came to Basra during the next generation,
from the Jazīra, or “Syria”, as he said, in order to study under Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb.
Rabīʿ did not know him, and he himself did everything he could in order not
to show his Qadarite views. When a visitor exposed him, younger members of
the community insisted that Rabīʿ should exclude him. He was accused of hav-
ing “ruined” the community in Najrān, like his father before him.15 This shows
that there were still Ibāḍites with Qadarite convictions in the Mosul region;
they even proselytised in other communities. The father probably spent time
in Basra with Ḥamza16 and later offered him sanctuary in his home region. He
probably was a southern Arab; his son’s name indicates this, as did the
9 Among the “weaker Muslims”, 120, 14 tells us; similar to 85, 10f. with reference to the
Basrans: “among the women and the weak” (which may have had people like Saʿīda in
mind).
10 Shammākhī 112, 6ff.; cf. p. 529 below.
12 Shammākhī 107, –6ff.
13 Ibid. 120, 6f.
14 Ibid. 120, 3ff. and earlier. Regarding them see p. 239ff. below.
15 Darjīnī 276, pu. ff.; Shammākhī 104, 9ff. (which has Khurāsān instead of Najrān).
16 Shammākhī 85, 13, and 120, 8.
iraq �35
successes in Najrān.17 – The third man in this group, who is mentioned in only
one passage,18 was
al-Ḥārith b. Mazyad,
who has already been discussed above under the name of Ḥārith al-Ibāḍī.19 He
may have been younger than the other two and drew clearer consequences
from the division, for his followers represented “Muʿtazilite doctrine in the
qadar . . . claiming that the faculty of action existed previously to the action”.
This reveals a more theoretical approach; they also “contradicted the other
Ibāḍites” in this.20 Their break with community tradition led to their going
back to ʿAbdallāh b. Ibāḍ.21
The case of a certain Ghaylān, whom Shammākhī links to the others

(105,6, and 120, 1f.), poses a problem. In all probability we are looking at a
straightforward misunderstanding, as these are not original accounts but
retrospective summaries. They are probably based on the passage (which
we have already consulted) by Abū Sufyān, of Ḥamza al-Kūfī defending
his views against Abū ʿUbayda, and later Ḥājib al-Ṭāʾī. No information
survived regarding the course of the discussion, but it was said that at the
end Abū ʿUbayda countered Ḥamza’s arguments with the words: “With
this view you have seceded from Ghaylān” (Darjīnī 244, 2; Shammākhī
85, 1); i.e. Abū ʿUbayda had caught him out in an inconsistency and de-
cided the debate in his own favour. It is not said that this Ghaylān was
an Ibāḍite; he probably referred to Ghaylān al-Dimashqī. We cannot de-
cide whether Abū ʿUbayda meant that Ḥamza went even further than
Ghaylān.
17 It is probably not advisable to link him to Hilāl b. ʿAṭiyya al-Khurāsānī (see p. 673 below),
even if Najrān may have been an error for Khurāsān (see above). The latter was a respect-
ed man who had no ties with the Jazīra.
18 Shammākhī 120, 8.
19 P. 218. Only Baghdādī notes the complete name (Farq 84, 8 > Isfarāʾīnī, Tabṣīr 57, 9/59, 9).
ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd misread Mazyad for Yazīd in his edition (105, 3), which Gimaret, Livre des
Religions 410, no. 32, quotes.
20 Ashʿarī, Maq. 104, 6ff.
21 For further doctrines occasionally associated with Ḥārith, see p. 260 and 266, n. 2, below.
�36 chapter �
The Qadarite groups were probably absorbed by the Muʿtazila at some point.
Whenever Muʿtazilites refer to the Ibāḍiyya, it is always to the predestinarian
majority. Jāḥiẓ was amused at a rather naïve member of the sect who believed
that the faculty of action was present only at the moment of the action (al-
istiṭāʿa maʿa l-fiʿl), quoting poetical sources that contributed nothing.22 The
Kufan Ibāḍite ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd also adhered to this conviction.23 At the be-
ginning, however, istiṭāʿa was not the point under discussion. Abū ʿUbayda’s
starting point clearly was the divine prescience: “Those who admit that God
knows of things before they exist, also accept predestination”, was a dictum
transmitted from him.24 This thought seems to go back to his teacher Ṣuḥār al-
ʿAbdī from whom a similar dictum was transmitted – but nothing else.25 Abū
ʿUbayda did not want this interpreted to the effect that with this prescience
God exerts some kind of compulsion (jabr); rather, humans are impelled to
evil by their “ego” or by Satan, and then commit acts that God had already
foreseen.26 Good deeds come into being through God’s help (tawfīq); and thus
even an unbeliever can find the faith.27 Ḍumām b. al-Sāʾib had said something
similar already.28 Thus the Ibāḍites were not determinists in the strict sense
of the word; jabriyya to them was a term of abuse meaning the “tyranny” of
unlawful rulers.29
22 Ḥayawān III 9, –4ff.; he was also said to have given as his reason for loathing the Shīʿa that
so many words that begin with sh have a negative meaning (ibid. 22, 2ff.). – Inversely, later
texts saying “Qadarites” always mean Muʿtazilites (cf. e.g. the summary of their doctrine
by Abū Sahl Yaḥyā b. Ibrāhīm al-Warglānī, second half of the fifth/eleventh century, in
Cuperly, Professions de foi ibāḍites II 191).
24 Darjīnī 233, 15f.
25 Cf. in more detail Anfänge 20f.; also Darjīnī 233, 17f., where it emerges that Abū Sufyān
linked the two statements. Reservations regarding the date in Cook, Dogma 142.
26 Darjīnī 241, 8ff. = Shammākhī 86, 8ff.; Anfänge 131.
27 Darjīnī 241, –4ff. = Shammākhī 85, apu. ff.
28 Shammākhī 86, pu. ff.; Anfänge 55.
29 Thus e.g. in the first of the letters allegedly by Ibn Ibāḍ to ʿAbd al-Malik (cf. HT 183); also in
Mukhtār b. ʿAwf’s khuṭba (Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 124, 4; cf. p. 736 below). The word was used else-
where in anti-Umayyad propaganda as well; Abū Hāshim, Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s son, being
one who was claimed to have said it (Akhbār al-ʿAbbās 177, apu. ff., and 178, 9; in general
also Studies on the First Century 114f.).
iraq �37
The problem was clearly not central to Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb’s view. While the ma-
jority of hadiths in his Musnad that touch on the subject are predestinarian in
tone, there are others which are more supportive of a Qadarite position,30 and
in one instance he interprets the term Qadariyya like Qadarites and Muʿtazilites
did, meaning “predestinarian”.31 However, even during Abū ʿUbayda’s day there
were “young people” who inclined to stricter determinism; Ḥamza complained
that Abū ʿUbayda did not excommunicate them.32 Maybe they were Shuʿayb b.
Maʿrūf and his friends who had debated with Ḥamza.33 It was also claimed that
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī had been “corrupted” by Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ;34 Qadarism and Muʿtazila
had become viewed as one. The Muʿtazila began its mission in Oman; Wāʾil b.
Ayyūb, one of Rabīʿ’s pupils, debated there with one of their people named
Kahlān.35 There is an extant record of the debate; one of the subjects discussed
was the istiṭāʿa.36 Around the same time Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl wrote a brief intro-
duction to successfully debating “with our enemy, the Qadarites”, his arguments
based firmly on Abū ʿUbayda’s.37 Shortly afterwards, around 210/825 or slightly
later, a notable from Ṣuḥār complained to the imam ʿAbd al-Malik b. Ḥumayd
(r. 207/822 or 208/823 to 226/841) that the “Qadarites” – like the Murjiʾites –
attracted so many members, and asked him for help.38
2.2.5.4 The Quarrel over the Anthropomorphisms

Abū ʿUbayda anathematised not only the Qadarites but also, as we saw earlier,
“young people” who had wondered – and asked him – whether someone who
had not had the opportunity to know the true faith should be called an unbe-
liever after all. They may have taken their cue from Qadarite ideas, but they
30 Cf. no. 8 and 9 in Cuperly’s translation p. 287. Of course it was Warglānī in Tartīb who
classified them into the Bāb al-qadar; Rabīʿ may not have been interested in their implica-
tions at all.
31 Ibid. no. 10.
32 Shammākhī 85, –6ff.
34 Darjīnī 258, 5ff. = Shammākhī 97, 15ff., as having been said by Abū Muḥammad al-Nahdī.
35 Shammākhī 105, 12f. This was probably a Southern Arab; the name was already recorded
in Sabian inscriptions (Y. Abdallah, Personennamen 85).
36 Cf. the translation in Cuperly, Professions de foi ibāḍites I 425, n. 28.
37 Khamīs b. Saʿīd, Manhaj I 434, 9ff.
38 ʿAbdallāh b. Ḥumayd al-Sālimī, Tuḥfat al-aʿyān bi-sīrat ahl ʿUmān (2Cairo 1350) I 113f.; cf.
Cuperly, Introduction 159 and Wilkinson in Ar. Stud. 4/1978/204. Should the combination
of Qadarites and Murjiʾites lead us to conclude that the Muʿtazilites found in Oman were
in fact Basran Ghaylānites?
�38 chapter �
were clearly referring to the state of salvation. And this was an issue where
Abū ʿUbayda, for all his severity, was very cautious.1 He was also said to have
dismissed some of his pupils who called non-Ibāḍite Muslims (ahl al-qibla)
polytheists (mushrikūn) because “they had wrong ideas concerning passages
(in the Quran) that sound anthropomorphic”.2 It was the rash judgment that
he took exception to, as he probably agreed with the hotheads he criticised
that the ahl al-qibla were wrong factually. The wording indicates this: anthro-
pomorphisms only sound like that; if one really interprets Quranic passages
along those lines, one has misunderstood them. The source refers to this false
exegesis – in this instance literal instead of metaphoric interpretation – as
taʾwīl. Fiqh absaṭ uses the term in this sense as well, and with the same conclu-
sion: taʾwīl leads to sin, but not to unbelief.3
Fundamental rejection of all tashbīh moved the Ibāḍiyya closer to the
Muʿtazila. Unlike the latter it even provides earlier sources on the subject.
ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd wrote his K. al-tawḥīd one generation after Abū ʿUbayda.4
While Abū ʿUbayda was still trying to prevent the issue from being talked
about, by that time the Ibāḍite views had been clear for some time. People re-
ferred to Jābir b. Zayd and via him to Ibn ʿAbbās. Ennami collected the relevant
material from Rabīʿ’s Musnad: if God holds something in his hand (qabaḍa; cf.
sura 2:245 or 39:67), this refers to his authority; his “hand” is his power or his re-
ward, his “eye” his knowledge and protection. His “calf” (sāq) which he will bare
on the Day of Judgment (68:42) means his firm determination to act, and his
“person” (nafs, cf. sura 5:116) his knowledge.5 This strand of traditions should
not necessarily be regarded as fictitious, as Mujāhid, another of Ibn ʿAbbās’
pupils, also interpreted the anthropomorphisms metaphorically.6 Tawḥīd was
already used as a political–religious slogan and a symbol of Ibāḍite identity
1 He did not consider the person under discussion to be muʾmin, but muslim (see vol. I 483
above). Cf. also p. 233 n. 3 above.
2 al-mutaʾawwilīn fī lladhī warada mā yūhimu l-tashbīh (Shammākhī 105, 1f.). The wording is
rather convoluted. Regarding the context cf. Cuperly, Introduction 27, n. 63.
3 P. 41, ult. ff. (where tafsīr is used besides taʾwīl); even more extreme 45, 12ff. Regarding this
meaning of taʾwīl cf. also Text IV 62, d, with commentary, and p. 244 below, also vol. I 304
above. On assessing the situation among the Ibāḍites cf. also Cuperly, Introduction 169f.; later
Zaydite law knows the term kufr al-taʾwīl (cf. Kruse in: WI 23–24/1984/432ff.).
5 Ennami 205ff.; cf. the texts in Musnad (ed. Damascus 1388), p. 220ff., or in Warglānī, Tartīb, MS
Rhodes House, Afr. S. 3, fol. 229a ff. Further source in Cuperly, Introduction 188. Cf. also Cook
in: JSAI 9/1987/171f.
6 Madelung, Qāsim 59; cf. p. 720 below.
iraq �39
in Ṭālib al-ḥaqq’s speech.7 The Ibn ʿAbbās tradition continues its existence in
Abū Ammār’s K. al-mūjaz,8 which, however, quotes other witnesses as well,
among them even Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, presumably on the basis of his Tafṣīr.9
The Ibāḍites applied the same rationalist probe to certain details of eschatol-
ogy; Ibn Ḥanbal had remarked in his ʿaqīda that the “Khārijites” did not believe
in the cistern (ḥawḍ), the punishment of the grave etc.10 This was occasion-
ally transmitted from other Basran Qadarites, too.11 Later the emphasis shifted
overall towards the problem of the vision of God (ruʾya), another subject on
which Rabīʿ had collected material from tradition.12 It was not until later that
the issue became a controversy, at least in the Maghreb: we know that Abū Nūḥ
Saʿīd b. Zangīl studied it around the middle of the fourth/tenth century.13
As in the case of qadar, we can give events a more concrete background
by adding a few names, for those whose strict attitude towards anthropomor-
phisms had angered Abū ʿUbayda resurfaced once more under Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb.
By this time they had become respected gentlemen, and it seems that as long
this was the only issue, Rabīʿ had no objections.14 There was, for instance,
Abū Saʿīd ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz,
a jurist who played an independent part beside Rabīʿ and remained well-known
later mainly because he freely employed qiyās.15 He frequently maintained
his own opinion against Jābir b. Zaid as well as Abū ʿUbayda which brought
him criticism, but was also the reason why Bishr b. Ghānim included him as
7 See p. 227 above.

8 Cf. his refutation of the mushabbiha in Mūjaz I 351ff., e.g. 372, 6ff. (istawā ʿalā ʿarshihī =
istawlā), or 376, 2f. (jāʾa rabbuka = jāʾa amru rabbika).
9 Ibid. I 386, 9f. (yad = amr), and 399, 4f. (God’s laugh = pleasure); also 376, 3ff. It is unlikely
that he was aware of working from ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s redaction. Cf. also the material in
Khamīs b. Saʿīd, Manhaj I 392ff. and 503ff.
10 Ibn Abī Yaʿlā, Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila I 34, 3f.; transl. in Laoust, Ibn Baṭṭa 55, n. 1. Sources
quoting Ibn ʿAbbās on this issue in Khamīs b. Saʿīd I 499, 6f. (al-ṣirāṭ = dīn al-Islām) and
506, 4ff. (al-kursī = ʿilm Allāh).
11 See p. 82 above.
12 Cf. Cuperly 237, n. 11, after Muḥammad Aṭfiyyash’s Tartīb al-tartīb.
13 Cuperly 236, although he dates Abū Nūḥ too early; regarding his dates see vol. I 484 above.
14 Shammākhī 105, 4f.
15 Cf. ZDMG 126/1976/39 and 41; Ṭālibī in Mūjaz II 213, n. 5. Maybe these were early signs of
Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Aṭrābulusī’s doctrine (see vol. I 487 above).
�40 chapter �
an authority in his Mudawwana.16 His K. nikāḥ al-shighār survives to this day.17

We have already come across him as a predestinarian opponent of Ḥamza
al-Kūfī.18 – Another one mentioned is
Abū l-Muʾarrij ʿAmr (?) b. Muḥammad al-Sadūsī,
one of Qatāda’s fellow-tribesmen. He, too, was remarkable mainly as a jurist.19

After the altercation with Abū ʿUbayda he seems to have moved to Persia.20
It is worthwhile to consider whether we may be looking at the father of the
philologist Muʾarrij b. ʿAmr al-Sadūsī who played a part at the caliph’s court in
Baghdad under al-Maʾmūn. Ṭālibī considered the relation but rejected it rather
rashly,21 as we do find a few surprising points of contact. The name Muʾarrij is
not frequent; it attracted attention in Iraq.22 The philologist went to Marv with
al-Maʾmūn,23 and also visited Nishapur and possibly Jurjān.24 Furthermore he
was believed to have been one of Khalīl’s assistants (ghilmān),25 and Khalīl,
too, came from an Ibāḍite or Ṣufrite background.26
The latter piece of information might originally have applied to the

father, as it was noted very close to another remark that leaves hardly
any doubt that the two were being confused here, namely the date of
his death. It is often emphasised that the philologist came to Baghdad
16 Kitāb Ibn Sallām 114, 3ff.; Schwartz 48f. and 59f.; Rebstock 181. Regarding Bishr b. Ghānim
see p. 675ff. below.
17 One manuscript is preserved in the Maktaba al-Bārūniyya on Djerba (Schwartz 300, no. 1).
Regarding the exact title cf. Ennami in: Ibn Khalfūn, Ajwiba 108, where he referred to Abū
ʿUbayda and Abū Nūḥ Ṣāliḥ al-Dahhān. Regarding nikāḥ al-shighār cf. EI2 VI 475b.
19 Cf. esp. Schwartz 60f.; also Index s. n., ZDMG 126/1976/38ff., and Ṭālibī in Mūjaz II 213, n. 6.
20 This probably also explains that he is the authority most frequently named in Bishr b.
Ghānim’s Mudawwana al-kubrā.
21 This because, among other things, he was not thinking of the father but presupposing an
absolute identity (loc. cit.).
22 Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 104, 5ff.; TB XIII 258, 19ff.; Qifṭī, Inbāh III 328, 4ff. Maybe one
should read ʿarabiyyan instead of gharīban?
23 TB XIII 258, 13; also 258, 7f.
24 Qifṭī 330, 10; Marzubānī 104, 13.
25 TB XIII 259, 4f.
iraq �41
with al-Maʾmūn (TB 258, 7, Qifṭī III 327, 12). This would have been in
204/819. Indeed, Marzubānī tells us that he went a different way from the
caliph, to visit Basra where he later died (Nūr al-qabas 104, 13f.; also IKh
V 307, 2ff. after Muʾarrij’s pupil Ismāʿīl b. Yaḥyā al-Yazīdī; also Sellheim,
Sprichwörtersammlungen 50f. and 54). Elsewhere the date of his death
is usually given as 195/810 (e.g. in Zubaydī, Ṭabaqāt al-naḥwiyyīn 78, 8;
further sources in Ziriklī VIII 266 and Kaḥḥāla XIII 33f.). This, however,
applied in fact to the father, as confirmed by a note by Ibn al-Muʿtazz and
preserved by Ibn al-Nadhīm; the same was true of the cooperation with
Khalīl (Qifṭī 330, 3f.; altered in the extant redaction of Fihrist, p. 54, 2f.).
Which would mean that our Ibāḍite died in 195/810, which is an entirely
acceptable date.
Two facts argue against equating the two. Firstly, the name of the Ibāḍite is
not transmitted as ʿAmr b. Muḥammad only, but as ʿUmar b. Muḥammad as
well.27 Secondly, the genealogy usually cited for Muʾarrij b. ʿAmr goes back via
a certain Ḥārith b. Thawr . . . rather than a Muḥammad,28 although it is not
conclusive. In order to establish a connection with the genealogical chain we
would have to assume that Muʾarrij was only a sobriquet and his real name
was Marthad b. al-Ḥārith . . . al-Sadūsī.29 Is it possible that he adopted the
genealogy later? It meant a lot to him to have his origins in the desert – un-
derstandable in a philologist; it also meant he had an excuse for not being an
expert in the scholarly method.30 – The separation from Rabīʿ became obvious
only with
27 ʿAmr according to Lewicki (in EI1 S 187a) and Rebstock (p. 179); ʿUmar according to
Wilkinson (in: Arab. Stud. 4/1978/205 and Der Islam 62/1985/249) and Schwartz (p. 60f.).
Ḥātim b. Manṣūr, as found in Cuperly 315, is a misunderstanding; this was the name of an-
other of Bishr b. Ghānim’s authorities (cf. ADMG 126/1976/41). Schwartz reads Abū l-Muʾrij
instead of Abū l-Muʾarrij, while Cuperly has Abū l-Mawrij.
28 Not yet in Marzubānī, but in TB XIII 258, 3ff.; Qifṭī III 327, 8ff. etc.
29 Cf. Ibn Ḥazm Jamhara 318, 2ff. with n.; Fihrist 54, 1 = Qifṭī 330, 2f. (which reads Yazīd in-
stead of Marthad).
30 TB 258, 15f.; Qifṭī 328, 1ff.
�4� chapter �
Abū l-Maʿrūf Shuʿayb b. al-Maʿrūf.31
In Oman he was regarded as the head of the movement, which was called the
Shuʿaybiyya there.32 However, he had been one of Rabīʿ’s close advisers,33 and
they had fallen out over a specific incident: he had intervened in the dispute
surrounding the election of the Rustamid ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. Like Rabīʿ he had
been asked for an expert opinion by the imam’s messengers, and that before
they met Rabīʿ and his colleagues in Mecca. He was in Egypt at the time; it is
possible that he came from there. And Egypt was on the way for the envoys
who were, after all, travelling from the Maghreb to the Hijaz. His response was
negative; we may assume that this was, in fact, the reason why the delegation
from Tāhart – whose orders were probably to try for a positive answer – con-
tinued their journey. He must have realised that he had not won their favour,
which was why he set out for the Maghreb, “without asking the relevant com-
munity authorities’ advice”, as Darjīnī put it, and when a conversation with
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb did not improve the situation, joined Ibn Fandīn. When things
went wrong, he finally fled to Tripolitania.34
The violent clashes had widened the chasm even further. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
had damaged his own reputation not only with his autocratic claim, but also by
spilling the blood of “Muslims”, i.e. members of his own community. Shuʿayb,
on the other hand, appears only to have defended ancient principles, as the
problem was not confined to the Berbers’ demanding a say; ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
had not been the most theologically competent of the possible candidates, ei-
ther. This was the very issue concerning which Rabīʿ had made allowances,
pointing out that Abū Bakr had been the rightful caliph even though there had
been other people more versed in religion than he, Zayd b. Thābit for instance,
31 Shammākhī 119, ult.; the name must be corrected in accordance with Darjīnī 274, 16. The
reading Muʿarrif instead of Maʿrūf, which is found in e.g. Shammākhī, and has also found
its way into secondary sources (cf. Le Tourneau in Revue Afr. 104/1960/136 or Schwartz 48),
is less probable, as the kunya presumably refers back to the father’s name. – The Shuʿayb
mentioned by Ashʿarī, Maq. 94, 6ff., belonged to a different group of Khārijites and is not
identical with the person discussed here.
32 Wilkinson in: Arab. Stud. 4/1978/205. The term Shaʿbiyya is also used, for the Nukkār in
general (cf. Lewicki in EI1 S 186b). Abū Zakariyyāʾ was the first to read Shaghbiyya instead,
and also provided a suitable etymology (60, 17/transl. Revue. Afr. 139 > Darjīnī, Ṭab. 51, 12).
33 Darjīnī 274, 10ff.
34 Cf. the report in Abū Zakariyyāʾ 58, apu. ff./ trans. 136ff. > Darjīnī 49, 9ff. Quite different
and unaware of the doctrinal discord: Ibn Ṣaghīr 17, 11ff./transl. 74ff. Rebstock has a sum-
mary 168ff.
iraq �43
or ʿAlī and Muʿādh b. Jabal.35 Support for the imāmat al-mafḍūl sounded
strange coming from a Khārijite, as his “realpolitik” view of things was entirely
new.36 Thus we are not surprised to hear that Rabīʿ met with opposition else-
where, too; it seems that he was entirely isolated when he returned to Basra.37
He was ordered to explain why he had excluded Shuʿayb even though the latter
had never introduced any “innovation”.38 Maybe it was not until he went back
to Oman that people agreed with him; after all, at the time there was no inter-
est in intervening in events in the Maghreb. Ultimately the three abovemen-
tioned scholars, as well as ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd al-Fazārī, became key witnesses
for the Nukkār.39
This was probably a later development. Originally the Nukkār had been a
political party, and that only in the Maghreb, where someone like ʿAbdallāh b.
Yazīd had never set foot. Only once the reason for the “challenge” had become
a thing of the past, and rejection of the Rustamid imamate had grown insig-
nificant compared to the issue of the self-image of small communities that
continued to exist, namely after Tāhart had been destroyed by the Fatimids in
296/909, would the separate theological views have been collected into a co-
herent body. An external observer like the historian Ibn Ṣaghīr found it difficult
to distinguish differences between the doctrines even after he had lived for
some time among the two hostile sects.40 The positions branded as heretical
by the Wahbiyya had probably been situated within the range of the theologi-
cal and juristic possibilities of Ibāḍite communities of the second century.
Consequently we cannot rule out that the Wahbite sources, when they
quote Abū ʿUbayda on the issue, are employing projection. The names of those
he disciplined were nor, after all, given; the text only hints that they were the
same theologians who would later come to prominence under Rabīʿ. But the
problem grew more immediate only two generations later, and then not in
Basra but in Oman. A certain
35 Cf. the fatwā mentioned in Abū Zakariyyāʾ 59, 11ff./transl. 137, and Darjīnī 50, 7ff. Cf. p. 229
above.
36 According to Pseudo-Nāshiʾ, Uṣūl al-niḥal 68, 17, all Khārijites supported the imāmat al-
fāḍil. Cf. also Strothmann in: Der Islam 17/1928/265.
37 Shammākhī 153, 3ff. and 11ff.
38 Abū Zakariyyāʾ 64, 11ff./transl. 143; cf. also Rebstock 186f.
39 Ennami 261; also vol. I 482 above. Cf. Shammākhī 119, –7ff., where a certain Sahl b. Ṣāliḥ
appears by his side (regarding him see Text VII, 1). However, events are linked, probably
erroneously, to ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s successor Aflaḥ.
40 P. 16, –5f. Motylinski.
�44 chapter �
Hārūn b. al-Yamān
who remained entirely unknown to authors from the Maghreb,41 appeared

there in support of the “Nukkārite” view, defending it in a letter to the prince al-
Muhannā b. Jayfar (r. 226/841–238/853) with the explanation that all he did was
follow the teachings of the ancients,42 but from his later writings it becomes
clear that this was not touching on the nerve of the matter. While the “ancients”
had been agreed that no member of the community who professed God’s one-
ness should be regarded as a polytheist, he was the only one to propose that
an anthropomorphist trespassed against this profession by imagining God to
be composed of many parts.43 His antagonist, Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl, wrote two
epistles from Basra to the communities in Oman and Ḥaḍramawt,44 attempt-
ing to control the heresy; he considered anthropomorphism to be a grave sin,
not polytheism.45 After all, we do not know precisely what the essence of God
is, otherwise it would have been unthinkable that some early Ibāḍite authori-
ties, or respected non-Ibāḍites like Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, should have used anthro-
pomorphic expressions from time to time. As for statements regarding the
prophet, these are different: his time on earth was spent in the light of his-
tory, and anyone who has wrong ideas about him (al-mutaʾawwil fīhi) is mali-
cious and must consequently be regarded as mushrik.46 As we have seen above,
al-mutaʾawwil fīhi is the exact expression the same Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl em-
ployed in his history in the context of Abū ʿUbayda, from where Shammākhī
adopted it. All the more noticeable, then, that in his epistles he did not refer to
the event described in the history.47
41 Wilkinson believes him to have been a Basran who was active in the Maghreb (Imamate
Tradition of Oman 164), but this is rather improbable. In fact, in another passage (ibid. 151)
he appears to presume him to have been a Yemeni.
42 Cf. Sayyida Ismāʿīl Kāshif’s edition in: Al-siyar wal-jawābāt I 325ff., esp. 327, –4f.
43 Ibid. 328, 8ff., and 329, 6ff.
44 Ibid. 276ff. and 308ff.
45 Ibid. 328, 12ff (after Hārūn b. al-Yamān); also Khamīs b. Saʿīd, Manhaj I 393, –6f.
46 Ibid. 300, –5ff.; 302, apu. ff., and 316, 7ff.; also 331, 7ff. (after Hārūn b. al-Yamān).
47 P. 281, 6ff. gets closest, but the context is much more general. Overall, in Oman the dis-
cussion had much greater scope (see p. 796f. below). Furthermore, the way in which the
subject is dealt with is long-winded and comparatively imprecise.
iraq �45
2.2.5.5 Further Controversial Issues

Similar uncertainty surrounds another controversial issue because of which
ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd, Abū l-Muʾarrij and ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz1 and, according
to another source, Shuʿayb b. Maʿrūf, too,2 were criticised. They were appar-
ently not willing to exclude a woman from the community for tolerating anal
intercourse, and to declare her a grievous sinner (kāfirat niʿma). The Wahbites
would later find this not sufficiently rigorous, regarding it as typical of the
Nukkār.3 If, however, we interpret a remark by Hārūn al-Yamān correctly,4 then
Maḥbūb was lenient in this matter, too: this kind of intercourse does not de-
mand the ḥadd punishment for fornication; but a person who is not punish-
able according to ḥadd should not be excommunicated, either.
Once again the later attribution of roles is less important than the ques-
tion of how this dissension came about. It must be of old standing, and goes
beyond the Ibāḍiyya with parallels in the Hijaz: anal intercourse was custom-
ary in Mecca but taboo in Medina.5 The Medinans’ stricter attitude might be
explained with Jewish influence,6 while the prophet, so people thought they
knew, favoured the Meccan view.7 Ibāḍite communities in the Hijaz may have
been divided on the issue from the first, as was hadith. The stricter view ap-
pears to have been more widely held in Iraq; at least, Abū ʿAmmār claimed
that Muʿtazilites and Zaydites adhered to it as well,8 which may well have been
due at least in part to the scrupulousness (waraʿ) concerning religious law that
spread in Basra in particular. The Wahbites would later regard it as a pillar of
1 Thus according to the exhaustive review by Abū ʿAmmār, Mūjaz II 213, 6ff. and previously.
2 Thus according to a brief reference in Shammākhī 104, ult. f., which has Shuʿayb take ʿAbdallāh
b. Yazīd’s place.
3 Cf. e.g. Cuperly, Professions de foi II 192 regarding Abū Sahl Yaḥyā al-Warglānī’s catechism
(sixth/twelfth century), and Introduction 333 regarding Shammākhī’s (d. 792/1389–90) Uṣūl
al-diyānāt. Regarding Oman cf. Ibn Khalfūn, Ajwiba 52, –5ff., and Sachau in: MSOS, 2nd series,
2/1898/66.
4 Al-siyar wal-jawābāt I 328, 4f.
5 Cf. Dārimī, Sunan I 204ff., esp. no. 1124 (= Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad VI 305, 3ff.); in general Conc. II
109b, and Ṭabarī, Tafsīr 3IV 398ff. regarding sura 2:223.
6 Dārimī I 205 no. 1130; also al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Wasīlat al-Shīʿa XIV 100f., according to which,
however, it was Medina where attitudes were particularly relaxed.
7 Cf. F. Mernissi, Le harem politique 184ff., based mainly on Ṭabarī’s Tafsīr.
8 Mūjaz II 206, 3; also the Ḥanafites according to Faḍl b. Shādhān, Īḍāḥ 296, 9f. In the Hijaz,
ʿIkrima had already supported it (Dārimī I 205 no. 1129, and 207 no. 1143).
�46 chapter �
religion of similar importance to knowledge, action, and intentio.9 Of course,

the Nukkār were prudes as well.
The other question that comes to mind is why only the woman would be
condemned.10 One might once again look for the answer in a general tendency:
to the present day the Ibāḍiyya has had the reputation of being particularly
misogynistic. However, another point seems to be more important: this was
not about sexual behaviour within marriage, but about prostitution.11 It was
unlikely that a judge should hear about the forms of intercourse between a
husband and wife, unless it became grounds for divorce. In extra-marital rela-
tions, however, it was much more important that anal intercourse was a means
of contraception; hetaerae in Antiquity had insisted on the practice in order
to prevent pregnancy.12 Looked at under this aspect the community’s lack of
forbearance and its one-sided condemnation become more comprehensible:
compassion for prostitutes would not be found until the romanticising litera-
ture of the nineteenth century. Nobody denied that the man, too, was a forni-
cator, but he was merely a sinner while the woman was an “unbeliever”. The
Nukkār dissenters, on the other hand, insisted on theological equality: the
woman, too, was merely a “sinner”.13
We must turn to a final subject that has always been debated: Friday prayers.
It is not surprising that the Ibāḍites in particular devoted some thought to it,
as the khuṭba was one of the official sovereign acts of the authorities. In Basra
they had learnt to conform early on, which is why tradition emphasised Jābir
b. Zayd praying behind Ḥajjāj.14 Abū Sufyān supported this attitude against
Hārūn b. al-Yamān, but used Jābir’s pupil Ḍumām as an illustration for the
people of Oman rather than the teacher: Ḍumām had visited the mosque even
during the greatest heat during Ramadan.15 Performing the prayer led by an
imam, a prayer leader, who was not a member of the Ibāḍiyya was, of course,
terrible, but people consoled themselves with the thought that being an “un-
believer” he would not be able to benefit from his prayer.16
9 Thus in Jannāwunī’s ʿaqīda (BEO 32–33/1980–81/49, 8).

10 Abū Sahl Yaḥyā al-Warglānī includes the man in the verdict.
11 Abū ʿAmmār, Mūjaz II 211, 6ff.; Shammākhī in Cuperly, Introduction 333.
12 K. Dover, Homosexuality 101.
13 Mūjaz 213, 6f. Regarding prostitution in early Islam in general cf. Nabih Akel, Studies in
the Social History of the Umayyad Period as Revealed in the Kitāb al-Aghānī (PhD London
1960), esp. p. 205ff.
15 Cf. Wilkinson in: Der Islam 62/1985/252; also The Imamate Tradition of Oman 165.
16 Schwartz 71f.
iraq �47
Under different circumstances people would, of course, make different

decisions. A source from the first half of the sixth/twelfth century noted that
the Nukkār declared prayer led by an unjust ruler to be invalid;17 they kept to
themselves in any case. Naffāth, a separatist who was active at the beginning of
the third/ninth century in the Jarīd in Tunisia in the lands of the Nafzāwī tribe
and who dissociated himself from the Rustamid imam Aflaḥ b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
(r. 208/823–258/872), believed the khuṭba to be an innovation altogether.18 The
Wahbites dropped the khuṭba when after the fall of the Rustamids they had
no imam any more, but as they had set great store by it during their previous
political independence, they formulated the theory that the sermon was not
obligatory.19
Questions of ritual detail were less relevant in comparison. There had been
disagreement since time immemorial regarding whether the preacher was al-
lowed to sit between the two parts of his sermon or not.20 During the prayer
people did not perform rafʿ al-yadayn; they held their arms by their side.21 This
was another old shibboleth;22 it is possible that people had already observed
it in Basra. In general, however, one has to be cautious with such deductions;
many of the points ʿUthmān b. Khalīfa al-Sūfī noted in connection with the
Nukkār clearly had no parallel during the early years. The Sunnis around them
barely noticed all this; in their view, the Ibāḍites were simply different. Around
the middle of the nineteenth century people in Tunis were saying that those
from the Mzāb who were known as the Wahbiyya removed their trousers dur-
ing prayers.23
17 ʿUthmān b. Khalīfa al-Sūfī, Risāla fī bayān firaq al-Ibāḍiyya al-sitta wa-ghairihā (regarding
the work cf. ZDMG 126/1976/55); following him ʿAlī Yaḥyā Muʿammar, Al-Ibāḍiyya bayna
l-firaq al-islāmiyya 302.
18 Lewicki in: SI 9/1958/79; Rebstock 248ff. Regarding the Naffāthiyya cf. also Muʿammar,
loc. cit. 304ff., and Khulayfāt, Al-nuẓum al-ijtimāʿiyya wal-tarbawiyya ʿinda l-Ibāḍiyya 114f.
19 Jannāwunī, ʿAqīda in: BEO 32–33/1980–81/51, 11; Abū Sahl Yaḥyā al-Warglānī in Cuperly,
Introduction 118. Regarding Ibāḍite custom in Zanzibar see ibid. 154.
20 Cuperly, Professions de foi II 82, n. 194. The early Khārijite Ḍaḥḥāk b. Qays had preached
sitting down (Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 22, 4ff.; regarding him see p. 526f. below). On the issue
in general cf. F. Meier in: Festschrift Spuler 226.
21 Schwartz 72; regarding modern times cf. Delheure, Faits et dires du Mzab 63.
23 H. von Maltzan, Reise in die Regentschaften Tunis und Tripolis I 108. Even for this there is a
parallel in Iran (see p. 699 below regarding the Kūziyya).
�48 chapter �
2.2.5.6 The Environment

Despite their seclusion the Ibāḍites attracted attention in non-Ibāḍite bio-
graphical and bibliographical sources. The Fihrist names some of their theolo-
gians in its chapter on the Khārijites,1 and they are also occasionally mentioned
in the rijāl works. However, we are in a grey area here: Sunni authors did not
distinguish clearly enough; to them Khārijites were often simply Khārijites.
Ibāḍite biographers, on the other hand, obviously missed out some scholars
from their community, and we cannot always be sure whether they deliber-
ately concealed a name, or whether the omission was due to the fact that they
did not look beyond Basra (and the Maghreb).
Ibn al-Nadīm included at least one Ibāḍite from Mosul;2 describing him
simply as a Khārijite. We are entirely unable to get a grasp on other theologians
he mentions, such as Ibrāhīm b. Isḥāq al-Ibāḍī or al-Haytham b. al-Haytham
al-Nājī. Regarding Ṣāliḥ al-Nājī we do at least find out that he was a Qadarite,3
which would explain why the Ibāḍite authors ignored him. Ibn Ḥibbān be-
lieved that he was the same as the Basran ascetic and qāṣṣ Ṣāliḥ b. Bashīr al-
Murrī who died around 175/791, but this is probably pure speculation.4 There
are a few Ibāḍites5 among the Khārijite jurists whom Ibn al-Nadīm lists in the
5th fann of the 6th maqāla,6 but most of them are too young to be relevant
within the time discussed here.
ʿAmmār Ṭālibī believed Ibrāhīm b. Isḥāq to be the same as the Ibrāhīm

about whom Ashʿarī wrote (Maq. 110, 1ff.) that he quarrelled with a col-
league over the sale of a female slave (Mūjaz I 191). Ṭālibī interpreted the
text as an argument on legal principles and regarded the two opponents
as scholars who supported the same positions in theory as in this practical
case. However, a slightly more detailed parallel in Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī (Ḥūr
175, 11f.) shows that this was not necessarily the case. Ibrāhīm, a Medinan of
changeable mind in religious affairs, had sent a female slave to the market;
when she did not return in good time he decided to sell her to the Bedouins.
As the latter, of course, were not Ibāḍites and consequently “unbelievers”,
his neighbour criticised him, which led to a series of mutual excommuni-
cations. The story was repeated because of these convolutions rather than
1 Fihrist 234, 5ff. and earlier.

2 Ḥafṣ b. Ashyam; see p. 529 below.
3 Kaʿbī, Maq. 106, 2 after Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī.
4 He, too, was believed to be a Qadarite (see p. 79f. above).
5 Regarding Jubayr b. Ghālib see p. 529 below.
6 P. 295.
iraq �49
because of the persons involved (cf. also Watt in: Der Islam 36/1961/225).
Furthermore, Abū Bayhas had already commented on the case (see p. 667
below), but he was executed in 94/713. This would date Ibrāhīm to ʿAbd al-
Malik’s reign, which would be rather too early for the theologian.
Ṣāliḥ al-Nājī might be identical with Ṣāliḥ b. Kathīr, whom Shammākhī
mentioned as a mutakallim (83, apu. f.; also Lewicki in SI 9/1958/77),
and who may have been the father of the Sahl b. Ṣāliḥ mentioned above
(p. 243, n. 39), as it was said of both of them that they supported certain
innovations. Whether there is any link between him and the Medinan
traditionist of the same name, as I considered in Anfänge 23f., is more
than doubtful, and he must be clearly distinguished from the Ṣāliḥ b. Abī
Ṣāliḥ mentioned by Ashʿarī, Maq. 122, 12ff. (see p. 520, n. 1 below).
Ibrāhīm b. Isḥāq is the only one of whom we can be certain that Ibn
al-Nadīm regarded him as an Ibāḍite; in the case of the others this is
only suggested by the context. Of the four Khārijite theologians listed by
Masʿūdī, Murūj V 442, 5ff./IV 28, 2ff., only ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd was an Ibāḍite
with any certainty (regarding him see vol. I 477ff. above). Abū Mālik al-
Ḥaḍramī belongs in a different context altogether; he was a Shīʿite (see
vol. I 408f. above), which may have been true of the third one, too, a cer-
tain Qaʿnab who might be identical with the brother of Zurāra b. Aʿyan
(see vol. I, 376ff. with n. 9 above). Pellat, on the other hand, believes him
to be identical with the Khārijite of the same name mentioned by Caskel,
Jamhara II 465 (Index VII 582).
Regarding the fourth one, Yamān b. Riʾāb, see p. 671f. below. Regarding
some later Ibāḍite theologians living in Baghdad, see ch. C 5.3 below.
Remarkably, the Basran Khārijites listed in rijāl works are grouped around
Qatāda; Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb had studied under him, too. It is surprising all the same,
as Qatāda had a good relationship with the Umayyads, as we have seen.7 The
first one we must mention was in fact an Azraqite, but came from the same
tribe as Qatāda (and Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī):
Jurayy b. Kulayb al-Sadūsī.
Qatāda had studied under him; interestingly, he transmitted from ʿAlī.8 – Then
we have a relative by marriage (khatan) of Qatāda’s, who was one of the qurrāʾ
of Basra:

8 Mīzān no. 1475; TT II 78 no. 120.
�50 chapter �
Shubayl b. ʿAzra b. ʿUmayr al-Ḍubaʿī.
He was an Arab of the old school: poet, historian (rāwiya) and khaṭīb, an ex-
pert on gharīb words which he displayed most skilfully in a qaṣīda.9 Only Jāḥiẓ
mentioned that he was a Ṣufrite, or rather: became one, after he had been a
member of the extreme Shīʿa “for seventy years”,10 probably towards the end
of the Umayyad era when Ḍaḥḥāk b. Qays claimed the caliphate.11 Shubayl
accompanied the events in verse.12 He died at the beginning of the Abbasid
era.13 – Where Qatāda did not accept a Khārijite’s hadith, this was noted clear-
ly, as in the case of
Abū Ḥasan al-Aʿraj,
who died in 130/749 during the yawm al-Ḥarūriyya,14 presumably having ac-
companied the Basran expeditionary force that stood with the Ibāḍite Abū
Ḥamza during his raid on Medina.15 – One of Qatāda’s pupils who was also
regarded as a Khārijite,
Abū l-ʿAwwām ʿImrān b. Dāwar al-Qaṭṭān,
d. after 150/767,16 pronounced a fatwā permitting Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh’s troops

to shed blood.17 It was probably no coincidence that he also transmitted a ha-
dith against unjust judges.18 He was a Qadarite.19
We need not be deterred by the confusion surrounding his name. Some

sources read Dāwūd instead of Dāwar (e.g. Bukhārī III2 425 no. 2868, and
IAH III1 287f. no. 1649). Ibn Ḥibbān tried to distinguish between ʿImrān
9 Fihrist 51, 1ff. > Qifṭī, Inbāh II 76 no. 296 (with better readings). Cf. also the story in
Zubaydī, Ṭabaqāt al-naḥwiyyīn 48, ult. ff. = Ibn Durayd, Ishtiqāq 119, 12ff.
10 Bayān I 343, 6ff.; TT IV 310f. no. 530.
12 Ṭabarī II 1913, 8ff.
13 Ibn Durayd, Ishtiqāq 318, 10f.
14 TT XII 72 no. 287.
15 Ṭabarī II 2007, 17ff.; for more information see p. 736f. and 746 below.
16 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 532 no. 1852; IS VII2 41, 7f.; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 300f. no. 1309; TT VIII 130ff.
no. 225.
17 Dhahabī, Mīzān no. 6383 and Taʾrīkh VI 359, 3ff.; similarly Fasawī before him (II 258, 3ff.).
18 Wakīʿ, Akhbār I 34, –4ff.
19 Kaʿbī, Maq. 107, 7 after Jāḥiẓ.
iraq �51
al-Qaṭṭān and one ʿImrān al-ʿAmmī (Majrūḥīn II 123, 2ff.), while Dhahabī
linked the nisba al-ʿAmmī to Ibrāhīm al-Qaṭṭān himself, in which case he
would have been a member of the Banū l-ʿAmm, another one of whom
is known to us as a participant in the uprising (see p. 379 below). They
were not a genuine tribe but rather mawālī who had moved to Basra
from Ahwāz during ʿUmar’s time, and were treated “like cousins” by the
Tamīm among whom they lived (cf. Agh. III 257, 2ff. and 17). According
to Massignon they were weavers who had earlier followed Christianity
(Opera minora III 69). Cf. also p. 125 above.
There is only one case in these surroundings where we may claim to have met
a previously unknown Ibāḍite, and there, too, only under specific premises. We
are, it must be said, looking at an extremely interesting man, as he succeeded
at court and excelled in a science of which the Khārijites with their scriptural-
ist inclination must have been especially fond, Quran recitation:
(Abū Yazīd) Abān (b. Yazīd al-ʿAṭṭār al-Naḥwī),
d. between 160/776 and 170/787 (?). Manṣūr invited him to recite the Quran.20
He probably was an apothecary from Basra; Ṭabarī mentioned that he was an
Ibāḍite,21 and Ibn Qutayba called him simply al-Ibāḍī.22 Sunni sources know
him mainly as a traditionist,23 their main criticism being that he succumbed
to Qadarite leanings.24 It is not possible to prove entirely consistently that the
traditionist and the Ibāḍite Quran virtuoso were one and the same,25 but Ibn
Ḥanbal did compare him favourably to the abovementioned ʿImrān al-Qaṭṭān,
who was also a Qadarite.26 We do not know whether he, with a name like
al-Naḥwī, was interested in grammar; although it was only a short step from
Quran recitation, the relevant biographical works ignore him completely. It
20 Ṭabarī III 426, 3: as Abān al-Qāriʾ.

21 III 597, 13.
22 Maʿārif 533, 5.
23 Cf. IS VII2 41, 1f. (among the Basrans); Khalīfa, Ṭab. 538 no. 1886; Bukhārī I1 454 no. 1452;
IAH I1 299 no. 1098; Fasawī III 62, apu. ff.; Mīzān no. 20; TT I 101f. no. 175; Ṣafadī, Wāfī V 301
no. 2362; Azmi, Studies 167f. no. 3.
24 TT I 101; TH 202, 4; above all also the Muʿtazilite sources: Kaʿbī 95, 3ff., and 107, 6 (after
Jāḥiẓ) > Faḍl 342, –6 > IM 138, 3; Kaʿbī, Qabūl 213, 16f.
25 Ibn al-Jazārī, Ṭab. I 4 no. 2, has the complete name but, like the other biographical
sources, no information concerning his being a member of the Ibāḍiyya; while Ṭabarī,
who emphasised this detail, had the name as only Abān.
26 ʿIlal 248 no. 1598 = 352 no. 2320.
�5� chapter �
may be that he was simply a client of the Banū Naḥw, a subtribe of the Azd,27
who produced a large number of Ibāḍites. His Quranic recitation followed a
particular style based on that of the Basran ʿUbaydallāh b. Abī Bakra28 which
he had learnt from the latter’s grandson ʿUbaydallāh b. ʿUmar. He recited the
text in an elegiac modulation, making it sound like a solemn chant which was
known under the name qirāʾa bil-alḥān, while ʿUbaydallāh b. ʿUmar’s style was
called qirāʾat Ibn ʿUmar,29 but it did not catch on. Ibn al-Jazārī entirely ignored
ʿUbaydallāh, who left hardly any traces elsewhere either, although his family,
the Bakrāwī, produced many scholars.30 Ṭurṭūshī pointed out that “scholars
tended to shun” the entire school.31 Abān had two Ibāḍite followers, Saʿīd al-
ʿAllāf and his brother, whose name we do not know.32 The former sang himself
27 Cf. Samʿānī, Ansāb XIII 52, 6ff.

28 His brother ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was the first child to have been born in Basra (Khalīfa, Ṭab.
483, ult. ff.); he himself was appointed governor of the province of Sijistān by Ziyād
in 51/671, and remained in the post until 53/673; later he became a military leader in
Afghanistan. Regarding him cf. Khalīfa, Ṭab. 484 no. 1643; IS VII1 138, 8ff.; Bosworth, Sīstān,
Index s. n.; M. A. Fikrat in: GIE II 629ff.
29 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 533, 2ff.; regarding Abān cf. also Ṭurṭūshī, Al-ḥawādith wal-bidaʿ 77,
5. Ibn Qutayba, as we have already mentioned, called the latter simply al-Ibāḍī; his iden-
tity can be confirmed through the comparison with Ṭabarī. However, shortly afterwards
we read that he, like other Quran reciters including, it seems, the Kufan Shīʿite Ḥumrān
b. Aʿyan (regarding him see vol. I 374f. above), “included (everyday) songs, camel driver
melodies and psalmody (rahbāniyya)” (533, 9f.). ʿUbaydallāh b. Abī Bakra did not do this;
he used only sad melodies (533, 3). This does recall the style of the Kufan ʿAwn b. ʿAbdallāh
who had the Quran recited by a female slave who was a singer (see vol. I 187f. above). The
contradiction may be due to Abān being mentioned in connection with others; or the
Kufan Quran reciter Abān b. Taghlib may have been referred to (regarding him see vol. I
392 above). Cf. also the information in WKAS II 389a, 9ff.
30 Cf. Samʿānī, Ansāb II 294ff.
31 Ḥawādith 77, 5f. with much further detail; discussed by Talbi in: Arabica 5/1958/181ff. This
statement argues against his being identical with the Qadarite as the latter, as well as
Abān b. Taghlib, was included by Ibn al-Jazārī. But maybe he was too much respected in
his home town to have been omitted entirely later; the verdict on the qirāʾa bil-alḥān is
obviously of a younger date. While Talbi assumes that the qirāʾa bil-alḥān was limited to
the court, I think this is improbable; we may safely assume that, like so many other intel-
lectual fashions, it was imported from Basra and Kufa. The phenomenon awaits further
study, not least because of its possible influence on the samāʿ of the Sufis.
32 Maʿārif 533, 5; cf. also Ṭabarī III 597, 6f. Lisān al-ʿArab describes Saʿīd al-ʿAllāf as ʿUbaydallāh
b. ʿUmar’s pupil in an abridged version (XV 137a, 3f.).
iraq �53
into Hārūn al-Rashīd’s good graces, just like Abān impressed Manṣūr;33 we will
meet him later in his guise as a theologian.34
As much as Qadarite views estranged an Ibāḍite from his community in the
long run, they might well have fitted in with his criticism of the authorities.
Among the contemporary Ṣufriyya we also find Qadarites, e.g.
Layth b. Anas b. Zunaym al-Laythī,
who had studied under Ibn Sīrīn.35 This Khārijite group, however, is particularly
difficult to define. Some little light is thrown onto it due to the well-known phi-
lologist Abū ʿUbayda (120/738–207/822?) having been a member; thus we know
it continued to exist in the following generation. He spent nearly his entire life
in Basra, criticising the Muhallabids, which he might not have done if he had
been an Ibāḍite.36 What appeared to be differing Khārijite “denominations”
were probably also linked to different tribal ties. This is the reason why the case
of the last person we shall discuss in this context is so very complex:
Khalīl b. Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī al-Yaḥmadī,
the well-known lexicographer and founder of Arab metrics. He was a member

of the same clan as Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb; the Farāhīd belonged to the Azd.37 Even so,
he was reported to have said about himself that he was a Ṣufrite when he came
to Basra from Oman.38 Aṣmaʿī, on the other hand, claimed that his sympathies
were with the Ibāḍiyya.39 In any case it was assumed that it was Ayyūb al-
Sakhtiyānī (d. 131/748) who had helped him shed all his harebrained heretical
ideas. He cannot have been very old at that time; he died between 160/776 and
33 Maʿārif 533, 7f. When Abān appears in an anecdote told by Masʿūdī, Murūj VIII 244, 8ff., as
a guest at Hārūn al-Rashīd’s table, he may have been confused with Saʿīd.
34 See ch. C 5.3 (end) below. – It is possible that the Ibāḍite theologian ʿĪsā b. ʿUmayr from
Kufa was also a Quran reciter (see vol. I 486 above).
35 Regarding him see Bukhārī IV1 247 no. 1055; IAH III2 180 no. 1017; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ IV 17f.
no. 1570; Mīzān no. 6993.
36 EI2 I 158; regarding him cf. also GAS 8/67ff., and 9/65f. Ashʿarī tells us that he was a Ṣufrite
(Maq. 120, 5f.). Ibn Qutayba lists him among the ahl al-Yaman (Risāla fī l-khaṭṭ wal-qalam
in: Mawrid 19/1990, issue 1/163, pu.); maybe his sympathies originated there?
37 Fihrist 48, 5; Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 380, 13ff.; Wilkinson, Imamate Tradition of Oman 77.
38 Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 56, 20ff.; quoted by Sellheim in: EI2 IV 962a.
39 Zubaydī, Ṭab. 45, 1ff.; also ʿIqd II 217, 15, and TT III 163, 11. Aṣmaʿī had been Khalīl’s pupil.
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175/791 at the age of 74.40 However, we must consider the possibility that his
“conversion” was only an attempt by later admirers to whitewash him; Ayyūb
al-Sakhtiyānī would in due course become the guardian of Basran “orthodoxy”.41
The unusual divergence in the information on the date of Khalīl’s death il-
lustrates how little was really known about him. It is furthermore difficult to
understand what he would have learnt from Ayyūb, as he was not prominent
on the field of either hadith or fiqh.42 If the two were linked this was because
Khalīl was regarded as particularly pious; he was said to have alternately gone
on the pilgrimage one year and to war against the unbelievers the next.43 Some
extant verses by him praise frugality – but some also survive in which he la-
mented his lack of funds.44 In his opinion a scholar had to set an example as “a
scholar’s wrongdoing beats the drum”,45 scholars, being awliyāʾ, were very close
to God;46 he described them as rabbāniyyūn, “men of God”.47
He even met Iyās b. Muʿāwiya and transmitted his criticism of the conclu-
sion by analogy.48 Aṣmaʿī’s suggestion that is was the latter’s influence that led
him to distrust qiyās himself,49 may well be tendentious once again, as he was
the one to establish analogy as a tool of language analysis.50 Sometime later
he tried to be get a position as a tutor with Sulaymān b. Ḥabīb al-Muhallab,
who was governing the provinces of Fārs and Ahwāz on behalf of ʿAbdallāh b.
40 Cf. EI2, loc. cit.; Yāqūt, Irshād IV 183, 5.

42 But cf. the definition of naskh Ṭūsī, Tibyān I 393, 2ff., quoted after K. al-ʿayn.
43 Marzubānī 56, 10f. > Yāqūt, Irshād IV 182, 5. Naḍr b. Shumayl, himself “orthodox”, was said
to have compared his zuhd to ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn’s – who is always mentioned together
with Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī (Irshād IV 182, 1f.; regarding him see p. 404 below).
44 Marzubānī 70, 14ff., and 70, 2f. Ibn al-Nadīm also emphasised his zuhd (Fihrist 48, 6f.).
45 Zubaydī, Ṭab. 44, 16. The “scholar’s wrongdoing” (zallat al-ʿālim) probably played on an as-
sociation; the phrase is found in a story concerning ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd, which is repeated
several times (cf. e.g. Fiqh absaṭ 45, ult., and 46, 6; Ibn Abī Shayba, Īmān 34, 15; Conc. II
341b.
46 Qifṭī, Inbāh I 344, 1f.; also Yāqūt, Irshād IV 182, 6.
47 Zubaydī, Ṭab. 44, 8. The word is also used in hadith (cf. Conc. II 210a, and Ibn al-Athīr,
Nihāya II 181, 7ff.).
49 Zubaydī, Ṭab. 45, 4f.
50 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 48, 5f. and passim, qiyās usually meaning “rule” here (Versteegh
in: ZAL 4/1980/23f.; also 14). He is thus one of the line of anonymous “grammarians”
(naḥwiyyūn) mentioned by Sībawayh as opposing the “Arabs” (cf. Rundgren in: Acta
Societatis Linguisticae Uppsaliensis II 5/1976/132). Regarding Khalīl’s grammatical termi-
nology cf. W. Fischer in: ZAL 15/1985/97ff.; regarding his achievements as a grammarian
and lexicographer GAS 8/51ff. and 9/44ff., and Schoeler in: Der Islam 66/1989/52ff.
iraq �55
ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. Based on a few verses, later accounts would emphasise
that he did not accept any payment from Sulaymān.51 What is more signifi-
cant for us, however, is that the Muhallabids had close ties to the Azd. Khalīl
claimed to have seen Farazdaq (d. 112/730) as a child, when the latter visited the
Muhallabids (in Oman?).52 In another place Sulaymān b. Ḥabīb is described as
his friend.53
Someone wanting to be a tutor would probably not get very far with “Arab”
scholarship such as grammar and lexicography, especially not in Western Iran,
where he may have been at the time.54 It was probably no accident that he had
the idea of adding a further piece, a camel, to the game of chess,55 proof that,
for all his piousness, he did not have any religious reservations of the kind that
Marwān II had had his secretary ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Yaḥyā express56 concerning
this pastime. He had his own ideas on the value or otherwise of the sciences
of Antiquity. Aṣmaʿī reported that he had a simple classification: dialectics
(jadal) had neither a methodological basis (aṣl) nor a practical application
(farʿ); astronomy had methodology but no application; medicine, conversely,
practical application but no theoretical basis; while mathematics had both.57
Mathematics had practical application to merchants as well as lawyers, to
51 Qālī, Amālī II 269, –9ff.; Zubaydī, Ṭab. 43, 9ff.; Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ṭabaqāt al-shuʿarāʾ 99,
2ff.; Qifṭī, Inbāh I 344, 6ff.; Yāqūt, Irshād IV 182, 15ff.; Anbārī, Nuzha 47, 5ff.; Mufaḍḍal
b. Muḥammad al-Tanūkhī, Taʾrīkh al- ʿulamāʾ al-naḥwiyyīn 127, 4ff.; IKh II 245, pu. ff.
Marzubānī, Nūr 67, 2ff., is closer to reality – and uses different verses. The governor’s name
soon lost its relevance, changing frequently: Sulaymān b. Qabīṣa b. Yazīd b. al-Muhallab
according to Ibn al-Muʿtazz; Sulaymān b. ʿAlī according to Qālī, Zubaydī, Anbārī and
Yāqūt. Tawḥīdī, Mathālib al-wazīrayn 220, 3ff., presents a long-winded account pretend-
ing to be autobiographical in which Sulaymān b. ʿAlī is the governor of Basra. Marzubānī,
Qifṭī, Tanūkhī and Ibn Khallikān all report the correct version. Cf. also Balādhurī, Ansāb
III 183, 12ff., which dates Sulaymān around the year 127/744. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar remained
governor of Iraq for some time after (see p. 277f. below).
52 Marzubānī 69, 2ff.
53 Ibid. 67, 14ff.
54 See p. 29 and 46 above.
55 Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī, Tanbīh 121, 1f. Regarding lions or camels in chess cf. R. Wieber, Das
Schachspiel in der arabischen Literatur 245.
56 Cf. his Risāla on the game of chess in Kurd ʿAlī, Rasāʾil al-bulaghāʾ 211ff. = Ṣafwat, Jamharat
rasāʾil al-ʿArab 540ff. = Rasāʾil, ed. ʿAbbās 265ff. Religious judgments on the game cf.
Wieber 48ff. and 152ff. Chess was frequently played for money (cf. Rosenthal, Gambling
89f.).
57 Qifṭī, Inbāh I 346, 9ff.
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inheritance law, and to politicians for calculating taxation.58 The practical side
of astronomy, which did, of course, exist in the form of horoscopes, was sus-
picious in Khalīl’s eyes.59 Even where lexicography was concerned – and he
created the foundations for it with his K. al-ʿayn – he was not entirely “Arab”;
his approach of classifying the dictionary entries according to the basis of ar-
ticulation of the sounds as well as certain details of his linguistic theory appear
to go back to Indian influence.60
It is surprising that dialectics fared so poorly in his classification when it
should have been dear to him; after all, he practised kalām, although he did not
win any laurels in this field. The Muʿtazilites, who would become the dominant
force later, did not think much of him. Naẓẓām called him a vain professor
who prided himself on the circles he had devised to structure the rules of met-
rics. Consequently he had thought himself an expert in other fields as well, but
not even his compendium of rules amounted to much (in Naẓẓām’s opinion).61
Jāḥiẓ adopted this verdict: Khalīl fancied himself an expert in kalām, but it
only proved his stupidity.62 The same, he said, was true of musical theory (taʾlīf
al-luḥūn); he wrote a book on each of these subjects, but no scholar worth his
salt ever consulted either.63
The Muʿtazilites disliked him because he – in accordance with Ibāḍite prin-
ciples – did not believe in free will.64 However, as he wrote a book “on the pro-
fessing God’s oneness” (fī l-tawḥīd, i.e. about the image of God), we may assume
that someone must have been interested in it, and maybe even paid him for it.
And it engages our attention when we hear that Ayyūb b. Jaʿfar b. Sulaymān,
an influential and educated Abbasid whom we have already met in another
58 Cf. the anecdote that Khalīl was able to read a letter written in Greek by the basileus by
applying a combinatory method. This is said to have been the basis of his K. al-Muʿammā
(Zubaydī, Ṭab. 47, 12).
59 Marzubānī 65, 8ff. = Mubarrad, Kāmil 360, 4ff. = Zubaydī, Ṭab. 43, ult. ff. = Tanūkhī,
Ṭabaqāt al-ʿulamāʾ 125, 1ff.; even, later, Ibn Marzūq al-Tilimsānī, Musnad 440, 14ff., always
following some verses attributed to him.
60 Pines, Atomenlehre 119; Wild, Das K. al-ʿAin und die arab. Lexikographie 37ff.; more gen-
erally Danecki in: RO 44/1985, issue 1/127ff. It is of course entirely possible that he had
already learnt about Indian ideas in Oman.
61 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān VII 165, apu. ff.
62 K. al-muʿallimīn in: Rasāʾil III 44, 11ff.
63 Ḥayawān I 150, 9ff. Another instance of his vanity might be found in the anecdote nar-
rated by Marzubānī 67, 19ff., although this is probably meant to express respect for one’s
elders.
64 Cf. Marzubānī 65, 14ff., with an entirely philological refutation of the Qadarites.
iraq �57
context,65 was the owner of this text. It is true that the text goes on to say that
he only read from it to amuse his guests, but then the narrator is once again al-
Naẓẓām.66 He had barely known Khalīl; while it was claimed that he had been
presented to him as a child, this is mere legend.67 Khalīl’s actual opponent was
Abū Shamir al-Ḥanafī, who had no liking for his determinism, either.68 He par-
ticularly disliked his nebulous style; this is how the only fragment of Khalīl’s
kalām text survived. It is unusual indeed: “O you who come asking, wishing
to understand the Eternal One! If you say “Where is he?”, you have already lo-
cated him, and if you say “What is he like?”, you have already qualified him. As
regards his essence, he is +A, +A; (but also) –A, –A; or +A, –A, and –A, +A.”
Thus Tanbīh 122, 5ff. The last sentence poses problems. In Arabic it reads
huwa shayʾ shayʾ wa-lā-shayʾ lā-shayʾ wa-shayʾ lā-shayʾ wa-lā-shayʾ shayʾ.
I am following Massignon’s translation in: Opera Minora II 245, but it
would also be possible to assume genitive constructions, resulting in
something along the lines “He is the being of a being, and the non-being
of a non-being, the being of a non-being, and the non-being of a being.”
However, it seems that the reference is to a kind of mathematical or logi-
cal table of values; after all, two generations later Khwārizmī would use
the word shayʾ to mean the unknown in linear equations similar to our x
(cf. EI2 II 361a; Vernet, Cultura hispanoárabe 125/German translation 140).
This is definitely expressed in a most hermetic fashion; Massignon calls it

“hyperdialectics”. Still, at the same time it was an uncompromising expression
of the divine transcendence recalling the neo-Platonic ἐπέκεινα τη̃ ς οὐσίας.
Abū Shamir thought this went too far, presumably because in his as in the
Muʿtazilites’ view, God could not be lā-shayʾ, “–A”. It is not easy to confirm
whether the Ibāḍites went along with him. While, as we have seen, Muʾarrij
al-Sadūsī chose Khalīl as his teacher,69 we do not know for certain whether he

66 Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī, Tanbīh 120, 10ff.
68 Regarding him see p. 200ff. above. – One might consider linking Marzubānī’s anecdote
mentioned in n. 64 to Abū Shamir’s comment on an Ibāḍite theory we discussed on
p. 205f. above. Like Khalīl, the Ibāḍites presume that one and the same circumstance
may be viewed under two different aspects, or can integrate two different “moments”.
However, it seems more probable that this anecdote was intended to refute Ḍirār b. ʿAmr’s
position (see ch. C 1.3.1.3 below).
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was an Ibāḍite; but we do know that he did not wish to study theology under
him but grammar and lexicography.
I do not know what Khalīl’s doctrine of wahm qadīm entailed (Jāḥiẓ,

Tarbīʿ 78, –4). We must consider that the term wahm still had positive
connotations at that time, meaning simply “imagination” rather than
“conceit” (thus frequently in Shīʿite texts; cf. Ibn Bābōya, Tawḥīd 38, apu.
f.; 42, –8 etc.). Interestingly the closest parallels with Khalīl’s abovemen-
tioned description of transcendence are found in the same Shīʿite en-
vironment; they, too, undoubtedly of quite an early date (see ch. D 1.3,
beginning, below).
2.2.5.7 The Relation between Sin and Faith

One central point of Ibāḍite doctrine has so far been mentioned only in pass-
ing: the concept of sin. Here, the heresiographers become more relevant,
as this concept was always regarded as distinctive by the non-Ibāḍite sur-
roundings, while it was not controversial within the community. It was pure
chance that preserved an old document on the subject among Darjīnī’s writ-
ings, a missive briefly mentioned above, from Abū Sufyān Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl
to, probably, the community in Yemen during the second half of the second
century.1 His main concern was to protect the community he addressed from
the Khārijites’ ancient error of alienating followers through excessive rigour.
He called for leniency towards sinners and advocated accepting their peni-
tence rather than speculating on their hidden intentions. Whoever wishes to
deceive God will have to deal with God alone.2 A venial sin becomes a mortal
sin only through obduracy on the part of the sinner, in which case it is nec-
essary to cease supporting him (walāya).3 Islam is not damaged every time a
work of obedience is neglected, and not every infringement of a prohibition
leads to unbelief. While there are certain fundamental principles that are in-
dispensable to a Muslim, such as those listed in the “piety verse” of the Quran
(sura 2:177): belief in God, in the Day of Judgment, in the angels, the scripture,
and the prophets, as well as some practical points such as fasting in Ramadan,
the pilgrimage, abiding by contracts, returning entrusted property etc.,4 there
1 See p. 232, n. 100 above; also regarding dating difficulties.

2 After sura 2:9. Cf. Darjīnī 281, 12ff.; transl. in Cuperly, Professions de foi II 135f. (cf. also
Introduction 29f.).
3 Ibid. 281, 5ff. = Cuperly 134.
4 In more detail in ch. D 0 below.
iraq �59
are also the opera supererogationis, to which one is not obliged. And of course
there are mortal sins such as murder, incest, fornication, slander of honour-
able women (which might result in their being stoned), or misappropriation of
an orphan’s property. Many other things, however, are merely lamam, a small
misdemeanour.5
These issues played a most significant part in community life. As we have
seen, withdrawal of the walāya could lead to excommunication; in any case
it meant a certain loss of honour by damaging one’s good reputation and the
capacity to testify and cancelling the poor relief from the zakāt etc.6 On the
other hand, someone who wished to join the community had to request accep-
tance formally, promising to renounce his previous false beliefs.7 Besides the
walāya, which was due only to community members of blameless reputation,
and the ultimate termination of membership, the “revocation” (barāʾa), anoth-
er possible practice was wuqūf, ἐποχή, presumably mainly in cases where the
heads of the community had not yet spoken. There have been later attempts
at defining these precisely,8 but it is not necessary to look at the development
in detail here. What is essential is that the problem from the very first also
included a historical dimension; people wished to know not only to whom
among the contemporaries living with them they should show “friendship” but
also who among the people of the past were deserving of solidarity. Later, the
Quran would be the main confirmation: all prophets, but also Eve and Sarah
are granted walāya, while pharaoh, Haman, and Lot’s wife were renounced.9
In the beginning, however, the issue was regarded under a more immediate
aspect, and it was the image of history that was discussed. Of course, ʿUthmān
was roundly rejected, but it would have been noticed if someone had rein-
terpreted Quranic verses, in the Shīʿite manner, to refer to him.10 In fact, he
had done the same with regard to ʿAlī; once again it was the method that was
new rather than the intention.11 People took a critical view even of their own
past; Ḥārith b. Mazyad distanced himself from all authorities after Ibn Ibāḍ,
5 Ibid. 279, 14ff. = Cuperly 133.

6 Ennami, Studies 332ff.; Talbi, Etudes d’histoire ifrīqiyenne 18ff.; also Abū ʿAmmār, Mūjaz
II 117, –4ff. Regarding the circumstances in Mzab in general cf. H. Halm in: Religion und
Moral, ed. Gladigow, 196ff., and Delheure, Faits et dires du Mzab 39.
7 Khamīs b. Saʿīd, Manhaj al-ṭālibīn II 41, 2f., and 349, 11ff.
8 Thus e.g. in the ancient Berber ʿaqīda (cf. Schwartz, Anfänge der Ibāḍiten 56ff.) or in
Jannāwunī’s (cf. Cuperly in: BEO 32–33/1980–1/26ff.). In detail also Khamīs b. Saʿīd II 7ff.
9 Jannāwunī, ib. 48, 1ff.
10 Text VII 4, e.
11 Ibid. f (which does, however, also include Ibn Muljam; cf. Brentjes, Imamatslehren 13). Cf.
Jāḥiẓ’ anecdote mentioned p. 236, n. 22 above.
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presumably because they were not Qadarites;12 Yazīd b. Unaysa13 dismissed all
Khārijite movements more recent that the first muḥakkima, probably because
he did not approve of the Azraqites’ extremism.14 In general, the difference
between the Azraqites and the Ibāḍites and Khārijites was that the latter did
not persecute and fight dissenters individually (istiʿrāḍ);15 the demand that
unjust – which probably meant: non-Ibāḍite – authorities should be removed,
however, was upheld at least in theory.16 The army camp of the caliph and his
assistants (ʿaskar al-sulṭān) was regarded as dār baghy, an “area of lawlessness”,17
or possibly as dār kufr, “area of unbelief”, where people were hindered when
performing their religious duties, possibly even the prayer;18 while the rest of
the Islamic ecumene was called dār tawḥīd, an area that was distinguished by
the profession of God’s oneness.
The words employed show how closely all this was linked to the definition
of belief and unbelief. These two poles still represented the fundamental al-
ternatives, but the rigorism of the early Khārijites was becoming increasingly
softened by more specific distinctions. The term muslim was usually reserved
for their own kind;19 if it was applied to others at all, these were persons who
had not come in contact with Islam as a positive religion, and consequently
had not faced the decision of accepting or rejecting it.20 Fellow-believers in
general were called, at least with a neutral and polite intention, ahl al-qibla or
ahl al-ṣalāt;21 Khārijites of different denominations, in particular the Azraqites
of the early years, were called khawārij in Sunni sources.22 They themselves

14 Cf. Text VIII 5, b and g, with the commentary.
15 Ibid., h; cf. Maq. 105, 1f.
16 Maq. 125, 1ff.
17 Thus Baghdādī, Farq 85, 4f./106, 1f., and Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī, Ḥūr 173, 13f., both probably
after Kaʿbī.
18 Thus Ashʿarī, Maq. 104, 13f., who may also have quoted Kaʿbī and in that case simplified
the term (and one can also ask whether the following yaʿnī is not simply misread for
baghy). – According to Ṣāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād these were merely Ḥārith b. Mazyad’s teach-
ings (Kashf ʿan manāhij aṣnāf al-Khawārij, in: Nashriyya-i Dānishkada-i Adabiyyāt Tabrīz
20/1347/147, 8f.).
19 See p. 218 and 223 above; also e.g. Abū Zakariyāʾ, Siyar 171, apu. f./transl. Revue Afr.
105/1961/150, and 165, –4/transl. 141.
20 Thus Abū ʿUbayda; see vol. I 483 above.
21 See p. 226 and 238 above. Baghdādī once used the phrase ahl Makka (because Mecca de-
termines the direction of the qibla; cf. Farq 85, 4/106, 1).
22 Cf. e.g. Shammākhī, Siyar 76, –7ff.; sometimes also māriqa (thus in Abū Yaʿqūb al-
Warglānī’s K. al-dalīl).
iraq �61
rejected this designation; this is indeed the case to this day, reinforced by the
unitarian tendencies of modern Islam.23 When referring to the Islamic ec-
umene in general the term used was, as we have seen, not the dār al-Islām
customary elsewhere, but dār al-tawḥīd. Consequently while the ahl al-ṣalāt
were not muslimūn, at least they were muwaḥḥidūn.
However, they were also kuffār, not primarily due to their evaluation as a
group but rather to the doctrine of sin. As long as an Ibāḍite had not commit-
ted any grave sins, he was considered not only muslim but also muʾmin, “believ-
er”; grave sin would make him a kāfir. Grave sins were not only the well-known
ones Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl had listed in the letter quoted above, but might just
as well – as he, too, had emphasised despite his moderate outlook – be due to
one’s persisting in some misdeed, even one that was only lamam; as this was
the way to obduracy (iṣrār).24 Consequently a sinner had to be called to re-
pent (istatāba) as tawba would guide him back to islām.25 The sources only
allow us to guess what this would look like in detail; what is clear is that while
someone was in a state of sin – especially of doctrinal dissension – he was ex-
cluded from religious meetings (majālis).26 The abovementioned story of the
Medinan Ibrāhīm who sold one of his female slaves to an “unbeliever”27 il-
lustrates, maybe in a deliberate caricature, the complications that could re-
sult from mutual excommunications. A particularly disastrous case would be
if someone followed his own exegetical views; it would then be permitted to
kill the dissenter if he did not follow the call to repentance – even if he was
not even aware of his heresy.28 Non-Ibāḍites were living in permanent ob-
duracy; only conversion could guide the dissenter out of the status of kāfir.
Nobody doubted that he would stay in hell for eternity, just like every other
obdurate sinner who does not heed the call to repentance.29 The fact that he
was muwaḥḥid, “professing oneness”, did not change this, either.
23 Cf. the modern Omani scholar Sālim b. Ḥammūd al-Sayyābī’s Aṣdaq al-manāhij fī tamyīz
al-Ibāḍiyya min al-Khawārij, ed. Sayyida Ismāʿīl Kāshif (Cairo 1979). The early instance in
Al-siyar wal-jawābāt I 56, 8, differs.
24 See p. 258 above. Cf. also Maq. 107, 10.
25 Cf. the story told by Abū Zakariyāʾ in: Revue Afr. 105/1961/366; also Abū l-Muʾaththir,
K. al-aḥdāth wal-ṣifāt in: Al-siyar wal-jawābāt I 38, 9ff.
26 Cf. Text VIII 1, i. Regarding the practices customary in Mzab nowadays cf. Halm in: Religion
und Moral 199ff.
28 Ashʿarī, Maq. 107, 4ff. > Baghdādī, Farq 86, 10ff./107, 6f. Regarding the wording see p. 244
above.
29 Ibid. 110, 14f.; also Abū ʿAmmār, Mūjaz II 116, 12f.
�6� chapter �
In this context we must bear in mind that to the Ibāḍites kufr did not mean
“unbelief” in the strict sense; it was interpreted more as kufr niʿma, ingratitude
towards a good deed received,30 following Quranic usage: “If you are thank-
ful”, God had said, “surely I will increase (my blessings to) you, but if you are
thankless (kafartum) – my chastisement is terrible”.31 The opposite of kufr in
this context is not īmān “faith” or “belief”, but shukr “gratitude”, Abraham’s at-
titude who was “grateful for his blessings”.32 A kāfir does not deny points of
faith, but refuses to recognise a claim that is self-evident;33 kufr is an inap-
propriate attitude towards God the ruler. The concept is deeply rooted within
Arab consciousness.34
Of course a heathen who denies a point of faith is also a kāfir, as can be
documented with reference to the Quran, but another factor is needed as well:
shirk, “polytheism” – he is not someone who professes “oneness” (muwaḥḥid),
unlike the non-Ibāḍite muslims.35 While retaining the term kufr, the distinc-
tion between kufr niʿma and kufr shirk also relied on a semantic shift of the
term used in the Quran in which a historical explanation changed the ancient
twofold classification into a threefold one. As we know this corresponded to
a general tendency in Basran theology of the time, consequently it is not sur-
prising that the choice of words conformed to this environment and people
used the phrase kufr nifāq,36 or simply nifāq, instead of kufr niʿma.37 In this
way the kāfir niʿma’s middle position is confirmed by the Quran which says
of the munāfiqūn: “They waver in indecision between them (bayna dhālika),
unable to (decide) for either one or the other”.38 Sura 33:73 was adduced to af-
firm the semantic association of muʾmin – munāfiq – mushrik.39 Shammākhī’s
(d. 792/1389–90) interpreting nifāq as an “intermediate stage” (manzila bayna
30 Cf. e.g. Abū Yaʿlā, Muʿtamad 189, 7f.

31 Sura 14/7.
32 Cf. Sura 16:120. Cf. also sura 16:55, 30:34, 18:83 etc.; sura 26:19 refers to ingratitude towards
a human, namely pharaoh. Regarding the development of the concept cf. Izutsu, Ethico-
Religious Concepts in the Qurʾān 119ff., and Björkman in EI2 IV 407ff. s. v. Kāfir.
33 Cf. also Serjeant in: CHAL I 136.
34 Cf. Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership 72ff.
35 Maq. 105, 3f. and previously, also 110, 14, and 453, 1; Jannāwunī, ʿAqīda in: BEO 32–33/1980–
81/47, 9ff.; also Wilkinson, Imamate Tradition 189.
36 Thus e.g. Abū ʿAmmār, Mūjaz II 117, 3.
37 For general information see Schwartz 54ff.
38 Sura 4:143. Cf. Maq. 105, 9ff.; Abū Muṭīʿ, Radd 10, 1f.; Abū ʿAmmār II 117, 4f.
39 Abū ʿAmmār II 117, pu. ff.
iraq �63
l-manzilatayn) will hardly surprise after this.40 It is unlikely that this reverence
for Muʿtazilite usage would be traced back to the Basran community, which
was closer to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and did indeed refer to him.41 In this way Ibn
Ḥazm may have come to believe that ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd should be counted
among the Khārijites.42
Ibn Ḥazm, however, overlooked an important point. In Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s as
well as in Bakr’s eyes a munāfiq, even though he faced eternal torment in hell,
was still a muʾmin.43 Of course, they did not conform with the Muʿtazilites, ei-
ther, as they had turned the munāfiq into a fāsiq, denying him the status of “un-
believer”, and at the same time removing the ambiguity of the word kāfir: kāfir
to them was identical with, to put it in Ibāḍite terms, mushrik; consequently
the term mushrik became less important. The debate between the two schools
was only ever about the choice of words in this context. Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb had
already adduced hadiths confirming that a fāsiq had to be called kāfir as well,44
and Abū ʿAmmār wondered why the eternal torments of hell with which the
Muʿtazilites threatened the fāsiq were not also linked to kufr.45 In his view
kāfir and fāsiq, but also ḍāll, ẓālim, fājir, always meant the same thing, just as
muʾmin, muslim, and muhtadī etc. did;46 but tradition has put kāfir in the most
prominent position among the synonyms.
The problem could not be swept aside so easily; there was a reason why
the Muʿtazilites had ended the argument over terminology by introducing an
unused designation. For the focus of the argument was not only on terms, but
on their definition, too, and the sources show clearly how severely the Ibāḍites
were punished for their conservatism. While we may assume that the systema-
tising character of the doxographical sources we have used may have blurred
some historical and geographical distinctions,47 the Ibāḍites did attempt to
craft a system out of it all, and had to bear the consequences of its weaknesses.
The dissension with their closest Khārijite brothers, the Ṣufrites, could not be
resolved, as the latter insisted on the older delimitation of kufr and shirk. This
40 Between īmān and shirk, of course, not between īmān and kufr (Cuperly, Introduction
333).
41 Cf. e.g. the quotation in Abū ʿAmmār II 117, –4ff.
42 See p. 128f. above. Other Khārijite groups that did not necessarily have close ties to Basra
also used the term munāfiq, e.g. the Najdiyya (cf. Watt in: Der Islam 36/1961/220).
44 Cf. Warglānī, Tartīb, MS Rhodes House, Afr. S 3, fol. 222b f.
45 Mūjaz II 123, 4ff. This is probably where the difference lies when Abū ʿUbayda al-Tamīmī,
maybe altogether innocently, speaks of the grave sinner as a fāsiq (K. al-zakāt 21, ult.).
46 Ibid. 126, 4ff.
47 Cf. p. 264 below regarding tawḥīd and nifāq.
�64 chapter �
might not have seemed very convincing in view of the practical relations with
the “unbelievers” such as intermarriage with other Muslims, accepting inheri-
tances etc.,48 but at least it did not stop halfway. In fact, there was uncertainty
even within the Ibāḍiyya as whether nifāq could be imagined entirely without
shirk if one did not consider the former to be a genuine intermediate posi-
tion: if the munāfiqūn belonged “neither to these (the muʾminūn) nor to those
(the mushrikūn), it could only mean, following this presumption, that they had
something of both sides, i.e. also had a part in shirk.49 Consequently later au-
thors would speak of shirk juzʾī “partial polytheism”.50
In addition it was not possible, some people determined, to combine nifāq
and tawḥīd, belief in the one God; on the contrary, the former precluded the
latter, as did shirk.51 The reasons given were exegetical and based on the his-
torical identity of the munāfiqūn mentioned in the Quran. We are told that the
opposing party, who were insisting on a strict separation of nifāq and shirk,
subsequently maintained that all the munāfiqūn the prophet had met had
“professed God’s oneness” and merited the designation munāfiq only because
they lived in grave sin,52 a theory that could hardly bear up under historical
analysis. Consequently others suggested that the term should be limited exclu-
sively to the Quranic context.53 This was equivalent to admitting that it should
be dropped as a theological term, an argument put forward by non-Ibāḍites,
e.g. Murjiʾite theologians, too.54 Failing this the term would have to be charged
with meanings that would not agree with Quranic usage, whether we translate
it as “hypocrisy” or something else.55
Difficulties also arose surrounding the definition of shirk, once again in
relation with the Quranic meaning of the word. The prophet had called the
48 Mūjaz II 116, 13ff., and 119, 5ff.

49 Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir IV 254, 6f./2IV 216 no. 785 after Kaʿbī; in principle also Qatāda (Ṭabarī,
Tafsīr 3IX 334, 6ff. no. 10732). Ḥasan al-Baṣrī was said to have distinguished between a
nifāq takdhīb li-Muḥammad and a nifāq khaṭāyā wa-dhunūb, the former being beyond
forgiveness while there was still hope for the latter (Ṭabarī, Tahdhīb al-āthār, Musnad Ibn
ʿAbbās 640 no. 956).
50 Cf. Cuperly, Professions de foi II 7, n., after ʿAbdallāh b. Ḥumayd al-Sālimī (d. 1332/19140.
51 Maq. 105, 11f. = Nashwān, Ḥūr 174, 1 (both presumably after Kaʿbī) > Baghdādī, Farq 95, 8f.
(appears to be missing in ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd’s edition, after 106, 6).
52 Maq. 105, ult. ff. According to Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 191, 17ff., this opinion was supported by
only one of Ḥārith b. Mazyad’s followers.
53 Maq. 105, 12ff. > Farq 85, 8ff./106, 7ff. Sālim b. Dhakwān regarded this position as Azraqite
(Cook, Dogma 96).
54 Cf. e.g. Abū Muṭīʿ, Radd 70, 3ff.
55 Cf. Cuperly’s remarks, Professions de foi II 9, n. 17.
iraq �65
heathen polytheists mushrikūn, which lived on in the terminology in the jux-

taposition of shirk and tawḥīd. Later Ibāḍite theological terminology described
all non-Muslims as polytheists, including those who were in actual fact mono-
theists. In addition, sin was understood as “ingratitude”, i.e. as deliberate con-
tempt of a divine blessing; on this premise a Christian who had never heard of
Islam had to be called muslim, as Abū ʿUbayda had done. This resulted in, as we
have seen elsewhere,56 the quarrel over the God’s “argument”. Is monotheism a
given, a priori mindset, from which not even God can exempt anyone – similar
to the anthropologist Wilhelm Schmidt’s idea of primitive monotheism – or
dos it emerge as a consequence of “information”, i.e. revelation?57 Is every kind
of denial of God ( jaḥd) equal to “polytheism”, or is it really necessary to assign
a second God?58 And what about the Christians who say of themselves that
they are monotheists: should one say that they are in fact polytheists in their
hearts, or should one believe their protestations?59 And what about the Jews?
Are they not in fact better than the anthropomorphists, whom one may kill
and take prisoner because they disregard tawḥīd so brazenly?60 In this way a
certain
Ḥafṣ b. Abī l-Miqdām
arrived at the idea of postulating a special status for those non-Muslims whose
faith included a monotheistic creed as well as a prophet and the scripture re-
vealed through him.61 It does not seem, however, that he arrived at a fourfold
arrangement, as he included Muslims who “have murdered someone or who
consider fornication and incest to be permitted”, i.e. who are mortal sinners,
to still “profess God’s oneness”.62 He was clearly using tawḥīd instead of nifāq;
indeed, he may have been the one to introduce the term in addition to kufr
niʿma. His view did not prevail.63
56 Vol. I 483ff.

57 Maq. 106, 5ff. = Nashwān, Ḥūr 174, 2ff. (after Kaʿbī?) > Baghdādī, Farq 85, –4ff./106, 14f.
58 Regarding this dissension cf. Maq. 107, 8ff.; regarding jaḥada cf. sura 29:47, 41:28. Regarding
the juxtaposition of kufr jaḥd – kufr niʿma cf. also Ibn ʿAqīl, Funūn § 420.
59 Maq. 106, 16f. = Nashwān 174, 12f. Cf. ʿĪsā b. ʿUmayr’s liberal doctrine (vol. I 486).
60 Maq. 109, 10ff. > Farq 86, ult. ff./107, 14ff.; abbreviated Nashwān, Ḥūr 174, pu. f. People won-
dered whether penitence was even possible in case of tashbīh (cf. the anecdote told by
Abū Zakariyāʾ, transl. Revue Afr. 105/1961/366).
61 Text VIII 4 with commentary.
62 Ibid., b.
63 Ibid., d.
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This may have been one of the reasons why he was not mentioned at
all in Ibāḍite sources. Another reason seems to have been that he was
barely known in Basra. We do not know where he was active. One might
consider identifying him with the theologian and jurist Ḥafṣ b. Ashyam
who was a member of the Ibāḍite community in Upper Mesopotamia,
in the area around Mosul (see p. 529 below), but although we know only
little about him, his profile is rather different. An Ibāḍite from Iran, Yazīd
b. Unaysa (regarding him see p. 688ff. below), would seem to be the clos-
est match. The theological problem raised above would have a place in
western Iran, too, where not only the Christian but also the Jewish com-
munity were rather numerous. However, unlike Ibn Abī l-Miqdām, Yazīd
b. Unaysa regarded even Ibāḍites as polytheists under certain circum-
stances, i.e. when they were deserving of ḥadd punishment (Shahrastānī
102, 5f./249, 3f.).
2.2.5.8 Puritanism and Scrupulousness

No proof is needed to confirm that all this led to most meticulous observa-
tion of the law. Every commandment was understood to be universal; noth-
ing could be mitigated by linking it to one specific circumstance.1 Punishment
alone was not enough; public penitence was required as well. In the case of a
grave crime this was so important that, if the perpetrator refused to subject
himself to it, some people demanded capital punishment in addition to ḥadd
punishment.2 People not only steered clear of everything prohibited, but also
of much that was permitted, in order to be sure not to lapse into sin.3 From
the outside this was particularly noticeable when it came to purity and food
laws. Ibn Ḥazm reported that the Spanish Ibāḍites did not eat the penises
of he-goats, rams and bulls, and that they made someone fast afterwards if
he fell asleep during the day during Ramadan and had an ejaculation while
asleep.4 One of the sects in the Maghreb, the Farthiyya, bore this name be-
cause its founder Abū Sulaymān ʿUmar b. Yaʿqūb b. Muḥammad b. Aflaḥ, a
1 Maq. 106, 3f.

2 Thus certain of Ḥārith b. Mazyad’s followers according to Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 189, 4f. Ashʿarī
probably generalised too much when he applied this to all Ibāḍites (Maq. I 107, 6f.). In any
case capital punishment could only be carried out by the authorities. In the Mzab the ḥadd
punishment is often mitigated in favour of penitence nowadays (Halm in: Religion und Moral
199f.).
3 Regarding waraʿ see p. 227 and 245 above; Cuperly, Introduction 58f.
4 Fiṣal IV 189, 6f.
iraq �67
descendant of the Rustamids, considered sheep tripe to be impure.5 To this

day the Ibāḍites demand that someone who has intercourse during a night
in Ramadan must perform the full ablution if the fasting on that day is to be
valid.6 On the one hand, fear of everything impure led to meticulous cleanli-
ness, which can still be observed in the Mzab to this day;7 the Rustamid imam
Abū l-Yaqẓān already attracted attention by ensuring that the inhabitants of
Tāhart cleared any refuse off the streets immediately.8 On the other hand it
could also result in a certain fear of contact: the Spanish Ibāḍites mentioned
by Ibn Ḥazm considered foods impure if they were prepared by non-Muslims.9
Abū Zakariyāʾ narrates how a pious Ibāḍite from the Maghreb did not shake
hands with visitors until he had finished his prayer.10 Similar behaviour pat-
terns held in Djerba until the most recent past, and not only among the Ibāḍite
community, but also the Jewish one.11
What conclusions we might draw from this regarding community life in
Basra remains to be seen. Rubinacci is probably overall correct when he says
that the Ibāḍites in North Africa have preserved patterns of religious behav-
iour that would have been common in Basra in the second century.12 Still, the
sources mainly note the divergences and peculiarities; we can deduce only a
general tendency, but not the respective details. The debate around the prohi-
bition of wine seems characteristic; it was conducted with particular intensity
throughout Iraq in the second century. Significantly Iyās b. Muʿāwiya already
considered all alcoholic drinks to be prohibited.13 It is interesting that this gen-
eralisation was not accepted everywhere, despite the Ibāḍiyya’s puritanism.
While inebriation as well as wine were frowned upon, some people still be-
lieved that drinks which only led to inebriation when consumed in excessive
quantities should be permitted.14
5 ʿUthmān b. Khalīfa, Bayān firaq al-Ibāḍiyya 60 with further, stricter regulations; cf. also
Muʿammar, Ibāḍiyya 318ff., and Khulayfāt, Al-nuẓum al-ijtimāʿiyya 107. Briefly also Lewicki
in EI2 III 660a, and SI 9/1958/51, where the founder’s name seems corrupted.
6 Rubinacci in: Religion in the Middle East II 310; general information id., La purità rituale
secondo gli Ibāḍiti, in: AIUON 6/1957/1ff.
7 Cf. e.g. Halm 196; also Delheure, Faits et dires au Mzab 37.
8 Ibn Ṣaghīr, Chronik 41, ult. f./transl. 105.
9 Ibid. 189, 6.
10 Cf. the translation in Abū Zakariyāʾ in: Revue Afr. 105/1961/348.
11 Udovitch-Valensi, The Last Arab Jews 12.
12 In: Trudy 25. Kongressa, Moskva II 72f.
13 Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt I 349, 8.
14 Maq. 109, 9f. = Nashwān, Ḥūr 174, apu. f.
�68 chapter �
A similar attitude was also found among other Khārijite groups. Interest-
ing sources, especially some concerning Iran, have survived (see p. 699
below). Due to Ḥanafite influence the general prohibition of wine met
with even greater resistance there (cf. e.g. the attitude of the Bayhasiyya,
p. 668 below).
The fear of shaking hands with strangers has also been document-
ed for Basran Ibāḍite circles. Ḥasan al-Baṣrī was reported to have per-
formed a partial ablution every time he had greeted ahl al-kitāb in this
way (Madelung, Qāsim 90). ʿUmar b. al-Riyāḥ al-ʿAbdī supported this
with a hadith: Gabriel did not take the prophet’s hand because the latter
had previously shaken the hand of a Jew (ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 160, –7ff. >
Mīzān no. 6109; quoted by Goldziher in: REJ 29/1894/76 = Ges. Schr. III
323). Shīʿites reacted in the same way (Kashshī 447 no. 840 regarding the
Basran ʿAbdallāh b. Khidāsh al-Mahrī). Like the Ibāḍites they frequent-
ly also avoided touching Muslims who were not members of their own
denomination (see vol. I 319 above). Ascetics wearing patched tunics
shook nobody’s hand (Sahlakī, K. rūḥ al-rūḥ quoted by Vajda in: Arabica
29/1982/311). Whether this was noticeable in individual instances would
of course depend on whether greeting people by shaking hands was prac-
tised regularly at all (cf. e.g. Kulīnī, Kāfī II 179 no. 1 and 180 no. 7). On the
subject cf. also Kister in: JSAI 12/1989/325f. and 330f.
2.2.6 The Early Muʿtazila

According to the generally accepted understanding, in Islam systematic in-
terest in theological issues began with the Muʿtazila. Maimonides was of this
opinion,1 and Hegel adopted it from him in his Vorlesungen über die Geschichte
der Philosophie.2 The image, however, is wrong; it dates from an era when only
Ashʿarites and Muʿtazilites were still known. At the beginning the development
of the Muʿtazila was anything but straightforward. Although it had already
emerged towards the end of the Umayyad era, it was a marginal group until
the last quarter of the second century; we have seen the degree of competi-
tion it faced from Murjiʾites, Shīʿites and Ibāḍites. It was not the only one to lay
claim to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s legacy (Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ having allegedly “defected” from
his circle), either; the Qadariyya, the Bakriyya and the “Ghaylāniyya” raised the
same claim. Interestingly, later Muʿtazilites did not know any more how their
1 Dalālat al-ḥāʾirīn 184, 7ff./transl. Friedländer 108.

2 II. Teil, Erster Abschnitt, A (vol. III 25f.). Cf. also F. Niewöhner in: Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte
18/1974/24ff.
iraq �69
denomination got its name;3 recollection of the past had been lost. Modern
scholarship has not been able to provide clarity in this matter, either. We must
not avoid the problem, but it would seem advisable, as we have done so far, to
consider the biographies of the most important protagonists first.
2.2.6.1 Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ

The image of history mentioned above usually assigns two founders to the
Muʿtazila: Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ and ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd. This, however, is only true to a
degree, as it is a secondary combination like “Marx and Engels” or “Goethe
and Schiller”. The two were contemporaries, but ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd had heard the
call to the cause later, “converted” by Wāṣil. Thus according to later Muʿtazilite
narrative; but in reality, matters were probably rather more complicated.1 Not
only the name of the organisation, but its entire early period is shrouded in
mystery. This did not prevent biographers writing about Wāṣil, and sometimes
about ʿAmr as well, again and again; after all, they were both famous men. But
the information available was sparse, and the material was usually simply re-
arranged. Above all, tradition started far too late. The doxographers, on the
other hand, were noticeably reticent; Ashʿarī mentioned Wāṣil only once in
his Maqālāt, and in the context of a problem that was hardly characteristic of
the Muʿtazila.2 Shahrastānī built him up as a “church father”, but his work is
most scholarly and exceedingly problematic.3 Bibliographical tradition relies
entirely on Ibn al-Nadīm; it, too, presents cause for concern.4 Anything else
Fihrist contains in the way of biographical material is also known to us from
other sources.
The earliest information we have about Wāṣil is at the beginning of Jāḥiẓ’

K. al-bayān wal-tabyīn, but he is described as a khaṭīb rather than a mu-
takallim. It is difficult to determine whether he merely adhered to the in-
tention of his book, or whether he really did not see Wāṣil as a Muʿtazilite
in the later sense. The material he collected under this aspect was barely
expanded later; Mubarrad, our next witness, did not provide anything
new in this respect, but included some additional anecdotes (Kāmil 921,
pu. ff.; also 891, apu. ff.). Kaʿbī’s K. al-Maqālāt was the first instance of
3 See p. 382 below.

2 As Strothmann observed already (Der Islam 19/1931/231).
4 Cf. Catalogue of Works IX.
�70 chapter �
doxographical literature to make an appearance, although the author in

fact limited himself to biographical information which he mainly based
on Jāḥiẓ (Maq. 64, –4ff.). Interestingly he discussed Wāṣil later in the book
once again, including him in a list of Basran “proto-Muʿtazilites” (ibid.
90, 9ff.); he obviously presumed that Muʿtazilite doctrine had not yet
evolved fully. Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī, on the other hand, included Wāṣil in
his K. al-awāʾil (dictated 395/1005) because he believed him to have been
the first author of kalām texts (II 134ff.). Like his predecessors, he mainly
collected adab material, but in addition he preserved a valuable theoreti-
cal text (cf. Text IX 22). This was then included, together with many other
singular accounts, in the long biography by Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (Faḍl al-
iʿtizāl 234–41). The fact that the same author hardly referred to Wāṣil at
all in his Mughnī illustrates how little was known about his teachings.
Sharīf al-Murtaḍā was independent in a number of details, devoting a
longish digression to him in his Amālī (I 163ff.). The traditions found in
the Ibāḍite author Yusūf b. Ibrāhīm al-Warglānī’s (d. 570/1174) K. al-dalīl li-
ahl al-ʿuqūl are independent as well but irrelevant from the point of view
of the content (cf. Text IX 4).
Later authors contribute nothing new on the whole. He appears
in Samʿānī (Ansāb XIII 265, 12ff.), Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī (Ḥūr 206ff.,
after Kaʿbī), Yāqūt (Irshād VII 233, 3ff.), Ibn Khallikān (Wafayāt VI 7ff.,
after Mubarrad and Samʿānī), Dhahabī (Mīzān no. 9324; Taʾrīkh V 310,
6ff.), Ṣafadī (Wāfī XXVII s. n.), Kutubī (Fawāt II 624f. no. 478, after Ibn
Khallikān), Yāfīʿī (Mirʾāt al-janān I 274, 4ff., partly after Mubarrad and
Samʿānī), Maqrīzī (Khiṭaṭ II 345, –11ff., in part after Fihrist), Ibn Ḥajar
al-ʿAsqalānī (Lisān al-Mīzān VI 214f., in part after Dhahabī, Mīzān), Ibn
Taghrībirdī (Nujūm I 313, 15ff.), Ibn al-ʿImād (Shadharāt al-dhahab I 182,
ult. ff.) and Khwānsārī (Rawżāt ul-jannāt 738, 1ff., entirely dependent on
Shahrastānī). More recent collections to be consulted include: Ziriklī,
Aʿlām IX 121f.; Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam al-muʾallifīn XIII 159; Rayḥānat al-adab IV
232ff. s. v. Ghazzāl (!); also GAS 1/596 and Neşet Çağatay in: IA XIII 219ff.
s. v. Vāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ. The only monograph, much influenced by the viewpoint
of the sources, is by Abū l-Wafāʾ al-Taftāzānī, Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ. Ḥayātuhū wa-
muṣannafātuhū in: Dirāsāt falsafiyya muhdāt ilā Ibrāhīm Madkūr 39ff.
2.2.6.1.1 The Chronology of his Life. His Origins and Profession

Wāṣil is one of the very few early Muʿtazilites the date of whose death is given
precisely and without variants, which is astonishing, as for a long time the
Muʿtazilites evidently had no interest in the chronology of their movement.
As for the science within which this interest first developed, namely hadith,
Wāṣil had nothing to do with it, which suggests the assumption that later,
iraq �71
when dates were being collected, people recalled some remarkable event
which allowed them to deduce the date of his death. The combination appears
to be due to Khayyāṭ; certainly tradition does not go back any further in time.
Sharīf al-Murtaḍā referred to him,1 while the author of Fihrist referred to his
pupil Abū l-Qāsim al-Balkhī.2 Masʿūdī, who confirmed the date,3 was probably
also referring to one of the two, either directly or indirectly. The year they all
name is 131/748–9. The event aiding their memory was presumably the “pesti-
lence” that raged in Basra during that year; later, it was used as a fixed point in
hadith as well.4 The Abbasid revolution would be another possibility, but it is
usually linked more closely to the year 132; furthermore this hypothesis would
assume that Wāṣil was actively engaged for or against either the Abbasids, the
Umayyads, or someone else at the time, and we have barely any evidence of
that.5 He was probably in the prime of his life then. While the year 80/699,
which the same sources give as the year of his birth, is probably only hypotheti-
cal, it is unlikely to be too far from reality.
He shared the year of his birth with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd (see p. 324 below);
this is probably due to a desire on the part of the biographers to establish
a connection between the two founders of the movement. Concerning
facts that might contradict this date see p. 288 and 295 below. When
Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī called ʿAmr Wāṣil’s ghulām (Text XII 1, v. 1), he was prob-
ably not saying that the former was younger, but just that he converted
to Wāṣil’s teachings only later. Ibn Ṭāwūs’ (d. 664/1266) claim that Ḥajjāj
wrote to Wāṣil and ʿAmr as well as their teacher Ḥasan al-Baṣrī in order
to discover their opinion on qadar (Ṭarāʾif fī maʿrifat madhhab al-ṭawāʾif)
was probably read into Ḥasan’s Qadarite Risāla (see p. 55 above); the ten-
dency visible is that they all – besides those named also Shaʿbī – refer to
ʿAlī in their answer. Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār points out Wāṣil’s “correct” age,
51 lunar years (Faḍl 239, pu.), but this is probably only calculated based
on the dates given.
1 Amālī I 164, pu. f.; thus also IM 29, 5.

2 Fihrist 203, 5 > IKh VI 11, ult.
3 Murūj VII 234, 1f./V 22, 11f.
4 Thus Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 373, 4f. Regarding the event cf. in summary L. Conrad in: SI 54/1981/53ff.
The pestilence spread far beyond Basra and is mentioned in Byzantine sources as well
(ibid. 59, n. 1).
5 See p. 290 and 386 below; the Abbasid revolution is not normally adduced in biographies to
provide a point of reference for someone who did not have anything to do with it. The pes-
tilence of 131, on the other hand, was also memorable because it was the last one in a line of
epidemics during the early Islamic period.
�7� chapter �
The same witnesses claim that he was from Medina,6 which is not entirely
certain;7 it could simply be deduced from the legends that link him to Abū
Hāshim, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya’s son.8 He is described as a mawlā of the
Banū Ḍabba9 who were mainly resident in Basra.10 It is of course possible that
he only entered into clientship with them later, once he had moved to Basra.
There are some indications that he was a stranger there.11 Ibn al-Nadīm does,
in fact, mention not only the Banū Ḍabba but also, after a less securely doc-
umented tradition, the Banū Makhzūm, whom we would indeed find in the
Hijaz, although they were closer to Mecca than Medina.12 Kaʿbī also mentioned
the Banū Hāshim, but in the context of the legend13 rather than in Wāṣil’s
biography proper.14 This is indeed fiction, but the question remains to what
degree it influenced other information regarding the Hijaz. Interestingly
we also read of Wāṣil’s two kunyas, both of which appear to be correct: Abū
Ḥudhayfa, repeatedly used by the biographers but also documented in a verse
by Bashshār b. Burd,15 and Abū Jaʿd, also confirmed by a verse.16
Poetry furnishes the documentary evidence closest to Wāṣil. We learn that
he had a long neck because of which Bashshār b. Burd compared him to a
giraffe.17 References in poetry also indicate that his sobriquet al-ghazzāl “the
yarn spinner” was not due to any secondary reasons, but that he was linked
to the cloth trade that was flourishing in Basra at the time. Asbāṭ b. Wāṣil al-
Shaybānī, a Qadarite who had already composed poems in praise of Yazīd III
and died only a few years after Wāṣil, around 138/755,18 praised him in an elegy
in the following words:
6 Khayyāṭ in: Murtaḍā, Amālī I 164, pu.; Kaʿbī, Maq. 64. –4 > Fihrist 203, 4f., and 202, –7 > IKh
VI 11, pu.
7 Madelung, Qāsim 34f.
9 Fihrist 202, –7 > Yāqūt, Irshād VII 223, 3, and IKh VI 7, 8; IM 29, 1.
10 Caskel in EI2 II 71f.; also Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam al-qabāʾil 661f.
11 E.g. his debate with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd (see p. 292ff. below).
12 Fihrist ibid. Regarding the Makhzūm cf. M. Hinds in EI2 VI 137ff.; also Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam
al-qabāʾil 1058. There were other Makhzūm as well, but they were not as well known.
13 Maq. 90, apu.; later Murtaḍā, Amālī I 163, 3, and IM 29, 1.
14 Where his Medinan origins only are mentioned (Maq. 64, –4)).
15 See p. 280 below; also in Wāṣil’s alleged letter to ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd (see p. 295f. below).
16 Which is in turn directed at, and against, Bashshār b. Burd (Text XII 2, v. 23).
17 See p. 10 above; Ibn al-Nadīm referred to this (202, –6). ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd was also said to
have made fun of Wāṣil’s long neck, and then begged forgiveness (cf. Text IX 2, b with
commentary).
18 Regarding him see vol. I 119f.
iraq �73
He did not tie up (his money pouch around) a dinar, nor did he touch a
dirham. ‫ ٭‬He did not know the garment he cut,19
emphasising his asceticism and his unmoved attitude when it came to worldly
possessions, but his asceticism was in the world; after all, he did cut garments.
However, this would soon be interpreted differently. Abū l-Ṭurūq al-Ḍabbī, of
whom not much more is known than that he was bound to the same tribe as
Wāṣil and praised his oratorical skills in a verse,20 asked the following rhetori-
cal question – obviously addressing opponents:
When did a seller of yarns (bayyāʿ al-ghuzūl) ever find himself in some
contest, or ever (at all) at the head of anything? /
When did the light-giving East and the West ever unite for a seller of
yarn, of low birth and unorthodox (māriq)?21
This is reductio ad absurdum: Wāṣil would never have been able to found such
a respected religious organisation that found followers in Persia as well as in
the Maghreb if he had been a lowly yarn seller. He was, in fact, more than that,
a cloth merchant, as Asbāṭ b. Wāṣil’s verse describes. “Yarn seller” was the lan-
guage of hostile polemic – like “low birth” and “unorthodox”; the latter term,
māriq, referring to the Khārijites after a well-known prophetic dictum,22 and
Wāṣil was indeed regarded as a Khārijite.23 The polemic is ancient and seems
to date back to Wāṣil’s lifetime. It occurs in the same collocation in a poem by
the Basran traditionist and jurist Isḥāq b. Suwayd al-ʿAdawī who died from the
pestilence like Wāṣil.24 His poem expressed his “love for the prophet” and his
“orthodox” attitude and stated:
19 ʿAskarī, Awāʾil II 138, 2ff.; attributing it to Asbāṭ b. Wāṣil results in certain problem regard-
ing which cf. vol. I 120.
21 ʿAskarī 138, –5ff.
22 Cf. my K. an-Nakṯ des Naẓẓām 84.
24 In 131/748 according to IS VII2 11, 13ff. > TT I 236; in 132/749 according to Khalīfa, Ṭab. 518
no. 1793. He engaged in political activity from an early age (Ṭabarī II 452, 11ff., and 454,
6ff.; also Naqāʾiḍ 730ff., and Balādhurī, Ansāb IV B 108, 14ff.). Mubarrad, Kāmil 921, 9, and
Yaʿqūbī, Taʾrīkh II 436, 6 tell us that he was a jurist. Cf. also Brentjes, Imamatslehren 30,
and Pellat, Index for Masʿūdī, Murūj VII 144.
�74 chapter �
I refute the Khārijite with whom I have nothing in common, /

and the yarn spinner in their midst, and Ibn Bāb.25
The argument continued into the next generation. Bashshār b. Burd, who
had revered Wāṣil in his youth, quoted the disparaging epithet,26 as did
Maʿdān al-Shumayṭī in his heresiographical qaṣīda;27 Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī par-
ried the thrust in a similar fashion to Abū l-Ṭurūq.28 Wāṣil was clearly well off;
according to an anecdote preserved by Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, he inherited
20,000 dirhams from his father, but did not keep them for himself.29 The
missionary movement he organised is difficult to imagine without a certain
material foundation.30 His prestige was damaged not so much by his middle-
class affluence as such, but rather the way in which it had been acquired: not
through war or political circumstance like a true Arab, but by a craft or trade,
like a mawlā. In his pamphlet for the caliph al-Manṣūr, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, his
contemporary, spoke of someone who “spent most of his life as a craftsman,
working with his hands, never having shown bravery in war besides . . .” and
stresses his immoral lifestyle,31 presenting the opposite image to the catalogue
of virtues he, an official of the state, and his addressee, the caliph, considered
valid.32
This does still not explain everything as those who were attacking Wāṣil here
were themselves mawālī,33 and probably also craftsmen.34 It is in fact the bad
reputation of the weaver’s craft specifically that was intended to harm Wāṣil. It
was obviously of secondary importance that he was not actually a weaver, and
25 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 23, 4ff. and Mubarrad, Kāmil 921, 11ff., with three more verses (both probably
quoted from Aṣmaʿī’s K. al-ikhtiyār) > Baghdādī, Farq 99, 4ff./119, 9ff., and Lālakāʾī, Sharḥ
uṣūl iʿtiqād ahl al-sunna 1234, 1ff.; anonymous in Ibn ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd II 405, 13ff. Ibn Bāb
is ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd. – For a few more of his verses cf. Masʿūdī, Murūj II 142, 6ff./I 280, 4ff.; he
praises the Northern Arabs against the demands of the Qaḥṭān.
26 See p. 10 above.
27 Bayān I 23, ult.; regarding Maʿdān see ch. C 2.1 below.
29 Faḍl 239, –5ff.
30 See p. 352f. and 356 below.
31 Risāla fī l-ṣaḥāba 52 § 47.
32 Regarding the negative opinion of merchants in Bedouin society cf. G. Müller, Ich bin
Labīd 86f.; general information also vol. I 46f. above.
33 As, incidentally, was Ibn Muqaffaʿ.
34 At least if we assume that they were people who, like Isḥāq b. Suwayd, were close to the
aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth.
iraq �75
that weavers were usually designated with a different word, ḥāʾik; this seems
to have been sweeping discrimination against the entire cloth manufacturing
sector. Saying of someone that he “took a spindle in his hand” meant “he be-
haves like a woman, is a coward”. We come across this phrase in the works of
a poet of the second century who was close to the Muʿtazila,35 but he appears
to be quoting an ancient Bedouin prejudice. Of course it was possible to direct
it against true Arabs: Ibn al-Ashʿath who rebelled against Ḥajjāj was mocked
as ḥāʾik Kinda,36 and his grandfather Ashʿath b. Qays had been called ḥāʾik ibn
ḥāʾik.37 The latter’s father Qays al-Ashajj had been one of the priests living in
the Kaʿba of Najrān,38 and it is well-known that Najrān’s wealth was mainly due
to the manufacture of cloth, especially brocade.39 Maybe Najrān’s economic
potential aroused the nomads’ envy to such a degree that they could work it
off only by despising the effeminate work that generated it. Islamic jurists ad-
opted the prejudice and expressed concerns regarding the ʿadāla.40 Al-Sindī b.
Shāhak, a close confidant of Hārūn’s in his later years, and therefore appointed
to special missions on several occasions,41 considered the weavers’ oath, like
that of sailors and donkey drivers, to be invalid.42 In a tendentious Kufan had-
ith ʿAlī was heard to say that when a weaver made claims to being knowledge-
able, all one could do was run.43 The weaver he was referring to came from
Basra; we are probably very close to Wāṣil here.
35 Agh. XVIII 171, 9; regarding the poet Muḥammad b. al-Munādhir see p. 444 below.
36 Ṭabarī II 1412, 2; Crone, Roman Law 131, n. 56.
37 Agh. XXI 15, 6.
38 R. Sayed, Ibn al-Ashʿath 74f.
39 Massignon, Opera minora I 558; W. Schmucker in: Studien zum Minderheitenproblem I
236ff.
40 EI2 XII 341b.
41 Regarding him cf. Justi, Namenbuch 302, and Pellat in EI2 III 990a; also Crone, Slaves
on Horses 194f. no. 43, and Kennedy in: Proc. V Congress UEAI Edinburgh, p. 31. He was
the one who arrested the Barmakids; as representative of the governor of Syria he had
the walls of Damascus pulled down in 176/792 (Ibn Manẓūr, Mukhtaṣar TD X 210, –6f.).
He died on 6 Rajab 204/27 Dec. 819 (Ṭayfūr, K. Baghdād 349, 2f./191, 12ff.). Regarding his
son Ibrāhīm b. al-Sindī see ch. C 1.3.2 and 1.4.3.2.1 below. Through another son the poet
Kushājim was his great-grandson (cf. GAS 2/499, and Pellat in EI2 V 525).
42 Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn al-akhbār I 70, 17ff.
43 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 201, 9ff.; cf. also the story in Halm, Ausbreitung der šāfiʿitischen Rechtsschule
121.
�76 chapter �
Cf. also Jāḥiẓ, Ḥujaj al-nubuwwa in: Rasāʾil III 224, 10ff./transl. Pellat–
Müller, Arabische Geisteswelt 71; cf. also Goldziher in: Globus 66/1894/
205 = Ges. Schr. III 318, Friedländer in: JAOS 29/1908/96, and especially
Brunschvig in: SI 16/1962/50ff. = Etudes d’Islamologie II 154ff. Regarding
the despised trades in general see Sadan in: SI 62/1985/95, n. 148, and
Gerholm, Market, Mosque and Mafraj 131f.
This negative image has been well-nigh indestructible. While Shīʿite tradition
would later have Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq say that if a weaver was condemned, this mere-
ly referred to someone who “wove lies”,44 in Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ’s case we can observe
frequent attempts at reinterpreting his sobriquet, and thus directing the odium
away from him, rather than attacking the prejudice itself. Thus it was said that
he went to the spinners market frequently to look for the decent women there
in order to give them alms45 – obviously people assumed that whores would be
found there in particular, in the company of craftsmen and merchants of ill re-
pute. And people who thought even this too compromising could concentrate
on the report that Wāṣil merely visited the lectures of a certain Abū ʿAbdallāh
al-Ghazzāl, one of Qaṭan al-Hilālī’s46 clients, who was his milk brother, and
then adopted his sobriquet.47 Even if it were possible to identify this Abū
ʿAbdallāh – whom a later source names as simply ʿAbdallāh48 – the explana-
tion is probably not even worth considering.
2.2.6.1.2 Wāṣil the khaṭīb. His Appearance before ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar b.

ʿAbd al-ʿazīz
While he may have been derided for being petit bourgeois, there is nothing to
indicate that he had a special understanding of simple folk. On the contrary,
one remark Jāḥiẓ transmits from him allows us to infer a rather distant view:
“They cause trouble whenever they gather together”, he said of the common
people, maybe hinting at social unrest, “and they become useful as soon as
they part again” returning, as was the proper thing to do, to their respective
44 Kulīnī, Kāfī II 340, 10f.

45 Mubarrad, Kāmil 921, ult. ff.; Fihrist 202, –7f.
46 Who is this? Is he the same as Qaṭan b. Ḥarb al-Hilālī, a follower of the Umayyads who
died in 131 (!) in Nihāwand? (Ṭabarī III, 7, 10).
47 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 33, 9f.; Murtaḍā, Amālī I 163, 5. More straightforward in Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār,
Faḍl 239, –7: Wāṣil himself is said to have lectured in the cloth market.
48 ʿAskarī, Awāʾil II 137, 9f.
iraq �77
trades.1 Unlike Mukhtār before him he had no interest in inciting the dis-
advantaged against the ashrāf, and his organisation did not have this objec-
tive, either. He was a well-respected man, deeply learned, as Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī
confirmed with a rather unusual word,2 and very well-known, especially as a
khaṭīb.3 A khaṭīb in those days was not merely someone who possessed par-
ticular rhetorical skill, nor was he a mere pulpit orator, but held certain, clearly
defined offices.4 Frequently he would be the judge of his tribe,5 and its repre-
sentative in public matters; it is no coincidence that in the capital, the caliph
himself or the governor would be preaching the khuṭba on Fridays. If a battle
was imminent, he had to conduct the mufākhara with the opponent.6
There is evidence that Wāṣil carried out similar tasks. The text of a speech
survives that he gave during marriage ceremonies, clearly a standard form
into which the names of the couple and the amount of the bride price had to
be inserted.7 Above all we know that he gave a sensational speech as member
of a Basran delegation before ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, the son of
ʿUmar II. This was towards the end of his life, as it was not until 126/744 that
Yazīd III appointed ʿAbdallāh governor of Iraq.8 He stayed in this office until
1 Jāḥiẓ, Nafy al-tashbīh, in: Rasāʾil I 283, 11ff.

2 niṭāsī (Text CII 2, v. 23). In the opinion of the Arab lexicographers the word was derived from
Gr. nusṭās = γνώστης (Lisān al-ʿArab IV 232b, 3; cf. Lane, Lexicon 2810b). It is documented as
early as the pre-Islamic period (thus in Aws b. Ḥajar, no. 38 Geyer = no. 44 Najm, v. 3) and
used above all as an attribute of the physician (e.g. in Kumayt; cf. Lisān al-ʿArab XIV 448a,
9: al-āsī al-niṭāsī). Nusṭās also occurs as a proper name (cf. ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 98 no. 114 as the
name of a Medinan traditionist).
3 Cf. e.g. Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 235, 11ff.; ʿAskarī, Awāʾil II 135, 3; even as late as Ibn al-
Dawādārī, Kanz al-durar VI 312, 13.
4 For general information cf. Goldziher in: WZKM 6/1892/97ff. = Ges. Schr. III 27ff., and the
literature cited vol. I 54, n. 16 above.
6 Cf. Pedersen in EI2 IV 1109b. Regarding the role played by persuasion as a means of exerting
political power in non-centralised societies without established authorities cf. St. C. Caton in:
IJMES 19/1987/77ff.
7 Faḍl 238, 16ff. after Ibn Yazdādh’s K. al-maṣābīḥ. The text is only a few verses long and dis-
tinguished by rhymed prose. This is not a marriage contract, which would have been more
precise as to the details and arranged quite differently (cf. Ṭaḥāwī, Al-shurūṭ al-ṣaghīr 671ff.;
for the later time W. Hoenerbach, Spanisch-islamische Urkunden aus der Zeit der Naṣriden
und Moriscos, Bonn 1965). A similar text, making more economical use of sajʿ and slightly
shorter, also survives from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 100, 12ff.).
8 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 559, 14ff., and 578, 3f.; Zetterstéen in EI2 I 53b.
�78 chapter �
129/746–7, notwithstanding certain challenges;9 but this event can be dated to

the early days of his time in office when the representatives of Basra greeted
him officially in Wāsiṭ.10 We do not know which function Wāṣil had in the del-
egation: whether he was the representative of his tribe – which would have
been unusual considering his status as a client – or the representative of the
merchants and the bourgeoisie, or even as the leader of the Muʿtazila. A pas-
sage in Balādhurī reports that ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd declined to attend,11 which may
support the assumption that it was indeed the Muʿtazila that was being repre-
sented, even though the passage may have been meant merely as explanation
why it was Wāṣil rather than ʿAmr, the genuine Basran among the movement’s
founders, who represented the city.
The circumstances reported agree in the main, but it does appear that most
of the accounts go back to a single source, a few verses by Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī,
the only differences being found in the accounts by Balādhurī and maybe the
philologist Yūnus b. Ḥabīb (d. 182/789) to whom Jāḥiẓ referred.12 Ṣafwān re-
ports that other khuṭabāʾ, who also enjoyed a good reputation due to their elo-
quence: Shabīb b. Shayba, Khālid b. Ṣafwān and Faḍl b. ʿĪsā al-Raqāshī, spoke
before Wāṣil, but he outdid them all: “He gave an original talk (abdaʿa qawlan)
the like of which is not usually found with mortals” – original not as regards
the subject matter (which was only an exhortation to fear God and criticism
of the “world”), but the form: “The rāʾ did not take away from his skill, as he
succeeded in omitting it while keeping the flow uninterrupted and coherent.
‫ ٭‬ʿAbdallāh (b. ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz) favoured Wāṣil’s speech, and when he
came to hand out gifts gave him a double share. ‫ ٭‬Everyone was satisfied with
the gratitude for the gifts (given) to him; (but) in his eyes asceticism attached
little value to the double (amount)”.
Regarding the context cf. Text XII 3 after Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 32, 9ff. Jāḥiẓ had
Yūnus b. Ḥabīb recount events in prose, too; this is the version quoted by
Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (Faḍl 237, pu. ff.). ʿAskarī, Awāʾil II 136, 1ff., is based
on the same account, but with numerous variants in the tradition and
9 Earlier he had been a follower of Ḍaḥḥāk b. Qays (see p. 526 below). He died in 132/749–50
of an epidemic in prison in Ḥarrān (Ṭabarī III 43, 4ff.).
10 Regarding this custom see also p. 180f. above. It is not said anywhere that the audience
took place in Wāsiṭ; I am only assuming it. The tradition p. 281 below may contradict this.
11 Ansāb, MS Reisülküttab 598, fol. 90a, –9ff. Is he referring to Madāʾinī’s K. khuṭbat Wāṣil?
(Cf. Catalogue of Works IX, no. 6).
12 See p. 280f. below. It is interesting that Yūnus b. Ḥabīb was one of the few Basran gram-
marians who were not linked to the Muʿtazila (see p. 98 above). He is one of Sībawayh’s
main sources. Regarding him cf. GAS 8/57f., and 9/49ff.
iraq �79
some edited detail. – Of the other speakers Faḍl al-Raqāshī was the only
theologian (regarding him see p. 192ff. above). The two others, Khālid b.
Ṣafwān and Shabīb b. Shayba, were respected Arabs and close kin of one
another, both being members of the Banū l-Ahtam family of the Tamīm.
Among them the profession of khaṭīb was popular (Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 355,
5ff.; Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 217, 7f.); they were both also regarded as the best
arbiters (ḥakam) among the Tamīm (Bayān I 47, 3). Khālid b. Ṣafwān died
in 135/752; he had still known ʿUmar II. Shabīb b. Shayba was younger
and is still documented at the time of al-Mahdī (Ṭabarī III 544, 11f.).
Khālid had known Ḥasan al-Baṣrī well (ʿIqd II 230, 1ff.; Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir
II 455, 4ff./2VIII 110 no. 419); the latter had been a witness when Khālid’s
father made his will (Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 403, 17). Consequently both
he and Shabīb respected ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd. Khālid was said to have offered
him money (to support his organisation? Faḍl 244, 1), while Shabīb told
stories of him after his death (cf. e.g. Faḍl 248, 7ff.). Shabīb was also ac-
quainted with Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (Balādhurī, Ansāb, MS Reisülküttab 598,
fol. 492a, 1ff.); the latter, too, having worked for the Banū l-Ahtam (see
p. 29 above). Khālid was an expert in speaking extempore (Jāḥiẓ, Bayān
I 340, 1ff.), while Shabīb was able to give speeches only with preparation
(ʿIqd II 138, 9f.). Khālid’s speeches and dicta were collected and published
early on, by Madāʾinī and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Yaḥyā al-Julūdī (Ibn al-Nadīm
116, –6, and 128, 10); the material appears frequently in adab texts, e.g.
in Jāḥiẓ and in Ibn ʿAbdrabbih’s ʿIqd. Regarding him cf. Pellat in: EI2 IV
927; also Blachère, Histoire 732, and Ritter, Geheimnisse der Wortkunst 18,
n. 1. Among the newer sources Balādhurī, Ansāb is worth considering (MS
Reisülküttab 598, fol. 484a, 11ff.); see also the passage regarding Shabīb b.
Shayba shortly afterwards (491b, 19ff.).
Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī had not, however, been the first to sing Wāṣil’s praises.
Bashshār b. Burd had preceded him, having witnessed the event at a time
when he was not yet hostile to the Muʿtazilites:
They spoke in painstaking language (i.e. painstakingly prepared), while

the people celebrated, ‫ ٭‬and delivered remarkably elegant orations.
He, however, rose and spoke extempore (murtajilan), his spontaneous
inspiration bubbling ‫ ٭‬like the blacksmith’s cauldron13 when the blaze
surrounds it.
13 mirjal al-qayn. The image was probably chosen primarily for the sake of the paronomasia
existing between mirjal and murtajilan. Medieval readers already criticised that a black-
smith of all people should have a cauldron; a gloss in the MS of Murtaḍā’s Amālī (I 139,
�80 chapter �
He avoided the rāʾ, nobody noticing ‫ ٭‬unless he should examine14 and

search thoroughly”.15
Here, Bashshār introduces a distinction that mattered greatly to him as a poet.

Wāṣil spoke spontaneously, with natural expression, while his competitors’
speeches were “stilted”, in a forced style (takalluf),16 but it looks as though
he meant to say something else as well: Wāṣil not only spoke spontaneously,
but without preparation. All the more remarkable, then, that he succeeded
in hiding his speech defect. No-one seems to have expected Wāṣil, who was,
after all, a mawlā, to take the floor, this being the privilege of the Arabs. The
governor must have unexpectedly invited him to speak, maybe because he
wished to honour the Qadariyya. After all, as the representative of Yazīd III he
relied on this group.17 Faḍl al-Raqāshī’s presence would confirm this theory as
he, too, represented a group from among the Basran Qadariyya. Interestingly
Balādhurī18 names a certain Ismāʿīl al-Makkī in his version of the story instead,
probably once again the Qadarite of this name.19 Bashshār b. Burd, on the
other hand, did not name the people involved in the verses quoted; after all,
they are only a fragment. But he did know them, as witness two more verses of
his preserved together with the others by Jāḥiẓ:
Abū Ḥudhayfa,20 an admirable achievement was granted to you, in

the shape of an oration delivered spontaneously and without previous
planning.21
n. 2) interprets qayn as “fuller” (ṣabbāgh). While the latter would indeed have much more
use for a cauldron, this is probably merely retrospective rationalising, of the kind that
also occurs in the statement in national dictionaries that qayn could denote any kind of
“craftsman” (ṣāniʿ).
14 qabla l-taṣaffuḥi, also: “before leafing through”; maybe an indication that people were
writing the khuṭba down as it was preached, or immediately afterwards.
15 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 24, 8ff.; Agh. III 224, 5ff.; Faḍl 65, apu. ff.; Murtaḍā’, Amālī I 139, 7ff.; Yāqūt,
Irshād VII 223, 13ff.
16 Regarding the distinction cf. W. Heinrichs, Arabische Dichtung und griechische Poetik 52f.;
also ch. C 1.4.3.1 below.
17 We must bear in mind that Yazīd III’s coup appears to have met with considerable resis-
tance in Basra (see p. 1 above).
18 See n. 11 above.
20 Wāṣil’s kunya (see p. 272 above).
21 min ghayri taqdīrī.
iraq �81
Indeed, an oration that pleases both Khālids together robs us of our

speech and enjoins silence, however eloquently one (is able) to express
oneself.22
The two Khālids are, joined by a dual form a potiori, Khālid b. Ṣafwān and
Shabīb b. Shayba.23 The author does not say clearly enough that both were
indeed present at the audience; it seems surprising that not only the grand old
man Khālid b. Ṣafwān but also his younger rival Shabīb b. Shayba – who rep-
resented the same tribe – should have delivered a speech. It cannot be ruled
out entirely that Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī, on whose account we have relied so far, was
already spreading a version embroidered in the Muʿtazilite fashion. Balādhurī
proved that the tradition was not uniform, not only diverging slightly as to
the names of those present but also emphasising Wāṣil’s triumph slightly less
and, above all, leaving out any reference to the latter’s luthgha, his inability to
roll the r, and his skill in avoiding the sound in a solemn speech. Furthermore,
while he did note towards the end that Wāṣil declined the governor’s gift, he
did not add what Jāḥiẓ reported after Yūnus b. Ḥabīb: that instead he urged
the governor “to complete this river (or canal, nahr) for the people of this city
(miṣr) as soon as possible”.24 And indeed, despite all the perils of his time in
office, ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz found the time to construct a canal,
the Nahr Ibn ʿUmar, in Basra.25 This, however, strengthens the suspicion that
later Muʿtazilite propaganda was the reason to have Wāṣil support this project;
not even Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī’s verses mention the matter.
It is not a contradiction that Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī reported a different ob-

jective of the request, namely that “wells should be dug (nabsh al-qayḍ)
for the people of the city (balad)” (Awāʾil II 136, 9f.), as ultimately he went
back to the same source, presumably Yūnus b. Ḥabīb. The divergences
may be explained with the endeavour to take Wāṣil’s luthgha into ac-
count and to use words that do not contain rāʾ: balad instead of miṣr,
nabsh instead of ḥafr, qayḍ instead of nahr or biʾr. Cf. the parallel version
in: Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab I 183, 2ff.
22 Bayān I 24, 4f.; Kaʿbī, Maq. 66m 4ff.; Nashwān, Ḥūr 208, 1ff.; Yāqūt, Irshād VII 233, 10f.
23 Thus also according to a gloss in the MS of Bayān (I 24, n. 3).
24 Faḍl 238, 6f.
25 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān s. v.
282 chapter 2
2.2.6.1.3 Wāṣil’s Speech Defect

The luthgha cannot be discounted, as numerous contemporary verses make
reference to it.1 Later, it would become a topos, the remark in Jāḥiẓ’ Bayān
probably having contributed.2 The phenomenon was interesting in itself al-
ready; Kindī discussed it in a treatise from the physiological point of view, list-
ing the various types of speech defect.3 In addition it tickled the storytellers’
imagination, be it to try and invent situations in which it could lead to amus-
ing mistakes, or to compose texts in which the defect was skilfully concealed.
They imagined that even in an extreme situation, at the front when the enemy
overran the camp at night, Wāṣil was able – and indeed made a point of it – to
give stylistically perfect orders entirely without r,4 and people believed that
he rephrased unwieldy Quranic passages extempore.5 When he, in order to
curse Bashshār b. Burd, resorted to complex linguistic contortions, this is prob-
ably only ben trovato. We do not actually know whether he did indeed curse
Bashshār – this is clearly a reflection of the later falling-out between the poet
and Wāṣil’s school6 – but if he did, the poet’s name would have presented some
irritating difficulties indeed.
He apostrophised him as al-mukannā bi-Abī Muʿādh, replacing muraʿʿath

with mushannaf, kāfir with mulḥid, firāsh with maḍja etc. Cf. the slight-
ly divergent versions in Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 16, 10ff. > Fihrist 202, –4f., and
Mubarrad, Kāmil 924, 1ff. > IKh VI 8, 3ff.; Agh. III 146, 1ff. > Murtaḍā,
Amālī I 140, 1ff., and Yāqūt, Irshād VII 224, 2ff.; ʿAskarī, Awāʾil II 136, pu.
ff. Jāḥiẓ revealed that the tradition originated with ʿUmar b. Abī ʿUthmān
al-Shimmazī, ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s pupil (regarding him cf. p. 366f. below; the
name is corrupted in the edition of Bayān).
1 Besides Bashshār b. Burd’s verse mentioned above cf. also Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 21, ult. f. (after Ḍirār
b. ʿAmr) > Murtaḍā, Amālī I 139, 11f. = Kaʿbī, Maq. 65, 6ff. = Mubarrad, Kāmil 923, pu. f. > IKh VI
8, 1f. = Yāqūt, Irshād VII 224, apu. f.; also Bayān I 15, pu. f. = Mubarrad 923, –4 > IKh VI 7, 8ff. =
Irshād VII 223, ult. f. (regarding the problem of attribution see p. 367 below). Faḍl al-Raqāshī
was also said to have expressed his admiration (ʿAskarī, Awāʾil II 135, –5ff.).
2 Cf. the material collected by Ibn Khallikān, VI 8, apu. ff.
3 Cf. the edition and translation by G. Celentano in: AIUON 39/1979, Suppl. 18, p. 47ff.; also
Muḥ. Ḥassān al-Ṭayyān in: RAAD 60/1985/515ff.
4 ʿAskarī, Awāʾil II 136, –5ff.; differently Murtaḍā, Amālī I 164, 16ff.; combined with the account
of his khuṭba before the governor in Ibn Zūlāq, Akhbār Sībawayh 56, –6ff.
5 Cf. Hārūn, Nawādir al-makhṭūṭāt I 126, 2ff. after Kutubī, ʿUyūn al-tawārikh s. a. 131.
6 See p. 9 above.
iraq 283
In fact what we are looking at are lipograms, such as have always been though
up at times and in environments that appreciated linguistic virtuosity.7 They
are found in poetry8 as well as prose; the Spanish Mālikite Aḥmad b. ʿAlī b.
al-Zayyāt al-Mālaqī (d. 728/1328) e.g. composed a sermon that did not contain
the letter alif.9 In the second century this kind of word game was not yet very
frequent.10 In any case, Wāṣil was not able altogether to escape his nature. The
grammarian Quṭrub was said to have asked the Qadarite ʿUthmān b. Miqsam
al-Burrī (d. 173/789–90)11 what the master did about numbers or the names of
the months that contained an r; al-Burrī’s only answer was a verse praising him
by Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī.12 A poem attributed to Wāṣil does not take the difficulty
into account, either.13
Consequently it would be worthwhile to discover whether the texts dis-
cussed so far which lack the letter r can really be traced back to Wāṣil. We
may assume it in the case of the speech he gave on the occasion of marriage
ceremonies,14 as the situation was predictable and the solemnity of the oc-
casion would have suffered if he had not been careful. But the khuṭba before the
governor was a different matter. While he avoided the pitfalls in this instance,
too – after all, this was what Bashshār praised so much – this does not mean
that the original text was preserved. Two entirely different versions survive,
neither of which can be proved with any certainty to be genuine or false. The
more extensive one was preserved in Muslim b. Maḥmūd al-Shayzarī’s Jamharat
al-Islām. It may have been kept in Yemen, as Shayzarī dedicated his work to
the last Ayyūbid reigning in Yemen, al-Malik al-Masʿūd (r. 612/1215–626/1229),
7 Thus e.g. in Baroque literature and its offshoots; cf. Alfred Liede, Dichtung als Spiel. Studien
zur Unsinnspoesie an den Grenzen der Sprache (Berlin 1963), II 90ff. There are numerous
instances in particular of the omission (hence “lipo-gramm”) of the letter r (Ernst Schulz-
Besser, Deutsche Dichtungen ohne den Buchstaben R, in: Zeitschrift für Bücherfreunde,
N. F. 1/1909–10/382ff.); one striking example is the novel Die Zwillinge by Franz Rittler
(3rd ed. Vienna 1920).
8 Cf. the examples in Haft Qulzum by Qabūl Muḥammad (wr. 1230/1815), transl. in F. Rückert,
Grammatik, Poetik und Rhetorik der Perser (Gotha 1874), 163ff.
9 Ibn al-Khaṭīb, Al-iḥāṭa fī taʾrīkh Gharnāṭa, ed. ʿInān, I 290, –4ff.
10 The few instances, e.g. in Ibn Harma, were collected by F. Abu-Khadra in: Arabica
33/1986/76ff.
12 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 22, 2ff. > Yāqūt, Irshād VII 224, ult. ff.
13 Faḍl 240, 5ff.; the same is true of Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 118, 8f.
284 chapter 2
a son of Malik al-Kāmil.15 The other one is found in Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-
Ghafūr al-Kalāʿī’s K. aḥkām ṣināʿat al-kalām; the author lived in Spain during
the Almoravid era, i.e. the sixth/eleventh century.16 Not long afterwards it ap-
pears on a sheet inserted in the Feyzullah MS 1580 of Jāḥiẓ’ Bayān added by
the person who wrote the manuscript, Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Lakhmī, him-
self; he may have read the khuṭba with his teacher Abū Dharr al-Khushanī who
wrote a commentary on K. al-Bayān and under whom he studied the text. This
version was edited by ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn17 who also consulted
the – overall similar – version Faḍlallāh al-ʿUmarī (d. 749/1349) preserved in
his Masālik al-abṣār.18 Sezgin notes several further manuscripts.19
Consequently the entirety of the transmitted texts is late, although the
Fihrist records that the khuṭba was in separate circulation: Madāʾinī recorded
it.20 Within the Muʿtazila it was transmitted by Ibn Yazdādh, probably in his
K. al-Maṣābīḥ.21 We do not, however, know which was the version known at the
time, although it is reasonably certain that it took Wāṣil’s luthgha into account,
as that is common to both extant versions. In Kalāʿī’s version even religious for-
mulae are changed due to this necessity: Bismi llāhi l-raḥmāni l-raḥīm becomes
Bismi llāhi l-fattāḥi l-mannān.22 Sura 112 is the only one quoted in its entirety,
as it does not contain the letter r.23 There are repeated reminiscences of the
Quran, but they follow the same rule (thus e.g. always Allāhu l-samīʿu l-ʿalīm,
never Allāhu samīʿun baṣīr). Wāṣil’s avoiding tongue-twisting quotations from
the Quran is also presupposed in a story found in Sharīf al-Murtaḍā’s Amālī.24
15 Regarding him see GAL2 1/302 S 1/460. The text was edited with detailed comments by
H. Daiber (Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ als Prediger und Theologe. Ein neuer Text aus dem 8. Jahrhundert
n. Chr.; Leiden 1988); cf. also his preliminary account in: Actas XI Congresso UEAI, Evora,
p. 383ff. The entire text is accessible in a facsimile held by the Leiden Unicum edited by
F. Sezgin (Frankfurt 1407/1986); cf. ibid. p. 174ff.
16 His grandfather was vizier under Muʿtamid of Seville (461/1069–484/1091). Cf. the edition
by Muḥammad Riḍwān al-Dāya, Beirut 1966 (p. 172, ult. ff.; transl. as Text IX 1).
17 Nawādir al-makhṭūṭāt I 134ff.
18 More details about the manuscript in Kalāʿī 172, n. 1.
19 GAS 1/596. The text was printed for the first time, without giving a source, in K. Miftāḥ al-
afkār by the Egyptian scholar Aḥmad Miftāḥ (Cairo 1314/1896; p. 270f.); this was the source
for the version in Aḥmad Zakī Ṣafwat’s Jamharat khuṭab al-ʿArab (I 482ff.).
20 Fihrist 117, 5. It is also mentioned in one of the catalogues of Wāṣil’s works preserved by
Ibn al-Nadīm, but it is possible that he quoted it after Madāʾinī (203, n. 1, l. 5).
21 Faḍl 238, 16.
22 Text IX 1, k.
23 Ibid.
24 I 164, 1ff., after the Muʿtazilite Abū l-Ḥasan al-Bardhaʿī (regarding him see ch. C 7.4 below).
iraq 285
Later, as we have seen,25 this would become the claim that he even rephrased
them, which was probably not meant as flattery anymore; Dhahabī was led to
the conclusion that Wāṣil considered the qirāʾa bil-maʿnā to be permitted.26
Regarding the contents of the khuṭba cf. Text IX 1. The prose in this ver-
sion has rhythmical structure and features internal rhyme (sajʿ) in some
passages, especially at the beginning and the end. Praise of God and the
prophet (a–d) takes up much space compared to the main part of the
text. There are no immediate trenchant theological statements, but the
rhetorical tawḥīd emphasises God’s infinity and eternity (a); any similar-
ity with creation or humans is ruled out (d). By using the term ibtidāʿ it
expresses the idea of creatio ex nihilo (a). God’s omnipotence as well as
his justice feature less prominently, while his mercy and grace are em-
phasised specially. The objective of the main part is paraenesis, the au-
thor varying the topic of the fear of God (taqwā), contrasting it with the
worldliness of humans (e–f) and presenting earthly existence (al-ḥayāt
al-dunyā) as a mere illusion. The well-known ubi sunt qui ante nos motif
illustrates the transitoriness, and as the text is addressed to a governor,
kings are used as the instance (g). Subsequently (h) the author returns
to the thought that fear of God is the best “sustenance” (cf. e), and that
it is best achieved through the Quran (i). In this context he quotes sura
112 which appears to be playing the part of a profession of faith. It might
have been the basis for Muʿtazilite tawḥīd. – Regarding Shayzarī’s ver-
sion cf. Daiber’s translation and Radtke’s detailed review in: Der Islam
67/1990/322ff. Interestingly Shayzarī included the text in his K. al-zuhd,
confusing in his introductory words the addressee ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar b.
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz with his father, the caliph ʿUmar II.
2.2.6.1.4 Wāṣil’s Relations with the ʿAlids in Medina

In the version of the khuṭba quoted here it is noticeable that the blessing on
the prophet includes his family as well,1 giving rise to the question to what
degree reports of Wāṣil’s pro-ʿAlid sentiments are based on fact. Much was cer-
tainly projection; after all, a part of the Muʿtazila would later support al-Nafs
al-zakiyya and prevail against resistance from its own ranks which deferred
25 N. 5 above.
26 Taʾrīkh V 311, 3ff. It recalls the story according to which ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd wanted to expur-
gate a verse from the Quran (see p. 341 below).
1 Text IX 1, d.
286 chapter 2
to ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s more cautious attitude.2 On the other hand there is evi-
dence warning us against assigning everything to the realm of fable. Wāṣil’s
doctrine on the issue of imāma does indeed show a certain preference for ʿAlī,
compared to ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s.3 When around 130/747 the Umayyads perse-
cuted Wāṣil’s followers in Yemen the reason was that they were believed to
be Shīʿites.4 When Idrīs b. ʿAbdallāh had to flee after the disaster of Fakhkh in
169/786 he found refuge with the Banū Awraba in the Maghreb who had been
won for the Muʿtazila through Wāṣil’s initiative.5 Wāṣil certainly did not spend
all his time in Basra. When Manṣūr visited the city in secret before the revolu-
tion, he did not get in touch with him but rather with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.6 It is not
even certain whether Wāṣil came from Basra at all.7
Individual reports must be interpreted in the context of the respective con-
cept of history. Thus we hear that Wāṣil and ʿAmr were members of a Basran
delegation to Suwayqa near Medina where the ʿAlids had their houses, where
they went to see ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥasan, al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s father. ʿAbdallāh
sent his son Ibrāhīm out to them who then accepted the oath of allegiance in
Muḥammad’s stead.8 As far as the chronology goes this is not impossible; the
propaganda for the “mahdī ” Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh was being prepared over
a long time by his father.9 On the other hand the story conveys the impression
that ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd was being committed to an allegiance to Ibrāhīm which he
did not keep later.10 Indeed, the same text says earlier that in Basra Wāṣil took
al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s side against ʿAmr and that ʿAmr, while agreeing that things
had to change, did not want to swear an oath of allegiance11 and did not, in fact,
recognise al-Nafs al-zakiyya as mahdī at all.12 Even Wāṣil may not have met the
2 See p. 373 below.

5 See p. 355 and ch. C 7.7.1 below. This, however, dates to the time after 145/762, when Bashīr
al-Raḥḥāl’s sons, who had fought with Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh in Basra, had gone to the
Maghreb (see p. 376 below).
6 See p. 333f. below. But cf. Faḍl 239, ult. ff., according to which Wāṣil complained to Manṣūr
of a lack of support for his duʿāt.
8 Abū l-Faraj, Maqātil al-Ṭālibiyyīn 293, apu. ff.; cf. also Veccia-Vaglieri in EI2 III 985a.
9 See vol. I 465 above and p. 289f. below.
10 In more detail on p. 328f. below.
11 Maqātil 293, 3ff. Remarkably the two are said to have met in the house of a member of a
family from the Hijaz.
iraq 287
latter at all, as after another account his dāʿī in the Hijaz went to find al-Nafs
al-zakiyya to win him for his (Wāṣil’s) cause.13
Nota bene: win him for Wāṣil’s cause, not: pay homage to him. It seems that
there was an ʿAlid view of things, and a Muʿtazilite one. Among the Muʿtazilites,
too, the dāʿī would soon become Wāṣil himself, and the story went that when
he was canvassing during the pilgrimage in Mecca and Medina, he converted
al-Nafs al-zakiyya as well as his brother Ibrāhīm to his qawl bil-ʿadl.14 In an-
other characteristic shift in an account by Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār15 it is not Wāṣil
anymore who goes to the ʿAlids, but they accord him the honour of a visit while
he was allegedly staying at Ibrāhīm b. Abī Yaḥyā’s house.16 They are also rather
more numerous. Besides ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥasan and his brothers, Zayd b. ʿAlī and
his son Yaḥyā are mentioned, as well as the traditionist and jurist Muḥammad
b. ʿAjlān17 and a certain Abū ʿAbbād al-Lahabī;18 Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq also appears,
asking his followers to come with him. In the course of the conversation he at-
tacks Wāṣil and exhorts him to repent, referring to sura 8:75: “Those related by
blood are closest to one another. Thus it was decreed by God”. Wāṣil replies with
a khuṭba emphasising God’s justice, and implicitly rejecting any determination
as expressed by the Quranic verse; he claims to be representing the faith of the
prophet and the first four caliphs. Characteristically he does all this without
even once uttering the letter r.19 Zayd b. ʿAlī then accuses Jaʿfar of not following
Wāṣil simply because of envy towards him. This is a motif added in the spirit
of the later alliance between Zaydiyya and Muʿtazila. The Imamite claim that
only the prophet’s nearest blood relations (ulū l-arḥām) but not Abū Bakr and
ʿUmar had a title to the position of caliph, is criticised. Wāṣil acknowledges all
four “righteous” caliphs, and his preference for ʿAlī is not mentioned at all. Zayd
b. ʿAlī has no objection to Wāṣil’s message about God’s justice, even though we
13 Maqātil 238, pu. f.; regarding him see p. 354 below.
14 Murtaḍā, Amālī I 169, 1f.; according to Ibn ʿInaba, too, the two ʿAlids were Muʿtazilites
(ʿUmdat al-ṭālib 103, pu., and 108, –5), according to an earlier source at least al-Nafs al-
zakiyya was (ʿAlī b. Abī l-Ghanāʾim, Majdī 38, 2). Kaʿbī’s anecdote 169, 3ff. informs us that
he certainly embraced Qadarite views.
15 Faḍl 239, 1ff. > IM 33, 3ff.
16 Ibn al-Murtaḍā writes Ibrāhīm b. Yaḥyā instead, presumably referring, however, to Ibrāhīm
b. Yaḥyā al-Madanī, a Qadarite and probably a pupil of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s, who enjoyed
great esteem as a scholar in the city at the time (see p. 781ff. below).
18 Ibn al-Murtaḍā has al-Laythī instead. Is he identical with the Medinan Qadarite al-Qāsim
b. al-ʿAbbās al-Lahabī (see p. 753 below)?
19 Consequently Abū Bakr becomes Abū Quḥāfa, and ʿUmar, Ibn al-Khaṭṭāb.
288 chapter 2
know that he as well as his immediate followers were still predestinarians.20

Not having played a part before Zayd b. ʿAlī’s uprising ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥasan
is less relevant. The chronology alone would show this tradition in a dubious
light: the meeting would have to have taken place before 122/740, but Ibrāhīm
b. Yaḥyā, Wāṣil’s host, did not die until 184/800.21
All the same, this train of thought would be continued; there was clearly
a great need to show later connections as paradigms in the earliest period.
The Imamites reported that Wāṣil, ʿAmr and Bashīr al-Raḥḥāl had gone to visit
Muḥammad al-Bāqir (who had already died in 113/731!), trying to trick him
with dialectic sophistry when he proposed that every “thing” had a “boundary”,
i.e. could be “defined”.22 In the Zaydite camp, on the other hand, a Risāla fī
l-imāma was transmitted which Zayd was believed to have addressed to Wāṣil.
It survives to this day; it is a letter in which Zayd replied to Wāṣil’s questions
regarding his opinion of the first four caliphs. There is nothing characteristic in
the text; it does not touch Wāṣil’s own opinion at all.23 In the author’s view he
probably was not, in fact, permitted one, as he was playing the part of the pupil,
which tells us that in the later Zaydite view Wāṣil’s opinion on the imāma issue
(to which the members of his own school frequently did not adhere) agreed
with Zayd b. ʿAlī’s.
As we have seen the Muʿtazilites did not deny these connections. They did,
however, try to diminish their importance by emphasising ʿAlid contacts in
the Hijaz going back via Zayd b. ʿAlī and Muḥammad al-Bāqir to the line of
Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya. Wāṣil, they said, was brought up by Muḥammad
b. al-Ḥanafiyya and went to school with his son Abū Hāshim, remaining at-
tached to the latter for a long time even later in his life.24 This is only pos-
sible if we declare Wāṣil’s date of birth (80/700) to be incorrect; Muḥammad
b. al-Ḥanafiyya died in 81/701. Murtaḍā, and later Ḥākim al-Jushamī, noted
the discrepancy,25 while Ibn al-Nadīm, who already mentioned the date of
20 See vol. I 296 and 303ff. above.

22 Barqī, Maḥāsin 361, –5ff. This is probably based on the idea that in that case God, too,
being “something” (shayʾ), could be delimited, as the Shīʿa’s anthropomorphism pre-
sumed. The story itself does not mention anything of the sort, but the answer is made too
easy for Muḥammad al-Bāqir.
23 Cf. my discussion in WO 10/1979/59f. regarding MS Vehbi 457, fol. 77b–78b.
24 Kaʿbī 64, –4ff.; also Faḍl 215, 1f., and 226, 4 > IM 17, 4f.; Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mughnī XX2
137, 7; ʿAskarī, Awāʾil II 135, 3f. Slightly divergent Abū Hāshim’s falsified saying in Ibn al-
Murtaḍā 16, 4f.: “If you want to know this (sc. how great my father Muḥammad b. al-
Ḥanafiyya’s knowledge was), see the marks it left on Wāṣil!”.
25 Amālī I 162, 2; cf. also Madelung, Qāsim 34.
iraq 289
birth, only said that Wāṣil “met” Abū Hāshim.26 All of which is presumably
legend; older Muʿtazilite documents ignore the connection entirely.27 It was
probably brought up because in this way it was possible to trace the school’s
“isnād” back to the prophet and the Muʿtazila consequently was not an “inno-
vation” any more.28 Abū l-Hudhayl even continued the line as far as the angel
Gabriel.29 Choosing precisely the family of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya may
have been linked to the fact that, unlike the ʿAlids to whom the Zaydiyya and
the Imāmiyya referred, it had died out and consequently did not entail unde-
sirable obligations; in addition it provided some proximity to the Abbasids,
who had after all based their claim on Abū Hāshim’s testament for some time.30
W. Madelung examined the connections in detail;31 also pointing out that it
may have been a rash remark Shabīb b. Shayba made in the caliph al-Mahdī’s
hearing that caused or at least encouraged them.32
Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s saying that Wāṣil was Abū Hāshim’s maternal uncle
(Faḍl 234, 4f.: kāna khālan li-Abī Hāshim) was probably misread from kāna
khalā li-Abī Hāshim or bi-Abī Hāshim in Kaʿbī, Maq. 90, 14f.; the passage
was changed only in the printed version after the parallel in Qāḍī ʿAbd al-
Jabbār’s version. Such blood kinship would be difficult to imagine due to
the chronology alone. All we know of Abū Hāshim’s mother, who would
have been Wāṣil’s sister in this scenario, is that she was an umm walad
named Nāʾila (Zubayrī, Nasab Quraysh 75, 12f.).
In the legends that grew around Wāṣil’s ties to the Hijaz we can thus discern
diverse tendencies and different phases. The explanation why the legends took
this as their starting point is probably that Wāṣil was not the focus by himself,
but rather linked to his entire “organisation”. During the years in which the
Umayyad empire disintegrated the Muʿtazila was a political force, and would
become one again later during the uprising in Basra in 145/762; consequent-
ly people were interested to know which position it had occupied. If there
is indeed a fundamentum in re to all this, the most likely event would be the
26 Fihrist 203, 2.

27 Cf. the examples in Madelung, Qāsim 34.
28 Kaʿbī 68, 1ff. > Faḍl 164, 16ff. > IM 7, 1ff.
29 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 202, 5ff.
30 More details in ch. C 1.2.1 below.
31 Cf. Qāsim 31ff., where Kaʿbī’s K. al-maqālāt was not yet known and consequently some of
the source-critical remarks would have to be modified.
32 Qāsim 33.
290 chapter 2
so-called Hāshimid meeting in Abwāʾ. There, by Āmina’s grave on the road from
Mecca to Medina,33 representatives of the prophet’s family and, as Ṭabarī said,
the “Muʿtazila”, gathered after the murder of Walīd II in order to confer on who
should claim the caliphate after the end of the troubles; ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥasan
appears to have presented his son Muḥammad as the mahdī at the time.34 A
tendentious Imamite tradition claims that the “heads of the Muʿtazila”: Wāṣil,
ʿAmr and Wāṣil’s pupil Ḥafṣ b. Sālim also confirmed to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq which
side they were taking.35 Ṭabarī, on the other hand, does not name names. In
the case of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd at least we may doubt that he was there;36 Wāṣil,
too, actually had business elsewhere, at the audience with ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar
b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. And more importantly, he died during the critical phase, im-
mediately before the success of the Abbasid revolution. This would have con-
tributed to his followers’ activities being paralysed. All the same he was still
regarded as the leader of the movement, as illustrated by contemporary poetry
repeatedly praising or reviling him, but not ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.
2.2.6.1.5 The Image of Wāṣil’s Personality

The image people had of Wāṣil’s personality was characterised by asceticism
and moderate withdrawal from the world. The verse from Asbāṭ b. Wāṣil’s mar-
thiya indicated this,1 as did Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī’s concluding remark on Wāṣil’s
demeanour after his khuṭba,2 and indeed the subject matter of the speech it-
self. Dicta transmitted from him have the same tenor: “If the believer is hun-
gry, he will show patience; if he has eaten, he will thank (the creator)”,3 or
“I had rather that God should say to me on the day of resurrection ‘why did you
not say . . .?’ than ‘why did you say . . .?’ For if I said something, he will ask me
for proof, but if I was silent, he will ask nothing”.4 Which would mean that he
33 EI2 169a.

34 Ṭabarī III 143, 15ff., and 152, 11ff./transl. Muth, Der Kalif al-Manṣūr 63 and 72. Regarding
this event cf. van Arendonk, Opkomst 41ff., Veccia-Vaglieri in: A Francesco Gabrieli 324, and
Nagel in: Der Islam 46/1970/258ff.
35 Ṭabrisī, Iḥtijāj II 118, 7ff. > Biḥār XLVII 213ff. no. 2. Biḥār 214, 6ff. proves that the account
was faked.
1 See p. 273 above.

2 See p. 278 above. The term zuhd is used directly here.
4 Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd, ShNB VII 92, 8f.; Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir 2VII 178 no. 555 with further parallels in
the material listed.
iraq 291
already indicated the dialectic between shabr and shukr that would be empha-
sised so frequently later,5 and the merit of keeping silent.6 The latter makes us
take notice; after all, Wāṣil was a mutakallim. But kalām did not mean “speech”
at all costs. Wāṣil was said to have shown forbearance when he was insulted
in a discussion.7 He was also reported to have humbly copied hadith from a
young man – who should have been his pupil – “in order to let him taste the
sweetness of pre-eminence (riyāsa)”.8 People said his wife, Umm Yūsuf, told
them he read the Quran at night and found his best arguments then.9
Much of this was undoubtedly idealised. Even the fact that he entered into a
marriage at all seemed to require explanation: he only married ʿAmr’s sister be-
cause ʿAmr wished it; Wāṣil himself had no connection with women.10 Neither
he nor ʿAmr were believed to have had any offspring.11 Reality was rather more
prosaic: honest occupation, a preference for dialectic “speech”, presumably a
degree of intellectual superiority. Knowledge and activities cannot be sepa-
rated: Wāṣil warned people of a depraved scholar (ʿālim fāsiq) just as much as
of an ignorant believer.12 And sometimes, keeping silent was simply prudent:
two verses have him say that one should pretend to be stupid when among
stupid people, and not show off one’s intelligence, as nowadays the intelligent
person comes to harm by his intelligence, just in the past as the fool used to by
his ignorance.13 And one should not expect too much of oneself: “Staring (at
a point) for a length of time tires the eye, and the heart’s eye is weaker still”.14
5 Cf. Reinert, Tawakkul 175f.; also 112ff. and Index s. v. “Dank” and “Geduld”.
6 Cf. e.g. Gedankenwelt des Muḥāsibī 107ff. In Ḥasan’s circle, too, Wāṣil was said to have been
noticeable for his taciturnity (see p. 292 and 295 below).
7 Faḍl 235, 14ff.
8 Ibid. 241, –5ff.; also ShNB XX 247, apu. ff., and Ibn Abī ʿAwn, Al-ajwiba al-muskita 58
no. 345.
9 Ibid. 236, 6 > IM 31, ult. f.
10 Ibid. 235, 9f. He appears to have invoked the example of ʿĀmir b. ʿAbdqays (IS VII1 79, 18ff.,
if he is the same as the Wāṣil mentioned there); regarding whom see p. 101 above.
11 Ibid. 234, 13. Indeed, we only hear of a nephew named Jaʿfar, the son of his sister (Jāḥiẓ,
Ḥayawān VII 204, pu., and Bukhalāʾ 145, 2, both times as an authority quoted by Jāḥiẓ).
However, as in ʿAmr’s case, a double kunya was transmitted for him as well (see p. 324
below), for which the best explanation would be that he had had children but that they
died at a young age.
12 Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir I 299, 9ff./2II 7, 4ff.
13 Yāqūt, Irshād VII 225, 7f.
14 Jāḥiẓ, Nafy al-tashbīh, in: Rasāʾil I 290, 4f.
292 chapter 2
The tendency of renouncing the world is more clearly expressed in the

reports on ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd than in those concerning Wāṣil. Wāṣil may have
preached asceticism, but he was still khaṭīb and mutakallim, both traits which
were much less significant in ʿAmr’s case.15 Asceticism only became the domi-
nant ideal once people found themselves pushed into passive resistance after
Abbasid rule had taken hold. ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd was part of this process and may
even have encouraged it, but Wāṣil was not. Interestingly, according to Kaʿbī,
it was ʿAmr who emphasised Wāṣil’s zuhd,16 but there may, in fact, have been
something else: asceticism was a particularly Basran phenomenon. Wāṣil,
however, may have been a stranger in that city, and certainly among Ḥasan al-
Baṣrī’s circle of pupils where ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd occupied a much more dominant
position. Wāṣil, people knew, found followers only once he had convinced
ʿAmr of his views.17 Let us now examine how he succeeded in doing this.
2.2.6.1.6 Wāṣil’s Relationship with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd and Ḥasan al-Baṣrī

The turning point was said to have been reached during a debate in which
Wāṣil emerged victorious. The sources mention it repeatedly, and we are able
to reconstruct the image people had of events along general lines. Wāṣil and
ʿAmr knew one another from Ḥasan’s lectures, where Wāṣil had remained per-
sistently silent for four years; consequently he was believed to be deaf.1 He
was associated with Khārijite circles at the time; ʿAmr was thought to have got
in touch with him when he heard how skilfully he dealt with his opponents
there.2 But there is no mention of any influence: both were very young at the
time, and Wāṣil did not develop his doctrine of the manzila bayna l-manzila-
tayn until later. He does not even seem to have been in Basra then, and cer-
tainly not in touch with any of Ḥasan’s pupils, as it was left to third parties who
had heard of his new ideas to put him in contact with ʿAmr3 who was lead-
ing Ḥasan’s former ḥalqa by that time – and probably had done since Qatāda’s
death in 117/735.4 This was the occasion of the abovementioned debate. ʿAmr
defended Ḥasan’s position, but was beaten and consequently converted to

16 Maq. 67, –4.
17 Cf. e.g. TB XII 166, 8f.
1 Fihrist 203, 2f. > ʿAskarī, Awāʾil II 135, 4f.; also Faḍl 235, 4ff.
2 Ibid. 235, 8f.
3 Text IX 2, a. According to Malaṭī, Tanbīh 30, 16/38, 5, Wāṣil brought his doctrine with him
from Medina, but it is possible that this is an interpretation of earlier reports.
4 See p. 156 above.
iraq 293
Wāṣil’s point of view; he was reported to have accepted his defeat without a
grudge or making excuses.5 It would be emphasised later that he was not a
good debater,6 and probably had no great interest in kalām. Subsequently he
would send his pupils to Wāṣil’s lectures pointing out that they were much
more profitable than his own.7
The assumption appears to have been that he continued to occupy the
higher position. He gave his sister to Wāṣil in marriage, and it was noticeable if
Wāṣil criticised him.8 On the other hand, ʿAmr admired Wāṣil for his skills as a
khaṭīb,9 and he was even said to have considered him worthy of the caliphate.10
We do not know whether this was interpreted as more than mere hyperbole,
but the statement must in any case be considered before the background of
the troubles towards the end of the Umayyad era. When someone later criti-
cised ʿAmr for not having risked an uprising in Basra during the days of Yazīd
III,11 his excuse was that he could have relied on one person only, on Wāṣil.12
Long after Wāṣil had died, one of his followers accused ʿAmr of being merely
an epigone (dhanab) while Wāṣil, the head, had died tragically early; but ʿAmr
admitted this freely: twenty – or in another version: thirty – years he had lived
with Wāṣil, and never seen a single sin in him.13
We should not be taken in by this coherent image. It is probably not sig-
nificant that according to Mānkdīm, the commentator of Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār,
ʿAmr was debating Ḥasan’s munāfiq theory with Ḥasan himself;14 this is likely
to have been a later, marginal tradition. It does, however, show that he did
not believe the Wāṣil story, as in that case a “conversion” would not have been
5 Ibid., l; Text 3, also Faḍl 245, 10ff.

6 See p. 348 below.
7 Faḍl 236, 13ff.
8 Murtaḍā, Amālī I 164, 1ff.; however, this is a typical luthgha story.
9 Faḍl 235, 11ff.; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 282, apu. ff.; TB XII 175, 12ff., all after a report by Abū
ʿAwāna (d. 176/792; regarding him see p. 82 n. 166 above). Similar also ʿUqaylī 285, 10ff.
10 ʿUqaylī III 285, 14ff. > Mīzān III 275, 9f., after Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm Ibn ʿUlayya (d. 193/809;
regarding him see p. 473ff. below). The context of this tradition probably led Nyberg to
conclude that Ibn ʿUlayya was the author of the report of the meeting between Wāṣil and
ʿAmr – which is not supported by anything else (Classicisme et déclin culturel 127).
11 Cf. p. 325f. below.
12 Faḍl 250. 15ff. (corrupted, and emended according to Jushamī; Wāṣil is only a gloss). The
critic is Abū ʿAmr al-Zaʿfarānī (regarding him see p. 361f. below). Cf. the parallel ibid. 250,
6ff.
13 Kaʿbī 67, 15ff., more briefly also 90, 10ff.; abridged differently and traced back to Abū
l-Hudhayl in Faḍl 243, 15ff. Regarding “head” and “tail” see vol. I 211 above.
14 Text X 7.
294 chapter 2
necessary. A conversion brought about by a debate was first of all a literary

topos anyway. This was how people imagined it, but for understandable rea-
sons it was not at all frequent in reality.15 And ʿAmr’s reasonable attitude is
noted as a particular virtue. We must be prepared to assume that here as else-
where the account of the debate is merely an example. While the event had
apparently been recorded in an early source, the K. mā jarā baynahū (sc. Wāṣil)
wa-bayna ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd,16 but the surviving material describes the conversion
in different ways. The least probable version is found in a late Ibāḍite work,
Warglānī’s K. al-dalīl li-ahl al-ʿuqūl,17 where ʿAmr is not active at all but only
impressed by Wāṣil’s philippic against the predestinarians – the very subject
on which he was most likely to have always had his own clear opinion.18 Here,
his conversion is merely the last confirmation that the Muʿtazilite doctrine
was the “true faith” in the sense of sura 98:5. However, the two versions that
survive among Muʿtazilite tradition19 are also unlikely to take us back to the
original events. Their starting points have little in common – they would cer-
tainly not have had a logical interconnection in one and the same munāẓara.
Ibn al-Murtaḍā’s – or one of his sources’ – attempt at linking the two must be
considered to have failed.20
One of the two presents ʿAmr as embracing the thesis that a mortal sinner –
a munāfiq in Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s terminology – has no true knowledge of God;21
while the other is concerned with proving that, contrary to his view, munāfiq
could not be used as the term denoting a mortal sinner, fāsiq being the correct
term.22 With regard to the former it would be necessary to ask whether Ḥasan
al-Baṣrī formulated such a doctrine for ʿAmr to embrace it.23 As for the latter,
it is noticeable that the principle of manzila bayna l-manzilatayn that, accord-
ing to the frame story, led to the debate in the first place (a) is not proven in
the debate but rather presumed, the issue being merely the terminology. This
may indeed have been the decisive innovation, but it is difficult to resist the
impression that we are looking at an already established position with only
this point remaining controversial. It seems that Wāṣil himself had nothing
15 Cf. the material in REI 44/1976/45ff.

16 Catalogue of Works IX, no. 9.
17 Text IX 4.
19 Ibn al-Murtaḍā confirmed that there were several (Ṭab. 36, 12).
20 Against Madelung, Qāsim 12, n. 20; cf. the commentary on Text 3.
21 Text 3.
22 Text 2, cited in sections in the following.
23 Cf. p. 300f. below.
iraq 295
to do with Ḥasan’s intellectual legacy directly, Ḥasan’s school being one firqa
among many in his view.24 Looking at the evidence and concluding that the
two versions are both exemplary, we can presume that the arguments were
not directed against ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd but against Ḥasan’s later followers who ad-
hered to his terminology and fixed it in dogma, namely the Bakriyya.25 In this
case both texts could be dated to the second half of the second century; the K.
mā jarā baynahū wa-bayna ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd may have been written around this
time, too, which would explain a few more idiosyncrasies: that the frame story
uses a topos to explain the term iʿtizāl, and that the term kāfir niʿma may be
being used anachronistically.26
We should not, of course, doubt that Wāṣil had at some point been Ḥasan’s
pupil. Tradition preserves his respectful opinion of the latter,27 and he adopted
his ideas in more than one instance.28 It is doubtful that he, like ʿAmr, trans-
mitted Ḥasan’s Tafsīr, as some sources claim;29 it may well be merely a retro-
spective Muʿtazilite generalisation. Still, it is probably also exaggerated that he
remained entirely silent in his teacher’s ḥalqa for four years; it is more likely to
be an attempt at explaining why Ḥasan had not himself noticed Wāṣil’s dislike
of the term munāfiq. After all, the report came from ʿAbd al-Wārith b. Saʿīd, a
future pupil of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s, who was not himself present at these events.30
Conversely, reports that Wāṣil himself renounced Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, or that Ḥasan
excluded him from his circle, are most certainly anti-Muʿtazilite fabrication.31
What is not entirely clear is whether he was in touch with Ḥasan in Basra.
An interesting but entirely isolated document preserved by Ibn ʿAbdrabbih
presumes that Wāṣil was close to Ḥasan when the latter, filled with premoni-
tions of his death, came to Medina to lecture in a side wing of the Prophet’s
Mosque.32 The text poses some questions. It would seem that towards the
end of his life, Ḥasan went on the pilgrimage for the second time and may have
spent some time in Mecca. Mujāhid was said to have been among his audience,
which would take us to the period before 104/722.33 He may well have visited
Medina at that time as well and Wāṣil, if he did indeed have his roots in that
24 Thus said explicitly in Text 2, k.

26 Cf. the commentary on Text 2.
27 Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir I 269, 4f./2I 222 no. 691.
29 Thus e.g. Faḍl 253, 2.
30 Ibid. 235, 4ff.; regarding him see p. 367ff. below.
32 Text 5.
33 IS VII1 115, 8ff.; regarding Mujāhid see p. 718ff. below.
296 chapter 2
city, might have joined him there. He was already sitting in the front row with
only ʿAmr between him and Ḥasan.34 If the transmitted birthdates are correct,
they were both very young at the time in any case. In addition it seems that Ibn
ʿAbdrabbih identified the text incorrectly, describing it as a letter written by
Wāṣil to ʿAmr despite the fact that Wāṣil is referred to in the third person and
with his kunya – this is not how one would talk about oneself.
Ṭāhā al-Ḥājirī already pointed out this fact and rejected the attribution
to Wāṣil (Jāḥiẓ, Bukhalāʾ 410, –4ff.). Abū l-Wafāʾ al-Taftāzānī mentioned
the text in his study of Wāṣil (in: Dirāsāt falsafiyya muhdāt ilā Ibrāhīm
Madkūr, p. 74) without noting the problem, believing to be looking at
K. mā jarā baynahū wa-bayna ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.
What is certain is that the letter was addressed to ʿAmr, the surprising feature
being that the sender attacks him, criticising his “quarrelsome” nature (b) and
his “bad doctrine” (c), which is said to have been considered unbearable in
Ḥasan’s circle (c), Ḥasan himself expressing the gravest possible fears with
regard to him in everyone’s hearing (g). Now – after his teacher’s death, it is
implied – it did indeed turn out that he interpreted the revelation in an idio-
syncratic fashion (i), his books providing additional proof (k). We are not told
of which issue in particular he was writing; there are vague references to “in-
novations” (mā btadaʿta) or to “abridging the contexts and dividing the foun-
dations” (tanqīṣ al-maʿānī wa-tafrīq al-mabānī) (k). This could refer to ʿAmr’s
alliance with Wāṣil, in which case the remark that they were sitting next to one
another the last time the author saw ʿAmr in Medina (h) could be interpreted
as an allusion to Wāṣil’s bad influence.35 It is also possible that ʿAmr’s Qadarite
opinions are being castigated, as his idiosyncratic interpretations covered not
only scripture but also traditions (aḥādīth), giving cause for eternal reproach
with regard to prophetic dicta on predestinarian matters.36 We do not know
who composed the letter. It must have been an influential scholar or pious man
of the time who lived outside Basra, probably in the Hijaz, and who was hos-
tile towards the emerging Muʿtazila or Qadariyya; he had followers in Ḥasan’s
circle or introduced them there (c). There are some doubts surrounding the
34 Text 5, h.
35 The expression that he “hung” his new interpretation of the scripture “around his neck”
(qalladtahū ʿunuqaka) could be used to this end, too; taqlīd insinuating that he adopted it
from someone else.
iraq 297
text, but as yet there is no reason not to believe its genuineness. It probably
dates from the time between AH 120 and 125.
However much ʿAmr was attacked here, his prestige was emphasised just as
much. Even in Medina in the old days he was sitting next to his teacher Ḥasan
(h); now he has power (ṭawl) and people lower their eyes before him with re-
spect (l). While this is mere “imagination and lust for glory” (l), there was no
doubt that ʿAmr was able to accept Ḥasan’s legacy. After all, the letter accused
him of managing it badly. A verse by Isḥāq b. Suwayd, composed while Wāṣil
was still living, shows that after the schools merged ʿAmr was equal with Wāṣil,
albeit maybe slightly less active.37 The story of the Basran kalām circle, other
members of which included Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs, Bashshār b. Burd and Ibn
Abī l-ʿAwjāʾ,38 also presupposes this.
How the relationship between the two was viewed also depended on the
viewer’s attitude. By outliving Wāṣil, ʿAmr gained a degree of ascendancy. On
the other hand, those Muʿtazilites who disagreed with his politics, especially
towards the end of his life,39 were inclined to refer to Wāṣil once again. Ṣafwān
al-Anṣārī called ʿAmr Wāṣil’s “pupil” (ghulām), which probably put too much
emphasis on the dependence. Maʿdān al-Shumayṭī regarded Wāṣil as the start-
ing point of the Muʿtazila,40 while authors whose background was among the
aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth named ʿAmr but not Wāṣil; e.g. Ibn Qutayba in his K. al-Maʿārif,41
or Ibn Baṭṭa in his Ibāna al-ṣughrā. Abū l-Hudhayl seemed to prefer Wāṣil;
Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir on the other hand referred to ʿAmr.42 People argued – and
presumably also wrote – about which of the two was of higher rank.43 Later
generations imagined them peacefully by each other’s side; a poem of praise
for Hishām al-Fuwaṭī says that he “followed Wāṣil and ʿAmr”.44 But even Kaʿbī
still included Ghaylān al-Dimashqī in the line of spiritual forebears.45 All of
this begins to take shape only when we compare both their doctrines.

39 Cf. p. 328 below.
40 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 356, 11; also Oriens 16/1963/108.
41 Cf. Watt, Formative Period 109.
42 Cf. Text XVII 5, v. 3. He is said to have studied with two of Wāṣil’s pupils (see p. 361 below).
43 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān VII 7, 7. Could we interpret the passage to say that Abū l-Hudhayl’s and
al-Naẓẓām’s followers differed in this question? Maybe ʿAmr’s champions came up with
the claim that he already debated with Ḥasan (see p. 293 above).
44 IM 61, 8. Abū l-Hudhayl was already thought to have spoken of aṣḥāb Wāṣil wa-ʿAmr (ibid.
71, 3f.).
45 Maq. 84, 10: madhhab Ghaylān wa-Wāṣil wa-ʿAmr.
298 chapter 2
2.2.6.1.7 The Doctrine of the Intermediate State

Wāṣil wrote a treatise on the manzila bayna l-manzilatayn;1 no such title has
been transmitted from ʿAmr. The issue must have been truly important to him;
the question, however, is where his originality lay, linked to the source-critical
discussion of whether Wāṣil’s text left an impression anywhere else. This might
be the case in parts of the munāẓara tradition already discussed, explaining its
exemplary form further. This working hypothesis2 increases in probability as
the positive half of Wāṣil’s argumentation3 is found in similar form in a review
of his theory by Khayyāṭ in his K. al-intiṣār.4 On the other hand there is an
older parallel in Jāḥiẓ which does not mention Wāṣil at all and replaces Ḥasan
al-Baṣrī with the Bakriyya.5 The theoretical reviews were thus adapted to the
respective situation early on, just like the accounts of the debate presumably
were.
Our best starting point would seem to be Khayyāṭ’s text. As usual he was
reacting to an attack by Ibn al-Rēwandī. The latter had introduced the criterion
of originality – with a negative connotation, of course, in the true spirit of the
age, and employing the concepts in use at the time: in his view Wāṣil put an
end to the consensus of the community with his manzila bayna l-manzilatayn.
Khayyāṭ pointed out in response that in fact there was a consensus regarding
the “new” term fāsiq which Wāṣil had introduced; it only needed to be raised
into people’s consciousness as it was obscured by a disagreement over terms.6
This concerned the status and classification of a mortal sinner, his “denotation”
(tasmiya), as it was called. The Khārijites had called him an unbeliever, the
Murjiʾites a believer, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī a “hypocrite” (munāfiq); Wāṣil countered
them with the word “evildoer” (fāsiq).7 The texts consulted state quite clearly8
that he did not wish to found a fourth party but rather to create a common
base for all. Consequently he did not argue based on the Quran but employed
existing, shared language usage attempting to change a word used casually into
a term. Of course he pointed out that the word was also used in the Quran,
where it was even used to refer to a mortal sinner – or rather, to one mortal
1 Catalogue of Works no. 1.

2 Regarding it cf. my article in: ZDMG 135/1985/22ff.
3 Text 2, h–k.
4 Text 6.
5 Text 7.
6 It is interesting that Khayyāṭ keeps mentioning the term fājir besides fāsiq (Text 6, f–h). In the
account of the discussion as well as in the later theological literature the former term played
no part at all; it may be a relic left over from the original question.
7 Thus also elsewhere; cf. e.g. Faḍl 166, –8ff.
8 Cf. Text 2, k, and 6, g–h.
iraq 299
sinner, namely the slanderer (qādhif).9 In the debate mentioned earlier ʿAmr
b. ʿUbayd tried to defend Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s position using this verse10 – but this
probably follows the Muʿtazilite line, i.e. that of the narrator.11 It would have
been impossible to justify the term based solely on the Quran, but that was
never the intention anyway.
Still, merely clearing up terminological disagreement was not the point
at issue either. There were also questions of evaluation, which is the point
at which Khayyāṭ’s summary contains additional information for us, beyond
the account of the debate.12 It discusses the matter summarised later under
the term al-asmāʾ wal-aḥkām. Calling a mortal sinner a believer, heathen or
munāfiq entailed certain consequences intrinsic to the terms; Wāṣil, Khayyāṭ
tells us, showed that it was not possible or desirable to take all consequences
into account, and that it would therefore make more sense to use a less charged
term. While this was certainly one motive, we must still consider to what de-
gree Khayyāṭ was systematising along the lines of later theology.
This is easiest to prove with regard to the Khārijites; after all, Wāṣil was said
to have argued with them constantly in his younger days.13 Khayyāṭ reported
Wāṣil’s deliberations that nobody would seriously think of going to war against
a mortal sinner who remains a Muslim and, we must add, does not renounce
the community politically either, or of denying him burial in a Muslim cem-
etery as if he were an unbeliever. Anyone would gladly accept his inheritance,
which would be forbidden in the case of a follower of a different religion.14
What Khayyāṭ does not tell us is that certain early Khārijites, e. g. the Azraqites,
did indeed draw this very consequence.15 In order for Wāṣil’s argument to hold
he would have had to point to the Basran Ibāḍites. However, the Ibāḍites had
9 Sura 24:4, with Text 6, h. This refers to slander with regard to fornication (cf. EI2 IV 373 s. v.
Ḳad̲ h̲f). The term qadhf or qādhif does not, in fact, occur in this verse, but the punishment
for the crime, namely 80 lashes, is fixed here. Jāḥiẓ, too, noted that this was the Muʿtazila’s
starting point (Text 7, a).
10 Text 2, e.
11 Text 3 presupposes that Wāṣil used the example of the slanderer against ʿAmr without
prompting.
12 Cf. also the related, but more briefly summarised descriptions in Jāḥiẓ (Text 6, b–d),
Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (Faḍl 235, 1ff.), and Ḥākim al-Jushamī, Al-risāla fī naṣīḥat al-ʿāmma
(MS Ambrosiana C 5, fol. 58b, 8ff.); also, slightly more inflated, Pseudo-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm,
K. al-ʿadl wal-tawḥīd (in: Rasāʾil al-ʿadl wal-tawḥīd, ed. ʿImāra, I 125, 4ff.) and Baghdādī
(Farq 97, 1ff./116, 4ff.). Cf. also Madelung, Qāsim 10f.
13 See p. 292 above and 307f. below.
14 Text 6, i–l.
15 Regarding individual points cf., in brief, Cook, Dogma 96f.
300 chapter 2
their own separate position, as stated explicitly in a parallel text,16 and Wāṣil
probably considered them separately. Khayyāṭ was simplifying things, and his
argument would have been of no use to Wāṣil in this form.
In the disagreement with the Murjiʾites, everything depended on the con-
cept of faith; it is no coincidence that the few texts that mention the relation-
ship between the early Muʿtazila and its Murjiʾite opponents concentrated
on this point17 which Khayyāṭ did not really express. In his version Wāṣil did
not begin with human behaviour, as he had done earlier in debates with the
Khārijites, but with God’s attitude as expressed in the Quran: God loves the
believers and promises them Paradise; he curses grave sinners and intends to
punish them. How then could one call a grave sinner a believer?18 This may
indeed have been Wāṣil’s approach: sura 32:18 states explicitly that a fāsiq and a
muʾmin have nothing in common. Wāṣil was probably aware that using humans
as the starting point would not be as dialectically effective, as the Murjiʾites
themselves regarded their relationship with sinful fellow-humans, especially
unjust rulers, as problematic and absolved by no means everyone.19
When it comes to criticising Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s position20 it is noticeable that
Khayyāṭ does not adduce any Quranic verses at all, which is also the case in
the debate with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, even though this was more directly aimed at
Ḥasan’s teachings: ʿAmr bases his arguments on the Quran, while Wāṣil limits
himself to destroying this scriptural basis and proving ʿAmr’s method of exege-
sis to be invalid.21 The nerve of the argument was clearly elsewhere. Khayyāṭ
pointed out that a munāfiq would be ordered to repent, once he had been
identified; if he refused, he would be executed. A mortal sinner – unless he
was an apostate, and as such had embraced unbelief – would not be treated
like that. In Khayyāṭ’s eyes a munāfiq was a secret unbeliever at the heart of
the community, not just any mortal sinner whose infringement would often
be there for all to see, and punished accordingly under the law applicable to
Muslims. Once again it is doubtful whether Wāṣil was of the same opinion. To
Khayyāṭ, Ḥasan’s teachings were in the distant past, while Wāṣil knew them
16 Kaʿbī (see p. 303 below), and, without names, Jāḥiẓ (Text 7, a). Baghdādī’s abovemen-
tioned discussion also lists various Khārijite opinions, but in a purely academic fashion:
it assumes that Wāṣil was already active under ʿAbd al-Malik when the Azraqites were
terrorising Basra and the Hijaz, and it ultimately develops into an orthodox iʿtizāl legend.
17 Cf. Texts IX 11 and II 6–7, also p. 306 below.
18 Text 6, n.
19 Cf. e.g. vol. I 197f. regarding the Sīrat Sālim b. Dhakwān; regarding the Basran Ghaylāniyya
ibid. 151f.
20 Text 6, m.
21 Cf. Text 2, f, with commentary.
iraq 301
in great detail. He would hardly have ignored the fact that Ḥasan had arrived
at the word munāfiq through Quranic meditation. Ḥasan had internalised the
meaning, regarding as a “hypocrite” someone who outwardly professed Islam
but without taking it seriously.22 While this was the same definition as found in
Khayyāṭ, its meaning was different; not taking Islam seriously meant not “liv-
ing” it, not carrying it out existentially. The ascetics close to the early Muʿtazila
would have seen it like that, too.
For Ḥasan the important thing was that a munāfiq would be punished with
eternal hellfire, besides which it was irrelevant whether he would be treated
as a believer or an unbeliever on earth. Wāṣil and the later Muʿtazila did not
differ from him in this; a fāsiq, too, remains in hell forever. They went their
different ways in other matters: to Ḥasan and the Bakriyya a certain mortal
sin, namely the murder of a Muslim, did not allow of repentance (tawba) be-
fore God,23 while a fāsiq could always turn back before God. This may be the
reason why Khayyāṭ emphasised that a munāfiq would be ordered to repent;
it was based on hidden – and possibly no longer understood – polemic. In the
case of the Bakriyya another factor was24 that it believed every sin should be
repented individually25 while the Muʿtazila thought that good deeds could be
offset against evil ones.26 Wāṣil wrote a K. fī l-tawba27 in which he might al-
ready have referred to the issue.
Compared to the Bakriyya the Muʿtazila seems milder and more generous;
after all, it was not only, and possibly not even mainly, an ascetic movement.
Jāḥiẓ explains that for the Bakriyya the munāfiq must be punished more se-
verely than an unbeliever.28 Wāṣil was working towards a compromise and the
unification of the community by introducing a new term and delimiting the ex-
isting terms more precisely. The new word was properly Quranic; Jāḥiẓ would
later emphasise that it had not been used in pre-Islamic times.29 However, it
entailed, precisely because of the compromise, a new definition of the pos-
sibility of a grave sinner’s salvation. Earlier, this definition had distinguished
between “designation” (ism) and juristic “definition” (ḥukm), i.e. between the
22 Cf. Ritter in: Der Islam 21/1933/44ff.; cf. p. 50 above.

24 This may be a reference to Ḥasan as well, but we cannot document it.
26 See ch. C 4.2.1.2 below regarding Jaʿfar b. Mubashshir.
28 Text 6, a; similarly also Baghdādī later, Farq 97, apu. ff./118, 6f. cf. p. 131 above.
29 Ḥayawān V 280, 9f.; regarding the semantic range in the Quran cf. Izutsu, Ethico-Religious
Concepts in the Qurʾān 156ff.
302 chapter 2
term itself and the rules and messages of salvation tied to it in the Quran and,
to some degree, the Sunna; it can be observed in Abū Ḥanīfa’s work.30 Since
the uṣūl al-khamsa had been established, it was more common to speak of
the Bāb fī l-asmāʾ wal-aḥkām than of the manzila bayna l-manzilatayn, but
we cannot determine whether Wāṣil already linked the two. The criterion of
asmāʾ wal-aḥkām clearly does not do justice to the original situation and does
not occur in the account of the discussion with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, nor in other
Muʿtazilite texts that provide information on this period, such as the debates
with Murjiʾites.31
How, then, did Wāṣil fit the concept of manzila bayna l-manzilatayn, which
after all he discussed in one of his treatises, into his framework of ideas? First
of all we must point out that the term does not seem to be in line with the issue
we have discussed so far, as the fāsiq is not in between a dual salvational sta-
tus of “believer” and “unbeliever”, but between three manāzil, reinforcing the
impression that the approach is based on a later stage of the problem.32 At the
same time we must ask the question of whether Wāṣil was not in fact employ-
ing a term already in existence. There are isolated cases in hadith where manzi-
la is used to mean salvational status.33 Above all, these allow us to observe how
this meaning originated: at first, it did not refer to “believer” and “unbeliever”
but to paradise and hell, i.e. the places where the believers and unbelievers will
“settle”. Man kāna llāhu khalaqahū li-wāḥidatin min al-manzilatayn yuhayyiʾuhū
li-ʿamalihā “if God has created someone for one of the two dwellings, he will
make him inclined to act accordingly”, Ibn Ḥanbal’s Musnad tells us.34 Yazīd al-
Raqāshī was also thought to have used the term with this meaning: laysa bayna
l-janna wal-nār manzila;35 and of course there is the corresponding verb: ayna
tunzilu l-kuffār fī l-ākhira? “where in the otherworld do you settle the unbe-
lievers?”, Nāfiʿ b. al-Azraq was said to have asked. This was transmitted among
the Murjiʾites,36 where – in the K. al-ʿālim wal-mutaʿallim37 – we also find an
interesting parallel to the Muʿtazilite manzila bayna l-manzilatayn: “The third
30 See vol. I 223 above. Regarding the translation of ḥukm see also Gimaret, Ashʿarī 487 n. 1.
31 Text 11 and II 6–7.
32 The dual should not be overestimated; the emphasis is not on “two” but on “between”. Abū
l-Muʿīn al-Nasafī characteristically writes of the masʾalat (al-)bayn al-bayn instead (Baḥr
al-kalām 75, –4, and 77, 2).
33 Muttaqī al-Hindī, Kanz al-ʿummāl I 28 no. 519.
34 IV 438, –7. Regarding hadith overall cf. HT 47ff.
35 In conversation with ʿUmar II (Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Sīrat ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿazīz 90, 9).
36 After an account by Abū Ḥanīfa in a codicil on the Risāla to ʿUthmān al-Battī (38, n.; cf.
also vol. I 228 with nn. 35 and 38 above).
37 20, 4ff.; also Oriens 17/1964/111.
iraq 303
status: those who profess the oneness (muwaḥḥidūn) in whose case we exer-
cise ἐποχή. We neither affirm that they are tied to the fires of hell, nor that
they belong to paradise; but we hope and fear for them”. These are ordinary
Muslims; those who are tied to the fires of hell are the unbelievers (called
mushrikūn here), while the ahl al-janna are the prophets and the other few to
whom the prophets promised paradise. Even so Abū Ḥanīfa considered those
who described a Muslim as neither believer nor unbeliever to be hair-splitting
innovators,38 for a valid reason: as in his view those who profess God’s oneness
remained believers; he regarded a sinner as muʾmin ḍāll.39
This does not take the discussion of the origins any further, as all the Murjiʾite
texts mentioned were composed after Wāṣil’s death, but there may have been
some progress in Kaʿbī when, in a passage preserved by Ibn al-Nadīm,40 he
added a fourth group to the ones discussed so far: the Zaydites and Ibāḍites who
believed that mortal sinners were “ungrateful (kuffār niʿma), neither polytheists
nor believers”. “Polytheists” (mushrikūn) was the Ibāḍite term for the heathen,
and indeed the Ibāḍites were most likely to grant mortal sinners – i.e. mainly:
non-Ibāḍite Muslims – an intermediate status.41 Shammākhī made this quite
clear in his Uṣūl al-diyānāt.42 Certain early Ṣufrites whose identity is unfortu-
nately not known to us, agreed completely with this view.43 Sālim b. Dhakwān
already used manzila in the figurative sense.44 The Zaydites Kaʿbī mentioned
together with the Ibāḍites are difficult to grasp. While they embraced similar
ideas,45 they could only have influenced Wāṣil during the last phase of his life.
Madelung considered the hypothesis that the term kufr niʿma “was also used
by those Shīʿite circles out of which the Zaydiyya emerged”.46 ʿAbdallāh b. Abī
Yaʿfūr, an Iraqi Imamite who had ties to the Zaydiyya, assumed intermediate
status for those who did not know the imam, i.e. were not members of the
38 Text II 5, o; see vol. I 226 above.

40 Fihrist 201, 9ff.
41 See p. 260ff. above.
42 Cuperly, Introduction 333. Abū ʿAmmār opposed Muʿtazilite doctrine but admitted that in
this point the Muʿtazila was closer to the Ibāḍiyya than the Murjiʾa (Mūjaz II 123, 1ff. and
apu. ff.).
44 Cook, Dogma 94; also Text II 2, r–s.
45 Madelung, Qāsim 60f.
46 Ibid. 13 with reference to Text IX 2, k, where the Zaydiyya (or Shīʿa) is named on its own,
without the Ibāḍiyya. Another correspondence between the Muʿtazila and the early
Zaydiyya is the idea that a mortal sinner would be condemned for eternity (Maq. 74, 3f.).
304 chapter 2
Shīʿa.47 Or did Wāṣil adopt the idea from the Medinan Shīʿa? Mānkdīm claims
he did, but then loses our trust by naming Abū Hāshim as the originator.48
It is unlikely that we will ever stand on firm ground in this matter, but we
may say that with his model Wāṣil not so much distanced himself from what
had gone before, but rather completed existing tendencies. Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s
term munāfiq had made the first step towards a tripartite scheme.49 Thus in a
sense Wāṣil only exchanged a term: “He was of the opinion that the fāsiq was a
munāfiq according to Ḥasan’s doctrine”, as Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī put it.50 He did
this because he considered the term munāfiq to have been over-interpreted;
the Ibāḍites, too, would find at some point that exegesis and theology got in
each other’s way here.51 Wāṣil attempted from the very first to keep Quranic
exegesis separate when employing the term fāsiq, which is why his choice of
vocabulary did not leave any traces in the tafsīr literature.52 Fundamentally
he, rather like Ḥasan, was searching for tools refined enough to bridge the by
then existing differences between Murjiʾites and (radical) Khārijites; he had a
reason for speaking of manzilatayn.53 This was probably why he found it easy
to win ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd for his cause.
If we are to believe the accounts of his discussion with ʿAmr, the fact that
he was the first to determinedly presume an intermediate status for a grave
sinner was at first not acknowledged much at all. There was a general ten-
dency in this direction, with Ḥasan, the Ibāḍites, and apparently the Zaydites
as well. Only once his compromise evolved into yet another new school, and
people were forced to delimit themselves accordingly did they shy away from
the consequence. In the subsequent debates it was the Bakriyya that occupied

48 ShUKh 137, ult. ff.
49 Cf. esp. the text from Abū Nuʿaym in: Der Islam 21/1933/44.
50 Awāʾil II 135, 10.
52 According to Muqātil b. Sulaymān the meaning of the word as used in the Quran ranged
from unbelief (as practised by the munāfiqūn against the prophets) and “polytheism” to
mere misdeeds (ithm) and wickedness (sayyiʾāt) that did not touch upon the faith status;
eternal pains of hell are not mentioned as the consequence (Al-wujūh wal-naẓāʾir 328,
–4ff.). Abū ʿUbayda discussed fisq in the context of sura 18:50 (Majāz al-Qurʾān I 406, 2),
as did Farrāʾ in his Maʿānī l-Qurʾān (II 147, 6ff.: fāsiq = al-khārij ʿan ṭāʿati rabbih). They both
ignore the Muʿtazila’s key witness, the slander verse 24:4, in this context. Ibn Qutayba
quoted Farrāʾ in his Gharīb al-ḥadīth (I 249, 1ff.). However, even for munāfiq, this provides
only a philological explanation (ibid. 249, 9ff.).
53 Sometimes even later texts present it in this way (cf. e.g. Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 161, 11ff.),
although this is probably retrospective simplification.
iraq 305
the central position. It contested the Muʿtazilites’ claim to be Ḥasan’s heirs,

forcing them not only to distance themselves from the ancient extremes, the
manzilatayn, which did not really have many followers in Basra, but also to ex-
plicitly refute the munāfiq solution. Consequences of this could be felt in the
accounts of an alleged debate between Wāṣil and ʿAmr, or in the doxographical
texts which now listed, and then rejected, three, sometimes even four, diver-
gent positions. By that time scholars had grown accustomed to ascribing the
individual asmāʾ to the respective aḥkām, a method that had probably evolved
during the discussion concerning the concept of faith,54 but now also applied
to the new issue by the Muʿtazilites.55 In this way the question had become
entirely independent.
2.2.6.1.7.1 Sin and Penitence

E. Gräf pointed out a parallel with this intermediate status in Christian pen-
itential practice: someone who was not allowed to partake of the Eucharist
was regarded neither as Christian nor as non-Christian.1 This is worth delib-
erating: in early Islam the problem of salvational status is also linked with
that of tawba; the quarrel over terms is in reality a debate on the degrees of
penitence – “psychologically explicable among puritans”, as Strothmann put
it.2 But we do not yet know whether the Muslims in Iraq could have known of
this Christian distinction. For the time being it would be better to consult the
sources regarding Wāṣil’s own attitude to sin and penitence.
Unfortunately the traditions on the subject do not form a coherent image.
Mānkdīm said3 that Wāṣil spoke against the idea that penitence was valid even
when it related to some of the sins committed; tawba to him would have meant
a radical turning-back. He might have learnt this from Ḥasan, but he was in the
company of other, later Muʿtazilites,4 and furthermore involved only as a wit-
ness in an argument conducted by Jubbāʾī and Abū Hāshim. Consequently
we must be cautious. Of course, we also hear that he regarded even the
54 See vol. I 222f. above regarding Abū Ḥanīfa.

55 A corresponding train of thought is found in one text that refers to Wāṣil (14, b–c); but
this, too, appears to have been edited (see p. 309f. below).
1 OLZ 55/1960/397 after Karl Holl, Enthusiasmus und Bußgewalt beim griechischen
Mönchtum (Leipzig 1898), p. 239; Gerhard Rauschen, Eucharistie und Bußsakrament in den
ersten sechs Jahrhunderten der Kirche (2Freiburg 1910), p. 196f.
2 Der Islam 19/1931/215.
3 Cf. ShUKh 797, 3ff., and 794, apu. ff. and 796, 10ff.; also Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Al-baḥr al-zakhkhār
I 149, –5f. (where Wāṣil is not mentioned).
4 Namely Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir (cf. ch. C 1.4.3.1.1.3) and Jaʿfar b. Mubashshir (cf. ch. C 4.2.1.2).
306 chapter 2
intention to commit a mortal sin as a misdeed deserving of the eternal fires

of hell; again, quite a severe and pietistic view. However, it is linked not only
with him but also with Abū l-Hudhayl and Jubbāʾī – and sometimes only with
them – which once again leads us to suspect projection.5 Furthermore, Ibn
al-Rēwandī claims the opposite, and we are not able to determine any more
whether Khayyāṭ was correct to protest against it.6
Wāṣil only considered those responsible whose actions were carried out
during adulthood; God does not hold children accountable, and they go to
paradise. This sounds reliable; he agreed in this with Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and the
pietistic circles of the time. In addition the doctrine was phrased in the way
in which it had been seen as a problem at first, with respect to the children
of those unbelievers fought in wars and often killed together with their off-
spring.7 – With reference to sura 2:174 Wāṣil, like Ḥasan before him, empha-
sised that on the Day of Judgment God does not speak to the damned but only
addresses good people.8
2.2.6.1.7.2 Wāṣil’s Relationship with Khārijites and Murjiʾites

These fragmentary accounts do not allow conclusions regarding Wāṣil’s doc-
trine of the intermediate status. Results are similarly scant when we examine
what the sources have to say regarding his relationship with Khārijites and
Murjiʾites. He already distinguished several varieties (aṣnāf) of Murjiʾites;1 even
so we do not even know whether he considered Faḍl al-Raqāshī, who may have
been with him when he spoke before ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, to be
one of them. We do, however, have the text of a guideline for debating he was
believed to have given to his pupil Ḥafṣ b. Sālim when he challenged Jahm b.
Ṣafwān in Tirmidh.2 We might wonder whether it was from a textbook used by
the pupils, possibly the K. al-sabīl ilā maʿrifat al-ḥaqq or the K. fī l-daʿwa.3 The
exemplary style, on the other hand, makes us doubt the genuineness of the text;
it recalls the discussion said to have taken place between ʿUmar al-Shimmazī,
a pupil of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s, and Abū Ḥanīfa.4 The Murjiʾa’s minimalist concept
5 Text 9, also Text XXI 156.

6 Text 8.
7 Text 10, presumably after Kaʿbī; regarding the question see vol. I 24 above.
8 Ṭūsī, Tibyān II 89, 13ff.; differently Ṭabarī, Tafsīr 3III 330, 1ff., who assumes a ḥadhf in this case:
God does not address the evil persons with friendly words.
1 Cf. the title at Catalogue of Works no. 4.

2 Text 11.
3 Catalogue of works no. 10 and 11.
4 Text II, b–e and 7; cf. vol. I 232, and p. 366f. below.
iraq 307
of faith is branded in both: faith cannot consist only in the knowledge of God,
but it also has to manifest itself in actions.5 Correspondingly, Wāṣil and ʿAmr
were thought to have understood sura 2:143 to mean that prayer is part of faith;
it states in the context of changing the direction of prayer that “God could by
no means allow” Muslims (so far, while they prayed facing Jerusalem) “to have
believed in vain”.6 But Qatāda had also interpreted the passage in this way;7 it
was not typically Muʿtazilite. Only the issue of whether someone who commits
bad deeds is still a believer would make that connection.8
Legend imagined the connection to Jahm b. Ṣafwān further. It was impos-

sible to deny that the two never met, but one could imagine that they
corresponded. Jahm, it was said, was at a loss during a debate with follow-
ers of other faiths and asked Wāṣil for advice; when the others heard of
this they travelled to Wāṣil in Basra and converted there. Like the preced-
ing tradition this narrative was recorded in the K. al-mashāyikh by Abū
l-Ḥasan Ibn Farzōya, a pupil of Jubbāʾī’s (regarding him cf. Madelung in
GAP II 330), from where Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār adopted it. There were sev-
eral other, non-Muʿtazilite versions, some of which appear more original.
Cf. p. 566f. below for more detail.
When it comes to the Khārijites, we are even less likely to be satisfied. Serious
polemical texts are almost non-existent. The much-repeated anecdote accord-
ing to which Wāṣil’s dialectical skill was once able to stop a group of danger-
ous Khārijites, probably Azraqites, from killing him and his companions is
pure adab, its only objective to emphasise his wit and presence of mind.9 Ibn
Ḥawqal tells the same anecdote, but about some of his pupils rather than
Wāṣil himself; this version was also recounted in the Maghreb where there
5 According to the late Zaydite al-Muwaffaq al-Jurjānī, a pupil of Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s, Wāṣil
saw faith as the performance of the acts of obedience and the avoidance of mortal sin; he was
said to have used the terms īmān, islām and dīn equivalently (Iḥāṭa, MS Leiden Or. 8409, fol.
213a, –4ff.). However, in this passage Wāṣil probably stands for the exponent of the Muʿtazila
par excellence.
6 Ṭūsī, Tibyān II 12, 5ff.
7 Ibid.
8 Ṭabarī also interprets īmān as ṣalāt (Tafsīr 3III 167, 2, and the following traditions).
9 Cf. the versions in Mubarrad, Kāmil 891, apu. ff. > Murtaḍā, Amālī I 168, 14ff.; Ibn Qutayba,
ʿUyūn I 196, 9ff. after Madāʾinī; Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 235, apu. ff.; Tanūkhī, Nishwār al-
muḥāḍara II 205f.; Ibn al-Jawzī, Adhkiyāʾ 126, 8ff. after Ibn Buhlūl (d. 318/930); Rāghib al-
Iṣfahānī, Muḥāḍarāt al-udabāʾ II 83.
308 chapter 2
was a Wāṣiliyya for a long time to come.10 The story spread by Ibāḍite sources,
in which Wāṣil was defeated by his contemporary Abū ʿUbayda al-Tamīmī,11
is also pure legend; furthermore it focusses on the question of qadar.12 There
are no relevant titles of books, either,13 which is surprising as the Muʿtazilite
sources claim that in Wāṣil’s youth when he was Ḥasan’s pupil he debated with
Khārijites in the teak merchants’ mosque in Basra.14 But maybe this was only
a protective claim. Contemporary poems show that he – as well as ʿAmr – was
linked to the Khārijites with polemic intention;15 Baghdādī tells us that the
early Muʿtazilites were called makhānīth al-khawārij “the ‘soft-hearted’ among
the Khārijites”, because they spoke of eternal torments of hell for a mortal sin-
ner, but refused to call him an unbeliever or surrender him to be executed.16
Like the parallel existence of both groups in the Maghreb the duʿāt system al-
lows us to conclude a degree of kinship.17 There does not seem to have been a
confrontation at the time.
Could the Khārijite Wāṣil (Wāṣil al-shārī), of whom Sufyān al-Thawrī re-
ports that he came to Kufa to ask Abū Ḥanīfa to repent and then was chased
out by Manṣūr’s followers, be identical with Wāṣil? (Kawtharī, Taʾnīb al-
khaṭīb 97, –7ff.; the “followers of Manṣūr” were probably Abbasid sym-
pathisers.) Ḥanafite heresiographical tradition subsumes the Muʿtazila
under the Khārijites, e.g. in Abū Muṭīʿ al-Nasafī’s Radd 77, 11ff. (where
he calls it Muʿtaziliyya) and in the late Tadhkirat al-madhāhib (in: IIED
2/1975/127, 6ff.). Abū Muṭīʿ emphasised their political doctrine, which Ibn
al-Jawzī adopted from him (Talbīs Iblīs 19, apu. f.). The Tadhkira, on the
other hand, has an entire summary of Muʿtazilite dogmatics. We should
play with the idea that the Muʿtazila was, as it were, the left wing of the
Ibāḍiyya, comprising (or offering a home to) all the Qadarites whom the
Ibāḍites excluded gradually. Later developments in the second century
10 Ṣūrat al-arḍ 103, 2ff. Kramers.

12 Darjīnī, Ṭab. 246, 9ff.; Khamīs b. Saʿīd, Manhaj I 430, –5ff.
13 Of course it would be said later that Wāṣil refuted Murjiʾites, Khārijites and Jahm b.
Ṣafwān (Faḍl 163, –6f.), but that is only a sweeping generalisation.
14 Faḍl 235, 6ff.; also 235, 14ff. Abū ʿUmar al-Bāhilī’s (d. 300/913) claim that Wāṣil had com-
pleted refuting all his opponents at the age of 30 – i.e. around 110, at the time of Ḥasan’s
death – probably belongs in this context as well (Faḍl 241, 16f.).
15 See p. 273f. above for Isḥāq b. Suwayd al-ʿAdawī and Abū l-Ṭurūq al-Ḍabbī’s verses.
16 Farq 99, 1ff./119, 5ff. Unfortunately we do not know Baghdādī’s source. It might be a phrase
by Ashʿarī (cf. Gimaret, Ashʿarī 485, n. 21 after Simnānī).
17 See p. 387f. below and ch. C 7.7.1.
iraq 309
provide some evidence of this, but not more than would allow a working
hypothesis at most. Regarding the problem cf. also W. M. Watt, Was Wāṣil
a Khārijite? in: Festschrift Meier 306ff.
2.2.6.1.8 Wāṣil’s Political Views

Based on Baghdādī (who in turn may have drawn on Ibn al-Rēwandī), later
sources would link Wāṣil’s doctrine of the intermediate status to his opinion
on the first civil wars, or the companions of the prophet involved in them. This
is certainly wrong,1 but it is not easy to shed light on his true position. Later
Muʿtazilites liked to refer to him, but as his school never achieved complete
unity in fundamental political issues, his image in history is not uniform. Not
even ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd was always of the same opinion as he. ʿAmr stood in Ḥasan
al-Baṣrī’s tradition; himself a Basran and ʿUthmānite like Ḥasan. Wāṣil, on the
other hand, preferred ʿAlī;2 after all, he was in touch with the ʿAlids in Medina.
In order not to cause offence in Basra, he did not condemn ʿUthmān’s caliphate
either, with the consequence that according to his view the best man would
not necessary – or not immediately – become the ruler, a view later system-
atists called imāmat al-mafḍūl “(legitimate) rule of the less excellent candi-
date”. According to this doctrine the election was the determining criterion;
while the man elected to be caliph was not allowed to have a bad reputation
and had to possess a certain basic religious knowledge, he did not have to
excel over all others. People strove to prove this by means of the prophet’s own
actions,3 e.g. the Muʿtazila’s Baghdad school;4 it is not very likely that Wāṣil
himself already adorned his pro-Alid attitude with these considerations. There
is no theoretical text on this subject among the list of titles, and emphasis on
the election did not mean anything at the time when Wāṣil was active, i.e. dur-
ing the troubles before the Abbasid revolution.
Another difficulty is posed by a passage from Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s Mughnī,
according to which Wāṣil was already collecting arguments for Abū Bakr’s high
rank.5 The Qāḍī regarded this as a reaction to Shīʿite, presumably Rāfiḍite po-
lemic, but in Wāṣil’s time, this was in its earliest beginnings at best. The argu-
ments might have been collected by the Bakriyya which, as we have seen, may
1 Cf. Text 17 with commentary.

2 Text 13, c–d: after Jubbāʾī.
3 Text 12.
4 See ch. C 4.2.1.1 below.
5 Text 14.
310 chapter 2
have supported Abū Bakr;6 certainly there is no reason why they should not
have originated in Basra where there was not much affection for the Shīʿa. In
one place the text does seem archaic: Wāṣil is said to have supported an inter-
pretation of the term ahl al-bayt in sura 33:33 that harked back to the depths
of Medinan exegesis, but did not retain its influence later. The slightly clumsy
argumentum e contrario he evolved from it is also isolated.7 In any case, the
argument does not follow Shīʿite lines – which is surprising given his prefer-
ence for ʿAlī.
However, the argument was meant to demonstrate something else alto-
gether: that prophet’s companions must never be called mushrik or munāfiq.
Many more Quranic verses were adduced in support.8 One cause of this may
have been the recollection that Wāṣil did indeed wish to protect the ṣaḥāba’s
honour, impelled by his theology of compromise; he was, in fact, repeating the
early Murjiʾa’s experiment at a later stage. Like them, he took the civil war as his
starting point, touching the very nerve of his political thought. Instead of irjāʾ
he recommended wuqūf, but he meant the same thing. While it could be pre-
sumed that in the battle of the camel, where companions of the prophet were
fighting on both sides, one of the two parties was right, we do not know any
more, which one.9 Khayyāṭ did not hesitate to use the term arjaʾa in this con-
text: it is impossible to reconstruct events, consequently an evaluation must be
“deferred” to someone “who is an expert in the matter”.10 In the eyes of the early
Murjiʾa this meant someone who was actually present at the event.11 Now, two
to three generations later, it could only mean God; Wāṣil – or Khayyāṭ – was
expressing wa-llāhu aʿlam. Humans can only draw the consequence of “prac-
tising loyalty” (tawallā), i.e. regarding the actions of the respective ṣaḥāba
as correct and authoritative.12 There must be no doubt that ʿAlī became ca-
liph legally;13 ʿUthmān, too, does not become ambivalent until the last six
years of his caliphate.14 There is, however, an important reservation: if the
6 See p. 135f. above. In favour of this hypothesis would be that the comparison between
Abū Bakr and Abraham, at whom k hints, is documented in Aḥmad al-Hujaymī, who was
one of the Basran ascetics and close to the Bakriyya (see p. 110 and 113f. above; also Mīzān
no. 468).
7 Cf. Text 14, b–c with commentary. Wāṣil might just have met ʿIkrima to whom the inter-
pretation can be traced back.
8 Text 14, a.
9 Text 15, g.
10 Ibid., c.
11 See vol. I 195f. and 199f. above.
12 Text 15, h.
13 Text 16, b.
14 Text 15, a–c.
iraq 311
opposing parties appear together and “bear witness” to something, they must
not be believed, as clearly one of them has gone astray; but in other cases their
ʿadāla is not in danger.15 Wāṣil was thought to have compared this to liʿān,
where in a trial concerning a child’s paternity both the man and the woman
affirm their testimony by pronouncing a curse against one another. This is
another case when it is not possible to determine which of the two speaks
the truth; a certain taint will remain. Afterwards they would be accepted once
more as full members of the community, their testimony accepted unless they
appear together once again.16
What does this testimony refer to? The opponents in the battle of the camel
were long dead. Is it just a figure of speech without practical consequences?
Surely not. Wāṣil was not thinking of the protagonists only but also of their
parties. If Shīʿites and non-Shīʿites were accusing one another, this pulled
the ground from under their quarrel – as in a trial where there is not enough
evidence to arrive at a verdict. The question is whether he thought that they
should not be trusted if they were testifying together concerning something
else or a third party. In that case this consideration would also apply to the
judgment on ʿUthmān against whom ʿAlī as well as Ṭalḥa and Zubayr declared
themselves; this would then be as irrelevant as the quarrel among them. It
would also apply to legal decisions and hadiths on one and the same sub-
ject that go back to ʿAlī as well as Ṭalḥa or Zubayr. After all, pseudo-Nāshiʾ,
i.e. presumably Jaʿfar b. Ḥarb, adduces an example to the contrary, in which
the testimonies do not cancel each other out, namely “ʿAlī and Abū Hurayra”;17
which sounds very much like hadith. On the other hand Wāṣil did allow a judg-
ment of ʿUthmān, disapproving as he did of his last six years as caliph. This
was the point where ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd distanced himself from him.18 Madelung
is probably right to apply the advice of the sources to the testimony against
one another, not to joint testimony.19 Surprisingly there was criticism by two
grammarians, ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī (d. 117/735) and ʿĪsā b. ʿUmar
al-Thaqafī (d. 149/766), but they did not like Wāṣil as a Qadarite, either.20
None of this had anything to do with the theory of the manzila bayna
l-manzilatayn. Of course one of the parties had done wrong and thus become
15 Text 15, d and g–h; also 16, g, and 17, h.

16 Text 16, f., and the parallels listed in the commentary. Regarding liʿān itself cf. the Quranic
verses 24:6–9 quoted there; on the later juristic development HW 724f. s. v. Ṭalāḳ > EI2 V
730ff. s. v. Liʿān.
17 Text 16, g.
19 Qāsim 26.
312 chapter 2
fāsiq, but this was not what Wāṣil was driving at; in fact, he wanted to remove
this odium as far away from them as possible. For a fāsiq would go to the fires
of hell for eternity, and this was not a fate Wāṣil could countenance in the case
of a companion of the prophet. Madelung made this quite clear, contradict-
ing Nyberg.21 Still, everything depended on how the category of ṣaḥāba was
defined at the time. In Iraq – and possibly in the Hijaz as well – Muʿāwiya was
not counted among them. Consequently Wāṣil did not speak of Ṣiffīn, as ʿAlī
was justified in fighting Muʿāwiya.22 Here, too, Wāṣil stood in the Murjiʾite
tradition.23
What is interesting is that the “Muʿtazila”, which the Ḥanafite heresiog-

raphers counted among the Khārijites (see p. 308 above), abstained from
giving a verdict on the quarrel between ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya (Abū Muṭīʿ,
Radd 77, 12ff., with some illegible text; according to the parallel in Ibn
al-Jawzī, Talbīs Iblīs 19, apu. f., yatawallā and yatabarraʾuhum should be
corrected to natawallā and natabarraʾuhum).
2.2.6.1.9 Further Points of Doctrine

As we know, Shahrastānī formulated an overview of Wāṣil’s teachings in which
all five Muʿtazilite uṣūl were already mentioned;1 Madelung2 and Daiber3 ad-
opted this view. Gimaret on the other hand raised doubts4 – and probably with
justification: early sources contain no information on the subject at all. We do
not know what Wāṣil’s K. al-tawḥīd was about;5 it does not seem as if God’s
attributes were an issue for him. God’s relationship with the world, the ques-
tion of the creation, held no interest for him, either. When Ibn Mattōya claims
to know that Wāṣil spoke of the “mood” (kawn) of substance,6 we can leave it
at that, as it presupposes a systematic connection that had not been made in
21 Qāsim 24f.; cf. also the commentary on Text 17. For Nyberg’s view see his article Muʿtazila
in EI1 III 851 and his thoughts in: Classicisme et déclin culturel 127.
22 Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 153, 9f.
1 Milal 31, –5ff./64, 9ff.

2 Qāsim 7ff.
3 In: Actas Congresso UEAI, p. 386ff.
4 Livre des Religions 184ff., n. 6ff.
6 Tadhkira 450, apu.
iraq 313
Wāṣil’s time.7 The account in Warglānī is pure myth,8 as is an anecdote on the

subject by Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār.9 There is nothing to show that Wāṣil was any-
thing more than a Qadarite. The only question that leads us into more detail
is that of the relation between prophecy and free will. Wāṣil is said to have
emphasised that prophets, too, are not merely chosen by God but also choose
themselves to accept the gift (amāna) of the divine message entrusted to them
and to preserve it. God knows in advance that they will do this, but he does
not force them.10 This attitude was often found in the later Muʿtazila, too;11 it
may simply have been projected onto Wāṣil. However, the same question was
discussed in the Quaestiones under the name of Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. al-
Ḥanafiyya, and resolved in a similar way by the Qadarites attacked there.12
We also learn a few things from tafsīr works showing Muʿtazilite influence,
but usually on matters that would later move to the fringes of theological in-
terest. One subject to which some consideration was given at the time was the
nature of Adam’s paradise; we know this from other accounts as well.13 Like
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī before them Wāṣil and ʿAmr were of the opinion that Adam
lived in the same paradise into which the blessed would enter one day, a con-
clusion based on the fact that in sura 2:35 janna occurs with the article, thus
describing the well-known paradise jannat al-khuld.14 This implied that the
paradise promised to humans existed from the beginning of time; Ḍirār’s see-
ing them as one and the same thus became a problem.15 Ḥasan had already in-
terpreted sura 2:169 to mean that the martyrs live on in paradise; consequently
it must be their home before the Day of Judgment. Wāṣil and ʿAmr did not con-
tradict him.16 Criticism of their theory was probably based on different con-
siderations. People asked how Satan could have entered Adam’s paradise if it
was created as reward for good deeds, and stated that if Adam had been in the
7 It is not until Abū l-Hudhayl that the term occurs (see ch. C 3.2.3.1.1.4 below). Ibn Mattōya
discusses whether at the moment of coming into being, substance should be seen as pos-
sessing “mood” or rest or motion; he quotes Wāṣil as well as one of the “two Jaʿfars”; maybe
the latter was referring to Wāṣil.
8 Text 4; see p. 293f. above.
9 Faḍl 240, 9ff. > IM 35, 8ff.
10 Text 20.
11 Ibid., c.
12 Anfänge 35ff. § 2. Whether the use of the word amāna points to its being based on an
exegesis of sura 33:72 remains to be examined.
13 Cf. my essay in: Festschrift Abel 109ff.
14 Ṭabrisī, Majmaʿ I 85, 13ff.; briefer also Ṭūsī, Tibyān I 156, 8ff.
15 See ch. C 1.3.1.5.1 below.
16 Ṭūsī, Tibyān III 46, 7ff.; cf. also ibid. II 34, –8ff. regarding sura 2:154.
314 chapter 2
jannat al-khuld, the paradise of eternal duration, he could not have forfeited
it again. The answers have been transmitted: Satan may have approached Eve
from outside, and Adam’s paradise is transient and will become eternal only
once it is the reward for good deeds on earth. These may well be later specula-
tions, especially as Jubbāʾī and other even later Muʿtazilites adopted Ḥasan’s
and Wāṣil’s position.17 But the second answer sounds as if paradise had once
ceased to exist, in the time after Adam’s fall. Not even Ḍirār would have said
this of the jannat al-khuld; instead, he spoke of two different paradises. Maybe
Wāṣil did not interpret khuld to mean “eternity” but merely “long duration”.18
Another consideration, once again shared by Wāṣil and Ḥasan, refers to sura
2:25, which says of those who dwell in paradise: “Whenever they are provided
with fruits they shall say, ‘This is what we have been given to eat before’. They
shall be given fruits that resemble one another (closely).” He interpreted: fruit
we have been given before in paradise, not in our earthly lives, paradise re-
maining a unique place. However, to prevent the food being too monotonous
the blessed would be able to recognise that fruits “that resemble one another
(closely)” are in fact different.19
It is not quite clear where this information came from in the first place.
It is possible that it was found in Wāṣil’s K. maʿānī al-Qurʾān (Catalogue
of Works no. 7), but as Wāṣil was usually mentioned together with ʿAmr,
it might also have been transferred onto him from the latter’s edition of
Ḥasan’s Tafsīr. On the other hand, as Wāṣil did sometimes feature togeth-
er with Ḥasan and without ʿAmr (e.g. concerning the last-named point),
we might see this as evidence that he himself transmitted parts of Ḥasan’s
Tafsīr. Agreement also covers juristic issues. Like Ḥasan, Wāṣil and ʿAmr
considered the ʿumra to be as mandatory as the hajj, while the “Iraqis”,
Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī and his Kufan friends, thought it was merely a praise-
worthy custom (masnūna; Ṭūsī, Tibyān II 155, 2ff. with reference to sura
2:196). On the question in general cf. HW 766b s. v. ʿUmra. – Regarding
Wāṣil’s view of the punishment of the grave and other eschatological de-
tails see p. 348 below.
17 Cf. the passages referred to; also Ṭūsī, Tibyān IV 398, 5f. regarding sura 7:19.
18 Regarding khulūd in pre-Islamic poetry cf. G. Müller, Labīd 100f.; in those days, wealth
might still be regarded as khulūd, i.e. something that conveys duration. For more informa-
tion on the question cf. ch. D 3.
19 Ṭabrisī, Majmaʿ I 65, 15f.; also Ṭabarī, Tafsīr 3I 385ff.
iraq 315
2.2.6.1.9.1 Epistemological Issues

The very few pieces of information on epistemological issues occupy a special
place. While not all of them are definitely authentic, they touch the very nerve
of Muʿtazilite thought. The missionary movement guided by Wāṣil appealed
to people’s rational understanding rather than, as some later Sufi movements
with similar intentions would, to their emotions. It rings true when he was
later described as believing that understanding had to come before action, and
that doctrine evolved out of the two. He was said to have derived this from
the Quran: Moses was called in this way, God first revealing himself on Mount
Sinai, then commanding him to remove his sandals, and finally commanding
him to proclaim his message (sura 20:12). But of normal people it was said,
too: those who did not wish to come to harm must “believe” and “do what is
right”, and finally “enjoin upon one another to keep to the truth and be patient”
(sura 103:1–3).1 The last-named exegesis was conclusive only because “believe”
here meant “recognise God”,2 while the missionary “enjoin upon one another”
referred to truth, which is part of knowledge, and to patience, i.e. practical
implementation. It is no coincidence that Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī’s K. al-awāʾil re-
members Wāṣil as the first one to polemicise against those of different faiths,
building a foundation that would remain valid later as well.3 He presented
these writings in the form of quaestiones (masāʾil);4 they were apparently used
in this form by his duʿāt. After his death his Iraqi pupils sent a compilation of
these to their “brothers in the Maghreb”;5 his wife, Umm Yūsuf, who seems
to have outlived him by many years, was said to have given two containers
(qimaṭr) containing his kalām to Abū l-Hudhayl.6 Even though he held forth on
the subject of juristic differences of opinion (al-ikhtilāf fī l-futyā) – in which he
1 Text 19.
2 When Sharīf al-Murtaḍā adopted the account he noticed the difficulty, explaining “to be-
lieve” as “to consider to be true”, thus adding an intellectual note. However, the equation is
also found in Abū Ḥanīfa (cf. Text II 5, f–g) with reference to the abovementioned Quranic
collocation.
3 Awāʾil II 134, 2ff. after Jāḥiẓ, translated in Pines, Atomenlehre 126; also quoted by Bernand in:
SI 36/1972/26.
4 Faḍl 165, 11. If Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya’s refutation of the Qadarites is genuine,
the form as such would not have been original to him as he might have come across it in the
Hijaz (see p. 745 below).
5 The so-called K. al-Mashriqiyyīn min aṣḥāb Abī Ḥudhayfa ilā ikhwānihim bil-Maghrib which
contained several separate works (cf. the introduction to Catalogue of works IX).
6 Faḍl 241, 18f.; also p. 291 above.
316 chapter 2
was believed to be proficient – he claimed to do this purely in order to encour-

age awareness of religious questions.7
If tradition is to be trusted he elucidated the “principles” in a few core
sentences preserved in only slightly divergent form by both the Qāḍī ʿAbd al-
Jabbār and Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī.8 One of these9 lists the instrument of estab-
lishing religious truth, namely the subjects that would later be discussed in
uṣūl al-fiqh, which is indeed how this text was interpreted subsequently, when
it would be emended to make up the classic number of four uṣūl.10 However,
this stage had not been reached during Wāṣil’s lifetime. The consensus was
not apparently considered as a separate criterion, and qiyās had not taken on
a more definite form among the more general ijtihād,11 occurring simply as
“rational conclusion” or “intellectual argument”. The distinction between law
and theology was not yet being made in any case, as is also illustrated by the
two criteria to which Wāṣil devoted the greatest attention, namely the Quran
and khabar.
According to the same sentence, only Quranic verses that do not allow di-
vergent interpretations can be used as evidence, another instance of Wāṣil’s
abiding by his inclination to neutralise all quarrels between parties. However,
he was thwarted by the distinction between muḥkamāt and mutashābihāt
hinted at in sura 3:7 and brought to public notice by ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Yaḥyā,
the secretary of the last Umayyads.12 In his view the muḥkamāt, the “clearly
defined” verses were not simply all those passages of scripture that contained
a clear statement, but especially those which indicate that a certain crime will
result in eternal torments of hell, i.e. which tell us when a sinner is fāsiq. One
of these passages is sura 4:93, which speaks of premeditated murder and adds
“. . . hell will be his reward, and he will remain there forever”; this is not appli-
cable to lying or a lustful glance, which are consequently merely venial sins.
One must be cautious when judging the latter, as God did not “state clearly that
he will punish them”.13
7 Faḍl 236, 9ff. after Abū ʿAmr al-Zaʿfarānī and Abū ʿUmar Ḥafṣ b. al-ʿAwwām (to be read
thus!), who were both members of the circle of pupils (see p. 361f. and 371 below). The
phrase has a slightly apologetic tone, as if the study of al-ikhtilāf fī l-futyā had not been
very popular later.
8 Text 21.
9 Ibid., f.
10 Cf. the commentary on this sentence. Riḍwān al-Sayyid directly presumed that Shāfiʿī
reacted to this text in his Risāla (Al-umma wal-jamāʿa wal-sulṭa 148f.).
11 Text 12.
12 See vol. I 44 above; also Schöning, Sendschreiben 21.
13 Text 22.
iraq 317
Muqātil b. Sulaymān, a younger contemporary of Wāṣil’s, also illustrated

the word muḥkam using the catalogue of prohibitions in sura 6:151–53
(Wansbrough, Quranic Studies 177). It can only be concluded e contrario
that a “lustful glance” is reprehensible, as sura 24:30 and 49:3 recommend
to lower one’s glance demurely. There are innumerable verses that show
lying in a negative light, without, however, delimiting a concrete punish-
ment. Thus while sura 2:10 says that the munāfiqūn “must expect painful
punishment” for their falseness, a painful punishment does not necessar-
ily last forever.
The second concept that went against him was abrogation. Once again there
appears to have been an ongoing discussion for some time,14 but it may in-
deed be that he, as Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī said, was the first one to formulate the
theory to the effect that abrogation was possible only in the case of verses with
content relating to the law, not those with historical information.15 Treatises
by Zuhrī or Qatāda16 adhere to this principle, but do not state it explicitly. It
has also been linked to Khalīl;17 later it became common property among the
Sunnites.
Ṭabarī, Tafsīr 3II 472, 1ff.; Abū Muqātil al-Samarqandī, Al-ʿālim wal-
mutaʿallim 44, ult. ff.; regarding Farrāʾ cf. Wansbrough, Quranic Studies
197. Even Christians referred to this. Elias of Nisibis used it to refute the
vizier al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Maghribī when on the occasion of a confer-
ence in 417/1026 the latter pointed out to him that sura 2:59, in which
the Christians were promised a reward from God, had been abrogated by
sura 3:79 (Mashriq 20/1922/118, apu. ff.; regarding the wider context cf. Kh.
Samir in: Islamochristiana 3/1977/262).
Verses with juristic relevance could be distinguished by their linguistic form, the
words “commandment” and “prohibition” being used.18 Soon the naskh theory
would be linked to the distinction between assertive and imperative sentences,
khabar and amr.19 This general premise was presumably also known to Wāṣil,
but he was said to have been “the first” to point out that there were statements
14 See vol. I 39ff. above.

15 Text 21, e.
16 Cf. p. 254, n. 42 above.
17 Ṭūsī, Tibyān I 393, 2ff.
18 Text 21, e.
19 Ibid., b.
318 chapter 2
(akhbār) of specific and others of generic import on which their respective

probative force depends.20 The phrasing is worth a little consideration. Later
uṣūl al-fiqh, in which the last-named distinction played a major part,21 would
apply it equally to assertive and to imperative sentences,22 as was unavoidable
in juristic hermeneutics. Wāṣil, on the other hand, sounds as if he was think-
ing of assertive sentences only, as he speaks of their probative force and not
their scope of application. He was probably thinking in dogmatic rather than
juristic categories. Later, the Muʿtazila would repeatedly accuse the Murjiʾites
of applying Quranic statements that threaten all mortal sinners, such as all
murderers, with eternal torments of hell, to non-Muslims only.23 While Wāṣil,
too, had this in mind primarily,24 he would have proceeded in the same way as
with his definition of muḥkam and mutashābih.
“Statements” were of interest for him, not merely within the Quran where
they were backed by divine authority, but also elsewhere where their credibil-
ity required further proof. It was necessary, in his view, that those who made
the statement were not working hand in glove (tawāṭuʾ) or – if they were not
living in the same place – corresponding or communicating via messengers in
order to ensure their opinions carried more weight, nor must they have agreed
to name something as false.25 Basically these are different aspects of one and
the same criterion: statements must be made independently of others. It is
noticeable that their rigour on the logical and the substantive level is not even
being considered: what is being said is not important, only that several persons
agree on it. Or, as we read elsewhere: a sentence becomes an argument only by
consensus; i.e. it becomes proof only once several have spoken it or believe it.26
The approach is not dissimilar to the one that would be called tawātur in
hadith science later,26a but Wāṣil did not use that term or say anywhere that he
was thinking of hadith only. It is more likely that he was looking at consider-
ations that were applied when ascertaining the truth of traditions in Antiquity:
20 Ibid., b–d.

21 Cf. e.g., one among many, Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī, Muʿtamad 201ff.; Shīrāzī, Tabṣira 105ff.;
Goldziher, Ẓâhiriten 120ff.; Turki, Polémiques 84ff. etc. Also the PhD thesis by Abd al-Rafiʿi
Oyewumi Omotosho, The Problem of al-amr in uṣūl al-fiqh (Edinburgh 1984).
22 Cf. e.g. Shīrāzī, Ṭabṣira 105, 6f., and 110, 3ff.; Turki, Polémiques 86.
23 See ch. C 2.5.1, 3.2.1.3.3.1, and 5.1.1 below.
24 According to Ṭūsī, Tibyān II 588, pu., we would go back as far as Ḥasan al-Baṣrī in this
context.
25 Text 21, a; cf. my examination of the passage in: La notion d’ autorité au Moyen Age, ed.
G. Makdisi and J. et D. Sourdel, 213f. Regarding Aṣamm’s understanding see Text XIII 35.
26 Text 23, a.
26a Cf. e.g. the expression used by Jāḥiẓ in ʿUthmāniyya 116, 4f.
iraq 319
how can one be sure that there is a city named Alexandria if one has never
been there?27 Hadith was subsumed, but had not yet been perceived to be a
special case. Testimony was seen horizontally, within one single generation,
where contemporaries might be transmitting the same tradition in the same
place or exchange traditions over a greater distance, such as between Kufa and
Basra. The relevance of vertical testimony for hadith, through several genera-
tions into the past and documented by an isnād, had not yet entered people’s
field of vision. Wāṣil was still too close to the generation of the companions of
the prophet, which is probably why the idea that tawātur could automatically
confer truth, so to speak, was alien to him: the persons reporting might have
come to an agreement among themselves. In theory the community might
reach a consensus on error and lies; which would be a catastrophe indeed.28
It is obvious that sayings later called āḥād, isolated attested prophetic dicta,
did not provide sufficient proof to him. He probably did not yet think that they
need not be collected, and there is no hint of a confrontation with the support-
ers of hadith. Wāṣil himself was said to have transmitted hadith from Ḥasan
al-Baṣrī and others.29 He was even believed to have had pupils in this field.30 In
all probability there were not very many prophetic dicta at the time that met
his criteria and were transmitted along several lines in the same version; much
less serious attempts at arranging these parallels carefully. There is no small
irony in the fact that Wāṣil’s fame would later be corroborated by a poorly at-
tested and clearly apocryphal hadith: “There will be a man named Wāṣil in my
community, who will distinguish between true and false”.31
2.2.6.2 ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd

The sources are just as deceptive in the case of the second “church father” ʿAmr
b. ʿUbayd as for Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ. He became a part of general historical knowl-
edge, and was consequently mentioned everywhere, frequently complete with
his own biography, but the extant material is hardly substantial. We must dis-
tinguish between Muʿtazilite and non-Muʿtazilite tradition, although as with
Wāṣil the latter adopted much of the former through Jāḥiẓ.
27 Cf. van den Bergh’s remarks in: Averroes’ Tahafut al-Tahafut II 16 ad p. 16.5.
28 Text 23, b.
29 Mīzān IV 329, 13; also Faḍl 241, –5ff.
30 Faḍl 90, 13; also p. 364 below.
31 Faḍl 234, 1ff. > IM 29, 9ff.: after Ibn Yazdādh’s K. al-maṣābīḥ with an isnād passing through
ʿAlī. For another hadith of this kind cf. Faḍl 241, pu. f. (the text appears to be corrupted).
320 chapter 2
In his Bayān Jāḥiẓ listed a number of ʿAmr’s zuhd dicta which he pre-
served because of the beautiful language in which they were composed;
he saw ʿAmr mainly as an ascetic with a remarkable rhetorical gift. In the
Muʿtazila, biographical tradition began with Kaʿbī’s K. al-maqālāt, which
looks at ʿAmr – as well as Wāṣil – twice: among the true Muʿtazilites
(p. 68, 7ff.) and then among the Basrans, together with many “sympathis-
ers” of the movement (p. 90, pu. ff.). He relied on diverse groups of sourc-
es; the second passage being the result of pro-Muʿtazilite sifting of early
jarḥ wal-taʿdīl texts, in particular the Qadarite lists. He included no theo-
logical material to speak of. This is also true of Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (Faḍl
242, 1ff.) where ʿAmr is described as an ascetic above all. This may be the
reason why Ibn al-Murtaḍā, against his usual practice, adopted hardly
anything from ʿAbd al-Jabbār (Ṭab. 35, 13ff.). Besides much corresponding
material Sharīf al-Murtaḍā also included some independent texts which
may have been adopted from Khayyāṭ (Amālī I 165ff.). Masʿūdī, too, stood
in the Muʿtazilite tradition (Murūj VI 208ff./IV 156 § 2418ff.). He also dis-
cussed ʿAmr in his K. al-maqālāt fī uṣūl al-diyānāt (ibid. VI 212, 7f./IV 158,
–4; regarding his works cf. Khalidi, Islamic Historiography 157).
Among the non-Muʿtazilite literature the heresiographers must be
treated as a separate group. Some of them, e.g. Malaṭī or Pazdawī, do
not mention ʿAmr as a Muʿtazilite at all. The first one to study him in
any detail under this aspect was Baghdādī, who distinguished a separate
school, the ʿAmriyya (Farq 100, ult. ff./120ff.), while Shahrastānī subsumed
ʿAmr into the Wāṣiliyya (Milal 33, –4f./69, 1f.; cf. also Gimaret, Livre 189,
n. 33). He also emphasised that ʿAmr was mainly a traditionist and be-
came known as an ascetic (34, 7f./70, 5). As asceticism was a positive trait,
non-Muʿtazilite sources often ignored it or only mentioned it in passing.
The main emphasis was on ʿAmr the traditionist, but he was described
as a Qadarite who bore the consequences of his conviction, ultimately
being boycotted by the orthodox aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s
school. The relevant material was collected, among others, by Fasawī
(d. 277/890), Maʿrifa II 259ff.; by ʿAbdallāh b. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 290/
903), K. al-sunna 131ff.; ʿUqaylī (d. 322/934), Ḍuʿafāʾ III 277ff.; Dāraquṭnī
(d. 385/995), Akhbār ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd; Lālakāʾī (d. 418/1071), Sharḥ uṣūl
iʿtiqād ahl al-sunna 737ff.; al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. 463/1071), TB XII
166ff.; later especially by Dhahabī (Mīzān no. 6404; cf. also Taʾrīkh al-
Islām VI 107ff. and Siyar VI 104ff.) and Shāṭibī (Iʿtiṣām I 185, 6ff.). I have
discussed the majority of these reports in Traditionistische Polemik gegen
ʿAmr b. ʿUbaid (Beirut 1967) following Dāraquṭnī’s text; here they will be
considered mainly in chs. 2.2.6.2.5–6 and 2.2.7. Some of them have also
iraq 321
been reviewed in Nagel, Rechtleitung und Kalifat 321ff. Interestingly, the

earliest Ṭabaqāt works were not aware of this material. Ibn Saʿd included
one brief, critical note (Ṭab. VII2 33, 1ff.); Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ, although liv-
ing in Basra, did not give ʿAmr even an entry in his Ṭabaqāt. – One biogra-
phy which is comparatively independent of these polemical notes is Ibn
Khallikān’s, Wafayāt III 460ff. no. 503.
2.2.6.2.1 Biographical Data

Hardly anything would later be remembered of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s biography,
which makes it all the more remarkable that a few detailed records of his ori-
gins are extant. As they refer to his status as a mawlā and his foreign ancestry,
there is some suspicion that they were only used as evidence supporting the
theory that all heresy in Islam came from non-Arabs.1 This does not mean au-
tomatically that the information is unsound, but it would provide a reason why
it was preserved and why this subject was of particular interest. However, they
are in competition with other reports which are not really compatible with
these, reports which were listed directly under the name of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s
father and were usually not linked to the information about ʿAmr himself. I
have discussed the interrelations elsewhere2 and am thus able to limit myself
to the main points here.
According to the first strand of tradition ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s father ʿUbayd b. Bāb
was a weaver who joined the municipal military police force in Basra, where
he rose to the position of doorkeeper for the governor al-Ḥakam b. Ayyūb b.
al-Ḥakam al-Thaqafī during Ḥajjāj’s term in office. The grandfather Bāb was be-
lieved to have been one of the prisoners of war brought to Sīstān and finally to
Basra by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Samūra from his campaigns in the region of Kabul
in the mid-forties. Consequently he would originally have been a slave, but he
was presented as a donkey driver who had a shop (dukkān) in the city in his
own name, attested by a verse addressed by Farazdaq to a donkey driver called
Bāb. Bāb was said to have been a mawlā of the āl ʿArāda3 who were part of
the Balʿadawiyya, the latter being the descendants of an ʿAdawite woman who
had had three sons with a certain Mālik b. Ḥanẓala of the Tamīm, and conse-
quently part of the Tamīm as well. As reference point for clientships we thus
have, depending on the source, besides the āl ʿArāda, the Banū l-ʿAdawiyya,
the Tamīm or, named after the son of the ʿAdawite woman from whom the āl
ʿArāda were descended, the Yarbūʿ b. Mālik.
1 Festschrift Meier 61 and 66f.; also Jāḥiẓ, Radd ʿalā l-Naṣārā in: Rasāʾil III 315, ult. f.
2 In: MUSJ 50/1984/733ff.
3 More probably thus than ʿArrāda; ʿarāda means “locust”.
322 chapter 2
While this is a comparatively coherent image that only fragmented in later

tradition, there are some problematic issues, namely: (1) there is no proof that
the person named Bāb in Farazdaq’s verse was ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s grandfather;
the brief scholion Ibn al-ʿArabī interpolated does not mention this, but this
verse is the only source for the claim that Bāb was a donkey driver. (2) Donkey
drivers not only had low social standing, but they were not taken seriously
when it came to their moral and religious integrity, their ʿadāla. As late as the
second half of the second century, i.e. after ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s death, it was pos-
sible for a state official to deny them, together with the weavers (!), the right
to testify as witnesses.4 ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s father and grandfather would thus be
antisocial elements. (3) This connection to the authorities was considered un-
savoury, especially as ʿUbayd helped support Ḥajjāj’s unjust regime. The status
of pariah already evident from his profession as a weaver was aggravated in
this way: he was a mere doorkeeper, but in addition a minion of the dictator-
ship. (4) The belief mentioned above, that heresy and “innovation” were due
to foreign influence, takes on the more concrete form that in particular the
descendants of prisoners of war or of female slaves taken as spoils of war were
the ones causing disorder in the community. This was already the case among
the Israelites, as Sufyān b. ʿUyayna transmitted from ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr (d.
94/713); he himself (d. 196/811) gave this as the explanation of the raʾy practice
in the jurisprudence of his time.5
The most important texts in this first strand of transmission are: Sharīf
al-Murtaḍā, Amālī I 169, 7ff.; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 482, 15ff.; TB XII 188, 6ff.
It is interesting that Murtaḍā, who is part of the Muʿtazilite tradition, ad-
opted parts of his material from Jāḥiẓ and Kaʿbī, which suggests that even
among Muʿtazilites knowledge of the actual events had been lost early
on, and the derogatory intention of these reports in particular was not
understood anymore. Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s biography of ʿAmr (in Faḍl
242, 1ff.) mentioned none of all this.
The second strand of transmission ran within the jarḥ wal-taʿdīl literature.
According to these texts, ʿUbayd b. Bāb was a client of Abū Hurayra’s, transmit-
ting hadith from the latter as well. Some of it he handed down to ʿAbdallāh
b. ʿAwn (d. 151/768), a contemporary of ʿAmr’s and his fellow-student under
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. This tradition contains no information on Bāb. ʿUbayd would
have had to establish his connection with Abū Hurayra before 58/678, which

5 See p. 170 above.
iraq 323
is the most probable date of the latter’s death. He might have been a slave
originally; his name ʿUbayd (not ʿUbaydallāh!) could indicate this. He would
have had to be quite young at the time; the succession of generations between
him and his son ʿAmr as well as to ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn is not too long to render it
impossible. The information was probably gathered from isnāds and the con-
nection with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd interpreted retrospectively. Bukhārī (d. 256/870)6
and by Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 327/938) assumed it,7 but Fasawī (d. 277/890)8
and Ibn Mākūlā (d. 475/1095) rejected it with reference to a judgment by Yaḥyā
b. Maʿīn (d. 233/847);9 Dhahabī, however, still maintained it.10 It is not surpris-
ing that it was controversial: anyone who was aware of the first strand of tradi-
tions could not accept it. Furthermore the next generation regarded ʿAbdallāh
b. ʿAwn as one of ʿAmr’s main opponents in the qadar debate,11 believing that
he boycotted ʿAmr, and would consequently have found it difficult to admit
that he could have transmitted hadith from his father.
How uncertain everything was is also illustrated by the different sequences
of names found for ʿAmr: ʿAmr b. Kaysān b. Bāb12 or ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd b. Kaysān
b. Bāb.13 If the former was not a mistake in the tradition, then not even the
“canonical” form of the name ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd would be beyond doubt. Further
notes on kinship ties do not offer any help here. Makḥūl al-Nasafī’s (d. 318/930)
Luʾluʾiyyāt mention a brother of ʿAmr’s named Yaʿlā b. ʿUbayd14 who also seems
to have been found elsewhere.15 In Hārūn b. Ḥātim’s Taʾrīkh we read that a
certain Yaʿlā b. ʿUbayd was born in 117 in the laylat ʿArafa, the night before 9
Dhū l-Ḥijja (= 30 Dec. 735)16 which would make ʿAmr considerably older than
his brother. Still, the person referred to here may be the traditionist Abū Yūsuf
Yaʿlā b. ʿUbayd al-Ṭanāfisī from Kufa, d. 209/824–25.17 We also read about his
6 Taʾrīkh III1 443 no. 1442.

7 Al-jarḥ wal-taʿdīl III1 402 no. 1863.
8 Maʿrifa II 126, 5f.
9 Ikmāl I 161, ult. f.
10 Mushtabih 37, 7, and Mīzān no. 5414.
12 Bukhārī III2 353, 4 .
13 IAH III1 246, 12f.
14 MS Aya Sofya 4801 (cf. GAS 1/601f.). Unfortunately I did not make a note of the folio number.
15 Faḍl 250, 12 = Text X 4; also Ibn Abī ʿAwn, Al-ajwiba al-muskita 13 no. 60, but without giving
a name.
16 RAAD 53/1978/139, 5f.
17 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 401 no. 1312, and Mīzān no. 9838. He should also be considered for tradi-
tions in Malaṭī, Tanbīh 85, 19/111, –7, and Qaysī, Adab al-qāḍī 23, 7. Regarding his brother
Muḥammad cf. Mīzān no. 7917.
324 chapter 2
nephew (ibn akh) Faḍāla who was said to have fomented opposition against
ʿAmr in the latter’s own lectures;18 he might have been a son of the abovemen-
tioned brother. Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār mentioned a brother-in-law (ʿadīl) named
ʿAbd al-Salām b. Muhājir al-Anṣārī,19 but no further information is known
about him, either. ʿAmr was also brother-in-law to Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ who had mar-
ried one of his sisters.20 The kunyas Abū ʿUthmān (frequent references) and
Abū Marwān21 lead us to conclude that he may have had sons of these names.
Muʿtazilite biographical tradition presumed that he was born in the same year
as Wāṣil, 80/699.22 Maybe he did not come from Basra at all; he was reported
to have said that he grew up in Sīrāf and was an “assistant” (ghulām) there.23
The date of his death is usually given as either 143 or 144, 143 being found
in Bukhārī24 and Zakariyyāʾ b. Yaḥyā al-Sājī (d. 308/920–21),25 while Ibn Saʿd,26
Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ,27 Azdī,28 Ibn al-Nadīm,29 Masʿūdī,30 Murtaḍā,31 and vari-
ous authorities32 cited in Taʾrīkh Baghdād favoured 144. The explanation for
this discrepancy is probably that ʿAmr died on the way home from the hajj.33
Consequently he would have left Basra before Dhū l-Ḥijja 143, and never re-
turned. As he was buried in Marrān, four days’ journey from Mecca,34 it is
probable that his death took place early in 144. This would agree with Kaʿbī’s
remark that al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s brother Ibrāhīm attempted his uprising in
Basra one year after ʿAmr’s death.35 There is no doubt that ʿAmr was not alive
18 TB XII 177, 16f.

19 Faḍl 248, –6; the same anecdote but without the name in Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 142, 9.
21 Kulīnī, Kāfī I 170, –7.
22 Cf. Murtaḍā, Amālī I 169, 15 after Khayyāṭ; Fihrist 203, 10f. after Kaʿbī; TB XII 187, 11. Cf.
p. 271 above.
23 Faḍl 243, 6f., albeit in the context of a legend. Regarding the Muʿtazilite community in
Sīrāf see ch. C 7.5 below.
24 Taʾrīkh III2 353, 2.
25 TB XII 186, 10ff., probably after his K. al-ḍuʿafāʾ (cf. ʿUmarī, Mawārid al-khaṭīb 324ff.).
26 VII2 33, 1ff.
27 Taʾrīkh 647, 11.
28 Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 181, 3.
29 Fihrist 203, 13.
30 Murūj VI 212, 1/IV 158, 11, and VII 234, 9/V 22, –7.
31 Amālī I 169, 16 after Khayyāṭ.
32 TB XII 187, 1ff. after a “book” by the philologist Abū ʿUbayd; 187, 5f. after Wāqidī; 186, 19ff.
after Haytham b. ʿAdī; 186, 17f. after Abū Nuʿaym etc.
33 Fihrist 203, 13.
34 TB XII 187, 10; Yāqūt s. v. Marrān; Ḥarbī, Manāsik 601, 4ff.
35 Maq. 119, –4f.
iraq 325
anymore during this uprising,36 and the date of 145/762 for his death given by
Masʿūdī, Murūj VI 212, 2/IV 158, 12, is definitely too late, as is, obviously, 148/765,
quoted after Ibn Ḥanbal in TB XII 187, 17f. 142/759, as Bukhārī37 and TB XII 186,
5f. and 8f. note, is probably too early because of the meeting with Manṣūr.38
The report that it was Sulaymān b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbbās who spoke
the prayer for the dead over ʿAmr39 is certainly wrong, as Sulaymān died in
Jumādā II 142/October 759 in Basra.40
ʿAmr is reported to have been a weaver (nassāj) by profession, but the report
is late41 and may just have been transferred onto him as this was his father’s
profession.42 If true, this would provide a further link to Wāṣil. We also read
that he owned a house which he rented to palm leaf braiders, asking for only
one dinar in rent out of scrupulousness.43 Ibn al-Nadīm furthermore recorded
the information that he was of medium height.44
2.2.6.2.2 Political Decisions

On two occasions ʿAmr’s life came in contact with political events; during Yazīd
III’s caliphate and in the time of Manṣūr, when the sources pay him more in-
depth attention. He appears to have taken Yazīd’s side quite openly; Shahrastānī
described him as the caliph’s dāʿī.1 In retrospect he would defend this decision,
reacting to the increasing glorification of ʿUmar II, the only Umayyad caliph
to have retained his reputation even in the Abbasid period, to an extent that
he threatened to obscure Yazīd III’s memory: Yazīd practised justice, starting
with himself; he killed his cousin (i.e. Walīd II) obeying God’s commandment;
he cut his fellow clan members’ (i.e. the Umayyads’) ʿaṭāʾ as much as they had
previously cut that of their subjects, and he accepted a certain condition in
his government declaration (ʿahd), namely that he would resign if it should
be asked of him. In summary, he spoke like Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (who had been
dead for one and a half decades by that time).2 The Umayyads are seen as “the
36 Ibid. 119, 10f.; also p. 327 below.

37 See n. 24 above.
41 Mīzān III 279, 12 after Fasawī, but not in the extant part of his K. al-maʿrifa wal-taʾrīkh.
43 Faḍl 248, 13ff., and Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd, ShNB III 156, 1f.
44 Fihrist 209, 11.
1 Milal 17, 15/29, 5.

2 Kaʿbī 117, 7ff. > IM 120, 12ff. (abridged).
326 chapter 2
powerful” here, the tyrants (al-jabābira); ʿAmr was thought to have called the
Syrians in general fāsiqūn.3 He criticised Nāfiʿ, ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar’s mawlā, who
had an excellent reputation in the Hijaz as a traditionist and whom he proba-
bly met in person,4 for his opinion that everything the caliph said in the pulpit
was irrevocable commandment (farīḍa).5 From Ḥasan al-Baṣrī he transmitted
the hadith “If you see Muʿāwiya in the pulpit then kill him!” During the last
years of Umayyad rule, this could only be understood as legitimation of Yazīd’s
coup. Tellingly, Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, Basran contemporary and opponent who
disapproved of Walīd II’s murder,6 believed it to be falsified.7
It remains unclear how ʿAmr acted in individual cases. It was known – and
viewed with surprise – that he did not appear before ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar b. ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz, Yazīd III’s governor, together with Wāṣil.8 The Qadarite interlude was
soon over, with barely any time for activity.9 Later he would be accused of not
having seized the moment, of having been a “coward”,10 but he had probably
realised that it was necessary to broaden the base beyond Basra. He started
corresponding with Ibn Shubruma, the influential jurist from Kufa (72/691–
144/761);11 ʿAmr called him to jihād based on the commandment of amr bil-
maʿrūf wal-nahy ʿan al-munkar, but Ibn Shubruma declined – interestingly, in
verse: amr bil-maʿrūf being only an opus supererogationis from which those
who were not able to perform it were excused. Certainly it must not be en-
forced with the sword.
3 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 283, 10ff.

4 He died in 117/735; but ʿAmr probably visited the Hijaz together with Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (see
p. 295 above).
5 Kaʿbī, Qabūl al-akhbār 63, 15ff.
6 Agh. VII 82, 10f.
7 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 132, apu. ff. no. 818; TB XII 181, 16ff.; Dhahabī, Siyar VI 105, 4f.; Suyūṭī, Laʾālī
I 425, 5ff. Suyūṭī also included other isnāds previously (424, –4ff.). The Meccan Qadarite
ʿAbbād b. Kathīr transmitted a similar saying (Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 108, –8f.; regarding him
see p. 731ff. below). Instead of fa-qtulūhu “then kill him”, he opposing side tried to read
fa-qbalūhu “accept it gladly”.
8 Balādhurī, Ansāb 90 a, –9ff.; abridged IKh III 460, –4ff. Regarding the event see p. 277
above.
11 Regarding him see EI2 III 938 s. n.; Shīrāzī, Ṭabaqāt 84, 4ff.
iraq 327
Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt III 91, apu. ff.; slightly different also ibid. 123,
–6ff. Historical context is rather vague in all these accounts. One might
even consider the time before al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s uprising, but ʿAmr was
standing back at the time (see below), and neither of the two lived to see
the actual uprising. – When ʿAmr spoke of the duty of amr bil-maʿrūf, he
probably supported it with sura 3:21 which speaks of the “call to justice”
(amr bil-qisṭ) (cf. Faḍl 242, pu. f., with Ṭūsī, Tibyān II 422, –4f.). When
some mountain-dwellers complained to him of all the injustices the au-
thorities were committing, he is said to have advised them to rebel, say-
ing “Die honourably!” (ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 283, 3ff. > Mīzān III 278, 1ff.).
2.2.6.2.2.1 The Relationship with Manṣūr

After the Abbasid victory ʿAmr continued to stay quiet, coming in contact with
them only towards the end of his life, in the time of Manṣūr. This was con-
nected to the prelude to al-Nafs al-zakiyya and his brother Ibrāhīm’s uprising.
Tradition greatly exaggerated the importance of the meeting between ʿAmr
and the caliph, and Islamic scholarship believed this view for a long time, H.
S. Nyberg seeing ʿAmr as “Manṣūr’s trusted friend” who became the caliph’s
“spiritual father in a way”,1 and W. M. Watt being sure that due to his reputa-
tion as an ascetic ʿAmr was “known at al-Manṣūr’s court, apparently speaking
fearlessly to the caliph on religious and moral issues, declining all payment”.2
Originally, however, it had not been about Manṣūr respecting ʿAmr and asking
his advice; on the contrary, he suspected him of conspiracy and his followers of
subversive activities. It is well-nigh impossible to reconstruct the circumstanc-
es; after all, the uprising failed, and it could only be in the Muʿtazila’s interest
to present itself as entirely loyal to the state, all the more since it had supported
the rebellion after ʿAmr’s death. Individual accounts reflect attempts at justify-
ing or criticising this decision rather than the actual situation.
Of course ʿAmr’s not being alive during the uprising itself presupposes
that the date of his death is actually correct. Still, Kaʿbī states explicitly
that until ʿAmr’s death the Muʿtazila “did not rebel” (mā kharajat; cf. Maq.
110, ult. > Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 228, 12). This was precisely why the
prophecy that Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh was the “innocent blood” to lose
his life by the oil stones could later be ascribed to him – a vaticinatio ex
eventu which acquired meaning only once he himself was not there to
1 EI1 III 852a, s. v. Muʿtazila.

2 EI2 I 454a s. n. ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.
328 chapter 2
support it any more (Faḍl 226, 15ff. after his pupil ʿUthmān b. al-Ḥakam
al-Thaqafī; regarding him see p. 370 below). Later (?) the saying would
circulate as hadith (Ibn ʿInaba, ʿUmdat al-ṭālib 105, 8f.).
When Manṣūr visited the Hijaz during his pilgrimage in 140, he imprisoned
ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥasan who had been the head of the ʿAlids for a long time;
it seems that a spy had informed him of the latter’s agreement to his sons’
Muḥammad and Ibrāhīm’s planned overthrow.3 And indeed, some time later
the former – namely al-Nafs al-zakiyya – appeared in Basra to sound out the
prospects of such a venture. He was said to have stayed for six days only, then
the city became too hot for him, for Manṣūr reacted quickly, appearing in the
city – with impressive escort, one would assume – and setting up camp by the
great bridge (al-jisr al-akbar).4 This was the sign for the Muʿtazila, or so Abū
l-Hudhayl heard from Zaʿfarānī, Wāṣil’s pupil,5 to persuade ʿAmr to visit the
caliph and profess his loyalty.6 ʿAmr is said to have agreed only reluctantly, but
this is probably the interpretation of a generation whose main concern was to
show that his not very heroic realism was not only – and maybe not primarily –
his own idea.
For there were many who shook their heads at this decision. Pro-ʿAlid cir-
cles pointed out that ʿAmr had a considerable following: “If he took his san-
dal off,7 30,000 took their sandals off”. These same circles also reported that
he had already prevaricated with al-Nafs al-zakiyya;8 that his caution was not
only due to the need of retreating before the caliph’s show of force. Among the
Muʿtazilites themselves it would later be said that at that time as well as Yazīd’s,
the loyalty of the 30,000 did not really amount to much. A certain Ayyūb al-
Qazzāz, maybe one of ʿAmr’s own followers, accused him of looking on and
doing nothing while his dīn, the ideal of religious order he was committed to,9
3 Cf. EI2 456 s. n. ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥasan and III 983ff. s. n. Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh. A more literary
description of al-Manṣūr’s ruse may be found in the Livre des Ruses translated by R. Khawam
(p. 201ff.).
4 As opposed to the “smaller bridge” (al-jisr al-aṣghar); it crossed the Tigris. Cf. Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī,
Khiṭaṭ al-Baṣra 158.
5 Regarding him see p. 361f. below; identified incorrectly in Muth, Der Kalif al-Manṣūr 315f.,
n. 963.
6 Ṭabarī III 148, 17ff.
7 A gesture of outrage; taking off one’s shoe meant revoking one’s oath of loyalty (Goldziher,
Abhandlungen I 47f.).
8 Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, Maqātil al-Ṭālibiyyīn 209, 3ff.
9 Regarding the concept of dīn cf. Nagel, Staat und Glaubensgemeinschaft I 14ff.; also p. 294
above, and ch. D 4 below).
iraq 329
was dwindling, when 30,000 would have risen up at his command, whereup-
on ʿAmr replied resignedly that only three were still serious about it.10 Both
these accounts are probably dependent on one another. What is interesting
is that they feature large numbers, which would presume that the Muʿtazila
was not only a religious community but also a political combat organisation
made up out of militant groups of the type of the later aḥdāth.11 Manṣūr had
good reason to appear slightly nervous before the uprising.12 A Muʿtazilite re-
port has him express the concern that in case ʿAmr should take the side of the
ʿAlids, not only would Basra be lost, but with it also Mecca, Medina, Bahrain,
the Yamāma, Yemen, Ahwāz, Fārs and Khorāsān – perhaps a reference to the
network of Muʿtazilite communities and its concomitant ability of deploying
armed groups with the same orders in a variety of places.13
Manṣūr’s show of force in Basra took place in the year 142,14 consequently
Balādhurī is correct to date his conversation with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd to the same
year, too.15 After his brother’s brief visit, Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh probably began
his active canvassing in Basra only in 143.16 Consequently it is not surpris-
ing that ʿAmr was not mentioned among those who met him and offered him
refuge. He was not believed to have regarded Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh as the
mahdī,17 which was no surprise in Basra, but it was probably of only minor
importance in the context of his political decision.
In numerous later accounts, especially non-Muʿtazilite sources, this core
event has been covered up beyond recognition. The political background is
10 Ṭabarī III 149, 7ff.; cf. p. 293f. above. His followers’ dissatisfaction is also obvious in Abū
l-Faraj’s account, Maqātil 246, –7ff. (where Abū l-Hudhayl is included in the isnād under
his ism).
11 Of course this is a topos, too, as illustrated by the parallel mentioned. When his 10,000 fol-
lowers were pointed out to ʿĪsā b. Zayd, Zayd b. ʿAlī’s son, he, too, was reported to have said
that he would be glad if as many as 300 actually followed him in an emergency (Maqātil
418, 7ff.). Tradition had Ḥasan al-Baṣrī refer to ʿAmr as the sayyid shabāb ahl al-Baṣra (TB
XII 170, 10f. and passim), but this was in a slightly different context.
12 Cf. Lassner in: SI 50/1979/25ff. and Shaping of ʿAbbāsid Rule 81ff.; also Kennedy, Abbasid
Caliphate 67ff.
13 Faḍl 246, 1ff.; Ibn al-Murtaḍā’s report (40, 6ff.) that al-Manṣūr himself recognised the
weakness of the Muʿtazilite cadres is of late origin and presumes excessive regard for ʿAmr
on the caliph’s part.
14 Dīnawarī, Akhbār ṭiwāl 384, 2.
15 Ansāb III 231, 6f. Dūrī; cf. also IKh III 461, pu. ff.
16 This tradition is not entirely assured (cf. T. Nagel in: Der Islam 46/1970/241 after the K.
Muḥammad wa-Ibrāhīm ibnay ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥasan by ʿUmar b. Shabba, 175/791–262/876).
17 Faḍl 226, 15f.
330 chapter 2
barely visible, while ʿAmr is given plenty of opportunity for paraenesis. This
corresponds to a popular cliché: an ascetic – which ʿAmr, of course, was – was
expected to appeal to a ruler’s conscience.18 The discrepancy goes so far as to
make us wonder whether, once the caliph did not have to fear the Muʿtazila as
a political factor, there was a second encounter in which he was rather more
forthcoming. Balādhurī did indeed presume this when he followed his report
of the conversation in 142 with an account from a different authority which
reported an audience during the hajj of 144.19 But besides the fact that, if our
deliberations on the date of ʿAmr’s death are correct, this would be too late,20
there are other observations which also make this a questionable repetition,
such as that the scene is not always the same in the different versions: in-
stead of a meeting during the hajj one mentions an encounter in Kufa, i.e. the
Hāshimiyya palace at the time that Manṣūr had his subjects swear loyalty to
his son al-Mahdī,21 another one even in Baghdad but on the same occasion,22
or indeed – and this is quite frequent – locates the second encounter by the
great bridge in Basra as well.23 In this last case we are clearly looking at a more
elaborate version of the meeting in 142, but none of these accounts contain de-
finitive dates. Furthermore, there are some irritating anachronisms: it was not
until 147 that Manṣūr replaced ʿĪsā b. Mūsā, the successor appointed by his pre-
decessor, with his son al-Mahdī;24 consequently he could not have demanded
loyalty to the latter during ʿAmr’s lifetime. And Baghdad, named among other
places in this version, had not even been built at the time.25 The story was not
told to supplement the traditions discussed above, but in order to supersede
them, as revealed clearly in the version located by the great bridge. Manṣūr,
having humiliated ʿAmr in political matters, must now at least show humil-
ity himself in religious and moral matters; we are looking at, as with so many
things in this context, a process of compensation.
We also recognise this because the political context is never left out entirely,
with repeated reference to a letter from Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh or even his
18 A series of reports of a meeting between Manṣūr and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq grew up in Shīʿite
tradition, which recall those described here in some points.
19 Ansāb III 231, 14ff.
20 The account claims that ʿAmr died at the end of 144 after he had completed the pilgrimage.
21 Ansāb III 231, –7ff.
22 Ibid. and TB XII 166, 16ff.; also 166, 10f., and 170, 4ff., as well as Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 201,
8ff.
23 Ansāb III 232, ult. ff.; TB XII 169, 12ff.; Faḍl 246, 3ff.
24 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 654, 2. Cf. also Kennedy, Abbasid Caliphate 91ff. and ch. C 1.2.1 below.
25 The city would be founded in 147/762 (see ch. C 1 below). It is only due to this anachro-
nism that ʿAmr made it into the Taʾrīkh Baghdād at all.
iraq 331
father to ʿAmr because of which Manṣūr took him to task even in the more
factual versions,26 and also in accounts which are part of the collection of not
primarily paraenetic traditions discussed above.27 It is controversial whether
the letter was genuine, or whether it might in fact have originated in the ca-
liph’s chancellery;28 ʿAmr distanced himself from it but refused to swear loy-
alty, and declined a gift.29 All of which may be purely literary; Manṣūr was said
to have already used the ruse of a falsified letter with ʿAbdallāh b. Ḥasan, too.30
But we may be permitted to assume that all further embroidery started at this
point and was thus ultimately based on a recollection of the political situation,
which would allow us to arrange the extant versions into those which discuss
the letter and the subsequent hearing briefly and in the style of a historian;31
others which, in adab style, display the conversation in epic detail while con-
sidering the letter mainly as paraenesis;32 still others in which ʿAmr’s position
as a preacher is so important that the letter is not mentioned at all;33 and fi-
nally those that select passages, once again mainly of a paraenetic nature, from
this composition, denuding the event of every vestige of history.34
The accounts try to achieve particular credibility by quoting eyewitnesses,
thus effectively proving themselves to be false, as different witnesses claim
to have observed the identical events in different places. Rabīʿ b. Yūnus, al-
Manṣūr’s chamberlain (ḥājib), was drafted as having been present at the
26 Cf. e.g. Ansāb III 231, 8ff.

27 Faḍl 246, 1ff. – Cf. also Text X 2, k.
28 Cf. e.g. TB XII 168, ult. ff., and Ansāb III 233, 16ff., as well as Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn I 209, 1ff.
(similar Faḍl 246, 10ff., and ʿIqd V 85, 11ff.).
29 Text X 2, o.
30 EI2 45b s. n. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan.
31 Cf. n. 26 above.
32 Faḍl 246, –5ff., and TB XII 167, 6ff. = Text X 2 (after Marzubānī, who was probably Qāḍī
ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s source as well); dependent on this Sharīshī, Sharḥ maqāmāt al-Ḥarīrī I
371, 19ff.
33 Thus e.g. in variants of the version mentioned previously (collected by Murtaḍā, Amālī I
173, 8ff.). According to other authorities, e.g. Balādhurī III 231, –7ff.; 232, –6ff.; 232, ult. ff.,
and 233, –4ff.; Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 44, 13ff.; Masʿūdī, Murūj VI 208ff./IV 156f. no. 2418;
Dīnawarī, Akhbār ṭiwāl 384, 6ff.; TB XII 169, 17ff. (after Ibn Abī l-Dunyā); Faḍl 249, 5ff.;
Zubayr b. Bakkār, Muwaffaqiyyāt 141ff. no. 68; ʿIqd III 164, 17ff.; Ḥuṣrī, Zahr al-ādāb I 112,
1ff.; Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd, ShNB II 96, 5ff.
34 Cf. e.g. TB XII 166, 13ff.; Faḍl 242, 7ff.; ʿIqd II 274, 4f., and IV 222, 6ff.; Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 198, pu. f.;
Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn II 337, 7ff.; Ābī, Nathr al-durr in Boughanmi, Studien über al-Ābī, Arab.
section 64 no. 19, and 76 no. 125. It might be sensible to also refer to the text Muwaffaqiyyāt
392ff. no. 266 in which Maʾmūn is reprimanded thoroughly by an unknown man thought
to be Khaḍir during the pilgrimage.
332 chapter 2
audience,35 cited by Isḥāq b. Faḍl al-Hāshimī, an old ʿAlid retainer of the

Abbasids,36 who watched with the secretary ʿUmāra b. Ḥamza37 as the visitor
arrived riding a donkey,38 and who later asked Rabīʿ for an account of events.39
Besides him, however, the grammarian Abū Bakr al-Hudhalī was also quoted
as describing his own observation of events,40 and there is even an alleged ac-
count by ʿAmr himself.41
After so many contradictions there can be hardly any doubt as to these re-
ports being false. Consequently it will be necessary to look at the details pre-
sented in them under the aspect of what they were meant to convey.42 In some
versions the successor to the throne al-Mahdī is, as indicated briefly above,
present at the audience. This is a secondary trait, as proven by an earlier stage
of the tradition which has Shabīb b. Shayba – an old acquaintance of ʿAmr’s,
as we have seen43 – recount the meeting between ʿAmr and the caliph to al-
Mahdī himself,44 who is described as an arrogant young man who unlike his
father shows no respect for ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.45 ʿAmr does not know him, and
remains hostile even after Manṣūr introduces him, emphasising the difference
in age by addressing al-Mahdī as yā bn akhī,46 and pointing out to al-Manṣūr
that his son’s regnal name was an unsuitable choice.47 All of which of course
35 Regarding him Sourdel, Vizirat 87ff., and vol. I 525 above; he was an influential man and
was occasionally described as al-Manṣūr’s “vizier”.
36 Regarding him cf. e.g. Ṭabarī III 61, 2.
38 Not mounted on a horse, as was customary at court. The story is telling us that the two
noble courtiers did not recognise ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s importance and were thoroughly as-
tonished at the caliph’s appreciation of ʿAmr.
39 Cf. the sources mentioned in n. 32 and at the beginning of n. 33, also Text X 2, a–d with
commentary. Two earlier traditions with similar content, which did not yet pretend to be
eyewitness accounts, go back to Rabīʿ via his son, the vizier Faḍl b. Rabīʿ (Balādhurī III
232, –6ff., and 233, –4ff.).
40 Regarding him cf. Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 40ff. (where 44, 13ff., the story itself is also
found); in this version Abū Ḥanīfa is present as well as ʿAmr. It is noticeable that the ver-
sion recounted by Rabīʿ b. Yūnus (= Text X 2) is also traced back to Marzubānī by al-Khaṭīb
al-Baghdādī.
41 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān IV 64, 12ff.; similar in Jahshiyārī, Wuzarāʾ 116, 17ff. (with a different partner in
the conversation).
42 In order to understand the following better, Text 2 should be considered in more detail.
44 Faḍl 248, 7ff.; cf. also Madelung, Qāsim 33.
45 Cf. e.g. Balādhurī III 232, 5f., and 233, 3; Text 2, p–r.
46 Text 2, r. He himself is addressed with the kunya by Manṣūr (ibid., f; cf. also Balādhurī III
233, 7ff., who had heard this from one of al-Maʾmūn’s sons).
47 Text 2, q; cf. also Masʿūdī, Murūj VI 209, apu./IV 157, 7.
iraq 333
reveals that the story was composed at a time by which people had no illusions
concerning al-Mahdī’s style of government anymore, and regarded his claim
that he was going “to fill the earth with justice” as the mahdī with nothing but
irony. Furthermore the name had been regarded as a provocation from the out-
set by those who had believed in the other mahdī, namely al-Nafs al-zakiyya,48
against whom he was probably pitted deliberately.49
The text not only anticipates criticism of the future caliph but also of bu-
reaucracy. In al-Manṣūr’s presence ʿAmr attacks Sulaymān b. Mujāhid,50 the
financial director51 whom the caliph entrusted with the administration of one
of the four quarters of Baghdad after the city’s foundation;52 Rabīʿ b. Yūnus
was another of the administrators. Clearly it was easier to admonish al-Manṣūr
when one could point to the greedy officials as the true culprits. On the other
hand this might allow the conclusion that the caliph himself was incapable of
putting them in their place.53 Consequently the caliph is then made to suggest
that they should be replaced with ʿAmr’s followers, i.e. Muʿtazilites, which gives
ʿAmr the opportunity to emphasise that his men would never get involved with
the state.54 ʿAmr himself declines the offer of money from Manṣūr;55 he even
refuses to hand the caliph his inkwell, as with one stroke of the pen he might
condemn a Muslim to ruin.56 This would remain the Muʿtazila’s characteristic
position until Maʾmūn’s time; the controversy was about whether the experi-
ence of social injustice should lead them to militant consequences like al-Nafs
al-zakiyya’s followers,57 or to withdraw into themselves.
48 It was thought that ʿAbdallāh b. Ḥasan, too, called the caliph’s attention to his son’s lack of
education, such as his insufficient command of language (Ṭabarī III 152, 17f.).
49 For more detailed information see ch. C 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 below.
50 Cf. e.g. Zubayr b. Bakkār, Muwaffaqiyyāt 142, 11ff.; Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 45, 10ff.; TB XII
168, 19ff. (i.e. versions quoting different eyewitnesses). Cf. Text 2, h.
51 Regarding him cf. Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 683, 13; he died during Manṣūr’s caliphate and was re-
placed by his nephew Ibrāhīm b. Ṣāliḥ b. Mujālid.
52 Jahshiyārī, Wuzarāʾ 100, 15ff.; also Sourdel, Vizirat 77, n. 5. Awzāʿī wrote to him asking him
to intercede with the caliph to secure the freedom of the inhabitants of Qalīqalā/Erzurum
(GAS 1/517).
53 Faḍl 249, 5ff. = Murtaḍā, Amālī I 174, 18ff.
54 Faḍl 249, 12ff.; Balādhurī III 234, 7ff.; Text 2, i. Regarding the motif cf. also ch. C 4.1.3 below.
55 Thus already Balādhurī III 231, 7; embroidered e.g. in TB XII 169, 5ff.; Text 2, o.
56 Cf. e.g. Balādhurī III 232, 4ff.; Zubayr b. Bakkār, Muwaffaqiyyāt 143, –4ff.; isolated, as a
report from Sufyān b. ʿUyayna, in Faḍl 242, 7ff. The same story was told of a certain Ibn
Ṭāwūs (= ʿAbdallāh b. Ṭāwūs b. Kaysān who, however, died before Manṣūr’s caliphate?) in
Ibn ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd I 55, 12ff.
334 chapter 2
The attitude encouraged by ʿAmr, which would ultimately prove to be the

wiser one, namely quietism or, to speak with Ibn Shubruma,58 al-amr bil-
maʿrūf only bil-lisān but not bil-sayf, in the form of individual criticism rather
than collective resistance – this attitude is sometimes presented as the tradi-
tional one in the stories discussed. ʿAmr reassures the caliph, who asks about
Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh’s letter, with the words: “You know my view on the
‘sword’ from the days when you associated with us: I do not believe in it”.59 In
another version Manṣūr asks directly: “Do you stand by your earlier attitude
(still), Abū ʿUthmān?”, and ʿAmr confirms this.60 In both cases the narrators
clearly presumed that ʿAmr and the caliph knew one another from the past,
apparently from a situation in which the latter was already interested in ʿAmr’s
view on armed rebellion. We may link this to those accounts according to which
Manṣūr spent some time in Basra during the last years of the Umayyad era,
campaigning for the anonymous candidate of choice of the prophet’s family.61
Manṣūr was said to have been in touch with ʿAmr at the time, learning analogi-
cal argumentation from him, without, however, being able to persuade him to
actively support the Abbasids. It is certainly not mentioned anywhere, and the
tradition on which the present deliberations are based denies it explicitly.
In Balādhurī III 183, 8ff., it goes back to Saʿīd b. Salm who commanded
a contingent against al-Nafs al-zakiyya in 145 (cf. Ashʿarī, Maq. 79, 13).
Manṣūr had been governor of Īdhāj in Ahwāz in 127 under ʿAbdallāh
b. Muʿāwiya (Balādhurī III 183, 12ff.), where his son Muḥammad, later
al-Mahdī, was born (Ṭabarī III 257, 2f.), but had been driven out by
Sulaymān b. Ḥabīb b. al-Muhallab. He came to Basra as a supplicant, an-
other story emphasising his poverty. ʿAmr called him a zawwār; Manṣūr
was, in modern terms, conducting a very hands-on election campaign,
going from door to door (Balādhurī 234, 11ff. [where this tradition ends
l. 18]; also Tanūkhī, Faraj baʿd al-shidda III 224, 4ff.). Further information
in van Vloten in: ZDMG 52/1898/213ff.

59 TB XII 169, 2f. = Text 2, m.
60 Faḍl 249, 9f.: once again it is worth noting that the caliph uses the kunya and thus empha-
sises his respect for ʿAmr. – Similar, but without the reference to an earlier encounter, in
Balādhurī III 235, 1.
61 Al-riḍā min āl Muḥammad; regarding the phrase see vol. I 288 above. Of course Manṣūr
had an Abbasid in mind, at the time Ibrāhīm al-Imām (cf. EI2 III 988 s. v. Ibrāhīm b.
Muḥammad).
iraq 335
The question remains whether ʿAmr did not benefit the Abbasids by not joining
Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh at that time, just as later in 142; in that case Manṣūr’s
referring to his “earlier attitude” in retrospect would be completely justified.
ʿAmr was clearly not among the Muʿtazilites who attended the Hāshimid
meeting in Abwāʾ.62 The story of his appearing in Suwaiqa near Medina with
a Basran delegation in order to see al-Nafs al-zakiyya, and then paying hom-
age to his brother Ibrāhīm instead is probably made up.63 Not even Zaydite
sources conceal the fact that there was doubt of ʿAmr’s bayʿa.64 But it was im-
portant to the Shīʿites to show that the Muʿtazilites, when they finally did em-
brace al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s cause, really only followed an old oath of allegiance,
and the Muʿtazilites themselves probably agreed with this view as well.65 It is
well known that there were claims that al-Manṣūr and other Abbasids were
at Abwāʾ, too, although there was no agreement on whether he had taken the
bayʿa or not.66 It may be safe to assume that while the “Muʿtazila” insofar as it
was ranged around ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd was a powerful factor in the troubles follow-
ing Walīd II’s murder, it refrained from taking clear sides even then.
Of course in the last interpretation Manṣūr’s remark makes sense only

if he, too, remained neutral in Abwāʾ or, indeed, did not attend at all (or
if the narrator assumed this). The reader’s attitude would depend on the
correspondence that sprang up between the caliph and al-Nafs al-zakiyya
during the latter’s revolt. If al-Manṣūr had indeed taken the bayʿa, one
would assume that al-Nafs al-zakiyya would refer to it but, as van Vloten
already noted, this is not the case. One might then consider the corre-
spondence a falsification, as van Vloten did (in: ZDMG 52/1898/213ff.) or,
conversely, that Manṣūr never swore an oath of allegiance, or one might
choose the compromise and advance the hypothesis that the correspon-
dence was purged by Abbasid hands before historians gained access to

64 Cf. the quotation in van Vloten in: ZDMG 52/1898/215, n. 2.
65 In a similar account, collected by the Zaydite imam al-Nāṭiq bil-ḥaqq in his K. al-ifāda, the
trend is developed through to the uprising (cf. MS Leiden 8404, fol. 18b, ult. ff.). Regarding
the sources in general see also Nagel in: Der Islam 46/1970/258ff.
66 Cf. Ṭabarī III 143, 14f., and 152, 11f. (where Mecca probably refers to Abwāʾ); cf. Nagel 261f.
After being arrested some prominent members of the uprising accused al-Manṣūr of
breaking his oath of allegiance (Ṭabarī III 262, 15f., and 264, 1f./transl. Muth, Der Kalif al-
Manṣūr 195 and 197). Cf. also the pro-Shīʿite tendentious tradition in Abū l-Faraj, Maqātil
239, 1ff. (after Madāʾinī): Manṣūr was said to have paid homage to al-Nafs al-zakiyya and
to have recognised him as the mahdī.
336 chapter 2
it, as assumed by R. Traini (in: AIUON 14/1964/773ff.) and F. ʿUmar (in:

Al-ʿAbbāsiyyūn al-awāʾil 181ff.). The same question arises with regard to
a passage extant in the version consulted: the discussion of ʿAbbās’ suc-
cession versus Fāṭima’s (see ch. C 1.2.1.1 below). D. Sourdel raised doubts
regarding this issue (in: Prédication et propagande 121f.). Originally Nagel
considered the text doubtful in parts (in: Der Islam 46/1970/255f.), but
expressed himself more positively later (Rechtleitung 298). In Islamic
Revolution and Historical Memory 7ff. Lassner does not go into the ques-
tion, promising, however, to do so in the future. However one decides
regarding the genuineness of the source will make no difference for the
evaluation of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.
2.2.6.2.3 The Image of ʿAmr’s Personality

Even more than in the case of Wāṣil, the characteristic that posterity remem-
bered of ʿAmr’s way of life was asceticism,1 legend doing its bit embellishing it.
His long hours of prayer and his dedication to the pilgrimage were stressed,2
as were his patience3 and his piety.4 He was aware of the presence of death,5
and consequently did not think much of pomp and possessions. Several tradi-
tions have him push aside a rug as too luxurious;6 he also declined money in
order to avoid becoming dependent on it.7 He distrusted the state, saying on
the occasion of a thief’s hand being cut off: “The secret thief is cutting the
well-known thief’s hand off”.8 Those who allowed themselves to be drafted into
1 Cf. in general TB XII 166, 9f.; also 186, 13, after a hostile source. Similar in a qaṣīda by Abū
l-Qāsim al-Zaʿfarānī, a poet from Ṣāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād’s circle, quoted by Thaʿālibī in his Yatīmat
al-dahr (Damascus III 55, ult./ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd III 219, 12).
2 Kaʿbī 68, 10f., similar Faḍl 243, 1ff. > IM 36, 7ff., after Jāḥiẓ; also Fihrist 203, 11: he was wearing
the signs of prosternation between his eyes.
3 When someone “made him hear ugly speech” (shouting? obscenities?), he placed the edge of
his outer garment (ridāʾ) on the ground without replying, then shook out the edge (Faḍl 243,
9ff.). Cf. also p. 400 below.
4 He visited his mother every day in order to ask what her wishes were (Faḍl 250, 10ff.).
5 Faḍl 248, –5ff.; also Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 142, 8ff., after Madāʾinī; slightly abridged Murtaḍā,
Amālī I 178, 1ff.
6 Cf. e.g. Faḍl 343, 2; also during his visit to al-Manṣūr (Text 2, a). He also declined the caliph’s
offer of a new ṭaylasān (Balādhurī, Ansāb III 232, –5ff.).
7 Faḍl 244, 1f.; Murtaḍā, Amālī I 170, 12ff. He was also said never to have accepted an invitation
to a feast (Jāḥiẓ, Bukhalāʾ 213, 10f.).
8 Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn I 56, 13f. = ʿIqd II 268, 15f. This was probably intended to say that the state
enriches itself unlawfully through taxes. Cf. also his outrage at the execution of a mentally
deranged man in Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān I 24, 6ff./transl. Souami 178.
iraq 337
government office forfeited his affection,9 but he was always ready to help the
poor and weak,10 and supported his followers, sometimes even with his own
clothes.11 He was always so serious as if he had come from his parents’ funeral.12
He disapproved of singing: sura 50:17f. says that the words a human speaks
are recorded by two angels to his right and to his left; who should then record
singing?13 The picture painted in the sources alternates between individual
pious renunciation of the world similar to that reported of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī,14
and traits of a futuwwa ideal presumably cherished among those Muʿtazilites
who would later take part in al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s uprising. Shīʿite accounts even
say that ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd wore a woollen shamla like a mantle (izār),15 presenting
himself like the “Sufis” we sometimes encounter in his proximity.16 The oppo-
nents of the Muʿtazila did not dispute his asceticism, but they did suspect him
of posing as pious in public only, i.e. performing eye-service.17
The conflation of related, but not necessarily similar, ideals can also be
read in the dicta attributed to him. These are aphorisms of various kinds,18 psy-
chological observations of the type expected of ascetics,19 but also individual
9 Thus e.g. Shabīb b. Shayba (Fasawī, Maʿrīfa II 261, 10ff. > TB XII 174, 16ff.; regarding him
p. 278f. above). When he became governor of Ahwāz, presumably under Manṣūr, ʿAmr
stopped speaking to him and did not even say “bless you” (raḥimaka llāh) when he
sneezed (Faḍl 250, –4ff.).
10 He is said to have usually accomplished the hajj on foot because he allowed poor and
weak people to sit on his camel (Kaʿbī 68, 10f.).
11 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Makārim al-akhlāq § 308.
12 IM 36, 2ff. after ʿAmr’s pupil Ibn al-Sammāk; said using similar phrasing of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī,
too (ibid., n., after Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif).
13 ʿIqd VI 11, 4ff.
14 Cf. also Ziyād b. Abīh’s waṣiyya which ʿAmr transmitted; ʿAbd al-Malik was said to have
had it recorded for people to learn by heart. It contained paraenesis which emphasises
the vanity of the world at the same time as the important part played by the intellect
(Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 387, 16ff.; Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir 2II 205f. no. 646 with further sources).
15 Kashshī 272, 5f. = Ṭabrisī, Iḥtijāj II 126, 3ff., but in the context of a legend.
16 See p. 124f. above regarding Hāshim al-Awqaṣ, and p. 374f. below regarding Bashīr
al-Raḥḥāl.
17 Mīzān III 278, 12ff.
18 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān VI 36, 5f., and Rasāʾil I 162, pu. f.; Tawḥīdī, Akhlāq al-wazīrayn 260, 1ff.;
Murtaḍā, Amālī I 173, 2ff.
19 Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir II 229, 3ff./2V 185, no. 640; also Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 261, 8f.: “If one thinks of
God’s wrath, one will be prevented from wrath oneself” (also Jāḥiẓ, Al-jadd wal-hazl,
transl. Vial, Quatre Essais 129).
338 chapter 2
prayers in ornately crafted language.20 Furthermore we find fundamental

commandments for good relations between humans: one must not covet
other people’s possessions; one should wish the same for others as for one-
self; and one should listen to one’s neighbour if something distresses him, in
order to help him take his mind off his worries.21 He spoke of muruwwa and
of generosity,22 which moved him closer to futuwwa ethics. Rhetoric was not
unimportant to him; together with other pupils of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s he had
visited Faḍl al-Raqāshī’s lectures who spoke in rhymed prose in the style of
the quṣṣāṣ.23 However, he valued rhetoric only if it served religious truth, as it
did in his own dicta, otherwise he regarded silence as preferable.24 He was no
khaṭīb like Wāṣil, and had no time for the poets.25 He rarely spoke, and only
ever briefly, abhorring stilted speech (takalluf),26 but greatly valuing politeness
and reticence. He criticised Wāṣil’s pupil Ḥafṣ b. Sālim for saying “no” all the
time, pointing out that the prophet had said “God will sort it out”,27 and he did
not like guests at the door answering merely “it is I”, when asked “who is it”.28
2.2.6.2.4 His Relationship with Ḥasan al-Baṣrī

ʿAmr’s reputation clearly extended much further than the circle of his immedi-
ate followers, the “Muʿtazila”, as proven by his detractors sparing no effort to
dispute his connection with Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and to prove that there was an-
tagonism between him and his famous teacher, who still dominated Basran
20 Cf. Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 271, 5f. = Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn II 290, 10 = Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 245,
pu. f. > IM 37, 4 (only the first half): “O God, make me rich in my desire for you, and do not
make me poor through renouncing you!” It is not entirely possible to imitate the chiliastic
structure in the translation.
21 Text X, 3.
22 Sulamī, Muqaddima fī l-taṣawwuf 40, 1ff., and 44, 5f.
23 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 306, 9ff., and similar 290, ult. ff.
24 Ibid. I 1ff. > Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 244, 3ff.; also Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn II 170, 11ff.; ʿIqd II
260, 2ff.; Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd, ShNB VII 89, 10ff.; Nuwayrī, Nihāya VII 7, 4ff.; much abridged
Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir II 699, –4f./2IX 94 no. 293.
25 The poet al-Aḥwaṣ (who was, however, believed to have died after 105/724 already; cf.
GAS 2/421) apparently attended his lectures, but they soon quarrelled (Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān 127,
1ff.). If he is occasionally quoted in verse, this is probably only literary motif; furthermore,
they are not his (TB XII 166, 20ff. = Masʿūdī, Murūj VI 211, 3ff./ IV 158, 4ff.; also Qāḍī ʿAbd
al-Jabbār, Tathbīt 621, 7ff.).
26 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 114, ult. ff. after ʿAmr’s pupil Shimmazī.
27 Ibid. II 190, 8ff. = III 155, 1ff. = Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn III 137, 3f.
28 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān I 337, –5ff.; more briefly also Ibn Abī ʿAwn, Al-ajwiba al-muskita 93 no. 547;
Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir III 680, 8f./2III 183 no. 659 (with further instances in the bibliography),
and Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn I 91, 6f. (where the name in the text has been changed).
iraq 339
tradition. It is well-nigh impossible to say what the relationship between the

two really was, as all statements are biased.1 There is no reason to assume that
ʿAmr was Ḥasan’s favourite pupil; it is indeed possible that the latter viewed his
development with concern.2 But a true polarisation only came later.
Qatāda seems to have carried greater weight in Ḥasan’s circle; he also ap-
pears to have been older than ʿAmr. People believed that Ḥasan regarded him
as the one among his pupils with the widest range of religious knowledge,3
and that only the Muʿtazilites ranked ʿAmr above him.4 They had both been
Qadarites, but Qatāda appears to have been more positively disposed towards
the Umayyad authorities than ʿAmr.5 Muʿtazilite sources speak surprisingly
little of Qatāda, even assuming that ʿAmr did not get on with him, and offering
the explanation that after Ḥasan’s death they were both head of the school
together, which had led to an estrangement between them.6 This does not
sound very probable; presumably Muʿtazilite self-consciousness found it dif-
ficult to come to terms with the fact that their revered ancestor, whose repu-
tation never suffered among his followers,7 did not immediately succeed his
similarly great teacher.8 Wāṣil never appears in this context; he probably was
not even in Basra at the time of Ḥasan’s death.
2.2.6.2.4.1 ʿAmr as an Exegete

ʿAmr’s connection to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī could not be overlooked by posterity for
the simple reason that he transmitted Ḥasan’s Quranic commentary. While the
work was transmitted also by other, “orthodox”, pupils, ʿAmr’s redaction appears
1 A positive assessment e.g. Faḍl 245, 1ff.; negative TB XII 181, 13ff. (after Yaḥyā al-Bakkāʾ, d.
130/748; cf. Mīzān no. 9631): Ḥasan did not even look at ʿAmr’s Masāʾil, when he came across
them.
3 TB XII 170, 17.
4 Ibid. 178, 19; also ibid. 16ff. (after Abū ʿAwāna, d. 176/793).
5 See p. 160f. above. We must, however, bear in mind that accounts of him date from the time
before 117, i.e. Hishām’s caliphate; resistance was not advisable at that time. The sources only
concern themselves with ʿAmr’s political views in the context of Yazīd II’s accession to power.
6 Murtaḍā, Amālī I 167, 5ff.; there is nothing similar in either Kaʿbī or Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s
works. Muʿtazilite tradition mentions the estrangement in the story of ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal’s
dream (see p. 341 below).
7 Cf. e.g. Naẓẓām’s verdict (Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 157, 4f.), and especially Jāḥiẓ’ own (ʿUthmāniyya
265, 10).
8 The late date of origin of this tradition is also suggested by its objective of explaining the
term iʿtizāl. An “orthodox” variant may be found in IKh IV 85, 11ff. (after Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ).
340 chapter 2
to have found the widest acclaim.1 Not only authors such as Muḥammad al-
Ṭūsī or Ṭabrisī, who stood firmly within the Muʿtazilite exegetic tradition,
relied on it, but Thaʿlabī2 referred to it, and even Ṭabarī did, albeit not in his
Tafsīr but in his Taʾrīkh, and there via Ibn Isḥāq whose work he probably used
directly and without whom it would not have been possible. Ibn Isḥāq had
been a Qadarite like ʿAmr and had had no reason to avoid him.3 Sufyān al-
Thawrī appears to have used the work, too, quoting Ḥasan in his Tafsīr after an
anonymous source who may well have been ʿAmr.4 Above all, the work came to
Spain, where it was transmitted in the third century by Khalīl b. ʿAbd al-Malik
b. Kulayb, known as Khalīl al-Ghafla, who “openly supported the (doctrine of)
the faculty of action”.5 This description tells us that like Ḥasan he did not hold
God responsible for evil; he also interpreted the scales and the ṣirāṭ bridge
figuratively.6 While his books were burnt after his death, the Tafsīr survived
for at least one more generation; it was transmitted by Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā Ibn al-
Samīna, who died in Cordoba in 315/927.7
This does presume that the passage in Ibn al-Faraḍī (I 165, 4) should be
read as ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, rather than ʿAmr b. Fāʾid as in the printed version.
Otherwise this would refer to ʿAmr b. Fāʾid al-Uswārī who had studied
under him and also composed a Tafsīr (see p. 94 above). However, no
trace of this work survives, and Iraqi tradition has no knowledge of a re-
daction of Ḥasan’s Tafsīr by ʿAmr b. Fāʾid. Fierro, Heterodoxía 91, adheres
to the traditional reading, but does not discuss the matter.
It is noticeable that Qatāda is never linked to Ḥasan’s Tafsīr, but is considered

rather as the author of a well-documented Tafsīr of his own,8 which might
lead to the conclusion that Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s Tafsīr was not available as an
1 Cf. p. 50ff. above. Massignon, Essai2 177, n. 7, claims that there is a manuscript of this work in
the British Museum; this is an error.
2 Cf. the introduction to his Kashf wal-bayān, ed. Goldfeld, p. 34, 3 (note the clearly non-
Muʿtazilite riwāya).
3 Cf. the material in the commentary on Catalogue of Works X, no. 3. Regarding Ibn Isḥāq see
p. 755ff. below.
4 P. 163, 4f.
5 Ibn al-Faraḍī, Taʾrīkh al-ʿulamāʾ bil-Andalus I 165, 4f.; regarding him also G. Hourani in: SI
32/1970/146.
6 Ibid. 165, 11ff. (when questioned by Baqī b. Makhlad); cf. also Makki, Ensayo sobre las aporta-
ciones 218f.
7 Ibid. II 185, pu. ff.; regarding him Fierro, Heterodoxía 111f.
8 See p. 162 above.
iraq 341
independent text, taking shape only in ʿAmr’s collection and probably only
after Qatāda’s death. This does, however, require more in-depth examination,
as does the connection between ʿAmr’s redaction and Qatāda’s work, the latter
of which might also be based on recollections of Ḥasan’s lectures. Within the
Muʿtazila ʿAmr’s redaction was transmitted further by his pupil al-Shimmazī,9
and people recalled that ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Najīḥ (d. 131/748), a Medinan Qadarite
who edited Mujāhid’s commentary,10 had great respect for ʿAmr’s scholarship.11
ʿAbbād b. Manṣūr, on the other hand, another Qadarite but, being a Basran
himself, familiar with Ḥasan’s original,12 noticed that the text was not the
same anymore; ʿAmr even admitted interpolating passages for his “followers’”
edification.13 This tradition, however, was Ḥammād b. Zayd’s who claimed to
have heard it from Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, in whose environment ʿAmr was not
much liked in any case.14 They also recounted a dream in which ʿAmr was seen
scratching out a verse in the Quran and then being unable to restore it.
The recipient of this dream is usually ʿĀṣim b. Sulaymān al-Aḥwal, a con-

temporary of ʿAmr’s who became qāḍī in Madāʾin (see ch. C 1.1 below);
thus ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 280, –4ff., Dāraquṭnī, Akhbār ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd § 4–5,
TB XII 178, 21ff., and Mīzān III 273, –6ff. Sometimes the older and more
respected Thābit al-Bunānī, a Basran ascetic (d. 127/745) was chosen,
presumably a secondary choice; e.g. in ʿAbdallāh b. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal,
K. al-sunna 131, 7f., TB XII 179, 7ff., and Mīzān III 273, –8f. The former tra-
dition consists of two parts; the first one, in which the dream is not men-
tioned, is also found in Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya II 335, 3ff. Regarding further
details see my Trad. Polemik 18ff. – In a similar tradition ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd
presumably was, once again, a secondary choice, exchanged for Jahm b.
Ṣafwān (e.g. Dhahabī, ʿUluww 192, 10ff.; Yāfiʿī, Marham al-ʿilal > Tritton,
Muslim Theology 62f.). Similar stories were told of Thumāma (ʿAbdallāh
b. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, K. al-sunna 30, 8ff.).
This dream vision does not refer to his activity as Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s transmitter,
but to his own exegetic ideas. There is no need to explain their existence. In
the Qadarite interpretation of some verses he appears to have gone beyond

10 Regarding him see GAS 1/29, and p. 721ff. below.
11 IM 36, 6f.
13 Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt II 44, –7ff.
342 chapter 2
Ḥasan,15 but whether he, in order to circumvent certain predestinarian con-

sequences, assumed that there must be an immediate difference between the
ideal Quran on the “preserved tablet” and the text as it was revealed, is doubtful,
although it was claimed in an anecdote transmitted in several versions. This,
however, was opposition polemic.16 Contrary to the tenor of this tradition he
sometimes even defended the wording of the Quran: when some – regrettably
unnamed – mutakallimūn17 expressed doubt that epilepsy and mental illness
were caused by Satan or evil spirits, he countered their rationalism with evi-
dence from scripture.18
His independent study of the Quran bore another fruit in his work on divid-
ing the Quran into 360 parts (ajzāʾ thalāthmiʾa wa-sittūn) which survives to this
day,19 although scholarship has so far ignored it entirely.
2.2.6.2.5 ʿAmr as a Legal Scholar

In legal matters ʿAmr used the Quran in an independent fashion too;1 and
once again with clear reference to his teacher. While there were apparently
doubts as to whether he truly preserved Ḥasan’s legacy in this field in such
great breadth, they could be allayed with a quotation from ʿUthmān al-Battī.2
A number of the opinions he embraced may simply have corresponded to
Basran legal practice of the time, which was much influenced by Ḥasan. Like
Ḥasan, he did not think much of taʿzīr and defended this opinion against the
Kufan usage represented by Ibn Shubruma at his time.3 While adding a qunūt
to every morning prayer4 allegedly corresponded to ʿAlī’s practice,5 Abū
Ḥanīfa and his entire school were against it,6 and ʿAmr relied on a hadith he
15 Cf. Texts 10–11 regarding sura 15:92f. and 39:56. In both instances the attribution is subject
to some doubt.
16 See p. 82 and 124, as well as Text VI 1 with commentary.
17 This does not necessarily refer to theologians; considering the theory they support this
may have been physicians in the tradition of the medicine of Antiquity.
18 Text X 1.
19 MS Chester Beatty 3165, fol. 31–40; cf. GAS 1/597.
1 Cf. Catalogue of works no. 3 regarding sura 4:6 and 4:129. Yaʿqūbī lists him among the
fuqahāʾ, interestingly in Saffāḥ’s time (Taʾrīkh II 436, 7).
2 Faḍl 242, 4ff.: with reference to 50 masāʾil regarding divorce law.
3 Ibn Shubruma based his position on sura 4:34 (Wakīʿ, Akhbār III 123, 12ff.).
4 Faḍl 248, 11f.; for general information cf. EI2 V 395 s. v. Ḳunūt.
5 Cf. my K. an-Nakt des Naẓẓām 69.
6 Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid I 132, 1f.
iraq 343
had heard from Ḥasan.7 In declaring date wine to be permitted8 he was in

agreement with the Kufans, but also had a tradition from Ḥasan on his side.9
It was noted that like his teacher he never prayed without his shoes.10 In Basra
a controversial habit of his was to proceed to the slaughter during the feast of
the sacrifice before the prayer leader had recited the ṣalāt al-ʿīd;11 Ḍirār would
later follow the same custom in Kufa.12 He presumably decided directly against
Ḥasan in the question of whether silent intervals were permissible during pub-
lic prayers.13
If a longer tradition transmitted by Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī, for which so
far no parallel has been found,14 is correctly linked to him, it would prove that
he also had his own thoughts on the field of uṣūl – and quite different ones
from Wāṣil’s. It concerns the criteria of permitted and prohibited. Like later
Muʿtazilites, e.g. Naẓẓām,15 it states that some transgressions can be rationally
perceived as such, and are consequently prohibited by natural law. Revelation
supplements and modifies, creating a second category of prohibitions, but at
times also restricting the first one, e.g. in the case of the prohibition on killing
which is broken by sacrifices and by slaughtering. There is a particular reason
(ʿilla) for both of these, which becomes clear in scripture. This ʿilla must be
clearly discernible and must not be concealed by unknown further reasons.16
As all this was based on prohibitions the result was a surprisingly liberal ap-
proach: only those things are forbidden of which it has been said clearly, or
can be deduced following strict methodology. The law does not regulate every-
thing; it merely has a restricting function.
This is how he came to consider nabīdh to be permitted (cf. the commen-

tary on Text 6). He was not alone in this argumentation (Ibn Qutayba,
Ashriba 53, 9ff.; Muḥāsibī, Masāʾil fī aʿmāl al-qulūb 103, 10f.); this was
probably adopted by the Ḥanafites (cf. Baghdādī, Uṣūl al-dīn 25, 14). Jāḥiẓ
7 Ṭaḥāwī, Maʿānī al-āthār I 247, 15f.; Mīzān III 275, apu. ff. (also p. 346, n. 14 below).
Regarding the Muʿtazilite view cf. Jāḥiẓ, Risāla fī l-ḥakamayn, in: Mashriq 52/1958/422.
8 Text 5.
9 See p. 346, n. 14 below. This tradition was later declared a falsification, proving that despite
his roots in asceticism ʿAmr was less strict in this matter than the following generations.
10 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 110, 8ff.; cf. p. 123 above.
11 Faḍl 245, 4f.; for general information cf. EI2 III 1007f. s. v. ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā.
12 Ibid. 245, 6ff.; also ch. C 1.3.1 below.
14 Text 5–6.
15 See ch. C 3.2.2.2.5 below.
16 Said similarly by ʿUthmān al-Battī (see p. 171 above).
344 chapter 2
reported that the consumption of lizard meat was justified in the same
fashion (Ḥayawān VI 84, 9ff.). ʿAmr’s permitting churches and synagogues
to be pulled down unless their owners could prove ancient claims was
along the same lines, although in this matter it was more relevant to him
that the buildings might give offence, be munkar, in a Muslim country,
and would continue to do so as long as they did not conform to accepted
custom (Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir 2VII 63 no. 193).
The last-named example already hints that the principle could be in-
verted as well. This was the position of the influential jurist ʿĪsā b. Abān
(d. early 221/836; regarding him see ch. C 1.3.1.7 below): everything that is
not permitted is prohibited (Baghdādī, Uṣūl 25, 12ff.). The dichotomy of
“permitted : prohibited” would in the long run be differentiated into the
well-known five-grade scale of the aḥkām al-khamsa (cf. I. Schneider in:
Vorträge XXIV. DOT 1988, p. 214ff.). However, the older principle would
also remain valid later (e.g. Jubbāʾī according to Tanūkhī’s testimony in:
IC 5/1931/575f.). The term ibāḥa aṣliyya was coined for it (cf. Schacht in
EI2 III 661 s. v. Ibāḥa; Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses 61f.); the Shīʿites
also used the term barāʾa (cf. Kohlberg in: EIran I 717 b). The starting
point, as the examples show, was the discussion of the dietary laws; pre-
sumably in an attempt to distinguish Islam from Judaism. In ʿAmr’s case,
of course, the attitude seems to conflict with his asceticism. This, as well
as the theoretical sophistication of the text advise caution when attribut-
ing it to him. There is a similar passage in Jāḥiẓ (Text XXII 201, a–c), where
the doctrine is anonymous. The related question of whether everything
was permitted before the law was revealed was answered in the affirma-
tive by later Basran Muʿtazilites (Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Maḥṣūl I1 209ff.; cf.
also Baghdādī, Uṣūl 203, 8ff.). Cf. also Text 4.
2.2.6.2.6 ʿAmr as a Traditionist

When it came to hadith ʿAmr’s connection to Ḥasan was very close as well.
Nobody doubted that he had adopted a lot of material from him;1 any contro-
versy concerned how far one should go in following him. This was not only due
to ʿAmr himself, but because Ḥasan’s tradition practice became increasingly
suspect. Where legal matters were concerned, much was still in a state of flux;
accepted customs of ʿAmr’s time might be seen as innovations later although
it was not necessarily his Muʿtazilite or Qadarite views that were regarded in
this way. The accounts reflect the various standpoints people could occupy in
this situation.
1 Cf. e.g. Fasawī II 261, pu. ff.

iraq 345
The Muʿtazilites recorded the names of those who transmitted from ʿAmr.2
They were already making an apologetic argument, as illustrated by the fact
that they listed especially those muḥaddithūn who were also highly respected
by the opposing side.3 In the long run ʿAmr’s traditions would be boycotted
and almost obliterated in the sources, even Muʿtazilite ones. But this took time;
first he had to be seen as the forefather of the Muʿtazila, and only then would
he be singled out from the other Qadarites whose traditions continued to be
transmitted, and branded a “propagandist” (dāʿiya).4 This was said to have
been ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak’s (d. 181/797) approach; he had avoided ʿAmr’s
circle, but attended lectures with his pupil ʿAbd al-Wārith b. Saʿīd, to whom he
was much closer in age.5 Maʿmar b. Rāshid (d. 154/770) did allegedly not think
much of ʿAmr;6 Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn (d. 233/847) would later employ all his author-
ity to ensure that those of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s traditions that were transmitted by
ʿAmr should not be written down any more.7
At first this was probably due to individual dislikes rather than a definitive
system. Ḥammād b. Salama (d. 167/783) understood through a dream that he
had to discard ʿAmr’s hadith because the latter embraced “innovations”;8 Yaḥyā
b. Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān (d. 198/813) thought that there were others worse than he.9
ʿAlī b. ʿĀṣim al-Ṣiddīqī (d. 201/816) quoted him in the presence of the young
Muʿtaṣim.10 Qadarite muḥaddithūn, of whom there were still many during
the second half of the second century, usually disregarded this polemic en-
tirely.11 This is why al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī as well as Kaʿbī preserved a list of
ʿAmr’s hadith students, in part containing the same names.12 It was known that
2 Kaʿbī, Maq. 69, 4ff., and 90, ult. ff.

3 Among them Sufyān al-Thawrī and Sufyān b. ʿUyayna, as well as Abū Yūsuf and Abū Muṭīʿ
al-Balkhī among Abū Ḥanīfa’s pupils. The two Sufyāns were adopted with justification, as
shown by passages such as Fasawī II 259, 11ff. and pu. f.; cf. also Faḍl 243, 12ff., and Kaʿbī 69,
4f. > Faḍl 242, 2f.
4 TB XII 184, 15f.; Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl 11, 5 = 10, 6/transl. Lecomte 9 § 17.
5 TB XII 183, 8f.; abridged in Dhahabī, Siyar, VI 104, –4.
6 Fasawī II 261, 2f. > TB XII 179, ult.; in Dāraquṭnī § 13/transl. 13f. probably disfigured due to
contamination and linked to Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī.
7 TB XII 185, 11 and 8f.; similar 5f.
8 Ibid. 183, 10ff.; a similar narrative 187, 18ff. There were no rational arguments to draw on at
the time.
9 Ibid. 185, 4f., although the “worse one”, Abū Hilāl Muḥammad b. Sulaym al-Rāsibī, would
be viewed much more positively later (regarding him see p. 78 above).
10 al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Kifāya 134, 10ff.; cf. p. 364f. below.
11 One exception might be ʿAwf al-Aʿrābī (see p. 63 above).
12 TB XII 184, 1f.; cf. also Mīzān III 273, 9ff., and 275, 4.
346 chapter 2
occasionally it was not the material traced back to him that was eliminated but
only his name in the isnād;13 in rare cases, especially in works not accessible to
the influence of Sunni jarḥ wal-taʿdīl, even the name still survives.
Thus e.g. in Faḍl b. Shādhān, Īḍāḥ 373, 1. Maybe the traditions found in
Fasawī II 9, 1ff, and 10, 4ff. are part of these as well, as Sufyān b. ʿUyayna
is transmitting from a certain ʿAmr? After all Sufyān had attended ʿAmr’s
lectures (see n. 3 above and p. 743 below) and preserved a great amount
of notes of them (ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 280, – 6f., the correct reading being
kitāban kabīran instead of kitāban kathīran). ʿAmr b. Dīnār, whom the editor
believes to be intended here, does not fit the context any better (regard-
ing his teachers and pupils cf. TT VII 30f. and Mīzān no. 6366). In that
case ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd would have attended lectures by Jābir b. Zayd al-Azdī,
the forefather of the Ibāḍiyya, and also by ʿIkrima when the latter visited
Baghdad.
Sometimes traditions ʿAmr had heard from Ḥasan were simply declared false,14
while it was pointed out elsewhere that the reason why Ḥasan had answered
ʿAmr’s leading questions in the way he did was because he was already ad-
vanced in years at the time.15 This was about expurgating hadiths because of
their content, but the form, too, seems to have been deemed insufficient by
later generations. Even Qadarites criticised ʿAmr’s circulating Ḥasan’s own
dicta that he had intended to be interpreted in the sense of the prophet, as
actual hadith.16 When critical questions were asked, others claimed to have
heard ʿAmr evade them by saying “Someone said” (qāla baʿḍ).17 Undoubtedly
the content was more important to him, although he did not evaluate it from
a rationalist’s point of view any more than he did with regard to the Quran; in-
deed, Muʿtazilite circles noted with some astonishment that he held on to had-
iths even if he was unable to explain them: “This is how it has come down to us,
13 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal I 384, 4f. no. 2555; TB XII 184, 19ff.; Kaʿbī 69, 7ff. = 91, 3ff. Regarding a pos-
sible documented instance in Sufyān al-Thawrī’s Tafsīr see p. 340 above.
14 Thus the hadith against Muʿāwiya mentioned p. 326 above; cf. also TB XII 180, 9ff. and ult.
ff. regarding qunūt or how nabīdh was assessed (see p. 342f. above; also Fasawī II 260, 4ff.),
i.e. juristic issues in which ʿAmr decided as this hadith stated. Similar in TB 181, 4f. and 8ff.
More general ibid. 182, 1f.
15 Fasawī II 263, –5ff. > TB XII 180, 17ff., after Ḥumayd al-Ṭawīl, d. 142/759.
16 See p. 64 above. It is probable that the passage in Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, Muqaddima I 22, apu. ff.,
refers to the same circumstances (cf. the translation by Juynboll in: JSAI 5/1984/286).
17 Fasawī II 262, 3, after a certain ʿAbd al-Razzāq, i.e. maybe ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī
(126/744–211/827) who would, however, have been quite young at the time.
iraq 347
and I do not know why (the prophet) said it”.18 There were, however, limits: in
matters of dogma where predestination was stated too explicitly,19 and in legal
issues where he considered accepted practice, or indeed the one he favoured,
under threat.20 In these cases he himself apparently simply dismissed texts;
later generations working with more sophisticated methodology, and possibly
regarding the legal issues differently as well, preserved the examples as a deter-
rent. Quite how much everything was still evolving becomes clear when we
consider that direct prophetic dicta are listed indiscriminately next to verdicts
by companions of the prophet which would only later be traced back to the
prophet.
Cf. Dāraquṭnī § 14 and 17/transl. 29f. and 33 = ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 280, 6ff. =
TB XII 176, 14ff. regarding ʿUthmān’s decree to grant ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b.
ʿAwf’s wife her inheritance even after the period of waiting. However, it
never became binding; ʿAmr’s rejection was justified. Critics consequently
focussed on the way in which he had rejected it: he said ʿUthmān was not
an authority in his view. – The development can also be observed in the
case in Dāraquṭnī § 19/transl 34f. = ʿUqaylī III 280, 3ff. = TB 176, 5ff., where
ʿAmr dismissed Samura b. Jundab’s, the governor of Basra under Ziyād
b. Abīh, practice of interpolating silences (sakta) two (or three) times in
the public prayer. This would later take the form of a hadith (cf. Conc. s. v.
sakta; cf. also Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Istīʿāb II 653, 13ff.), but, it seems, only after
ʿAmr’s time. It is interesting that the transmission went via Ḥasan, ʿAmr
contradicting his teacher in this case. Abū Ḥanīfa, too, thought little of
Samura (Goldziher, Ẓâhiriten 79).
18 Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir II 774, 7ff./2IX 154 no. 504: concerning the dog.
19 TB XII 172, 1ff. regarding the well-known hadith of predestination from the womb onwards;
also Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 107, pu. ff. = 109, -7ff. (after Abū Nuʿaym) and Yāfīʿī, Marham 110,
1ff. Cf. Schreiner in: Actes VIII. Congrès II1 94, and my HT 217. – Cf. also the story at TB XII
176, 19ff. concerning the problem of the eternal pains of hell; the hadith cited there as well
as the preceding one are found in all the canonical collections (Conc. VI 174b). However,
the anecdote probably intends to show that ʿAmr saw no way out in this matter, as he ac-
cepted the prophetic tradition as authority.
20 Thus in the case of one hadith according to which a thief could be granted pardon at the
request of the person from whom he had stolen; cf. Dāraquṭnī § 6/transl. 21f. with com-
mentary; also Fasawī II 261, 4ff. > TH XII 177, 18ff., and 178, 3ff. The hadith would always
remain controversial, this practice contradicting the principle that the ḥadd punishments
are God’s right (ḥaqq Allāh) and consequently cannot be influenced by humans.
348 chapter 2
2.2.6.2.7 Theology and Politics

The material analysed so far conveys the impression that ʿAmr more than any-
one else transmitted Ḥasan’s legacy.1 While there were contemporaries who
tried to dispute this claim, especially for reasons of dogma,2 they would only
be successful much later. ʿAmr’s ideas were as little revolutionary as his politics,
which is confirmed in a way by his failure to develop his profile in the field of
theology where, being a “Muʿtazilite”, he should have distanced himself most
clearly from Ḥasan. He seems to have adopted some material directly from
his teacher’s exegesis. Like Ḥasan he used sura 4:93 as proof that a murderer,
even if he was a Muslim, would be punished in hell for eternity. Even when he
followed Wāṣil a step further and extended this verdict to include every grave
sinner, the fāsiq in general, he may still have believed himself to be in agree-
ment with Ḥasan; it was only the Bakriyya that viewed the murderer as a spe-
cial case, believing in eternal punishment in hell, too.3 Both ʿAmr and Wāṣil
followed Ḥasan in deciding in favour of the innocence of minor children4 and
against the separation of past and future paradise.5 There was at least one issue
in which ʿAmr sided with Ḥasan against Wāṣil, as he had learnt from Ḥasan
that the phrase “we will punish them twice” in sura 9:101 provided an argument
in favour of the punishment of the grave.6 He was also said to have endorsed
other popular elements of the eschatology in the company of his followers,
such as the cistern (ḥawḍ) near which the believers would gather on the Day of
Judgment, the scales of judgment and even the prophet’s intercession,7 while
Wāṣil did not believe these to be real. Shimmazī who reported this information
was himself a pupil of ʿAmr’s8 and knew what he was talking about. By adding
that Wāṣil himself denied this Shimmazī was probably simply trying not to
damage the harmony between the two “church fathers”.9
ʿAmr composed hardly any works of his own; it seems that he was neither a
great orator nor a great author. He did not have noticeable skill in kalām; and in
debates – the few that are transmitted concerning him – he frequently appears
1 This is also true of other, less central areas; cf. e.g. Ḥasan’s remark on the pre-Islamic tribes in
Agh. IV 307, 1ff. transmitted by ʿAmr. He was the one people asked if they wanted to find out
more about Ḥasan (Baḥshal, Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 285, apu. ff.).
3 Text 9; cf. also p. 301 above.
4 See p. 306 above.
6 Muwaffaq, Iḥāṭa 221b, 13ff.
7 At least according to Kashshī 394, –6ff.
9 Faḍl 237, 1ff.
iraq 349
as the loser, and that not only in discussion with his fellow Muʿtazilite Wāṣil
b. ʿAṭāʾ.10 The Fihrist names only two independent titles besides the tafsīr: a
K. al-ʿadl wal-tawḥīd and a K. al-radd ʿalā l-Qadariyya.11 We do not know what
he wrote in these books, although the phrasing of the titles is interesting, if
indeed it was already used in the original. There is no earlier instance of the
combination of tawḥīd and ʿadl (which probably refers to God); and from the
Qadarite point of view the term “Qadariyya” refers to the predestinarians here.12
Letters (rasāʾil) and sermons are also mentioned,13 but we do not know any
details about these, either.
This is surprising as one would have expected the Muʿtazila, which would
later repeatedly refer back to ʿAmr, to have preserved a clearer memory. But
even here tradition is merely anecdotal, with anecdotes frequently adopted
from opponents. There is no clear picture. It was transmitted that Wāṣil per-
suaded him of his view, but he is also said to have himself refuted Ḥasan, in
the same question and using the same arguments.14 There are sporadic reports
linking him to the same Hijaz environment from which Wāṣil came. ʿAmr was
said to have been a pupil of Abū Hāshim’s as well.15 The Shīʿites imagined him
asking Muḥammad al-Bāqir16 or Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq17 for advice, but all this is fic-
tion. Muḥammad al-Bāqir had died in 113/731, and deep down the Muʿtazila
knew that its Abū Hāshim tradition had feet of clay.18 Naming ʿAmr and Wāṣil
together presumes a Muʿtazilite community that was not necessarily reality in
the first generation.
We should not put much faith in the report of a debate between ʿAmr
and Abū Ḥanīfa (Text 12). ʿAmr probably took on the part of his pupil
Shimmazī, who is usually the hero of similar stories; the subject being
the same every time, namely the concept of faith (cf. Text II 6–7 with
commentary). The variant mentioned is interesting only in that despite
10 Text 12 as well as p. 349 and 351f. below; regarding Wāṣil see p. 292ff. above. When Mūsā
al-Uswārī attacked him during a discussion (with Murjiʾite arguments) he is reported to
have said (maybe deliberately taking as his starting point a Murjiʾite principle): “God will
judge between us” (Faḍl 243, –7ff.).
11 Catalogue of works no. 1–2.
12 Cf. EI2 IV 368b s. v. Ḳadariyya; also HT 125.
13 Masʿūdī VI 212, 6/IV 158, –5, probably > IKh III 462, 5.
14 Text 7; cf. also p. 294 above.
15 Faḍl 164, 17f.
16 Kulīnī, Kāfī I 110, 5ff.; Mufīd, Irshād 265, 18ff./transl. 399f.; Ibn Bābōya, Tawḥīd 119, 11ff.
17 Ṭabrisī, Majmaʿ al-bayān II 39, 2ff.; Biḥār XLVII 216f. no. 4, and LXXIX 6ff. no. 7.
18 IM 16, 5ff. after Ḥākim al-Jushamī; cf. Madelung, Qāsim 33.
350 chapter 2
its Muʿtazilite tendency it admits ʿAmr’s lack of dialectic skills: he is un-

able to find his way out of an argument of Abū Ḥanīfa’s and has to rely on
one of his pupils – once again Shimmazī? – to find a suitable muʿāraḍa.
Regarding the content cf. also the commentary.
The area where ʿAmr preserved an independent individual position beside

Wāṣil most clearly was political theory, supporting the imāmat al-fāḍil,19 i.e.
he considered Abū Bakr to be the best candidate at the time he was elected.
He was thus not pro-ʿAlid, like Wāṣil.20 He had once again adopted this from
Ḥasan; Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār elucidates that like the latter, ʿAmr considered
the succession of the khulafāʾ al-rāshidūn to be religiously and historically
justified.21 He criticised ʿAlī; disapproving of his claiming to have heard spe-
cial revelations from the prophet.22 After the Abbasids had seized power this
made him suspect for a moment; the new governor had him make a statement
regarding those of his teacher’s dicta in which ʿAlī and, much worse, his re-
lationship with ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbbās, was shown in a bad light.23 While he did
not think much of Muʿāwiya, either,24 his opinion of ʿUthmān differed – posi-
tively – from Wāṣil’s, following not only his teacher but the general trend in
Basra, too.
This led to him modifying Wāṣil’s assessment of the battle of the camel.
While he, too, did not wish to brand the prophet’s companions involved as
grave sinners but rather to preserve equal loyalty to all of them, he did not
conclude that their testimony was valid under all circumstances as long as
they were not testifying against one another. They all rebelled against ʿUthmān
and were consequently under suspicion of having played a part in his mur-
der, a suspicion sufficient to ruin their ʿadāla. Independently of the circum-
stances in which they were testifying, together or individually, agreeing with
or against one another, their testimony could not be accepted. Independently,
consequently, too, of how Wāṣil interpreted this testimony,25 ʿAmr was strict-
er than he due to his insight into history, for ʿAlī’s good character could now
be doubted, while it would have been a sacrilege in the case of ʿUthmān and
19 Text XV 41.

20 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mughnī XX2 114, 8f. after Jubbāʾī.
21 Mughnī XX2 114, 7; also Ḥajūrī, Rawḍat al-akhbār 98a, 8.
22 Text X 14.
23 Text X 13.
iraq 351
his two predecessors.26 While the Shīʿites thought that in the instance of the
battle of the camel ʿAmr had granted ʿAlī a certain advantage compared to his
opponents,27 and there were voices among the Muʿtazilites who tried to play
down the difference,28 this was probably wishful thinking. After all, ʿUthmān’s
reputation was not called into doubt in the battle of the camel.
Other accounts of correspondences or differences in the opinions of the

two thinkers do not go beyond details. In debating technique Wāṣil was
said to have accorded the answering party higher importance, and ʿAmr
the party asking the questions, as the latter started the conversation and
determined its course (Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir 2VII 63 no. 194). Everyone capable
of thought had a duty to religious speculation – not because God explic-
itly commanded it, but because he forbade avoiding it (Text 4). In legal
matters, too, his starting point were prohibitions (see p. 343f. above).
ʿAmr’s true objective was the human freedom of decision and the rejection of
predestination. In this area he was more dedicated than Wāṣil, but it did not
necessarily make him a Muʿtazilite. He appears in the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth’s lists of
Qadarites together with some of his pupils,29 while Wāṣil was never included,
and neither were any other Muʿtazilites. Some texts implied that it had not
been his Qadarite attitude that discouraged the moderates, but rather his grad-
ual radicalisation; Sufyān b. ʿUyayna, who thought highly of him,30 claimed
to have heard hadith from him before he brought “new ideas” into the world
(aḥdatha).31 But what could have been the gist of these new ideas? It was as-
sumed that he based his Qadarite ideas on the Quran,32 but so had Ḥasan al-
Baṣrī, and it is impossible to determine whether ʿAmr found new evidence to
support his cause.33 He seems to have dismissed predestinarian hadiths,34 but
this was not unusual at the time at all. Ibn Ḥanbal would later accuse him
26 Text X 15, a–i. For general information cf. also ibn al-Murtaḍā, Al-baḥr al-zakhkhār I 180,
17f.
27 Text 18.
28 Text 15, k–l with commentary. Madelung linked the two (Qāsim 26). Regarding later shifts
of perspective cf. also Text 16–17.
29 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 625, 8 > Ibn Rusta, Aʿlāq 220, 7.
31 Fasawī II 259, pu. f.
32 Text 10.
33 Cf. also Text VI 1.
352 chapter 2
of denying divine prescience,35 but this is probably only polemic distortion of

the fact that he did not ascribe any predetermining force to it.36 How, indeed,
could he propose new ideas if tradition everywhere else claims that he was
avoided because he campaigned for something that was not new but usually
tolerated unchallenged? Maybe the “new ideas” Sufyān mentioned referred to
a different field, such as his adopting the concept of fisq.
If radicalisation could be noticed in his very own field, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s leg-
acy, it was most likely in two aspects. Firstly in abolishing the “asymmetry” in
Ḥasan’s theory of free will to the effect that God not only does not determine
evil, but neither does he determine good.37 Or, secondly, by extending the level
of argument beyond Quran and hadith. While this should not lead us to think
of purely rational kalām, two anecdotes describing him in debate with Abū
ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ38 also contain considerations introducing a new emphasis.
While they are still rooted in the Quran, the exegesis is now supported by lexi-
cal analysis. The fact that they work in ʿAmr’s favour once and once against him
shows that they had not become routine. At the same time this philological
approach suggests that the anecdotes reflect the grammarian Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ’s way
of thinking rather than that of the moralist and traditionist ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.
In all probability we are looking at a paradigmatic juxtaposition: the develop-
ment may have taken place during ʿAmr’s lifetime, but it probably did not start
with him.
For more information see p. 423ff. below. – A third anecdote, clearly

apocryphal, contains a conceptual argument of this kind. ʿAmr’s oppo-
nent in this case is Ḥārith b. Miskīn, an Egyptian jurist and predestinar-
ian who died at the age of 90 in 250/864, and had consequently not even
been born at the time of ʿAmr’s death (ʿIqd II 383, 14ff.; regarding Ḥārith
b. Miskīn see ch. C 3.3.4 below). In another instance the argument is pro-
posed by Abū l-Hudhayl rather than ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd (Faḍl 258, 13ff.).
2.2.6.3 The Pupil Generation

The followers gathering round Wāṣil and those around ʿAmr can be dis-
tinguished comparatively clearly – providing further proof that the two
founding fathers did not work as one from the very first. Wāṣil pupils were
mainly legal scholars, ʿAmr’s traditionists. Wāṣil sent his pupils into the world
35 Khallāl, Musnad 141, pu. f.

36 See p. 342, n. 16 above in the context of the Abū Lahab issue.
37 See p. 54 above.
38 Text 11 and XI 1.
iraq 353
as missionaries, while ʿAmr was active as a teacher in Basra. Tradition is sparse

in both cases.
2.2.6.3.1 The Circle around Wāṣil

The only ones among Wāṣil’s pupils about whom we can find out slightly more
are his duʿāt. Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī praised them in a poem, revealing some names
in the process.1 A marginally more recent account by Abū l-Hudhayl was pre-
served by ʿAbd al-Jabbār.2 Kaʿbī, too, seems to have relied on this,3 going into
more detail in some places and adding a further name.4 Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī
quoted from him directly in his K. al-ḥūr al-ʿīn.5 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār repeat-
ed the material from Abū l-Hudhayl in the fifth ṭabaqa of his work, where he
used a different list of names which also included other pupils; its origins are
not known.6 It was copied by the Zaydite imam al-Manṣūr billāh who had it
from Ḥākim al-Jushamī.7 Non-Muʿtazilite sources only rarely contain relevant
material.
2.2.6.3.1.1 The duʿāt

Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī described the practice of the missionaries or canvassers dis-
patched by Wāṣil. They would join caravans,1 some of them conducting busi-
ness at the same time.2 Upon reaching their destination they did not reveal
their intentions immediately but first established an atmosphere of mutual
trust, frequently by providing legal advice.3 We hear nothing of political pro-
paganda, the objective apparently being religious debate.4 They were trained
for this in Basra; it seems that Wāṣil also gave them written instructions and
templates for discussion.5 Their appearance was that of khaṭībs, with turban
1 Cf. p. 436 below.

2 Faḍl 237, 5ff.
3 Maq. 66, ult. ff.
4 Sulaymān b. Arqam (see p. 357f. below).
5 P. 208, 6ff.
6 Faḍl 251, 2ff.
7 Shāfī I 137, 11ff. (with significant errors).

2 See p. 356 below regarding ʿUthmān al-Ṭawīl.
3 Text XII, v. 8; also p. 356 below.
4 Ibid., vv. 14f. Regarding the dialectical skill of the duʿāt cf. v. 2.
5 See p. 306 above.
354 chapter 2
and staff.6 When they entered into a rhetorical duel they trusted that on the
same day their teacher would be praying with his pupils in Basra.7
They were probably in their prime, Wāṣil himself not yet being fifty at the
time.8 Consequently they were not yet at the forefront of scholarship in Basra;
later, after their master’s death and the great political changes, circumstances
were not favourable to them anymore, which explains why they did not step
into the limelight of religious tradition. In the case of
Ayyūb b. al-Awthar (?),
Wāṣil’s messenger to the Arabian Peninsula (jazīra)9 or, as Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār
added, to the Arabian Peninsula, Medina and Bahrain,10 the name alone poses
a problem. Kaʿbī has Awthar, but Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī writes Awtar11 and ʿAbd
al-Jabbār Awtan, while Abū l-Hudhayl’s account only has Ayyūb.12 The only
non-Muʿtazilite source mentioning him, Abū l-Faraj in Maqātil al-Ṭālibiyyīn,
calls him Abū Ayyūb b. al-Adbar instead, claiming in addition that he success-
fully invited al-Nafs al-zakiyya to follow Wāṣil’s teachings.13
Al-Qāsim b. al-Ṣaʿdī,
was Wāṣil’s messenger to Yemen.14 His father’s name is found as al-Saʿdī in Qāḍī
ʿAbd al-Jabbār and the texts based on his work,15 which is probably a later cor-
rection, the Banū Saʿd (of whom there were several) being more well-known
to scholars than the northern Yemeni city of Ṣaʿda. If Qāsim’s father came
from there it could explain why Wāṣil chose the son as dāʿī for this very region.
Qudāma b. Jaʿfar (d. 337/948) would note later that most of the merchants in
6 Text XII 1, vv. 9–12m 16, 24f.; also p. 436f. below.

7 This is how people imagined it (Faḍl 67, 11ff.). It is rewarding to compare this to the behav-
iour of the later Ismāʿīlite duʿāt (cf. Halm in: Festschrift Spuler 123ff.).
8 See p. 271 above.
9 Thus Kaʿbī 67, 3 > Nashwān, Ḥūr 208, 10.
10 Faḍl 251, 10 > al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī I 137, 14.
11 As Nashwān is directly dependent on Kaʿbī, one of the forms is a copyist’s error.
12 Faḍl 237, 9 > IM 32, 8. [Should he be identified with Ayyūb al-Qazzāz (p. 288)?].
13 P. 238, pu. f.; cf. p. 287 above. This account also runs through Abū l-Hudhayl, but he is cited
not with his kunya but with his ism Muḥammad b. al-Hudhayl al-ʿAbdī.
14 Kaʿbī 67, 3 > Nashwān 208, 9.
15 Faḍl 237, 9 (after Abū l-Hudhayl) > IM 32, 8; also Faḍl 251, 8f. > al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī I
137, 13.
iraq 355
Ṣaʿda came from Basra;16 it is possible that this special relationship started
early on.
The Zaydite imam al-Hādī ilā l-ḥaqq (d. 298/891), whose teachings were
strongly influenced by the Muʿtazila, also settled in Ṣaʿda first. The con-
nections between Ṣaʿda and the Basran Tamīm are still visible in the name
of a Yemeni author from the tenth/sixteenth century (cf. GAL S 2/557 and
Löfgren/Traini, Arabic Manuscripts in the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana II 49
no. 95 VI).
ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥārith
was Wāṣil’s messenger to the Maghreb.17 Like many of the other duʿāt there
is no evidence of him outside of Muʿtazilite literature, but his case is differ-
ent as the combination of names is extraordinarily frequent and consequently,
while he might be identical with others of his name, it is impossible to be cer-
tain.18 He clearly had a great following: even later the Muʿtazila in this area
was still known as Wāṣiliyya.19 There was certainly more scope for missionary
activity than in Medina or in Yemen. What is important is the information that
ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥārith had been given Wāṣil’s “books” on the way;20 these may
have been instructions on missionary practice of the kind that survives to this
day among Ibāḍite circles in the region.21 It is noticeable that he is the only one
of the duʿāt whom the Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār does not mention again in the fifth
ṭabaqa. Could the explanation be that he did not return from the Maghreb?
Ḥafṣ b. Sālim
was Wāṣil’s messenger to Khorasan. His basis of operations appears to have

been the city of Tirmidh, maybe because it was where Jahm b. Ṣafwān was
active whose influence had to be stopped. He is said to have debated with
16 K. al-Kharāj 189, 11.

17 Abū l-Hudhayl in Faḍl 237, 5; Kaʿbī 66, ult. f.
18 We might consider the schoolteacher (muʿallim) of this name mentioned in Ibn Qutayba,
Maʿārif 547, 7f., who was noticeable for not accepting any money for his activity. He is
mentioned in close proximity to Ḥusayn al-Muʿallim, a traditionist who may have been a
member of the Muʿtazila as well (see p. 359 below), but information such as that in Fasawī
II 798, 4ff., render this equation improbable.
20 Faḍl 227, 9.
21 Cf. ZDMG 126/1976/43ff. regarding the K. al-Jahālāt.
356 chapter 2
him at Wāṣil’s orders,22 but he bided his time, simply visiting the mosque in
Tirmidh until he was asked to take part in a scholarly discussion (kalām).23 It
is surely merely Muʿtazilite wishful thinking to say that Jahm converted after-
wards, unmasked not least because it had to be admitted that he lapsed again
later.24 Ḥafṣ later returned to Basra where he kept in touch with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd
after Wāṣil’s death. He transmitted ʿAmr’s definition of rhetoric (balāgha);25 he
probably noticed that ʿAmr did not continue to employ Wāṣil’s khaṭīb style.
ʿAmr was so forbearing with him26 that in one of his qaṣīdas Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī
gave him the epithet al-qarm “the lord, the important man”.27 His two sons
ʿAmr and al-Ḥusayn became followers of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.28
He is entirely distinct from Abū Muqātil Ḥafṣ b. Salm/Sālim al-Samarqandī

who transmitted Abū Ḥanīfa’s K. al-ʿālim wal-mutaʿallim. This one was a
Murjiʾite (see p. 629ff. below); but the debate with Jahm b. Ṣafwān was
on the subject of the Murjiʾite concept of faith. Chronologically, too, this
would hardly have been possible; Abū Muqātil died in 208/823, 80 years
after Jahm’s death.
Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān b. Abī ʿUthmān Khālid al-Ṭawīl,
Wāṣil’s messenger to Armenia, was already mentioned by Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī

as well.29 He was a mawlā of the Sulaym30 and seems to have been rather
wealthy; he was a cloth merchant (bazzāz)31 and as such in the same business
as Wāṣil himself. When Wāṣil sent him out he is said to have offered half his
fortune so he would not have to go, but in the end he earned 100,000 dirham
during a single transaction, people said, and converted most of the inhabit-
ants of Armenia.32 He probably settled in Bardhaʿa/Partev, where even later
22 Kaʿbī 67, 4 > Nashwān 208, 11; in more detail Faḍl 241, 1ff. > IM 32, 5ff., also Faḍl 251, 6f. > IM
42, 4f., and al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī I 137, 12.
23 Abū l-Hudhayl in Faḍl 237, 5ff.; Text IX 11.
24 Faḍl 237, 7f.
25 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 114, 1ff. (with identification 114, 17) > Faḍl 244, 3ff.; cf. p. 338 above.
26 Bayān I 114, 16f.; see also p. 338 above.
28 Regarding them see p. 369 below.
29 Text XII 1, v. 2; cf. Faḍl 251, 3ff. > al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī I 137, 11f.
30 Kaʿbī 67, 7.
31 Faḍl 237, 13 after Abū l-Hudhayl.
32 Kaʿbī 67, 7ff. > Nashwān, Ḥūr 208, 13ff.; Abū l-Hudhayl in Faḍl 237, 11ff. > IM 32, 9ff.
iraq 357
there would be numerous Muʿtazilites;33 at the time the city was the bridge-
head of Muslim rule in Armenia.34 Despite his economic interests he was not
as successful among the locals as a merchant as as a lawyer; he had studied
religious law under Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and, on Wāṣil’s advice, worked as a legal
adviser in Armenia for a year first.35 When he returned to Basra later he took
up the cause of Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh, al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s brother, but did not
want to be reminded of this after the uprising.36 At that time Abū l-Hudhayl
attended his lectures; he would later frequently be called the latter’s teacher,37
and probably did not die until after 150/767. But Abū l-Hudhayl’s main objec-
tive seems to have been to establish a link to Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ via ʿUthmān, who
did not write anything himself38 and appears to have merely administered his
teacher’s legacy. Abū l-Hudhayl heard stories from him about Wāṣil’s luthgha39
as well as the tradition of the discussion between ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd and Abū ʿAmr
Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ.40 He was of no interest to the doxographers, and is not mentioned
in the K. al-intiṣār, either; consequently nothing was known of his teachings.
Abū Muʿādh Sulaymān b. Arqam al-Baṣrī
was one of Wāṣil’s two messengers in Kufa.41 He was a mawlā of the Qurayẓa
or al-Naḍīr,42 i.e. one of the originally Jewish tribes of Medina, and appears to
have been a respected traditionist in his time. He had been acquainted with
ʿUmar II and transmitted stories of his conscientiousness as caliph;43 accord-
ing to an autobiographical account he delivered a letter from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī
to him in which he wrote of the vanity of earthly things.44 He possessed writ-
ten notes of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s lectures from which he quoted.45 He also met
33 Kaʿbī 111, 4f. > Ḥūr 212, 3; cf. ch. C 7.4 below.
34 EI2 I 1040f. s. n.; Barthold, An Historical Geography of Iran 227f., and Bosworth in EIran III
779f.
35 Kaʿbī 67, 12.
36 van Arendonk, Opkomst 289.
37 Faḍl 164, 16ff., and 251, 4 > IM 42, 2.
38 Fihrist 203, –4.
39 Faḍl 237, –4f.
40 Cf. Text X 11 with commentary.
41 Kaʿbī 67, 4f. > Ḥūr 208, 12; Faḍl 252, 10.
42 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 121m 2; TB IX 13, 12f.
43 Fasawī, Maʿrifa I 578, –5ff.
44 Agh. VII 271, 1ff.
358 chapter 2
Zuhrī (d. 124/742); they apparently transmitted from one another.46 However,
he outlived both of them by many years and would have the opportunity to
export his hadith into newly-founded Baghdad.47 At an unknown time he
was also in touch with Sayyid al-Ḥimyarī.48 Ṭabarī mentioned him as a rāwī
for historical information.49 While the negative verdicts did not begin until
later, once they did begin, they were unanimous.50 Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-
Anṣārī (118/736–215/830), who became qāḍī of Baghdad during Hārūn’s time,51
reported that even during his youth, i.e. at the beginning of the Abbasid era,
young people were kept away from him and his lectures boycotted.52 He had
probably made himself unpopular already at that time with his connections
to the Muʿtazila, which were reinforced by his ascetic inclinations. Dhahabī
preserved the following hadith from him: “He who enjoys experiencing the
sweetness of faith should dress in wool and rein in his tongue”,53 and a tradi-
tion recorded by Fasawī54 aimed at honing the awareness of sin that Ḥasan
al-Baṣrī aspired to.
There was a controversy on whether he had been confused with Sulaymān

b. Dāwūd al-Khawlānī, the brother of a Syrian Qadarite (regarding him
see vol. I 124 above). However, this only referred to the isnād of a single
hadith; the two persons were by no means identical (cf. Ibn Muhannā,
Taʾrīkh Dārayyā 81, 2ff.; AZ 455 no. 1151 and previously, Mīzān II 201, –5ff.).
(Abū Salama) al-Ḥasan b. Dhakwān al-Baṣrī
was the second of Wāṣil’s duʿāt in Kufa.55 The connection between him and
Sulaymān b. Arqam is not quite clear. Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s account could lead
46 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 236, no. 1488; TT IV 168, 11ff.; cf. also the confusion in the isnād cited by
Fasawī III 4, 4ff.
47 TB IX 13f. no. 4612. He was in Wāsiṭ as well (Baḥshal, Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 88, apu., and 131, 3).
48 Agh. VII 271, 1ff.
49 Taʾrīkh II 22, 10, and 27, 4.
50 Cf. esp. TB, loc. cit.; also Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 398, no. 2664; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 121f. no. 599;
Fasawī III 35, 1, and 57, 4f.; Mīzān no. 3427; TT IV 168f.
51 TB V 408ff.; regarding him cf. also p. 173 above.
52 Ibid. IX 14, 15f.; ʿUqaylī II 121, –5f.
53 Mīzān no. 3427; Ibn ʿAdī was said to have recorded more than twenty hadiths of his in his
Kāmil (cf. GAS 1/198f.).
54 Maʿrifa II 152, ult.
55 Kaʿbī 67, 4f. > Ḥūr 208, 12; Abū l-Hudhayl in Faḍl 237, 10 > IM 32, 8f.
iraq 359
to the conclusion that his part in the mission was greater;56 Abū l-Hudhayl’s ver-
sion, which otherwise agrees essentially with Kaʿbī, does not include Sulaymān
b. Arqam at all.57 Muʿtazilite sources tell us nothing further regarding his iden-
tity; all we learn is that he was a follower of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s.58 They did, howev-
er, find a further Ḥasan b. Dhakwān in the lists of Qadarites available to them,
from whom ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s pupil ʿAbd al-Wārith b. Saʿīd59 heard hadith,60 as
confirmed by non-Muʿtazilite texts.61 Ṭabarī I 161, 17f. reveals that this Ḥasan
b. Dhakwān transmitted from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, too. His moral ideas were very
strict: “Do not sit with the sons of the rich, for they behave like women and
are a worse temptation than virgins,” was transmitted from him.62 These two
persons are probably identical. After all, the Muʿtazilites did not exploit the
Qadarite lists until later63 and this was by no means the only doublet that re-
sulted.64 Ḥasan b. Dhakwān’s Muʿtazilite activities were not mentioned in jarḥ
wal-taʿdīl works, probably due to the fact that the rijāl experts gathered their
information mainly from isnāds and the tendency of the respective hadiths.
We are tempted to take a step further. There is a Basran traditionist named

Ḥusayn b. Dhakwān al-ʿAwdī of whom Ibn Abī Ḥātim also said that his
hadiths were preserved most completely by ʿAbd al-Wārith b. Saʿīd (III1 75,
–5f.). He was a schoolteacher (Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 251, 4 and earlier; Bukhārī I2
378 no. 2869), which is why he is often named simply Ḥusayn al-Muʿallim.
Consequently we might suspect that his father’s name was emended by
the scholars through a contamination with the abovementioned Ḥasan
b. Dhakwān, but this does not seem to be the case: the complete form of
the name was documented in the earliest sources (IS VII2 31, 10f.; Bukhārī,
loc. cit.; IAH I2 52 no. 233; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 350, no. 299). Ibn Qutayba adds
the father’s name in a gloss (Maʿārif 547, 14). This Ḥusayn b. Dhakwān
56 Faḍl 252, 8ff.; al-Manṣūr billāh even interpreted this to mean that he had won Sulaymān
over to become his follower (Shāfī I 137, 15f.).
57 Ibid. 237, 5ff.
58 Kaʿbī 67, 5.
60 Kaʿbī 92, 5ff.; Faḍl 342, 1.
61 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 223f. no. 272; Mīzān no. 1844; TT II 277, 2 and 6; Hady al-sārī II 122, –9ff.;
Suyūṭī, Tadrīb I 328, pu. He bears the short kunya Abū Salama.
62 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Dhamm al-malāhī, quoted in Bellamy, Society and the Sexes 37; unfortu-
nately I have been unable to compare the original wording.
64 Cf. e.g. p. 60 and 329, n. 22; also p. 169, n. 21.
360 chapter 2
died in 145, at the exact time when the Muʿtazila supported Ibrāhīm b.
ʿAbdallāh’s uprising, suffering great losses (see p. 372ff. below). Should we
presume therefore that he was identical with Ḥasan b. Dhakwān, Wāṣil’s
former dāʿī in Kufa? Kardarī’s Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa mention a certain
Ḥusayn al-Muʿtazilī who was ʿUthmān al-Battī’s teacher in Basra (II 83,
pu. ff.). This could be our Ḥusayn b. Dhakwān as he, too, appears to have
been knowledgeable in legal matters (if indeed Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 251, 2ff., can
be interpreted in this way). Ḥasan/Ḥusayn b. Dhakwān, schoolteacher by
trade and accomplished in legal matters, would in that case have been
sent to Kufa by Wāṣil in the twenties; we have already seen that legal
training was particularly important there. However, it would not have
paid off as handsomely as in Armenia or in Tirmidh where a flourishing
juristic tradition was already established. Ḥasan b. Dhakwān would have
died only around 20 years later – ample time for him to transmit hadith
and thus secure himself a place in the isnāds. There is no contradiction
in his bearing the nisba al-Baṣrī while Ḥusayn al-Muʿallim was called al-
ʿAwdī as “ʿAwd” in this instance probably refers to a sub-tribe of the Azd
who were living in Basra (Samʿānī, Ansāb IX 401, 1ff., esp. 9ff.). The spe-
cial relationship with ʿAbd al-Wārith b. Saʿīd that the Qadarite Ḥasan b.
Dhakwān as well as Ḥusayn b. Dhakwān were said to have enjoyed might
be explained by his being not only a pupil but also a nephew of the tra-
ditionist hiding behind the two names – after all, he was called ʿAbd al-
Wārith b. Saʿīd b. Dhakwān (see p. 366f. below).
However, this construction may be putting rather too much pressure
on the sources, as it would imply that neither the rijāl experts nor the
Muʿtazilites were able to make sense of the material with which they were
working. To the Muʿtazilites Ḥusayn al-Muʿallim was a Qadarite (Kaʿbī 95,
6ff. > Faḍl 342, 16 > IM 138, 4), to the “orthodox” sources not even that;
they only noted that there was some “confusion” in his hadith (fīhi ḍṭirāb;
ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 250, –5; cf. Mīzān no. 2000; TT II 338f. no. 599). Nowhere
do we read that he died during the uprising of 145, but Kardarī discusses
Ḥusayn al-Muʿtazilī next to Ibn Sīrīn, which is why we assumed on p. 169
above that he might be identical with Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. The question will
have to remain unanswered.
2.2.6.3.1.2 Wāṣil’s Other Pupils

Wāṣil’s other pupils have also been forgotten, and it is noticeable that not
even Muʿtazilite ṭabaqāt works recorded all of them. Thus Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī
named
iraq 361
ʿĪsā b. Ḥāḍir
as Wāṣil’s assistant (ghulām),1 but Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār knew only his name.2
Kaʿbī did not even list him, mentioning him only incidentally in one place
as the transmitter of a conversation with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.3 A report by Jāḥiẓ
confirms that they were acquainted and that ʿĪsā probably survived ʿAmr, al-
though Jāḥiẓ did not meet him himself.4 He was also in contact with Faḍl
al-Raqāshī.5 The strange combination of names leads us to assume that he is
identical with that ʿĪsā b. Ḥāḍir al-Bāhilī who, together with some like-minded
men such as Yūsuf al-Samtī, conspired in Basra against the unpopular qāḍī
Khālid b. Ṭalīq al-Ḥārithī.6 He would have still been alive in the second half of
the sixties, enjoying great respect in his city, as he was a member of the delega-
tion of dignitaries who brought a complaint against Khālid b. Ṭalīq before al-
Mahdī in Baghdad which resulted in the qāḍī’s being removed from office. The
Muʿtazilite poet Ibn Munādhir7 mentioned him in a poem composed on the
occasion praising the delegation – and informing the Basran population.8 His
position might explain why Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī named him in the same breath as
ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd and at the very beginning of his poem.
Malaṭī mentioned9 two Basran pupils of Wāṣil’s from whom Bishr b. al-
Muʿtamir was said to have adopted the fundamental doctrines of the school.
Firstly,
Abū ʿUthmān al-Zaʿfarānī.
He may have been named by Ṭabarī once as an authority for Abū l-Hudhayl
in a report on ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s attitude in the uprising of 145;10 this passage,
1 Text XII 1, v. 1.
2 Faḍl 251, pu. > al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī I 137, 15 (as ʿĪsā b. ʿĀṣim), and IM 42, 6 (as Qays b.
ʿĀṣim!).
3 Maq. 117, 7.
4 Ḥayawān I 337, –5ff. Two pupils of Abū Ḥafṣ al-Shimmazī’s, who was himself a follower of
ʿAmr’s, were the most likely intermediaries (regarding them see p. 478 below; however, in
that case Abū ʿAlī would have to be corrected to read Abū ʿĀmir).
5 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 307, pu. ff.; regarding him see p. 192ff. above.
6 See p. 174 above.
8 Wakīʿ II 129, 1ff.; 130, 15ff.; 132, 11ff.
9 Tanbīh 30, 18ff./38, 7ff. 31, 6ff. tells us that Abū l-Hudhayl also studied under both of them.
10 Taʾrīkh III 148, 17ff.; see p. 328 above.
362 chapter 2
however, mentions the nisba only, which is also found, but with a different
kunya, in Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār where a certain Abū ʿAmr al-Zaʿfarānī speaks
of Wāṣil.11 We may toy with the idea of changing this to Ibn ʿAmr in order to
remove the discrepancy, as he is named as Ibn al-Zaʿfarānī elsewhere;12 ad-
dressed, however, as Abū ʿAmr in that very passage, and the written form of the
accusative is, after all, unambiguous.13
The form Ibn al-Zaʿfarānī made us think of linking him with Maymūn
al-Zaʿfarānī, a mawlā of the Tamīm who had a son named Ghuṣn who
had been trained in the law by Abū Ḥanīfa (Wakīʿ, Akhbār III 167, –6ff.);
in that case Abū ʿUthmān or Abū ʿAmr’s name would have been Ghuṣn b.
Maymūn. He, however, would take us to Kufa, and Bishr al- Muʿtamir met
Abū ʿUthmān in Basra. We will have to leave it as non liquet. The nisba is
too frequent (cf. Samʿānī VI 298ff.).
The second of Wāṣil’s pupils mentioned was
Bishr b. Saʿīd.
He may have been the same as that Bishr b. Saʿīd whom Jāḥiẓ has narrate a
story from Basra (he may have heard it himself).14 He was not mentioned by
Kaʿbī or Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Kaʿbī noting instead a certain
Bishr b. Khālid
in a list of school leaders preserved by Ibn al-Nadīm.15 He was thought to have

shared Wāṣil’s view of the imāmat al-mafḍūl and was thus probably pro-ʿAlid.16
Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, on the other hand, seems to count him among ʿAmr b.
ʿUbayd’s followers.17 His dates pose certain problems. Jāḥiẓ heard him and
Naẓẓām report how they both debated with the Imamite theologian Shayṭān
al-Ṭāq,18 consequently he is unlikely to have died before 170/786 or 180/796.
11 Faḍl 236, 9.

12 Ibid. 250, 15.
13 250, 16: yā Abā ʿAmr.
14 Ḥayawān II 231, 9ff.
15 Fihrist 220, n., l. 5.
16 Pseudo-Nāshiʾ, Uṣūl al-niḥal 52, 2; cf. p. 308f. above.
17 Faḍl 252, pu. > IM 42, 11, and al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī I 137, 19.
18 Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 181, –6ff. > Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān V 108, apu. ff.
iraq 363
The claim that Naẓẓām met Shayṭān al-Ṭāq is not entirely unproblematic
as regards the chronology (see vol. I 394 above and ch. C 3.2.2 below). Of
course we do not know whether this was the same Bishr b. Khālid.
Another mysterious figure was
Hayyāj b. al-ʿAlāʾ al-Sulamī
under whom Ibn Abī Duwād studied in Syria. He was said to have met Wāṣil
personally, but is not mentioned in any of the early sources.19 It is clear that
he was known only through Ibn Abī Duwād’s biography, but in the case of a
Syrian who presumably did not even live in Damascus but among the Kalb in
the desert,20 this is not too surprising. The chronological distance, however, is
very great; at the earliest Hayyāj could have died around 175/791. Maybe Ibn Abī
Duwād foreshortened the correlations slightly when reporting of him. – Great
difficulties also arise in the context of those people who are mentioned in
some Muʿtazilite source or other. Thus we know nothing precise concerning
ʿAmr b. Ḥawshab
whom Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār named as one of Wāṣil’s pupils,21 while Kaʿbī knew
nothing of him. Could he have been a son of Ḥawshab b. Muslim al-Thaqafī’s,
who transmitted from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and had connections to the Muʿtazila?22
It is unlikely that he was the same Ibn Ḥawshab to whom Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī
addressed his apology of Wāṣil,23 as a pupil of Wāṣil’s would hardly have
needed it.
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Barra
was also mentioned by Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār but not recorded anywhere else.24
We know rather more about his son
19 Not until Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya II 37, –4ff., and Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya X 319, 19; not quite
as clear in IKh I 81, 10f.
20 Cf. ch. C 3.3.5 below.
21 Faḍl 251, pu. > al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī I 137, 14f., and IM 42, 6.
24 Faḍl 251, pu. > IM 42, 6f. (which has incorrect Murra or Qurra instead of Barra).
364 chapter 2
(al-)Rabīʿ b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Barra25 al-Sulamī,
who is listed immediately afterwards. He had attended Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s lectures

and was considered to be a Qadarite.26 He does appear to have been an ascetic
above all and recognised as such even by “orthodox” sources.27 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-
Jabbār also presents him in this way, quoting two paraenetic speeches which
employ the medium of sajʿ freely, although he does seem to be relying on non-
Muʿtazilite tradition.28 Among his pupils we find the predestinarian Muʿādh
b. Muʿādh, whose opposition to ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd would later be emphasised,29
as well as the grammarian Abū Zayd al-Anṣārī, who was probably a Qadarite
and transmitted hadith from ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.30 Muʿādh b. Muʿādh would later
dissociate himself from him, but the story recording this may well be mere
propaganda.31 It is not, in fact, impossible that he, as it claims, disapproved of a
certain prayer formula because it seemed to imply a restriction of human free-
dom of decision (namely Allāhumma ʿṣimnī “O God, make me free from sin”),
as a similar accusation was levelled against the ascetic ʿAmr b. Fāʾid al-ʿUswārī.32
His maternal brother was Abū Ḥurra Wāṣil b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Raqāshī
(d. 152/769 or 153/770), who was one of the first to internalise asceticism
in Basra (Ibn Nuqṭa, loc. cit.; regarding him see p. 111f. above). Another
brother named Juwayriya is found in Fasawī (Maʿrifa III 208, 4).
Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. ʿĀṣim b. Ṣuhayb al-Ṣiddīqī al-Wāsiṭī
transmitted hadith from Wāṣil.33 He must have met him as a young man as
he was born between 105/723–24 and 109/727 and died in Wāsiṭ in Jumādā I
201/Dec. 816.34 He also referred to ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, even in the presence of
25 The father’s name is sometimes left out and the grandfather’s name read Bazza, resulting
in al-Rabīʿ b. Bazza (e.g. Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn II 311, 11, or Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifat al-ṣafwa III 266,
10, where his identity is affirmed in 267, 12). The reading Barra is confirmed in Ibn Mākūlā,
Ikmāl I 254, 1f., and Dhahabī, Mushtabih 56, 4.
26 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 53, 12 > Mīzān no. 2731.
27 Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifa III 266ff.
28 Faḍl 252, 1ff. agrees with Ṣifat al-ṣafwa III 267, –5ff.
29 Ibn Mākūlā 254, 2; regarding him see p. 432f. below.
30 Cf. Ibn Nuqṭa quoted in Ibn Mākūlā 254, n. 1; regarding him p. 99 above.
31 HT 84f.; cf. also ʿUqaylī II 53, apu. ff.
32 See p. 96 above.
33 Kaʿbī 90, 13.
34 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 516, 1ff.; TT VII 344ff.
iraq 365
the young Muʿtaṣim whose favourite teacher he seems to have been.35 His
traditions would be viewed with reservation later, but his piety was beyond
doubt.36 He was a wealthy man and appears to have engaged in the business
of hadith with unwonted efficiency; immeasurable crowds came to hear him
when, standing on his roof, he spread his traditions with the assistance of three
mustamlīs.37 He played an important part in Wāsiṭ in particular, and conse-
quently became one of the pillars of hadith science there.38 However, Yazīd b.
Hārūn, who would later watch over the orthodoxy of Wāsiṭ,39 had a low opin-
ion of him.40 Some folios containing his hadith are preserved in Damascus.41
Ṭabarī mentions him as a rāwī in a long story about Solomon42 and another on
about the Ṭāq Kisrā in Ctesiphon.43 It seems more than doubtful that he had
any connections to the Muʿtazila in the narrower sense of the word. – We meet
two poets in Wāṣil’s circle, the Syrian Asbāṭ b. Wāṣil al-Shaybānī who wrote an
elegy on him,44 and a certain
Abū l-Ṭurūq al-Ḍabbī.
Marzubānī named him in his Muʿjam al-shuʿarāʾ,45 telling us nothing more

than that he was known by his kunya. Jāḥiẓ preserved a few verses.46 He
praised Wāṣil’s skill in hiding his speech defect47 and defended him against
the ridicule of his opponents.48 His nisba shows that he was linked to the same
tribe as Wāṣil,49 but it is not certain that he met him.
35 See p. 345 above. He was a client of a Quraysh family who were the descendants of one of
Abū Bakr’s granddaughters; hence his nisba.
36 Cf. also IS VII2 61, 20ff.; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 245rr. no. 1244; IAH III1 198f. no. 1092; Bukhārī
III2 290 no. 2435; Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn II 113, 2ff. Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 16 no. 66, TB XI 446ff.;
Mīzān no. 5873.
37 TB XI 447, 12ff., and 454, 5f.
38 Baḥshal, Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 161, 8ff.; also 146ff. and index s. n.
40 ʿUqaylī III 246, 1f.
41 Cf. GAS 1/97.
42 Taʾrīkh I 576, 14ff.: after ʿAṭāʾ b. Sāʾib < Mujāhid < Ibn ʿAbbās.
43 Ibid. I 1014, 11ff.
44 Regarding him see p. 272 and vol. I 119f. above.
45 P. 511, 8.
46 Bayān III 322, 6ff., and Ḥayawān VI 92, 4ff.
47 Cf. Bayān I 15, ult.; Mubarrad, Kāmil 923, –4 > IKh VI 7, 8ff.; Yāqūt, Irshād VII 223, ult. f.
366 chapter 2
Going by its immediate context the verse Bayān I 15, ult., might be re-
ferring to the “Murjiʾite” theologian Muḥammad b. Shabīb, who is men-
tioned in the preceding sentence, instead. As he was active in the early
third century (see ch. C 5.1.1 below) we might assume that Abū l-Ṭurūq
was still living at that time. This is contradicted by Mubarrad’s statement
that the verse referred to Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ. On the other hand, Mubarrad did
not name the poet, referring only to shāʾir min al-Muʿtazila. Ibn Khallikān,
who quoted after him, identified the poet, as did Yāqūt, both, presum-
ably, relying directly or indirectly on Jāḥiẓ. They were probably correct;
the person praised is lauded as a khaṭīb, and we have no reason to believe
that this was as true of Muḥammad b. Shabīb as it was of Wāṣil. In that
case Jāḥiẓ was returning to Wāṣil after a lengthy digression, discussing
him in detail subsequently having discussed him earlier as well. Ritter
(in: Jurjānī, Asrār al-balāgha 318, v. 418 with n./transl. Geheimnisse der
Wortkunst 370 with n.) did not come to a definite conclusion.
2.2.6.3.2 The Circle around ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd

The quarrel over taking part in al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s uprising split ʿAmr b.
ʿUbayd’s followers. Activists were facing moderates, the former probably with
less of an interest in scholarship; certainly their names were recorded only by
historians such as Ṭabarī. However, many of the others did not leave more than
a trace either; being younger they were more affected by the boycott than their
teacher.
2.2.6.3.2.1 Jurists and Traditionists

A jurist who could rightly be called ʿAmr’s successor was
Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar b. Abī ʿUthmān Ḥābis (?)1 al-Shimmazī.2
He had met Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ, but not Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. He was a rāwiya of
Wāṣil’s and was believed to have transmitted Ḥasan’s Tafsīr from him as well
1 Thus after his brother’s name in Ibn Baṭṭa, Al-ibāna al-kubrā, ms. Istanbul, Köprülü 231, fol.
129a, but the reading is not entirely certain. All other sources have only ʿUmar b. Abī ʿUthmān.
2 Regarding the reading Shimmazī cf. Samʿānī VII 385, 4f.; Ibn Mākūlā, Ikmāl IV 531, 1f. >
Dhahabī, Mushtabih 371, 2. The edition of Jāḥiẓ’ Bayān has incorrect al-Shammarī through-
out (cf. I 16, 15, and 114, 1). Elsewhere, too, the nisba is occasionally transmitted incorrectly (cf.
e.g. S-m-rī in Fihrist 203, apu.).
iraq 367
as from ʿAmr.3 He may also have attended Aṣmaʿī’s (d. 213/828) lectures.4 He
was said to have debated with Abū Ḥanīfa on the latter’s concept of faith, but
tradition is not entirely consistent.5 Jāḥiẓ thought highly of him.6 He was versed
in hadith, his pupil ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Rawḥ claiming that al-Shimmazī knew
more traditions than he himself, although he knew around 10,000 by heart.7
Even so, al-Shimmazī was not a muḥaddith in the true sense of the word. Later
jarḥ wal-taʿdīl works did not take any notice of him. According to Ibn Mākūlā8
a certain Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm al-ʿIjlī transmitted from him, but we do not know
anything about him, either.9 ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Rawḥ and Abū ʿĀmir al-Anṣārī
were his pupils in religious law;10 assistants of Maʿmar Abū l-Ashʿath, they were
both contemporaries of Muʿammar’s.11 ʿAbd al-Karīm remembered him with
great respect, but in later texts Shimmazī left no trace on this field, either; less
even than ʿUthmān al-Battī whose tradition he may have continued.
His father’s kunya tells us that he had a – presumably elder – brother

named ʿUthmān, who appears to have been a follower of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s
as well, as he appears in an anecdote about ʿAmr (Fasawī, Maʿrifa II 262,
4ff. etc. where, however, the nisba is misspelt throughout; cf. Text VI 1 with
commentary. The identification I proposed in Trad. Polemik 17 is wrong).
In hadith, this part was played by
Abū ʿUbayda ʿAbd al-Wārith b. Saʿīd b. Dhakwān al-Tamīmī al-Tannūrī
(102/720–1 – Muḥarram 180/March–April 796), a client of the Banū l-ʿAnbar,

who probably earnt his living as a stove maker. He was ʿAmr’s pupil and
3 Thus at least according to Muʿtazilite tradition (Faḍl 253, 1f.), which may be a bit generous
in this case. Ibn al-Nadīm’s parallel does not mention Wāṣil (Fihrist 203, apu.). Further
recollections of his two teachers cf. p. 282 (regarding Wāṣil’s luthgha) and p. 338 (regard-
ing ʿAmr’s taciturnity) above.
4 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 9, 6f., where only the kunya Abū Ḥafṣ is noted (which might refer to some-
one different).
6 Faḍl 253, 8f.
7 Ibid. 253, 8f.
8 Ikmāl IV 532, 2 > Samʿānī, Ansāb VII 385, 5.
9 Unless we read Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm (b. Muhājir) al-Bajalī (cf. Mīzān no. 827 etc.), but he was
a Kufan. Or is he the same as the “Jahmite” Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm al-Wāsiṭī (see p. 489 below).
10 Faḍl 253, 17ff. after Ibn Farzōya.
368 chapter 2
rāwiya12 and seems to have been closely acquainted with him as well as Wāṣil.
His reports of Wāṣil’s behaviour during Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s lectures,13 i.e. on
events that took place before 110/729, must have been based on hearsay. We are
told that he transmitted not only from ʿAmr but also from Ḥasan b. Dhakwān,
possibly a pupil of Wāṣil’s.14 There is no doubt that he was a Qadarite,15 which
is expressed in his extant hadith, too.16 Some of his contemporaries resent-
ed this, Ḥammād b. Zayd (98/716–7 – 179/795) and Yazīd b. Zurayʿ forbidding
their pupils to attend his lectures,17 while Abū Dāwūd refused to transmit from
him because he had openly declared that he thought more highly of ʿAmr b.
ʿUbayd than his “orthodox” opponents Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, Yūnus b. ʿUbayd
and ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn.18 Others are said to have taken care not to pray behind
him, such as Hammām b. Yaḥyā al-ʿAwdhī (d. 164/781)19 or al-Ḥasan b. al-Rabīʿ
al-Būrānī (d. 221/836), a Kufan who followed Ibn al-Mubārak.20
Still, it was impossible to deny that Ibn al-Mubārak as well as al-Ḥasan b. al-
Rabīʿ transmitted from ʿAbd al-Wārith; al-Ḥasan presumably having come all
the way from Kufa. Claiming that he preserved a deliberate distance during the
prayer sounds like evasive defence under the circumstances. This was indeed
the dilemma: ʿAbd al-Wārith was a muḥaddith who could not very well be ig-
nored as he possessed important records, e.g. of Muḥammad b. Juḥāda al-Kūfī
(70/689–131/749),21 of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Ṣuḥayb (d. 130/748),22 and even of Ayyūb
al-Sakhtiyānī (d. 131/749).23 Clearly he had not limited himself to authorities
12 Faḍl 252, pu. > IM 42, 11; also Faḍl 343, 7f.
13 Ibid. 235, 4ff.
14 Kaʿbī 92, 8. He might have been his nephew (see p. 359 above).
15 Cf. e.g. Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 512, 8ff., and 625m 13f.; al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Kifāya 125, 12;
also Mīzān no. 5307; Suyūṭī, Tadrīb I 329, n., 3f.
16 Kaʿbī 98, 2.
17 Mīzān, loc. cit.
18 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 99, 3ff. When rijāl works name Abū Dāwūd they usually mean the
author of the Sunan. However, he was too young to have met ʿAbd al-Wārith, as he was
not born until 202/817. Consequently we must ask whether this could be Abū Dāwūd al-
Ṭayālisī, the author of Musnad, who lived from 133/750–203/818, and in Basra at that (cf.
GAS 1/97f.).
19 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 145, 6f., but he seems to have been a Qadarite.
20 Fasawī, Maʿrifa II 263, 6f. = III 365, 8f. > TB XII 183, 7f.; regarding him cf. TH 458f. no. 467. Al-
Ḥasan b. al-Rabīʿ is the narrator speaking in the plural, thus including his fellow-students.
21 He nearly held a monopoly here (Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 248, 7, and 144, –5ff. no. 193); also Azmi,
Studies 154).
22 Azmi 118.
23 He was, however, said to have recorded Ayyūb’s traditions after his death, i.e. from mem-
ory (Fasawī II 131, 10f.; Azmi 81). Cf. also Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 145, 3ff.
iraq 369
presenting a Qadarite doctrine; after all, he had studied Quran recitation under
the highly orthodox Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ.24 Ibn Hishām used material of his
to add to Ibn Isḥāq’s Sīra.25 Consequently many had a positive opinion of him,
above all Ibn Saʿd.26 It was emphasised that unlike ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd he did not
spread his own Qadarite “propaganda”,27 and he was quoted as saying that he
only transmitted pro-Qadarite hadith in order to refute it later,28 or distancing
himself clearly from iʿtizāl.29 He may have undergone a transformation some
time during his life. ʿAlī Ibn al-Madīnī (d. 234/849), who met him in his old
age, recorded that he did not observe a trace of all the objectionable tenden-
cies of which he was usually accused;30 he was entirely focussed on Ayyūb al-
Sakhtiyānī and Yūnus b. ʿUbayd and clearly led a frugal life.31
He had connections to Kufan jurists. Ibn Abī l-Wafāʾ listed him among
the Ḥanafites,32 but he seems to have received traditions mainly from Ibn
Shubruma.33
In hadith his son ʿAbd al-Ṣamad (d. 207/822–3) continued his tradition
(regarding him TH 344 no. 328). Muḥammad b. ʿAmr al-Tannūrī, his
grandson by his daughter who may have inherited the business, adopted
his nisba al-Tannūrī (Samʿānī III 97, 14ff.).
These two scholars were not the only ones to transfer their bond with Wāṣil
onto ʿAmr; two sons of the dāʿī Ḥafṣ b. Sālim named Ḥusayn and ʿAmr, of whom
we know nothing beyond the names, did the same.34 They appear in a list com-
piled by Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār35 which we follow throughout this chapter.
24 Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭabaqāt al-qurrāʾ no. 1989.

25 Khoury in: La vie du Prophète 19.
26 VII2 44, 15; also Bukhārī III2 118 no. 1891; IAH III1 75 no. 386; TT VI 441ff. no. 923.
27 Fasawī II 263, 8f.; similar TT VI 443, 2.
28 Kaʿbī 98, 2.
29 TT 443, –4 and 11f.
31 Ibid. 242, ult. ff. The account sounds as if he had maintained a great household previously
(cf. 243, 5ff.), which would be surprising in the case of a stove maker (if the nisba does
indeed refer to him).
32 IAW I 334, no. 911.
33 Cf. the traditions in Wakīʿ III 46, 4f.; 48, 3f.; 49, 9f.; 71, 8f.; 125, 10f.
34 Faḍl 252, 10 > IM 42, 10 (which has Ḥasan instead of Ḥusayn). Regarding his father see
p. 355f. above.
35 Faḍl 252, 10ff. > IM 42, 9ff.
370 chapter 2
Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAmr b. Zayd
may be identical with the Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAmr al-Uswārī of whom pseudo-Nāshiʾ says
that like ʿAmr he supported the imāmat al-fāḍil.36 He is listed between ʿAmr
and Abū l-Hudhayl together with whom he appears in an anecdote by Ibn
Murtaḍā.37 However, if our assumption is true he would have been rather older
than the latter.37a
ʿUthmān b. al-Ḥakam al-Thaqafī
was apparently an influential citizen of Basra with access to Hārūn al-Rashīd

when the latter visited the city.38 He probably was a true Arab; after all, the gov-
ernor of the city had been one of the Thaqīf at times.39 It is possible that he was
included in the list only because he passed on information about ʿAmr.40 –
Sufyān b. Ḥabīb al-Baṣrī
(d. 182/789 at the age of 58) also came from a middle-class background. A cloth
merchant (bazzāz) with Qadarite leanings41 he was the best authority for Saʿīd
b. Abī ʿArūba’s traditions. He did not think much of the quṣṣāṣ originally.42 His
links to the Qadariyya would later be forgotten, but it was remembered that he
had transmitted “reprehensible hadiths”.43 – Two other persons, a certain Abū
Ghassān, who may have played a part in the circle around Zayd b. ʿAlī,44 and
36 Uṣūl al-niḥal 51, 8 (Text XV 41, d).

37 Ṭab. 77, 14.
37a In this case he could not have been ʿAmr b. Fāʾid al-Uswārī’s son, as assumed on p. 98
above.
38 Agh. X 48, 8ff., and XVIII 184, 13ff.
40 Faḍl 226, 15ff. Regarding him also Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 235, 1f., and Ḥayawān I 104, –6ff.
41 Kaʿbī 97, apu.; Faḍl 252, pu. f. > IM 42, 12.
42 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 369, 8ff.
43 TT IV 107 no. 189; Ibn Saʿd mentions him without a comment (VII2 45, 20).
44 Thus at least if Strothmann’s assumption in: Der Islam 13/1923/5 is correct. In that case his
nisba would have been al-Azdī, which is missing in Muʿtazilite sources. For the rest, we
will have to decide between the readings Abū Ghassān (IM 42, 11) and Ibn Ghassān (Faḍl
252, apu.). None of the Basran traditionist bearing this kunya appear to be identical with
him (cf. Dawlābī, Kunā II 76f.; TT XII 198 no. 914 and 917). Contrary to Strothmann’s claim
it is not possible to document him as a pupil of Wāṣil’s.
iraq 371
Abū ʿUmar Ḥafṣ b. al-ʿAwwām, also remain shadowy.45 It is not even certain
whether they, like the others, were Basrans; Zayd b. ʿAlī found more followers
in Kufa, but ʿAmr had pupils even from there, such as
Abū l-ʿAbbās Muḥammad b. Ṣabīḥ, known as Ibn al-Sammāk
(d. 183/799).46 As a client of the ʿIjl he came into contact with Kufan Shīʿites; he
narrated of how in his youth he conveyed a request from Zurāra b. Aʿyān47 to
Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq in Medina and learnt that the latter distanced himself from the
former’s extreme expectations regarding his omniscience.48 He later went to
Baghdad and seems to have had some connections to the Barmakids;49 Hārūn
al-Rashīd is also said to have received him.50 This influence was clearly due to
his fame preaching repentance; he held a majlis “for the people”,51 and Tawḥīdī
gave him the sobriquet al-wāʿiẓ.52 As a consequence he also found his way into
Abū Nuʿaym’s Ḥilya53 and Ibn al-Jawzī’s Ṣifat al-ṣafwa,54 where no Qadarite
leanings are mentioned. Even Ibn Ḥanbal adopted his traditions;55 transmit-
ter criticism presents an inconsistent verdict.56 It is noticeable that being a
Kufan he had a high opinion of ʿUmar.57 Asceticism was probably his firmest
link to ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd,58 and he composed a description of ʿAmr’s character.59
We are told that he went to battle with the Christians in the borderlands
with Byzantium,60 but it is unlikely that he took part in the uprising against
Manṣūr.
45 Faḍl 252, 11 > IM 42, 9f. (which has al-Qawwām instead of al-ʿAwwām); ibid. 242, 14ff.
46 Faḍl 252, apu. > IM 42, 11; in general TB V 368ff. no. 2895.
48 Fasawī II 671, ult. ff.
49 TB V 371, 15ff.; also 372, 7. Cf. also Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya VIII 209, 7ff.
50 Ibid. 372, 5ff.; also Ḥilya VIII 209, 7ff., and 211, 1ff.
51 Ibid. 373, 7.
52 Imtāʿ II 120, 10f.; instances of waʿẓ cf. Ḥilya VIII 205, 9ff. (in the sajʿ), and 206, 13ff. (a letter).
53 Cf. ibid. VIII 203ff.
54 III 105ff.
55 IAH III2 290 no. 1573; TB V 369, 5.
56 Cf. Mīzān no. 7696. Abū Nuʿaym collected a number of his gharīb hadiths (e.g. concerning
the rafʿ al-yadayn; see p. 599ff. below) each of which was transmitted by one authority
only (VIII 213, –7ff.).
57 Ḥilya VIII 211, 11ff.
58 Cf. e.g. TB V 370, 3f.; also Ḥilya VIII 204, 15ff. and the hadith against wealth ibid. 212, –7ff.
60 Cf. his account in Ḥilya VIII 207, 17.
372 chapter 2
Ṭalḥa b. Zayd,
the last man on the Qāḍī’s list, probably came from the Jazira. He may be iden-
tical with Ṭalḥa b. Zayd al-Qurashī, a Damascene who settled in the village
of Wāsiṭ near Raqqa,61 who is found with the nisba al-Raqqī elsewhere.62 His
Syrian origins and his connection with the Quraysh (whose mawlā he prob-
ably was) explain that he spread “ʿUthmānite” hadith.63 This would have found
favour in ʿUthmānite Basra, too, especially as there were already other Syrians
living there, such as the “Ghaylānite” Muḥammad b. Rāshid al-Khuzāʿī who had
fled from Marwān.64 But we do not know if Ṭalḥa ever went to Basra. His had-
ith was disliked, but the experts give no reasons.65 It is certain that he was not
afraid to include Qadarites in his isnāds, transmitting from al-Waḍīn b. ʿAṭāʾ,66
from Thawr b. Yazīd and, via Awzāʿī, from Yaḥyā b. Abī Kathīr and Ḥassān b.
ʿAṭiyya.67 Might he be the same as the Ṭalḥa b. Yazīd whom Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār
mentions in a different context68 as a Syrian Qadarite?
2.2.6.3.2.2 The “Muʿtazilites” of the Uprising of AH 145

Al-Nafs al-zakiyya was well-liked among the scholars of both urban centres in
Iraq; different denominations were irrelevant. Abū Ḥanīfa and Aʿmash in Kufa
displayed a more or less active interest,1 as did the predestinarian Shuʿba in
Basra from whom ʿAbd al-Wārith b. Saʿīd reported having heard words of en-
couragement.2 When Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh was preparing the uprising in Iraq
at his brother’s request, he acquired a significant sum of money in Basra with
61 Regarding this place cf. Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān V 352 s. n. It certainly does not refer to
the well-known Wāsiṭ; Ṭalḥa is not even mentioned in Baḥshal’s Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ.
62 Cf. Abū ʿAlī al-Qushayrī, Taʾrīkh Raqqa 110, –6ff., and TTD VII 65, 1ff. (with the kunya Abū
Miskīn); IAH II1 479 no. 2102 (with the kunya Abū Muḥammad); Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I
383f.; Mīzān no. 4000 (after him).
63 Ibn Ḥibbān I 383, –4ff.
65 Cf. also ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 225f. no. 770; Bukhārī II2 351 no. 3105; Nasāʾī, Ḍuʿafāʾ 2137f. no. 316;
TT V 15f. no. 28.
66 Dāraquṭnī, Ḍuʿafāʾ 331 no. 304.
67 Bukhārī, loc. cit.; Taʾrīkh Raqqa, loc. cit. Regarding those mentioned cf. vol. I 92f., 102f. and
131ff. above, and 750f. below.
68 Faḍl 339, 15 > IM 136, 6.
1 See vol. I 214f. and 273 above.

2 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 100. 1ff.; cf. the list of “sympathisers” in Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 188, 12ff.,
and van Arendonk, Opkomst 287ff.
iraq 373
which he was able to recruit soldiers.3 However, most of them were paramili-
taries4 whose enthusiasm outweighed their experience, dooming the enter-
prise from the start.5 Most of the Muʿtazilites who joined him were also not
professional soldiers. Their leader, Bashīr al-Raḥḥāl, wore a woollen cuirass6 of
the kind that would later be the uniform of citizens’ militias.7 It was also a sign
of asceticism, which may be why it was also reported of Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh,8
as the political agenda of the group – little though we know of it – was leaning
towards social criticism rather than embracing the needs of the ʿAlids; after all
ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd had been an ʿUthmānite. Nowhere do we find an indication that
Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh was recognised as the mahdī, let alone that people
thought in eschatological terms.9 In all probability the objective was to help
the ideal caliph – who furthermore took precedence over al-Manṣūr where
the pledge of allegiance was concerned – to the throne. It is interesting that
ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn, who had no liking for ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s Qadarite ideas at all,10
was accused by some Muʿtazilites of having opposed Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh’s
propaganda.11 He probably saw the revolt as a renewed flare-up of that same
Qadarite extremism to which Walīd II had already fallen victim.
If we can believe Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār the “elite of the Muʿtazila” (wujūh al-
Muʿtazila) joined Ibrāhīm;12 they were the core of his force and “fell before his
very eyes”.13 This would mean that after ʿAmr’s death the mood changed in the
leading ranks, but we do not know whether this was indeed the case. However,
it seems that participating in the uprising had touched on the Muʿtazilia’s
self-image, as many of the active fighters, at least those who are mentioned by
name, were given the sobriquet al-Muʿtazil(ī) conveying the impression that
the term had found its true meaning just there. When denoting the theological
3 Lassner, Shaping 85, and 267, n. 83.

4 rijāl ʿurāt; Ṭabarī III 312, 12.
5 Regarding the course of the uprising cf. Lassner, ibid. 81ff.; Kennedy, Abbasid Caliphate
67ff. The events leading up to the uprising according to Ṭabarī’s account may now be read
comfortably in F.-Chr. Muth, Der Kalif al-Manṣūr.
6 Kaʿbī 117, 12ff.
7 See ch. C 2.4 below regarding Baghdad during the time following Amīn’s death; cf. also
Taeschner, Zünfte und Bruderschaften 46.
9 Cf. also Madelung, Qāsim 37 and 72.
11 IS VII2 27, 4ff.
12 Faḍl 226, 19.
374 chapter 2
standpoint, on the other hand, the term “Qadarites” or the phrase qāla bil-ʿadl
might be used.14
The names discussed in the following were collected by Kaʿbī. Qāḍī ʿAbd
al-Jabbār did not include them, which is why Ibn al-Murtaḍā did not pre-
serve them, either. They had probably lost interest for later generations, as
there were no theologians among them, and in the case of most it is not even
possible to determine whether they were Muʿtazilites in a theological sense.
The majority, if not all, are noble Arabs; it seems that the persons listed were
mainly those who had come to prominence as military leaders, which makes
us wonder whether Kaʿbī did not simply copy a list of Basran rebels. However,
where the latter are mentioned by historians such as Ṭabarī, or in the Maqātil
al-Ṭālibiyyīn, they appear in the company of others who do not feature on
Kaʿbī’s list, which leads us to assume that they were distinguished by some par-
ticular characteristic, i.e. their connection with the “Muʿtazila”. In which case
they would be an interesting instance of how far the Muʿtazila had succeeded
in establishing itself among the tribes based in Basra.
We do not have as much information on the mawālī who took part in the
uprising as Muʿtazilites. However, the uncontested head of the group,
Abū Muḥammad15 Bashīr al-Raḥḥāl,
seems to have been one, like ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd before him. At the time of the up-
rising he was apparently no longer young; one report describes him as shaykh.16
He probably met Ḥasan al-Baṣrī,17 and was believed to have been present dur-
ing the legendary visit Wāṣil and ʿAmr paid Muḥammad al-Bāqir according to
Ibāḍite tradition.18 It was perhaps due to his age rather than his bravery that he
became the leader of the militant Muʿtazila after ʿAmr’s death. He was said to
have sworn to take revenge on Manṣūr after the latter had led him into the room
where ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥasan, who had been imprisoned in Iraq since 141/758,
lay dead.19 This may just be an explanation of why the movement abandoned
the quietism espoused by ʿAmr, but it does confirm that Bashīr was seen as the
14 Cf. IM 127, 9ff., where Bashīr al-Raḥḥāl is listed among the zuhhād who qālū bil-ʿadl.
15 The kunya is found in Ṭabarī III 311, 8.
16 Abū l-Faraj, Maqātil 340, 12; he had a long beard.
17 Muwaffaq b. Aḥmad, Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa II 103, pu. f.
18 Barqī, Maḥāsin 361, –5ff.; cf. also id., Rijāl 13, 8. See p. 288 above.
19 Ṭabarī III 185, 15ff.; Maqātil 227, 10ff. = Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 226, 10ff. > IM 41, 10ff.;
transl. in Nagel in: Der Islam 46/1970/239. The event should be dated to the year 144/762.
iraq 375
man to take the initiative. He remained faithful to Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh to the

end and was said to have held the head of the dead Ibrāhīm in his lap when
he himself was killed.20 When it came to theology he, like ʿAmr, was still very
much in the tradition of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. He fasted excessively,21 he bore the
sobriquet al-raḥḥāl because every year he would either go on the pilgrimage or
join the border forces.22 His wearing a woollen cuirass and a sword with nine
baldrics (ḥamāʾil) was said to be in imitation of ʿAmmār b. Yāsir,23 but he had
probably always been a militant Sufi. He followed the code of honour of a lone
fighter: he considered night-time attacks not to be soldierly; only thieves acted
that way.24
He was originally opposed to fighting against fellow believers as the prophet,
whose jihad he tried to emulate, had only fought mushrikūn.25 The situation
under Manṣūr’s government made him forget this principle; his criticism
of the rulers was so harsh that people were afraid of being arrested in his
company.26 The caliph had not, in Bashīr’s view, brought justice;27 clearly
Bashīr interpreted ʿadl mainly as a social and political postulate in this world
rather than as a divine quality that determined the salvation of humans in the
afterlife. When there were prayers for rain during a draught, he thought this
insufficient; after all, the famine had been caused by goods being distributed
20 Maqātil 347, 4; also Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 650, 10.

21 Cf. van Arendonk, Opkomst 288 after al-Nāṭiq bil-ḥaqq, Ifāda. Regarding his biography in
further Zaydite works cf. R. Traini, Sources biographiques des Zaidites 59 no. 253.
22 Faḍl 227, 6f. > IM 41, 8f. Ibn al-Murtaḍā even names him a second time, as a “proto-
Muʿtazilite” among the ascetics (127, 11).
23 Kaʿbī 117, 12ff. > Nashwān 209, apu. ff. (the passage in Kaʿbī is in part anticipated ibid. 110,
5ff).
24 Maqātil 344, 7ff. Bedouins and Khārijites might also think this way (Jacob, Beduinenleben
130; p. 654 below); but it was certainly not the rule. Marwān II had already advised his son
to dig a ditch around the camp in order to prevent night-time attacks (ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b.
Yaḥyā, Risāla ilā walī al-ʿahd 257, 3f. ʿAbbās/transl. Schönig 64f.). Cf. Jāḥiẓ’ deliberations
in his K. al-ʿAsā where the story is treated as a Shuʿūbite topos (Bayān III 17, 7, and 19, 9ff.;
also Norris in: CHAL II 40).
26 Maqātil 340, –6ff.
27 Ibid. 341, 6ff., allegedly expressed in Muḥammad b. Sulaymān’s presence, a cousin of al-
Manṣūr’s whose openness to paraenetic homilies had been noted. But it was he who, to-
gether with his brother Jaʿfar, began the resistance against Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh (Khalīfa,
Taʾrīkh 649, 11ff.). In a parallel in Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 226, 6ff., Bashīr was given the
opportunity of expressing his criticism to the caliph’s face.
376 chapter 2
unfairly and the state not taking any steps to stop price rigging.28 This set a
new priority. Usually, people knew, the quṣṣās merely talked and prayed, while
Bashīr actually criticised how bad things had become.29 We learn here that he
was regarded as a qāṣṣ, which agrees with his asceticism as well as the prose-
rhyme style he sometimes employed.30 There were people who mocked him
for moralising; he despaired of the tepidity of his contemporaries.31 But after
the revolt had failed, a legend grew up around him: having been taken pris-
oner he was led before Manṣūr, and made a defiant comment before his execu-
tion. The same comment was also attributed to Ghaylān al-Dimashqī and – in
Mosul – the martyr Maʿrūf b. Abī Maʿrūf.
Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 190, 6ff.; cf. 190, 10f., and ibid. 147, 10f., as well as
Text I 1, u. If he had indeed been executed, he could of course not have
been killed in the preceding battle, as other sources claim (see above). –
Among the Zaydites he was considered a secret Shīʿite (cf. Musallam
al-Lahjī, Sīrat al-Nāṣir li-dīn Allāh 5, pu. Madelung). Najāshī does name
a later descendant of his (Rijāl 64, 13f.) who may have lived in Isfahan.
F. Jadʿān presents a “portrait” of him (Al-miḥna 59ff.).
His followers lost their lives or were dispersed. Some of them, several of his
sons among them, were able to flee to the Maghreb and settle there, joining the
Muʿtazilite communities that had existed there since the days of ʿAbdallāh b.
al-Ḥārith.32 Iraqi tradition did not know any more details: the “Maghreb” was
one large blank area.
Ibrāhīm b. Numayla al-ʿAbshamī
was thought to have been Ibrāhīm’s deputy (khalīfa) during the uprising and
was given the title al-Kāmil due to his excellent qualities,33 but everything be-
comes rather less clear by adducing other sources. According to Ṭabarī III 301,
5, the Shīʿite pretender left his father Numayla b. Murra34 of the Abshams b.
28 Faḍl 226, pu. ff.

29 Cf. the parallel story Maqātil 340, 3ff.
30 Ibid. 339, –5f.
31 Ibid. 340, –8ff.
32 Faḍl 227, 8ff.; cf. p. 355 above.
33 Kaʿbī 118, 5f., in part after Jāḥiẓ.
34 Thus, not Ḥurra as F. Sayyid states (Faḍl 118, n. 355).
iraq 377
Saʿd35 in Basra as his deputy,36 according to III 304, 12, together with another son
named Ḥasan. Numayla was said to have been among the first to pay homage
to Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh;37 he was the commander of his police force (shurṭa).
However, later he would be said to have been one of Manṣūr’s confidants
(ṣaḥāba),38 which makes it less surprising that Kaʿbī does not mention him. But
then according to Kaʿbī the commander of Ibrāhīm’s police force in Basra was
Muʿāwiya b. Ḥarb b. Qaṭan,
not Numayla b. Murra. He was also believed to be versed in religious de-

bate (kalām),39 but this is an isolated piece of information, and no other re-
cord of Muʿāwiya b. Ḥarb has been found. However, his younger brother (?)
Muḥammad b. Ḥarb was also a prominent theologian; if our assumptions are
correct he was an Ibāḍite, although he cooperated with the Abbasids, occupy-
ing the position of prefect of police on their behalf several times into the third
century.40 Maybe Kaʿbī simply made a mistake.
ʿAmr b. Shaddād
took possession of the province of Fārs on Ibrāhīm’s behalf,41 presumably hav-

ing been his follower since ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s day; he had hidden Ibrāhīm from
the uprising in Madāʾin and was flogged for it.42 The force with which he con-
quered Fars was diminutive, allegedly numbering only 30 men. There cannot
have been much resistance. Abū l-Faraj reported of his flight back to Basra
after the uprising had failed;43 he was executed and crucified there in 156/773.44
There was a Kufan Shīʿite named Abū l-Ḥasan ʿUmar/ʿAmr b. Shaddād al-
Azdī (Ardabīlī, Jāmiʿ I 622f. and 635), but he is probably a different person.
35 Regarding the genealogy cf. Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 215, ult. Ṭabarī III 261, 9f. counts Numayla
among the Banū Saʿd because of this; in Jāḥiẓ’ Bukhalāʾ 151, 12 he has the nisba al-Saʿdī.
36 Cf. also Fasawī, Maʿrifa I 126, ult. f.
37 Maqātil 318, –5.
38 Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 216, 1f.; Caskel, Jamharat al-nasab II 450.
39 Maq. 118, 8f.
40 In more detail ch. C 5.3 below.
41 Kaʿbī 119, 8; Ṭabarī III 301, 7ff. with further details.
43 Maqātil 330, 6ff.
378 chapter 2
Al-Maḍāʾ b. al-Qāsim al-Taghlibī al-Jazarī
was Ibrāhīm’s general and at the same time khaṭīb; he commanded the van-
guard of his forces.45 He was the one calling for a night-time attack who was
then stopped by Bashīr al-Raḥḥāl or, in another version, by Ibrāhīm himself.46
ʿAbdallāh b. Khālid b. ʿUbaydallāh al-Jadalī
was Ibrāhīm’s standard-bearer.47 His nisba al-Jadalī probably does not refer
to dialectical skills but to membership of the Banū Jadīla.48
ʿĀṣim b. ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb al-ʿAnbarī
was a member of Ibrāhīm’s cavalry.49 The editor of the Kaʿbī text would like
to change the name to ʿĀṣim b. ʿUbaydallāh b. ʿĀṣim b. ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb
al-ʿAdawī, as the name listed by Kaʿbī does not occur anywhere else. But ʿĀṣim
b. ʿUbaydallāh, ʿUmar’s grandson, had already died at the beginning of the
Abbasid era.50 There was also a great-grandson, named ʿĀṣim b. ʿUmar b. Ḥafṣ
b. ʿĀṣim b. al-Khaṭṭāb, who would fit better. He was a traditionist, but not a very
respected one;51 furthermore, we do not know if he ever left the Hijaz where
the family continued to live.52 The nisba given in the text, al-ʿAnbarī, would
also have to be changed, the form al-ʿAdawī being one possible option, but it
does not seem to have been used for ʿĀṣim b. ʿUmar at all. Ardabīlī calls him
al-Madanī.53
45 Kaʿbī 118, 6f.

46 Maqātil 344, 7, and Ṭabarī 312, 10ff.; more instances cf. Maqātil 319, 5; 323, 8f.; 324, 1ff.;
Ṭabarī III 290, 11f.; 300, 8.
47 Kaʿbī 118, pu.
48 Cf. Samʿānī, Ansāb III 217f. s. n.
49 Kaʿbī 119, 2.
50 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 334, 8.
51 Regarding him Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 155, 9; ʿUqaylī III 335f. no. 1537.
52 Cf. Zubayrī, Nasab Quraysh 362, 7ff.
53 Jāmiʿ I 426b.
iraq 379
Mughīra b. al-Fazʿ al-ʿAbshamī al-Saʿdī
famous for his strength and courage,54 was one of the Arab fityān who swore
loyalty to Ibrāhīm.55 Ibrāhīm sent him to Ahwāz to seize power there.56 When
he was caught after the uprising, Asad b. Marzubān al-Fāryābī, a high-ranking
Iranian who commanded Manṣūr’s army, had him executed and crucified in
Basra.
Ibn al-Ḥabīb, Muḥabbar 487, 6f.; also Dhahabī, Mushtabih 508, 7 (after
Ibn Mākūlā). I am following Dhahabī’s form of the name; it is the same
as in the edition of Ṭabarī (III 290, 5). The majority of records has al-
Fizr, while Kaʿbī and the Ṭabarī MSS reads al-Faraʿ (118, ult.), Ibn al-Ḥabīb
al-Qaraʿ. In the case of al-Fizr we must bear in mind that this was a so-
briquet of the Saʿd b. Zaydmanāt, a tribal group of which the ʿAbshams
were also members (Ibn Durayd, Ishtiqāq 245, 2ff. and pu.; also Caskel,
Jamhara II 497).
ʿAwn b. Mālik b. Mismaʿ al-Mismaʿī
was a true Arab as well.57 The governor Muḥammad b. Sulaymān had his house
in Basra destroyed and his palm trees made unfruitful in 146/763.58 – In the
case of
al-Haytham al-Ṭuhawī
the reading of the nisba is not quite clear; the edition has al-Ṣ-h-wī.59 The cor-
rection is based on the fact that in Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ’s text a certain Ibrāhīm al-
Ṭuhawī is named as a follower of Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh and militant opponent
54 Regarding his heroic deeds cf. Jāḥiẓ, Burṣān 244, 9ff. (which has him cleaving an enemy
in two); also Maqātil 327, 8ff. In his K. fakhr al-sūdān ʿalā l-bīḍān Jāḥiẓ mentions a black
man named Kaʿbōya from the Yāsir clan who was his servant and also a man of exemplary
courage (Rasāʾil I 193, 4).
55 Ṭabarī III 290, 5; also Maqātil 318, pu.
56 Maqātil 324, –4ff., and Ṭabarī III 301, 1ff. (following the same source).
57 Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 321, 1f.; Kaʿbī 119, 6.
58 Cf. Ṭabarī III 327, 5 and 14. He treated the house of Hārūn b. Saʿd al-ʿIjlī in the same fashion
(Maqātil 360, 11); regarding him see vol. I 292 above. Regarding the Mismaʿī family see ch.
C 4.2.4.3 below.
59 Kaʿbī 119, 4f.
380 chapter 2
of the Abbasids,60 probably the same Ṭuhawī found in his company several
times in Ṭabarī’s version.61 His clan was descended from Ṭuhayya, the daughter
of ʿAbshams b. Saʿd;62 consequently he was a distant connection of the two
ʿAbshamī mentioned above.
Burd b. Labīd al-Yashkurī
commanded the left wing of Ibrāhīm’s army.63 The
Banū l-Mustawrid b. ʿAmr b. ʿAbbād
apparently were an entire clan; Burd b. Labīd as well as ʿAmr b. ʿAbbād were
members of the Yashkur.64 They were deployed as archers.65
Sufyān b. Ḥayyān b. Mūsā al-ʿAmmī,
a member of the Banū l-ʿAmm,66 had Manṣūr kit him out for the fight against
Ibrāhīm, and then defected to the latter.67 In Kaʿbī’s version his name is
incomplete.68
ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Ziyād al-ʿAtakī
appears in Kaʿbī 119, 5f., under the name ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. The correction is due
to Ibn Ḥazm.69 ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Ziyād, a grandson of Muhallab’s and through
the latter a member of the ʿAtīk b. al-Azd, took part in the uprising together
with his son ʿAtīk and died during it. His house was destroyed.70 He had been
among the first to pay homage to Ibrāhīm,71 although a decade and a half ear-
60 Taʾrīkh 650, 1.

61 III 290, 12, and 291, 2; according to 302, 13 he came from Basra.
62 Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 209, 9f.
63 Maqātil 343, 11; named in Kaʿbī 119, 4, and Ṭabarī III 290, 11.
65 Kaʿbī 119, 7f.
66 Regarding them see p. 251 above.
68 Maq. 119, 3.
69 Jamhara 370, 2ff.
71 Ibid. III 290, 3; also Maqātil 318, –4.
iraq 381
lier he had supported the Abbasids in their revolution.72 He is probably dis-

tinct from the traditionist ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Ziyād al-Thaqafī who died only in
177/793.73
al-Ḥawārī b. Ziyād b. ʿAmr al-ʿAtakī74
does not appear to have been a brother of the preceding one, but they were
related.75 He had fallen out with Yazīd b. al-Muhallab and played a part in his
murder in 102/721.76 Hadith was transmitted from him, too.77 – About
ʿAbd al-Aʿlā b. Abī Ḥāḍir
we really only know that his son Bakr was familiar with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s circle.78
If he was ʿĪsā b. Ḥāḍir’s uncle,79 he was probably a member of the Basran bour-
geoisie. Zāʾida b. al-Murqil, Ḥamal b. ʿUbaydallāh al-Sadūsī and Muḥammad
b. Ribāṭ al-ʿAqīmī remain mere names to us.80 – Furthermore there were
Qadarites supporting Ibrāhīm’s cause who were not necessarily Muʿtazilites.
This may be true of al-Azraq b. Tamma al-Ṣarīmī, whom Abū l-Faraj names as
a pupil of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s,81 and whom Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār does not mention.
It is even clearer in the case of
Abū Salama ʿAbbād b. Manṣūr al-Nājī,
whom Ibrāhīm appointed qāḍī. He was not only a Qadarite82 but, in the eyes
of some people, a dāʿiya.83 He originated the report that Ubayy b. Kaʿb had
convinced ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd to distance himself from the well-known hadith
according to which a condemned person is condemned already in his mother’s
72 Balādhurī, Ansāb III 175, apu. Dūrī.

73 Regarding him IS VII2 44, 11ff.; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 513, 12ff.; TT VI 434 no. 912 etc.; also
p. 113, n. 27 above. Van Arendonk believed them to be the same person.
74 Kaʿbī 119, 5.
75 Cf. Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 371, 1, with the variant in the notes.
76 Ṭabarī II 1387, 17ff., and 1405, ult. ff.
77 Mīzān no. 2377.
78 Kaʿbī 119, 7, and Faḍl 252, apu. > IM 42, 10.
80 Kaʿbī 119, 6f. and 1. Kaʿbī explains that the latter’s nisba was because he was a eunuch.
81 Maqātil 381, 7f.
82 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 625, 13; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 134ff. no. 1119; Mīzān no. 4141.
83 TT V 105, 2.
382 chapter 2
womb.84 All the same, the Muʿtazila never claimed him as their own; Kaʿbī,
who does mention him, does not do it, either.85 Like Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār and
Ibn al-Murtaḍā he only named him among the “proto-Muʿtazilites”, most of
whom were Qadarites.86 ʿAbbād probably had no need to join the movement.
He was a true Arab,87 possessed of great prestige. Yazīd III had appointed him
qāḍī, and he had retained this office in the difficult times before as well as in
the first years after the revolution, with a few interruptions.88 In the last days of
Umayyad rule he and ʿUthmān al-Battī had represented the city in negotiations
with the warring parties.89 He was side-lined under Manṣūr, which explains
why Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh appointed him as qāḍī again. Kaʿbī presents the event
in such a way as if the population of Basra had elected him,90 but elsewhere
we read that Ibrāhīm called on him only after another candidate had fallen ill.91
After the failure of the uprising he went into hiding until Manṣūr promised
him amnesty.92 He died in 152/769.93
2.2.6.4 The Origin of the Name Muʿtazila

We have stated above that the sobriquet given by the sources to the Muʿtazilite
participants in the uprising was simply al-muʿtazil in some cases, rather than
al-Muʿtazilī. This tells us that they were not merely followers of a movement
called Muʿtazila since the previous generation, but became Muʿtazilites
through their activity or their views. This observation alone would detract
from the credibility of the well-known foundation legend according to which
Wāṣil “separated himself” (iʿtazala) from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s ḥalqa, or Ḥasan
84 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 310, no. 2019; ʿUqaylī III 134, ult. ff.; garbled TT V 104, –5ff.
85 P. 118, –5ff.
86 Kaʿbī 92, 13ff. > Faḍl 342, 2 > IM 137, 15.
87 Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 174, 1ff., which also confirms the reading of the nisba as al-Nājī; also
Kaʿbī 92, 13, and indirectly Ibn Ḥajar, Tabṣīr al-muntabih 117, –4ff., which emphasises the
connection with the Banū Nājiya in Basra. TT V 103, –4 reads al-Bājī, while another pas-
sage in Kaʿbī has, presumably just as unjustified, al-Shāmī.
88 Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt II 43, –8ff. after an account by Abū ʿUbayda. Ṭabarī documents
him as qāḍī of Basra for the years 130, 131, 133, 134, 134, 136 and 145 (II 2017, 19f.; III 11, 16;
75, 6; 81, 10; 84, 4; 91, 17; 319, 3). Cf. also Balādhurī III 91, 4ff.; also D. Sourdel in: Arabica
2/1955/112f.
89 Balādhurī III 174, –5f.
90 118, 10f.
91 Maqātil 372, 3ff.
92 Ibid.
93 Cf. also van Arendonk, Opkomst 289. – Regarding the Qadarite ʿImrān b. Dāwar al-Qaṭṭān,
who supported Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh with a fatwā, see p. 250 above.
iraq 383
reported that he did so. It was recorded by Shahrastānī,1 which is why it be-
came widely quoted in the older secondary sources. Islamic literature cites it
to this day; after all, even a Muʿtazilite like Ibn al-Murtaḍā adopted it.2 Once we
go back beyond Shahrastānī, tradition becomes confused. He probably relied
on Baghdādī3 who, however seems to imply that iʿtizāl had been explained in a
different way in the past, namely with reference to the doctrine of the manzila
bayna l-mazilatayn.4
This was the Muʿtazilite interpretation. Kaʿbī was the first to state it ex-
plicitly: the Muʿtazila “separated itself” from the extremes developed among
Khārijites and Murjiʾites,5 an interpretation based on the way in which Kaʿbī’s
teacher Khayyāṭ explained the intermediate status,6 albeit simplified in char-
acteristic fashion: Ḥasan’s munāfiq theory, which Khayyāṭ presented as a third
variant, was mentioned only afterwards, as there was no real intention to
“separate” from Ḥasan. In fact Khayyāṭ’s tripartite model had been used by Ibn
al-Rēwandī before him7 and is consequently certainly more original. It is no-
ticeable that he did not take the opportunity of attacking the name Muʿtazila,
mentioning only that the Muʿtazila “revoked the consensus”, which leads us to
conclude that Kaʿbī’s explanation was not yet the prevailing one. Khayyāṭ does
not seem to have known it, either. Ibn al-Rēwandī and Khayyāṭ were writing
in Baghdad, where Muʿtazilites may still have known that the name had a dif-
ferent story. Writing his K. al-maqālāt in Balkh Kaʿbī had much more freedom,
although it is worth noting that only one generation after Kaʿbī, Ashʿarī was em-
bracing his interpretation in Basra.8 It took hold everywhere in the Muʿtazila
and was quoted by Ibn al-Nadīm after Kaʿbī directly;9 also by Muṭahhar b. Ṭāhir
al-Maqdisī,10 and by Masʿūdī.11
1 Milal 33, 7ff./68, 3ff.

2 Ṭab. 3, 4ff. Later literature sometimes claims, more radically, that Ḥasan “drove Wāṣil out”
of his circle (Yāqūt, Irshād VII 224, 12ff. > IKh VI 8, 11f. etc.).
3 Farq 98, 9ff./118, –5ff.
4 Thus in the parallel passage Farq 15, 6ff./20, 5ff.
5 Maq. 115, 1ff.; cf. also Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī, Awāʾil II 134, apu. ff.
7 Text IX 6, a–e.
8 Lumaʿ § 184/transl. McCarthy 105, with the nuance characteristic of him that Wāṣil “sepa-
rated himself” from the entire community with his doctrine.
9 And not Khayyāṭ or another early author (Fihrist 201, 9ff.).
10 Badʾ V 142, 6ff.
11 Murūj VI 22, 6ff./IV 59, § 2256; also VII 234, 3f./v 22,13f.
384 chapter 2
In another place, however, Kaʿbī stated that his explanation did not match
the self-image of his own generation:
“Iʿtizāl is the doctrine of the intermediate status. Nowadays, however, it

(sc.: the name “Muʿtazilite”) is the hallmark of those who embrace the
profession of unity and (God’s) justice, and do not believe in any of the
doctrines that revoke loyalty and commit people to hostility. (The name
“Muʿtazilite”) has left those who deny the profession of unity and (God’s)
justice, even though they teach the intermediate status. It is well-known
that Ḍirār and his followers do just that . . .” (Maq. 75, 1ff.).
Mufīd rejected this restriction;12 a Shīʿite who believed in the manzila he was
himself in danger of being excluded by the Muʿtazilites. But the dilemma was
clear: Ḍirār was considered to be a heretic, although he had written about the
intermediate status and thus was more Muʿtazilite that most later theologians
who had become increasingly indifferent to the subject.13 In Qāḍī ʿAbd al-
Jabbār’s view, Kaʿbī’s interpretation was consequently one among several, and
he did not take up arms on its behalf.14 In Ibn Yazdādh’s K. al-maṣābīḥ he found
something he liked better: the Muʿtazila “separated itself” from every kind of
excess and neglect: they were the “people of the middle” par excellence.15 Ibn
Yazdādh also stated that iʿtazala is found in the Quran, with a positive meaning
as in “to keep oneself separate from evil”.16 The same meaning occurs in hadith,
and by that time the Muʿtazila had nothing against hadith any more.17 It was
noted in particular that in a variant of the well-known saying of the 72 sects the
Muʿtazila was named as the one “winning salvation” (al-firqa al-nājiya). When
Sufyān al-Thawrī transmitted the saying he was said to have wished to claim
the name for himself, but then found out that ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd had already laid
claim to it; this was believed to have been the reason why he always omitted
the word from the saying and – we can add – why an expurgated version be-
came the accepted one among traditionists.18 ʿUthmān al-Ṭawīl had been said
12 Awāʾil al-maqālāt 37, 1ff./transl. Sourdel 252.

14 Faḍl 166, –8ff.: wa-qad qīla.
15 Faḍl 165, apu.; in the same sense already in Jāḥiẓ’ Risāla fī l-ḥakamayn (cf. the transl. in
Nagel, Rechtleitung 381f.).
16 Ibid. 165, –7ff. > Ḥākim al-Jushamī, Sharḥ ʿUyūn al-masāʾil, MS Leiden, Or. 2584a, fol. 48b,
–7ff. > IM 2, 6ff.: after sura 19:48 and 18:16.
17 Ibid. 166, 1f.
18 Ibid. 166, 3ff. > IM 2, 10ff.; also Ibn Mattōya, Muḥīṭ I 422, apu. ff. ʿAzmī/443, 17ff. Houben.
iraq 385
to have quoted this hadith when Qatāda accused him of having defected to
“those Muʿtazilites there”.19
These are presumably apocryphal stories; Sufyān al-Thawrī lived too late to
have been quite so uninformed, and in Qatāda’s day, i.e. before 117/735, ʿUthmān
al-Ṭawīl is unlikely to have already had a voice. But the hadith on which both
the stories focus takes us back to an era when neither Kaʿbī’s explanation nor
Shahrastānī’s legend had been formulated, and we shall also meet Qatāda
again in this context. For while Shahrastānī’s legend is a late invention, the best
proof being that Ashʿarī relied on Kaʿbī’s interpretation, we do know its earlier
versions. Ibn Qutayba, half a century before Ashʿarī, linked it to ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd
rather than Wāṣil, and to the doctrine of free will rather than the intermediate
state; ʿAmr the Qadarite was said to have “separated himself” from Ḥasan.20 In
the end, Ḥasan, too, turns out to have been a secondary motif in the story. The
Muʿtazilite Abū Bakr Ibn al-Ikhshīd, a contemporary of Kaʿbī’s,21 had pointed
this out already. He did not believe, he said, that the name Muʿtazila had al-
ready been linked to his school during Ḥasan’s lifetime, but rather that ʿAmr b.
ʿUbayd “separated himself” from Qatāda when he became Ḥasan’s successor.22
Sharīf al-Murtaḍā knew this story, too: ʿAmr and Qatāda did not get on very
well,23 Qatāda asking ironically afterwards “What are the loners (al-muʿtazila)
up to?”24
The Ḥasan tradition was thus an invention of the Muʿtazila’s opponents. Its
original objective was to show that Ḥasan was no Qadarite and excluded ʿAmr
for that reason. Over time the Qadarites would become Muʿtazilites in the tra-
dition, and as a consequence ʿAmr became Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ, and with Wāṣil the
doctrine of the intermediate status was added to the story as well. This devel-
opment relied on a Muʿtazilite explanation of the word iʿtizāl evolved by Kaʿbī.
In the legend, too, the doctrine of the intermediate status was still the cause of
Wāṣil’s iʿtizāl, but not the iʿtizāl itself. Instead of describing a doctrine leading
to a consequence, “separating oneself” now described a concrete situation that
was itself the consequence. Muʿtazilite tradition also reported a concrete situ-
ation, but with reference to Qatāda rather than Ḥasan al-Basri.25 And as the
19 Ibid. 166, 9ff. > IM 4, 13ff.; Ḥākim al-Jushamī 49 a, 7ff.

20 Maʿārif 483, 4f.; thus also Ḥuṣrī, Zahr al-ādāb I 111, ult.
21 Regarding him EI2 III 807 s. n.
22 Quoted in Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 201, –8ff.
23 Cf. p. 339 above.
24 Amālī I 167, 5ff., as anonymous tradition; cf. similar in Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 101, no. 607.
25 A conflated version is found in Ibn Mattōya, Muḥīṭ I 442, –6f. ʿAzmī/443, 14ff. Houben
(to be corrected in accordance with ʿAzmī). Later this did not require Qatāda any more,
either, and traced ʿAmr’s iʿtizāl back to his discussion with Wāṣil (Text IX 2, 1).
386 chapter 2
narrators of the story were now Muʿtazilites, the story took on a positive tone;
even coming from Qatāda, “loners” cannot really have been meant derogatory.
According to Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī the Muʿtazilites were the only ones who were
happy with their nickname.26 Could this perhaps be linked to the fact that
the name muʿtazila was not actually Qatāda’s invention but originated in the
hadith that ʿUthmān al-Ṭawīl allegedly quoted at him? But then what did the
word mean there?
The answer would be easy if we could assume that the Muʿtazila simply
invented this hadith together with the associated stories, but this is not very
probable. The stories presume that the hadith was already in existence, and
the Muʿtazilites were not among those who simply concocted hadiths for their
own ends; they only used them in the dialectical counter-move, the muʿāraḍa.
Most importantly, there had been muʿtazilūn long before Wāṣil and ʿAmr at the
time of the first civil war, when the differences between warring factions were
reflected in apocryphal prophetic dicta in an entirely straightforward fashion.
Nallino was the first to collect all the relevant documents27 relating to those
who were neutral at the time and “separated themselves” from all their fellow-
believers who raised arms against one another. These are the muʿtazila of the
hadith;28 lower-case muʿtazila as it was not yet a party or a school but simply
a second plural form of muʿtazil, besides muʿtazilūn. Wāṣil and his followers
referred to them.
However, much time had passed since the first civil war. Some early sources
still point to the connection,29 but simplify the historical development too
much. We need to define more clearly how Wāṣil and his followers understood
iʿtizāl: certainly not only as a theoretical position in accordance with the doc-
trine of intermediate status. The muʿtazila of the first civil war had not been
theoreticians, and the muʿtazila of 145 even less. Wāṣil’s Muʿtazila was active
in the years of anarchy before the Abbasid revolution, taking not only a theo-
logical but also a historical decision, although it did not necessarily share the
political activism of the people around Bashīr al-Raḥḥāl. By 145 the name had
become a fixed predicate that did not necessarily describe one’s personal views
26 Awāʾil II 135, 1f.

27 In: RSO 7/1916/429ff. = Raccolta II 146ff. Further material in my K. an-Nakṯ 121f.; Nuʿmān
al-Qāḍī, Al-firaq al-islāmiyya 296ff. and 535ff.; Bāqir ʿAbd al-Ghanī, Shiʿr al-iʿtizāl al-siyāsī
fī l-ʿaṣr al-umawī, in: Maj. Kulliyyat al-Ādāb Baghdād 9/1967/56ff.; Sayed, Ibn al-Ashʿath
305ff.; Morony, Iraq 478ff.
28 Cf. also HT 135f.
29 Thus Pseudo-Nāshiʾ, i.e. presumably Jaʿfar b. Ḥarb (Uṣūl al-niḥal 17, 4ff.), and Malaṭī
(Tanbīh 28, 20ff./36, 4ff.).
iraq 387
any more. After 126, as in the first civil war, iʿtizāl referred to iʿtizāl al-fitan, po-
litical neutrality in a world of competing claims to power.
As is well known, Nyberg believed that in reality the Muʿtazilites’ political
neutrality played into the hands of the Abbasids,30 but this theory, which ex-
erted considerable influence for some time, has been rejected nearly unani-
mously over recent decades.31 And it does indeed culminate in a contradiction
in terms: the Muʿtazila “separated itself” from every political party; Manṣūr
was said to have reminded ʿAmr of this later.32 Of course this decision affected
those in power first: the Umayyads; but it was also true of the Abbasids and of
ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥasan and his two sons. A hadith circulating in Syria called to
iʿtizāl against the Quraysh in general as they were ruining the commonwealth
(umma).33 This pessimism may have been expressed occasionally during
Hishām’s time, when Ghaylān al-Dimashqī was executed, but it flared up only
after Yazīd III’s death; after all, ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd had still spoken up for him.
Distance from the authorities also moved the muʿtazila closer to moderate
Khārijites. Among the Ibāḍites iʿtazala would later mean “to withdraw one’s
allegiance from the imam”,34 the original meaning being presumably “to keep
away, leave the community”.35 This, in fact, had always been the meaning: not
to take part in a call to blood feud,36 and later, not to go to the mosque, not
to take part in Friday prayers.37 This probably gave Wāṣil the idea of copy-
ing the Ibāḍite model of ḥamalat al-ʿilm; it would also explain the attempts
by some contemporaries as well as later heresiographers to link him with the
30 EI1 III 851 s.v. Muʿtazila; adopted in HW 557.

31 Cf. Cahen in: Revue historique 230/1963/322f.; Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology 61,
subsequently also in Festschrift Meier 306 and in Formative Period 214f.; Madelung, Qāsim
23ff.; Farūq ʿUmar, Buḥūth fī l-taʾrīkh al-ʿabbāsī 72ff.; Pellat in: Festschrift Wickens 25. The
oldest critical approach was by Fück in a lecture given before the Sächsische Akademie
der Wissenschaften in 1953, but not published until 1981 (Arab. Kultur und Islam im
Mittelalter 243ff.).
33 Qushayrī, Taʾrīkh Raqqa 74, 4ff.
34 Thus Abū l-Muʾaththir al-Ṣalt b. Khamīs, an Omani author of the third century (regarding
him see p. 798 below); cf. Al-siyar wal-jawābāt I 81, –5ff. and 84, 4 and apu. ff.
35 The transitive meaning “to withdraw allegiance” was also expressed by form I (ʿazala = “to
separate”; ibid.).
36 Cf. Agh. V 46, 3f., and 48, 4f. regarding the Basūs war; Masʿūdī, Tanbīh 207, 16f. In more
detail in Tabrīzī’s Ḥamāsa commentary 251, 12ff., where we learn that the muʿtazil would
render his weapons unusable and not leave his house. Cf. Sayed, Ibn al-Ashʿath 317.
37 Thus in hadith (Conc. IV 207b) or Ibn Saʿd (Ṭab. VI 191, 2ff.); see vol. I 117f. above regarding
the Syrian Qadarite ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Thābit b. Thawbān, or 474 regarding the Khārijite
Ismāʿīl b. Sumayʿ al-Ḥanafī.
388 chapter 2
Khārijites.38 But as far as we know Wāṣil’s duʿāt did not preach rebellion, as
that would have been contradictory to their principles; ʿAmr’s youth group was
a purely civil self-help organisation. Only when clear public order returned
under the Abbasids did all this become a problem. ʿAmr sat tight until the end
of his life; if his Muʿtazilites kept separate from the community this was due
only to the fact that they, like the Ibāḍites, had their own mosque in Basra.39
However, they had also from the first combined distance from the authorities
with the call for social and political justice. In Basra this was exemplified by
Ghaylān al-Dimashqī. ʿAmr did not stand aside; he interpreted ʿadl as qisṭ; but
Bashīr al-Raḥḥāl drew revolutionary consequences, turning the asceticism to
which the Muʿtazila had always felt a connection, militant.
Thus far, but thus far only, we can follow Goldziher who described the
Muʿtazilites as “withdrawing from the world, ascetics” in a late publica-
tion (in: Der Islam 8/1918/208f. = Ges. Schr. V 411f.). Schreiner had preced-
ed him in his Studien über Jeshuʿa ben Jehuda in 1900 (p. 17f. = Ges. Schr.
516f.). Massignon took this much further, regarding iʿtizāl as a “solitude
volontaire” of the heart (Passion2 III 189/Engl. transl. III 177). Goldziher’s
theory was revived by S. Stroumsa in: JSAI 13/1990/265ff. Cf. also the ex-
amples in Morony, Iraq 449f. – Incidentally, the Pharisees are named al-
muʿtazila (cf. Acta Apostolorum 5. 34, Arab. transl., ed. H. Staal in: CSCO,
vol. 462, p. 10, ult.; also Pines in: JSAI 9/1987/ 256 after the Arabic and the
Persian diatessaron); perūshīm is sometimes interpreted as “those who
keep themselves separate” in the Talmud (Pines in: JSAI 6/1985/158).
Regarding hip̄ rīsh “to secede, to separate” as used by ʿAnan ben David and
the Karaites cf. N. Wieder, Judaean Scrolls 161ff.; ʿAnan demanded the so-
cial and territorial separation of his community from those of different
faiths (ibid. 153ff.).
If, however, the name Muʿtazila should be interpreted mainly in the political
sense there is no need to assume that Wāṣil and ʿAmr followed the same theo-
logical path from the first. People remembered that they had discovered com-
mon ground over time. They were both Qadarites, but Qadarites could work
together in political commitment just as much as in theological conviction.
Wāṣil’s speaking before ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb may have been due to
the governor’s wish, being the representative of a Qadarite caliph, to win the
38 See p. 308 above. The early Ibāḍites only ever called the Muʿtazilites Qadariyya; even
ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd (see vol. I 478ff. above).
iraq 389
Basran Qadariyya over to his cause. ʿAmr had let Wāṣil speak in his circle,40 and
clearly the latter then spoke for this circle, although it seems that originally
he did not belong there. The doctrine of the intermediate status was devel-
oped by him alone, aiming far beyond Basra. It is tempting to derive it from an
earlier theology representing a compromise between ʿAlid and Medinan ideas.
ʿAbdallāh b. Ḥasan had to mediate for the sake of his political aims, as Ḥasan
b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya might have done in different circumstances: the
mahdī had to bring not only justice, but unity as well. Still, it is not possible
to prove this, even if there might have been a connection here. The political
principle of iʿtizāl is another story. Wāṣil was no agent of al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s;
otherwise he would not have needed to send a dāʿī to Medina. The Muʿtazila
probably existed before Abwāʾ; otherwise Wāṣil would probably not have been
present at the audience with ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar in 126. It was merely a conver-
gence of interests that linked him to the Hijaz.
When exactly the Muʿtazila itself came into being will have to remain unan-
swered. If it did happen during Qatāda’s lifetime, i.e. before 117/735, the name
would mainly be due to ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, as his youth organisation might al-
ready have been in existence at the time, although he had probably not been
persuaded to follow Wāṣil’s theology. Indeed, the youth group may have been
the cause of Qatāda’s displeasure. It is by no means certain that Wāṣil made
use of this organisation, as his main interest was the mission outside Basra for
which a few well-trained and motivated men were sufficient. These missionary
activities were entirely associated with his person; the followers he recruited in
the Maghreb were known as Wāṣiliyya rather than Muʿtazila. We do not know
when he established his network of agents. While Ṭabarī reported that as early
as Hishām’s day Iraqi duʿāt appeared in the Maghreb,41 these were probably
not yet Muʿtazilites but Ṣufrites and Ibāḍites.42 In any case, ʿAmr’s Muʿtazila
was fundamentally independent of this. In its case, if indeed it did bear this
name, we would need a motive for political iʿtizāl only. Should we assume that
ʿAmr’s circle was already “separating itself” from the Quraysh before 117/735, in-
fluenced by Ghaylān’s execution which, as we have seen,43 most probably took
place around 114/732? We will probably never be able to go beyond hypotheses
at this point.
40 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 282, apu. ff., and 285, 10ff.
41 Ṭabarī I 2815, 10f.
42 They staged their first rebellion during Hishām’s reign (see ch. C 7.7 below).
390 chapter 2
2.2.7 The Traditionist Reaction
2.2.7.1 Opposition against ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd

In retrospect it seemed incomprehensible that the Qadariyya was able to
maintain such a strong position in Basra for such a long time, and that ʿAmr
b. ʿUbayd in particular had not met with more resistance. Consequently par-
ticular weight was given to those people who were pupils of Ḥasan’s as well,
but had instead taken a firmly anti-Qadarite stance. Ibn Saʿd already discussed
them in great detail. It was thought that they would have administered Ḥasan’s
legacy better, while ʿAmr must have falsified it. Consequently people noted
meticulously whenever they voiced criticism of ʿAmr, although it does not ap-
pear to have been very frequent. In all probability not only the selection of
anecdotes but also their subject matter are reflections of a later generation’s
thinking. The reports were collated by authors from among the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth
several times from the middle of the third century onwards;1 but the material
probably became increasingly interesting after the miḥna and actually dates
back to Basran circles in the second half of the second century.2 Four or five
persons are mentioned again and again: Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, Yūnus b. ʿUbayd,
ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn, frequently also Sulaymān al-Taymī and, in one anecdote
only, Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ. The first three or four were obviously regarded as
a group; some statements refer to them all. ʿAmr was said to have called all
of them, extremely rudely, “dirty, unclean fellows”,3 and when they were all
sitting together, they allegedly did not greet him.4 Similarities in their appear-
ance were also noted: none of them was a straightforward ascetic.5 There were
occasional attempts to distinguish between them: Sulaymān al-Taymī was said
to have been the most pious of them, Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī the most skilful ju-
rist, Yūnus b. ʿUbayd the most conscientious one in financial matters, and Ibn
ʿAwn the one who was most successful at curbing his tongue,6 but all of this
1 See p. 320 above.

2 Cf. my Traditionistische Polemik 39ff.
3 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 483, 8ff., and Taʾwīl 101, 5ff. = 84, 14ff./transl. Lecomte 94 § 121; ʿUqaylī,
Ḍuʿafāʾ III 284, 12ff. > Mīzān III 274, 13ff.; slightly divergent Dāraquṭnī 30f. no. 15 (with addi-
tional commentary). Slightly distorted also Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 340, 7ff.
4 TB XII 174, 2ff.; Ibn Baṭṭa, Ibāna 40, 1ff.; ʿAbdallāh b. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, K. al-sunna 131, 8ff.
5 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 395, 1ff.; cf. p. 393f., 401f., and 412f. below. Joint mention (including Sulaymān
al-Taymī) also Fasawī II 132, 1; Ḥilya III 4, 8; Ibn ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd II 236, 16f.; TD (Leningrad)
338, 6ff.; 339, 7ff.; 360, 6ff. Without Sulaymān al-Taymī: Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 456, 5f.; AZ 475,
1ff.; TD 344, 8ff.
iraq 391
only serves to emphasise their fellowship even more. Abū Nuʿaym, too, named
all of them one after the other at the very beginning of the third volume.7
2.2.7.1.1 Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī

We have comparatively good information on Abū Bakr Ayyūb b. Abī Tamīma
Kaysān al-Sakhtiyānī.1 Still, his very fame, coupled with the desire of knowing
as much as possible about him, has led to inconsistencies, starting with the
actual dates of his life. Several sources are in agreement that he was a victim
of the “pestilence” in 131.2 This claim is supported by Ibn Ḥanbal narrowing it
to the month of Ramadan (= April/May 749);3 at that time the “pestilence” was
at its peak, as Aṣmaʿī and Madāʾinī recorded in their well-known catalogues
of epidemics.4 It is consequently self-evident that Ayyūb died in Basra, as em-
phasised by Ibn Qutayba.5 Even so, ʿUmar b. Shabba, himself a Basran by birth,
claimed that he was buried in the Yamāma, in the same place as the poet Jarīr
and the Basran ascetic Mālik b. Dīnār.6
The report might have originated in ʿUmar b. Shabba’s Taʾrīkh al-Baṣra in

which case it would carry considerably more weight, not least due to the
author’s own early date. Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, however, who quoted it
(Agh. XXI 387, 14f.), had reason to doubt it in a certain point, albeit not
the one relevant to us. Muqaddasī would later note that Ayyūb’s as well
as Mālik b. Dīnār’s grave were worshipped in Basra (Aḥsan al-taqāsīm 130,
6f.). Dating his death to 132 rather than 131, reported rather isolated in
Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ (Ṭab. 552, 12f.; later also Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr in his Tamhīd,
cf. Conrad 66), was probably merely an oversight, especially as the pes-
tilence is mentioned in the context. Abū Zurʿa’s note of “141, of the pesti-
lence” is, of course, also an error (475, apu. f.). – We should probably not
7 Cf. also Massignon, Essai2 168.
1 Regarding his full name cf. e.g. Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 471, 5ff., or Fasawī III 71, 7. Abū Nuʿaym
(Ḥilya III 8, 4) mentions his son Bakr, to whom his kunya referred, he also bore the name Abū
Yaḥyā.
2 Ibn al-Madīnī, ʿIlal 79, 2; Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 603, 14; IS VIII2 17, 21; Hārūn b. Ḥātim al-Tamīmī,
Taʾrīkh, in: RAAD 53, 1978/129, pu. f.; also many secondary sources.
3 ʿIlal 88 no. 513.
4 Cf. Aṣmaʿī in Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 602, 1f., and Madāʾinī in Mubarrad, Taʿāzī 209, 6ff.; regard-
ing both see Conrad in: SI 54/1981/55ff. and 61ff. Aṣmaʿī even mentions Ayyūb’s death in this
context without, however, stating the month definitively.
5 Maʿārif 471, 13.
392 chapter 2
identify Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, who was often cited simply as Ayyūb as he

was very well known, with a certain Ayyūb ṣāḥib al-Baṣrī who appears
once in Wākiʿ (II 440, 12f.) and was known in particular because of his
son Sulaymān (ibid. 23, 3f.; 339, –5f.; II 363, 12; 364, apu. etc.). The latter
did not, in fact, die until 235/849–50 in Baghdad (TB IX 48f. no. 4628). The
confusion arises because Sulaymān b. Ayyūb ṣāḥib al-Baṣrī frequently re-
ferred to a certain Ayyūb via Ḥammād b. Zayd, and in this case it is Ayyūb
al-Sakhtiyānī. Indeed, it may be that in the first passage cited the son is
indicated instead of the father.
Ibn Saʿd tells us that Ayyūb was born in the year before the “torrent pestilence”,7
although, confusingly, he gives the date of the epidemic as the year 87, but then
states that Ayyūb lived to 63 years.8 87 will probably have to be changed to
67; some authors dated the ṭāʿūn al-jārif, the date of which could not be fixed
with certainty, to this year, and Nawawī, trying to tidy up the chronological
muddle in his Sharḥ Muslim, cited a note by Kalabādhī according to which
Ayyūb was born in 66.9 In this case his age would have been 63 solar years,
although Aṣmaʿī dated the elusive epidemic to the year 69.10 However, we can
assume that his age was calculated in retrospect, and that the two pestilences
were recorded as the relevant dates.
Ayyūb was a mawlā, descended from prisoners of war, as he said himself,11
but the dependencies were rather complicated. The man taking the prisoners,
a certain ʿAmmār b. Shaddād of whom nothing else is known – and nothing is
known regarding the place and time of the capture, either – had himself been
a mawlā. Consequently Ayyūb, like his father Kaysān, was – in Ibn Qutayba’s
words – a client’s client and mawlā of the ʿAnaza through ʿAmmār.12 The Banū
ʿAmmār would later join the Banū Ṭuhayya13 who were in their turn confeder-
ates (aḥlāf) of the Banū l-Ḥarīsh, and Ayyūb’s house stood in their district.14
While one of our sources describes him as a tanner (dabbāgh),15 his nisba
7 VII2 14, 5.
8 Ibid. 14, 6 and 17, 21f.
9 Conrad 66f. However, when Nawawī referred to Aṣmaʿī and Madāʾinī for the date of 67, he
was wrong in both instances. Aṣmaʿī did in fact say 69 (Maʿārif 601, 8), and Madāʾinī, 79
(Taʿāzī 209, 8; Conrad relies on the variant noted there which says 69).
10 Maʿārif 601, 8.
11 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 522, 11f.
12 Maʿārif 471, 7f.; also Fasawī III 71, 7.
13 Khalīfa 522, 11; regarding them see also p. 380 above.
14 Bukhārī I1 410, 8.
15 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 69, ult., and 377, 15.
iraq 393
shows that he traded in morocco leather or “saffian” (sa/ikhtiyān) and was in

fact a merchant.16 He had connections with Egypt,17 and it was stressed that
he did not engage in business during the pilgrimage.18 He recommended not
to let one’s income suffer through piety19 and transmitted a hadith praising the
honest merchant.20 Sufyān al-Thawrī pointed out jeeringly that he would even
haggle over his sandals.21 “Wealth gives you security” (al-ghinā min al-ʿāfiya),
he was claimed to have said – security given by God that also covered one’s
family.22 He only engaged in scholarship in his free time, once he had provid-
ed for his family.23 He founded a mosque where one of his closest associates
became imam.24
In his case, unlike some of his Qadarite contemporaries, all this was tied to
his rejection of any outward expression of asceticism. He was not ashamed to
show his wealth: he wore a grand overshirt (qamīṣ) made from Herat material,25
not gathered up like the ascetics did but falling to the ground or even dragging
behind him,26 with long, full sleeves of the kind that had always been a sign
of particular grandeur.27 People also said they had seen him wear a Kurdish
ṭaylasān or a tall Iranian hat (qalansuwa).28 It was also noticeable that when
he wore an izār he let his navel show; ascetics probably thought this too ex-
hibitionist.29 He wore his hair in the traditional fashion and, unlike the early
Muʿtazilites, sported a luxuriant moustache.30 He let his hair grow, visiting
16 Maʿārif 577, 2; Samʿānī, Ansāb VII 53, 12ff. Even during the Ottoman era morocco was
still regarded as the highest-quality leather for shoes (Farokhi, Towns and Townsmen 161
and 165ff.). Regarding the derivation of the word “saffian” from sakhtiyān cf. Lokotzsch,
Etymologisches Wörterbuch no. 1769.
17 Fasawī II 232, apu. ff.; rather vaguer IS VII2 16, 10ff.
19 Ibid. II 233, 9f.
20 Qushayrī, Taʾrīkh Raqqa 119, 3f.
21 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 389, 2f.
22 Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya III 10, 7ff.
23 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 132, 9 = Fasawī II 233, 5f., and 236, 6ff.; also Ḥilya III 9, 1ff.
24 Cf. TT II 131 no. 218 s. n. Ḥātim b. Wardān al-Saʿdī; also Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Khiṭaṭ al-Baṣra 254.
26 IS VII2 15, 15ff.; ʿIqd II 372, 5ff. = VI 224, 7ff.
27 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 101, 3f.; see also p. 438 below.
28 Maʿārif 471, 11 > Ḥilya III 9, 17ff.; also Fasawī II 235, 6f. Regarding the different kinds of
ṭaylasān cf. A. Arazi in: Arabica 23/1976/132ff.
29 IS VII2 17, 17; the same was said of Ibn ʿAwn (ibid. 29, 11). Regarding the izār cf. Dozy,
Dictionnaire des vêtements 24ff., esp. 37.
30 Maʿārif, ibid.; cf. p. 437f. below.
394 chapter 2
the barber once a year only.31 In his old age he, like his friends ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn
and Yūnus b. ʿUbayd, dyed his hair and beard with henna.32 His serenity and
amiability were noted,33 presumably because of the contrast they presented
to the self-tormenting pietists. In his view, piety had its own time; on the oc-
casion of the ʿīd al-fiṭr he would send wooden bowls with foods and drinks to
his neighbours before daybreak.34 And self-castigation had its limits: “I am not
aware that scruffiness (qadhar) is part of faith” was transmitted from him.35
He made not only friends in this way. Criticism came from the “wool-
wearers” (mutaṣawwifa); Ḥawshab’s36 followers believed his house to be an un-
canny place.37 His rejecting Farqad al-Sabakhī and avoiding Faḍl al-Raqāshī
will have to be seen in this light, too.38 Circumstances are obscured slightly
by the fact that asceticism, in his time a recent and controversial phenom-
enon, was gradually becoming the ideal, and that consequently it would later
become impossible to imagine that he might have enjoyed worldly pleasures
in an entirely uncomplicated fashion. Ibn Saʿd had him say that he deliber-
ately abstained from the fashionable attitudes of the zuhhād in order to avoid
the shuhra, the “show”;39 an attitude (which probably belongs to a later de-
gree of reflection; it was systematised by Muḥāsibī in the first half of the third
century40) often linked to him elsewhere as well.41 In the end Ibn al-Nadīm
counted him among the ascetics after all,42 which made it all the more sur-
prising that he did not clash with the quṣṣāṣ who were, from the later point of
view, the most typical representatives of the shuhra, naïve superficiality. While
31 IS 15, 6ff. Pellat reads shiʿr instead of shaʿar and consequently believes Ayyūb to have been
a poet (Milieu 100).
32 Ibid. 17, 18f.; also Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 395, 1f.
33 Ibid. 16, 5f.
34 Ibid. 16, 20f.
35 Ibn Qutayba, Ashriba 84, 7f. Was this an allusion to the – non-canonical – hadith al-
naẓāfa min al-īmān? (Cf. Conc. VI 483a).
37 Fasawī II 240, 10ff., and p. 126 above.
38 See p. 108f. and 199 above. A comment of Ayyūb’s against ṣūf: Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifa III 217, 2ff.
39 VII2 15, 17f.
40 Cf. his remarks on “hypocrisy” by attire (ziyy) in Riʿāya 100, 16ff (transl. Gedankenwelt 40f.).
In more detail ch. C 6.2 below.
41 IS 16, 8: Ibn Qutayba, Ashriba 83, –5f.; Fasawī II 231, 7ff.; similar Ibn al-Jawzī, Quṣṣāṣ § 151.
He was said to always chose paths along which he was unknown (IS 16, 10ff., and 15, 12ff.;
also Fasawī II 232, apu. ff.).
42 Fihrist 235, 17.
iraq 395
Abū Nuʿaym noted one derogatory comment Ayyūb made about them,43 it was
entirely isolated; we find more emphasis on Ayyūb’s keeping his own counsel
with regard to the quṣṣāṣ merely because he was afraid that they might vilify
him.44 He may not have had anything against them; after all quṣṣāṣ, too, often
dressed sumptuously. Abū Nuʿaym and Ibn al-Jawzī carefully added a lot of
detail to the later, amended image, both of them dedicating a long chapter to
Ayyūb45 without, however, being able to add new, essential information.
This is also due to the attempt at presenting Ayyūb as a genuine pupil of
and emulating Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, another area where some doubt is indicated.
It is true that there are many reports of Ḥasan calling him the first among the
young people (sayyid al-fityān),46 but occasionally we learn that he said this
of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd as well.47 Ayyūb had no qualms reporting a rather arrogant
remark the Meccan ʿIkrima had made about Ḥasan during his visit to Basra.48
And of course there was the vexed matter of qadar. Ayyūb was quoted as having
said that he argued several times with his teacher about the latter’s Qadarite
views, claiming that he even threatened him with the authorities, whereupon
Ḥasan promised to renounce this error in the future.49 If the Qadarites still
relied on Ḥasan, it could only be maliciously and with the sole intention of
spreading their own doctrine among the people.50 The Muʿtazilites presented
things differently: Ayyūb spent four years in Ḥasan’s company, never daring
to ask anything,51 which ruled out a fortiori that he could have criticised his
beliefs. Leaving these claims aside – as they were blown out of proportion by
later emphasis – we come to the conclusion that in fact Ayyūb was a mem-
ber of Ibn Sīrīn’s circle of pupils; he may even have become his successor.52 A
major part of Ibn Sīrīn’s law traditions were transmitted via him, and Ibn Sīrīn
43 Ḥilya III 11, apu. f.

44 Fasawī II 236, 1f. It was noted that Mūsā al-Uswārī, although he was closely linked to the
quṣṣāṣ, prayed behind Ayyūb.
45 Ḥilya III 3ff.; Ṣifat al-ṣafwa III 212ff.
46 Is 14, 9 > Fasawī II 232, 1; also Ḥilya III 3, 6ff. with variants.
47 Fasawī II 260, 1ff. > TB XII 170, 9ff.
48 Ibid. II 5, apu. f.: AZ 680, 3f. Regarding ʿIkrima’s visit to Basra see p. 734 below.
49 IS VII1 122, 2f. > Fasawī II 34, 4ff.; AZ 683 no. 2086; also Kaʿbī 229, 1ff., softened immediately
with the comment that he had nothing else to reproach Ḥasan with (VII1 122, 4f. > Fasawī
II 34, ult.).
51 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 340, 6f.
52 Thus TH 131, 4f. after Ibn ʿAwn; cf. also Ibn al-Madīnī, ʿIlal 68, 8ff., and p. 400 below the
report of Salm b. Qutayba.
396 chapter 2
had distinguished himself as Ḥasan’s opposite by his very cosmopolitan and

serene attitude.
Ayyūb especially transmitted many of the precedents that Ibn Sīrīn trans-
mitted from the qāḍī Shurayḥ (regarding him GAS 1/402f.) and that Wakīʿ
recorded painstakingly (Akhbār al-quḍāt II 331ff.). The latter had heard
them from two sources he wrote down one after the other: the Mālikite
Ismāʿīl b. Isḥāq al-Jahḍamī al-Azdī (d. 282/895; cf. GAS 1/475f.) and Aḥmad
b. Manṣūr al-Ramādī (d. 265/879; cf. TH 564 no. 589). In the case of Ismāʿīl
b. Isḥāq he was occasionally able to rely on explicitly authorised tradi-
tions (ibid. 341, –7ff., albeit sometimes without naming Ayyūb, simply ʿan
Muḥammad [b. Sīrīn]), occasionally also on a book that had come into his
possession without ijāza (341, 12f.). Other traditions Ayyūb transmitted
from Ibn Sīrīn may be found ibid. I 83, 9; 270, 9; 278, 7 (with Ibn ʿAwn);
303, 10 etc.; also in my K. an-Nakth 24. – Regarding Ibn Sīrīn’s serenity
cf. e.g. IS VII1 142, 2f. and 15ff. (misquoted by T. Fahd in EI2 III 948a) or
Dhahabī, Siyar IV 608, 1, and 613, apu. Ibn Sīrīn’s biography was drawn
in similar lines to Ayyūb’s elsewhere, too. Like the latter he was said to
have avoided shuhra (IS 145, 6ff.). Unlike the pietists who wished to send
every sinner to hell, he felt hope for all Muslims (ibid. 144, 4f.; regarding
Ayyūb cf. VII2 16, 4; regarding ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn see p. 416 below). This did
not stop him thinking about precise compliance with commandments
(waraʿ, ibid. 142, 21f.); he was said to have omitted even harmless things
in order to ensure he did not sully himself (Muḥāsibī, Makāsib 206, 1f.,
and 205, 5f.), where Ayyūb, Ibn ʿAwn, and Yūnus b. ʿUbayd are named be-
side him). – The Muʿtazilite Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī presented Ayyūb as a
Murjiʾite (Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd, ShNB III 236, –4), probably because he “felt
hope”, but elsewhere we are told that especially regarding the concept of
faith, Ayyūb, Ibn ʿAwn, and Yūnus b. ʿUbayd disagreed with the Murjiʾites
(Mīzān II 629, 8ff.).
There are several instances confirming that Ayyūb was a good lawyer.53 The
same was said of his fellow-believers Yūnus b. ʿUbayd, ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn, and
Sulaymān al-Taymī;54 the elder Ibn ʿUlayya (b. 110/729) referred to them – pre-
sumably more to the latter two, as he can only have met Ayyūb in his youth.55
53 Fasawī II 109, –5 = 197, pu. ff.; also Ḥilya III 4, 4ff.
54 AZ 475, 1ff. after Sufyān al-Thawrī.
55 Fasawī II 132, 1, and previously; cf. also Wakīʿ I 331, 5f. etc. Regarding Ibn ʿUlayya see
p. 473ff. below.
iraq 397
Even Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795) deferred to him when he was in the Hijaz,
although Mālikite sources emphasise that he first inquired into Ayyūb’s
piousness.56 It was emphasised that he was most conscientious and did not
talk according to his own discretion (raʾy),57 preferring to admit his ignorance.58
Those who pronounced fatwās with the greatest boldness were, in his view, the
ones with the least understanding of ikhtilāf al-ʿulamāʾ.59 This was directed
at Kufa, among others, and when Ḥammād b. Abī Sulaymān came to Basra
to lecture, Ayyūb did not attend.60 He was also said to have made derogatory
remarks about Abū Ḥanīfa.61 While it was understood that he could not have
seen him during his heyday, people thought that they had once been together
in Mecca during the hajj, where Abū Ḥanīfa found respect for him.62
To later generations Ayyūb represented the Basran style of jurisprudence,
with much more emphasis on hadith than in Kufa. In fact, most reports focus
on Ayyūb as a muḥaddith, and there is even an extant text, a collection of his
traditions collated by the same Ismāʿīl b. Isḥāq who also preserved his Shurayḥ
tradition.63 As is only to be expected his hadith practice did not conform to
the rules established later. He did not recollect isnāds64 and did not write his
traditions down but learned them by heart.65 He also disapproved of his pupils
writing them down, insisting on seeing the notes afterwards.66 Ḥammād b. Zayd
al-Azdī (d. 179/795), a Basran himself, but already member of a different gen-
eration, consequently had concerns regarding Ayyūb in this matter;67 Shuʿba
b. al-Ḥajjāj (d. 160/778), one of the first systematisers of Basran hadith,68 could
only be stopped from “talking” about him by expostulations and threats.69 Soon,
56 Ibn ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik I 124, apu. ff.; also Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 89, –4ff.
58 IS VII2 14, 15.
59 Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, Appendix 125, 11ff.
60 Fasawī II 791, –5ff.; cf. vol. I 211 above.
61 Ibid. II 785, 1ff., and 791, 1ff.; also AZ 507 no. 1334, and TB XIII 397, 10ff.
62 Ibid. II 787, 5ff.; ʿIqd III 169, 12ff.
63 From a Mālikite, that is (see p. 395 above). The MS, which is kept in the Ẓāhiriyya, dates
from 640 (cf. GAS 1/88, and Muranyi in: ZDMG 138/1988/131ff.); two generations later, when
in Damascus with Ibn Taymiyya, the Spaniard Tujībī read a juzʾ containing Ayyūb’s had-
iths (Barnāmaj 213, –5ff.).
65 Ibid. II 232, 5f.
67 IS 14, ult. f. = Fasawī II 284, 10f.
69 Fasawī II 99, apu. ff.
398 chapter 2
however, this would be presented in a positive light: he was so conscientious

that he corrected his pupils’ notes;70 he considered Khilās b. ʿAmr (d. before
100/719) who, like Ayyūb himself, transmitted information about Shurayḥ,71 to
be a “booklet scholar” (ṣuḥufī) because he used ṣaḥīfas without actually having
heard their contents himself.72
His point of view was clearly rather complex. He was not directly opposed
to “books”; when his teacher Abū Qilāba left him his collection, he had had
it transported from Syria to Basra at his own expense.73 He was also said to
have possessed notes from Zuhrī, whom he esteemed greatly,74 ʿIkrima, ʿAmr
b. Dīnār, and Nāfiʿ, ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar’s mawlā75 – all of them, with the excep-
tion of ʿIkrima, authorities whom he could have interviewed during his travels.
But “books” were really only worth anything if they were based on personal
contact, and he clearly considered it the due of his craft that one should know
by heart what was noted in the books.76 There were scripts of his own hadith
as well: by Sufyān b. ʿUyayna and ʿAbd al-Ṣamad b. ʿAbd al-Wārith,77 the latter
possibly quoting from his father ʿAbd al-Wārith b. Saʿīd who had written down
his notes from memory after Ayyūb’s death.78 This is probably how the mate-
rial reached Ismāʿīl b. Isḥāq.
As for Ayyūb’s relationship with ʿIkrima, it was said explicitly that he did
not “suspect” him,79 ʿIkrima of course being a Khārijite. Interestingly he also
considered Jābir b. Zayd to be most intelligent.80 Khalīl, on the other hand, was
believed to have been converted from his Ibāḍite inclinations by Ayyūb, but it
70 Ibid. II 238, pu.

71 Wakīʿ II 383f.; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 28f. no. 449. Cf. Mīzān 2532.
73 AZ 473 no. 1233; Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Taqyīd al-ʿilm 62, 16ff.; cf. Azmi, Studies 63, for details.
Among other things they hey contained letters from the prophet and the early caliphs
(see ch. C 4.1.4 below; also Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 295 no. 1915).
74 AZ 411, 19f.; Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 22 no. 103.
75 Azmi 88; 66; 79; 97.
76 It was actually known that he had only heard a part of Abū Qilāba’s hadiths (Ibn Ḥanbal,
ʿIlal 77 no. 452). The systematic remarks transmitted by Fasawī later (II 826, 3f., and 828,
apu. f.), that he recognised the methods of kitāba and ʿarḍ, were based on this informa-
tion. Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, on the other hand, writes that the “Basrans” (which includes
Ayyūb, but also Ibn ʿUlayya) did not “write anything down” (Taqyīd al-ʿilm 79, 6f.); cf.
Schoeler in: Der Islam 66/1989/219.
77 Azmi 169 and 81; general information also AZ 467, 2.
79 Fasawī II 8, 10f.; his appreciation is emphasised ibid. 7, 5ff. Cf. also Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 19
no. 85f.
80 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 242, no. 1529; also Fasawī II 12, 5f.
iraq 399
may be that the transmitter, al-Aṣmaʿī, read too much into the story.81 Ayyūb
believed grammar to be important,82 which is at odds with stories that have
him make mistakes when speaking in Qatāda’s presence,83 but the objective
here may have been that unlike the latter, he was a mawlā. After all it was also
transmitted from him that no-one should boast of his pre-Islamic ancestors.84
He does not seem to have minded that Qatāda was a Qadarite as well.
Kaʿbī tells us that Ayyūb was very much affected by Qatāda’s death.85 Reports
of disagreements tend to refer to ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd who died a generation after
Qatāda.86 These accounts are not very informative, either: Ayyūb is said to
have called ʿAmr “odious” (maqīt).87 He did not believe that the latter would
convert, referring to ʿAlī’s well-known dictum (and the hadith developed out
of it) that “there will be people coming from Islam who will pierce the faith
(yamruqūna, also: apostatise), just like an arrow pierces the game”, after all, the
arrow would not return to its starting point, either.88 This was originally direct-
ed at the Khārijites,89 it seems that he included ʿAmr in that description. ʿAmr
suggested that he and Ayyūb should have a discussion to do away with these
accusations, but when they met in a mosque Ayyūb, after the rather mysteri-
ous intervention of a third man (who warned or enlightened him?), left ʿAmr
standing there.90 Sometimes ʿAmr appears in an unmistakeably more positive
light, advising people to feel sorry for Ayyūb after he once again attacked him.
ʿIqd II 275, pu. f. = II 336, 6f.; Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 96, 8f. without naming
Ayyūb; Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn II 19, 14f.; TB VIII 450, 18ff.; Murtaḍā, Amālī I
170, 9ff. (after Aṣmaʿī). Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir IV 71, ult. ff./2IV 61 no. 157 nar-
rates a similar story with (ʿAmr b. Fāʾid) al-Uswārī taking Ayyūb’s place.
Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s report Faḍl 243, apu. ff., which has ʿAmr replying
to Ayyūb rather maliciously is in a different vein and clearly Muʿtazilite
counter-propaganda.

82 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 219, 11f.
83 Bukhārī I1 409, ult. f.; Ḥilya III 11, –6f.
84 Ḥilya III 13, 17ff.
85 Maq. 88, –5f.
86 For a general instance of Ayyūb’s anti-Qadarite attitude cf. IS 16, 7f. = Fasawī II 240, apu.;
Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 183 no. 1183.
87 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 279, 14ff., and TB XII 174, 11ff.; the text is contaminated in Dāraquṭnī § 13
(cf. the commentary p. 28f.).
88 Ibid. 174, 5ff. = Fasawī III 390, apu. ff.
89 Regarding the context cf. K. an-Nakṯ 83f.
90 Fasawī II 260, apu. ff.
400 chapter 2
Other anecdotes have a specific motive. When Ayyūb and ʿAmr once came
to Mecca together, Ayyūb circled the Kaʿba all night, while ʿAmr debated all
the time;91 this is denouncing Muʿtazilite intellectualism. A similar instance
tells us that people visited ʿAmr expecting to hear profound thoughts (shayʾ
ghāmiḍ), while Ayyūb had no interest in profoundness.92 In other cases the
issue is hadith: “How can one trust traditions transmitted by someone whose
worship practice (dīn) does not inspire confidence?”93 While this sounds as
though Ayyūb was not criticising the hadith material itself, soon the positions
had become polarised so far that he was claimed to have accused ʿAmr of hav-
ing spread false traditions from Ḥasan.94 The opposite side also distanced
itself, ʿAbd al-Wārith b. Saʿīd stating clearly that he thought more highly of
ʿAmr than of Ayyūb and his fellow-believers.95 It was emphasised explicitly
that Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba did not consider it beneath him to transmit hadith to
Ayyūb’s pupils,96 but that he was not quite so meticulous about the isnād in
their presence.97
Interestingly, Ayyūb’s view on Yazīd III was transmitted as well: he got on
so well with him that Yazīd was believed to have heard hadith from him in
Mecca in the very year in which he assumed office.98 But then Ayyūb ended
their connection,99 disapproving of Walīd II’s murder as he feared civil war.100
He was a law-abiding man and disliked that the zakāt should be kept from
the rightful government.101 Salm b. Qutayba b. Muslim, who became gover-
nor in Basra shortly before the Abbasids came to power and who had known
Ibn Sīrīn, also heard hadith from him.102 At some point during the troubles
Ayyūb got into difficulty with the authorities after all and like ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn
91 TB XII 174, 19ff.

92 Ibid. 175, 2ff.; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 287, 9ff. A related story has gharāʾib (ʿUqaylī 287, 13ff. >
Mīzān III 276, 9ff.; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, Muqaddima I 23, 1ff. > Mīzān III 276, 11).
93 Muslim, Muqaddima I 23, 9ff.; TB 174, 14f.
94 TB 180, 9ff. (regarding the issue of qunūt); 180, ult. ff. = Muslim I 23, 6ff. = Fasawī II 260, 4ff.
(flogging for being drunk with nabīdh); also 181, 4ff. and 16ff. Regarding ʿAmr’s respective
juristic opinions see p. 342f. above.
97 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 373, 8ff. Regarding Sufyān al-Thawrī’s position see p. 340 above.
98 Al-ʿuyūn wal-ḥadāʾiq III 149, 7f. de Jong.
99 Ḥilya III 6, 5ff.; TH 131, 13f. (after Ḥammād b. Zayd).
100 Agh. VII 82, 10f.; also Al-ʿuyūn wal-ḥadāʾiq III 144, ult. ff.
101 Fasawī III 21, pu. f.
102 Balādhurī, Ansāb III 172, 7f. Dūrī.
iraq 401
was seen bound in the streets of Basra.103 For the rest, he followed the Basran
“line”: he had no high opinion of ʿAlī,104 but transmitted a hadith in favour of
Abū Bakr. 105
2.2.7.1.2 Yūnus b. ʿUbayd

Abū ʿAbdallāh Yūnus b. ʿUbayd b. Dīnār al-ʿAbdī al-Qaʿnabī, mawlā of the ʿAbd
al-Qays,1 was born in Kufa in 64/684,2 but lived most of his life in Basra3 to his
death, probably in 139/756.4 He was a silk merchant: he bought silk (ibrīsam)
mixed silk–cotton fabrics in Basra and had them sold through an agent (wakīl)
in Susa, a centre of Iranian silk manufacture, who sent him mixed silk–wool
fabrics (khazz) in return.5 He had a partner in this wholesale business, a cer-
tain Abū Khalaf ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĪsā al-Khazzāz, who also transmitted hadith
from him.6 There was much praise of the honesty of his business methods;
he did not allow himself to cheat anyone.7 He was no ascetic, not believing
himself to be very pious;8 he dyed his hair and beard with henna like Ayyūb
al-Sakhtiyānī9 and was not remarkable for excessive praying or fasting, but he
took great care of “what is due to God”, i.e. he obeyed every commandment
103 See p. 415 below regarding Ibn ʿAwn. By referring to him it is possible to delimit the date
of the tradition more precisely.
104 AZ 658 no. 1971.
105 Ḥilya III 13, 14ff., but cf. the tradition in Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir 2VII 102 no. 368, according to
which he esteemed all of the first four caliphs.
1 IS VII2 23, 17.

2 Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 90, 2.
3 He was said to be glad not to have grown up in Kufa (Fasawī II 32, 13f.).
4 This date in IS VII2 23, 20; Ibn al-Madīnī, ʿIlal 79, 3; Fasawī I 122, 3f.; Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭabaqāt
al-qurrāʾ II 407 no. 3951. Abū Zurʿa says “139 or 138” (475, –6f.), Shīrāzī “139 or 140” (Ṭab. 90,
2), Hārūn b. Ḥātim al-Tamīmī’s (d. 249/863) Taʾrīkh, isolated, says “134” (RAAD 53/1978/131,
–4f.), Ibn al-Jawzī, presumably referring to this, “139 or 140” (Ṣifat al-ṣafwa III 228, 8f.). He
lived longer than Ayyūb, but not as long as Ibn ʿAwn (Bukhārī IV2 402 no. 3488), he was
probably around 70 when he died.
5 Ḥilya III 15, –5ff. Regarding the different kinds of silk cf. EI2 s. v. Ḥarīr, and A. Miquel,
Géographie humaine III 334, n. 3; also Haussig, Geschichte Zentralasiens und der
Seidenstraße II 13f. Regarding Yūnus as a well-off merchant see also Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 131, 16.
6 Ṭabarī I 2856, 13f.; also ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 286f. no. 856, and Mīzān no. 4496.
7 Cf. the stories in Abū Nuʿaym III 15, 5ff., and 17, 8ff.; idealising ibid. 16, 10f., and 18, 9f.
(= Fasawī II 251, 7f.).
8 Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifat al-ṣafwa III 228, 2f.
402 chapter 2
meticulously.10 He was on good terms with the Abbasid authorities the first
years of which he lived to see; he supported the Kufan al-Ḥajjāj b. Arṭāt who
had been appointed the first qāḍī after the revolution,11 and people recalled
how at his funeral Sulaymān b. ʿAlī, the first Abbasid governor of the city, his
brother ʿAbdallāh and his sons Jaʿfar and Muḥammad had walked beneath his
bier.12 Yūnus had no qualms accepting a gift of 2000 dirhams from the gover-
nor, which may have been in recognition of political support.13 He did, how-
ever, expect the authorities to abide by the Sunna, otherwise their legitimation
might be in doubt with mutual attacks being the result.14 This was probably an
allusion to events during the last decade of Umayyad rule.
Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī held him in great esteem.15 Yūnus, too, was most re-
luctant to write hadith down,16 but a collection of around 200 traditions does
survive,17 going back to Abū Nuʿaym, who also preserved some examples in his
Ḥilya.18 Ibn ʿUlayya was thought to have had as many as 900 in his possession;19
other notes have been transmitted as well.20 Ibn ʿUlayya would later be criti-
cised for relying so much on him21 – and on Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī;22 the rea-
son was probably once again the transmission practice. Yūnus had closer
ties to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī than Ayyūb,23 and preferred him to Ibn Sīrīn whom he
also knew.24 The material extant in the sources confirms this.25 What had im-
pressed him about Ḥasan was his gravity26 and the fact that he was never
10 Ṣifat al-ṣafwa III 224, 3f.; also 224, 10ff.

11 Fasawī III 368, 10ff. > Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 51, –6ff.; regarding him see p. 177f. above.
12 IS VII2 23, 31ff.; Balādhurī, Ansāb III 111, 4f.
13 TD (Leningrad) 355, apu. ff.; see also p. 415 below.
14 Ibn Baṭṭa, Ibāna 34, 11ff.
15 Baḥshal, Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 240, 12f.; Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 63 no. 369 = 172 no. 1063 indicates that
Yūnus respected Ayyūb, too.
16 IS 23, 17f. = Fasawī II 237, 7f.
17 Cf. GAS 1/88.
18 III 24, –8ff. Yūnus also transmitted from his mother (Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 265 no. 1711).
20 Azmi, Studies 179.
21 Fasawī II 132, 1.
23 Ibn al-Madīnī, ʿIlal 69, 3.
24 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 322 no. 2097; Fasawī II 54, 7ff.; in greater detail AZ 684, 1ff.
25 Cf. Ibn al-Madīnī 56 no. 54; 61, 1; 64, 9; 93 no. 138; Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 331, no. 2163; Muḥāsibī,
Riʿāya 8, 2f., and 89, 7f.; Ṭabarī I 364, 11ff., and 398, 12ff.; Ḥilya III 24, –8ff.; more general
Fasawī II 165, 9f., and 50, 9ff.
26 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 171m 5ff.
iraq 403
discomfited, not even by Qadarite doctrine.27 It seems that Yūnus himself

was not easily disturbed by Qadarites, either; Mubārak b. Faḍāla attended
his lectures, as did Mahdī b. Hilāl, both of whom were suspected of Qadarite
leanings.28 Another Qadarite, however, enticed his listeners away from him:
Ismāʿīl b. Muslim al-Makkī, with whom he shared a majlis, i.e. they probably
lectured in the same mosque, and who was very popular due to his fatwās.29
People found it impossible to believe, on the other hand, that he could
have met Muʿtazilites with equanimity, alleging that he even disapproved of
neighbourly interaction with them,30 and transmitting a dictum listing their
“innovations”: “The Muʿtazilites are a worse visitation (fitna) on this commu-
nity than the Azraqites. They claim that the companions of the prophet went
astray, and that their testimony is not acceptable because of the innovations
they introduced. They deny (Muḥammad’s) intercession and the cistern (near
which Muḥammad will meet his community on the Day of Judgment), and
they reject the punishment of the grave. They are the ones whom God has
cursed; he made (their ears) deaf and their eyes blind. The leader (al-imām)
must call them to repent; if they agree, so be it, but otherwise he must chase
them from Muslim territory!”31 We must, however, consider the possibility of
projection – maybe this was how the expulsion of certain Muʿtazilites after AH
145 was justified.
The situation is similar in the case of the reports which quote Yūnus’ ver-
dicts on ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd. Like Ayyūb he was said to have accused ʿAmr of cir-
culating falsified hadiths,32 but it also happened that traditions which ʿAmr
was alleged to trace back to Ḥasan falsely were then found to go back to Ḥasan
via Yūnus as well.33 He seems to have been most displeased when his son con-
tacted ʿAmr;34 this may have been the very son on whose death ʿAmr expressed
his condolences to him (later).35 The two of them once debated publicly in
27 Wakīʿ, Akhbār II 13, pu. f.

29 IS VII2 34, 5ff.; also p. 76 above.
30 Ḥilya III 21, 10f.
31 Ibid. 21, 16ff.; regarding the doctrines mentioned see p. 310f. above and 405 below.
32 Muslim, Muqaddima I 22, 7ff. = Dāraquṭnī 26 § 10 = TB XII 182, 7ff.: after Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj.
33 Cf. Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 132 no. 818, with 410 no. 2758.
34 Dāraquṭnī 25 § 9; TB XII 172, 13ff.; Ḥilya III 20, –5ff.; TT XI 444, 13ff.; after Khuwayl b. Wāqid
al-Ṣaffār, Shuʿba’s son-in-law. Divergent TB XII 173, 6ff.
35 Murtaḍā, Amālī I 171, 3f.; Mīzān III 275, 1ff. With different reference in Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 82,
ult., and III 172, 3f. (where instead of Yūnus the person is described as a “brother” or a
“man”).
404 chapter 2
the Masjid al-ḥarām in Mecca.36 Yūnus may have been one of those who tried
to tie the Qadarite “heresy” to Maʿbad al-Juhanī, bypassing Ḥasan al-Baṣrī;37 in
this way the link between ʿAmr and Ḥasan would have been dissolved as well.
2.2.7.1.3 ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn

The last-named tendency was even more pronounced in the case of the third
man of the trio, Abū ʿAwn ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn b. Arṭabān al-Muzanī,1 d. Rajab
151/July–Aug. 7682 at the age of 85 or 86 years.3 Information on the date of
his birth is inconsistent and reconstructed in any case, but the year 66/686
seems acceptable.4 He recalled that his father received the news of his moth-
er’s confinement when he was in Hatra in Mesene5 while Muṣʿab b. al-Zubayr
was preparing his campaign against Mukhtār; Ibn Qutayba, who preserved this
information, added that this was during the year 66.6 His father was probably
a member of the forces gathered by Muṣʿab, as Basra had already sworn alle-
giance to Mukhtār.7 Ibn ʿUlayya’s – who had attended Ibn ʿAwn’s lectures – sug-
gesting the year 64/684 instead8 was probably because he knew the report by
Ḥammād b. Zayd (d. Ramadan 179/Nov.–Dec. 795), a pupil of Ibn ʿAwn’s, that he
was born three years before the “torrent pestilence”.9 This pestilence is, as we
saw in the context of Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, sometimes dated to 69, sometimes
36 Ibn Manẓūr, Mukhtaṣar TD XXIX 17, ult. ff.

37 Cf. Festschrift Meier 62, after Ibn ʿAsākir; cf. vol. I 83 above.
1 Not to be confused with the traditionist ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn al-Kharrāz al-Hilālī, d. 231/845
or 232/846 (GAS 1/106).
2 Thus according to the most reliable and precise report in IS VII2 30, 6; without the
month also in Khalīfa, Ṭab. 528, 2f. and Taʾrīkh 659, 5; Fasawī I 137, 1f.; summarised in TD
(Leningrad) 318, 8ff. AH 150 is also mentioned frequently (AZ 297 no. 521; Fasawī I 136, 1; TD
369, 5ff.). Wāqidī has both 151 and 152 (TD 324, 5ff.).
3 85 years: cf. TD 373, 7f., calculated using the difference between AH 66 and 151; 86 years:
ibid. 374, 10f. When ibid. 371, 7 (maybe after Bukhārī III1 163 no. 512) it is said that he was
87 years old, the earlier date of AH 64 must have been used for the calculation (see below).
4 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 333, 5; TD 317, 10 after Aṣmaʿī.
5 This is clearly not the well-known Hatra situated further north between Samarra and
Mosul. Yāqūt distinguished between the two places (Muʿjam al-buldān s. v.), and the
source adds clearly fī l-Madhār, i.e. in Mesene, four days’ journey from Basra (Yāqūt s. v.
al-Madhār and p. 3, n. 31 above).
6 Maʿārif 487, 13ff. after Aṣmaʿī.
8 TB 317, –4f.
9 IS 25, 3f. = TD 317, 5 (with copyist’s error).
iraq 405
to 67, due to a frequently occurring textual variant.10 This is probably also the
explanation of the claim that Ibn ʿAwn was two years older than Ayyūb;11 the
latter was said to have been born one year before the “torrent pestilence”.12
It is certainly a mistake when Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ says that Ibn ʿAwn

was ten years older than Ayyūb, and also died ten years later (Ṭab. 528,
3f.); comparing the – fairly well-documented – dates of their respec-
tive deaths furnishes corroboration. Ibn Ḥanbal mentions, quite cor-
rectly, that Ibn ʿAwn lived to be around twenty years older than Ayyūb
(ʿIlal 169, ult.).
He came from an old-established Iraqi family. His grandfather Arṭabān, judg-

ing by his name presumably of Persian origin,13 was a deacon (shammās) in the
parish of Mesene and captured there by Muslims. He had been part of ʿAbdallāh
b. Durra al-Muzanī’s spoils of war, becoming his client once he had been freed.14
Later, nothing precise would be known15 about his master who, although
a companion of the prophet, had not become important in hadith science,16
which is probably why Arṭabān was then linked to another Muzanite named
ʿAbdallāh: ʿAbdallāh b. Mughaffal b. ʿAbdniʿm (d. 59/679 or 60/680), the son of
a tribal leader (sayyid) and a companion of the prophet in his own right, who
settled near the chief mosque in Basra after ʿUmar sent him there in order to
take charge of the religious education of the population.17 Arṭabān succeeded

11 TD 318, 1f. after Ibn Maʿīn; also Bukhārī IV2 402 no. 3488.
13 Regarding the etymology and the most important bearers of this name in the Achaemenid
and Parthian eras cf. EIran II 646ff.; also Morony, Iraq 110 and 196. – Ibn ʿAwn spoke
Persian himself (TD 359, 8), but at the time this was not unusual in Basra especially if, as
in the passage quoted, it was in conversation with a female slave.
14 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 114, 13ff.; also Ṭabarī I 2387, 7ff. and 14. Cf. also Morony, Iraq 196.
15 The name itself is difficult to establish. Ibn Saʿd has Durra (VII1 88, 15, and VII2 24, pu.),
while Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ has Dharra every time (Taʾrīkh, loc. cit.; Ṭab. 89, 8 and 10; 416, ult.;
454, 9); Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 487, 6, names him as Ibn Barza. Dharr (Donner, Conquests
416 no. 14), based on Khalīfa, is probably an oversight. According to Ibn Saʿd (both passag-
es) the grandfather’s name was Surrāq, but according to Khalīfa 86, 10ff. (who furnishes
the entire genealogy), ʿĀʾid b. Ṭābikha; Ibn Ḥajar, Iṣāba II 303 no. 4660 confirms this.
16 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 86, 9f., and 417, 2.
17 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 487, 7; TD 323, 2, and 319, 4f. Regarding him cf. IS VII1 7, 14ff.; Khalīfa,
Ṭab. 85 no. 241, and 415 no. 1367; Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 202, 15ff.; Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Istīʿāb 996f.
no. 1667; Pellat, Milieu 72 and 86. ʿAbdallāh b. Durra/Dharra, too, owned a house in Basra
(Khalīfa, Ṭab. 86, 10, and 417, 1f.).
406 chapter 2
in acquiring some property so soon that when he went to pay ʿUmar his first
zakāt, the caliph was surprised by his zeal and blessed his possessions and his
descendants.18 This was interpreted with regard to the pious grandson, and
it was also reported of him; furthermore, this was probably the reason why
there was an interest in the woman whom Arṭabān married after this “near-
prophecy”. This grandmother of Ibn ʿAwn’s had been a prisoner of war, too,
among those who fell into the hands of the Muslims in Khorasan in 32/653
or 33/654 and were presumably sold on the slave market in Basra afterwards.19
Arṭabān had been captured around twenty years earlier and would have been
in his prime. He grew to feel so at home with his new faith that he transmitted
hadith from ʿUmar (d. 23/643).20
It is interesting that Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s father, too, had been captured in
Mesene,21 possibly providing a starting point for the later connection. Another
instance of interconnections within the aspiring religious elite is that ʿAṭāʾ b.
Farrūkh, a mawlā of the Quraysh who moved from Medina to Basra where he
became the teacher of, among others, Yūnus b. ʿUbayd, was the grandson of
one of Arṭabān’s sisters.22 Most noticeable are once again the ties to Ibn Sīrīn.
His father, too, had been captured at ʿAyn al-Tamr or in Mesene,23 Ibn ʿAwn
married a granddaughter of Ibn Sīrīn’s24 and his son, curiously enough, her
mother;25 furthermore one of his female servants had, when a slave, belonged
to his father-in-law.26 He left a part of his possessions to his wife’s relatives,
among them his brother-in-law Muḥammad, a son of ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad
b. Sīrīn.27 Most importantly, however, the latter’s son Bakkār b. Muḥammad
knew him as a child28 and became, presumably also because of the stories told
him by his aunt, Ibn Saʿd’s main source of information. By that time Ibn ʿAwn
18 IS VII1 88, 16ff.; a more in-depth interpretation in Morony, Iraq 110.
19 Ṭabarī I 2906, 3ff. s. a. 32, after a shaykh of the Tamīm; Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 178, 6ff. s. a. 33; also
Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 487, 11.
20 IS VII1 88, 16; Khalīfa, Ṭab. 454, 10.
21 See p. 47 above.
22 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 487, 10. Regarding him cf. TT VII 210 no. 389.
23 EI2 947b, and Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 88, 6f.; regarding the conquest of ʿAyn al-Tamr cf. Donner,
Conquests 184f.
24 IS VII2 36, 25f.; her name was Umm Muḥammad and she was the daughter of ʿAbdallāh b.
Muḥammad b. Sīrīn (ibid. 29, 25).
25 Ibid. 26, 26. She had probably been ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad b. Sīrīn’s concubine.
26 Ibid. 26, 24f.
27 Ibid. 26, 3, and 30, 2. Cf. also p. 413 below.
28 Ibid. 26, 2f.; he saw for instance how Ibn ʿAwn behaved during the uprising of 145 (ibid. 27,
8f.). As he lived until 224/839 (Mīzān no. 1263) he must have been very young at the time.
iraq 407
was already surrounded by the halo of fame, and Ibn Saʿd’s biography of him
is one of the most colourful and extensive from the Basran community.29 It is
worthwhile repeating Bakkār’s portrait of his uncle verbatim:30
I lived for a long time (dahran min al-dahr) with Ibn ʿAwn until his death;
he left his fortune to my father. I never heard him utter a pious or impi-
ous oath until death parted us. – Ibn ʿAwn fasted on alternate days until
his death.31 – Never did I see money in Ibn ʿAwn’s hands or see him weigh
something (a coin?).32 When he performed his ablution before praying,
nobody assisted him,33 and he dried his face on a napkin (mandīl) or a
piece of cloth. – He did not arrive ostentatiously early for Friday prayers,
but neither did he come too late; he favoured the middle course and dis-
appearing in the crowd (al-ikhtilāṭ bil-jamāʿa). On the occasion of Friday
(prayers) and the two feasts he performed the general ablution34 and put
on perfume for both: this he considered sunna. He also smelled good on
other days and wore soft clothing. On Fridays and for the two feasts he
donned his cleanest garment. He either walked or rode to Friday prayers
and did not linger after the end of the prayer. During Ramadan, too, he
did not perform more than the prescribed prayers in public but retired to
his house; when he was by himself he was silent, saying only “praise be
to our lord God”. I never saw him enter a public bath. He had a Christian
steward (wakīl) who collected the rent for the houses he owned.35 The
house in which he lived was home to both Christians and Muslims, it
29 The biography in Taʾrīkh Dimashq is also unusually long (pp. 315–76), but it was com-
piled from older sources and above all does not contain any genuinely Syrian material. –
Bakkār is frequently cited as an authority in Ibn Sīrīn’s biography as well (IS VII1 140ff.).
30 Ibid. 26, 2ff. Earlier and later news mainly go back to him as well. Regarding the transla-
tion cf. Pellat, Milieu 240.
31 From a hadith transmitted by Ibn ʿAwn himself this was known as “David’s fasting”
(ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 151, 2ff.; Ḥilya III 42, 13ff.: once again after Bakkār b. Muḥammad). Cf.
Lech, Ramaḍān-Fasten 14.
32 This probably means that while he did have money, he would always give it away (as alms)
without verifying the amount when it was given to him. Cf. p. 413 below.
33 The master of the house may expect that someone assists him by handing him the water
jug etc.; Bakkār may also be recalling that his uncle was advanced in years. The objective
of this remark is to draw attention to Ibn ʿAwn’s modest nature.
34 It is obligatory only after sexual intercourse, but in the manner described it is recom-
mended as a sunna (EI2 II 1104 s. v. G̲ h̲usl).
35 Read: yajbī instead of yuḥyī.
408 chapter 2
was situated in the market district (sūq). He was wont to say “Christians
should live beneath me, not Muslims,” as he lived on the top floor.36
Ibn ʿAwn performed the prayer at sunset and the evening prayer with
us; he had a prayer room (masjid) in his home (dār) for this purpose,
where he performed all prayers with everyone who happened to be
present: friends (ikhwān), inhabitants and children.37 One of his clients
named Zayd38 occupied the position of muʾadhdhin; during the adhān
he spoke the prayer formula twice, for the iqāma, however, only once.39
Sometimes Ibn ʿAwn was our prayer leader; sometimes he had one of his
sons step forward. There was nothing he sought (from God) that was not
granted him.40 If he knew that there was garlic anywhere in his food, he
did not try it.41 Before meals the servant would come to him (with water),
36 The grammatical structure of the text is unusual, and the contents seem to be incorrect,
for if Ibn ʿAwn lived on the top floor and some of his tenants were Muslim, they had to
be living beneath him. He did have two houses, one in the sūq of the druggists and one
on Mirbad Street. He himself lived in the last-named, which was surely the more distin-
guished one (ibid. 30, 5f., and 27, 9; cf. Massignon, Opera minora III 66, and Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī,
Khiṭaṭ al-Baṣra 116), which leads us to assume that his Muslim tenants lived in the house
in the sūq. It might also be possible that there is a negation missing before “Muslims”,
with the result which some later sources claim about him: that he did not let property to
Muslims at all as he did not wish to “spread fear among them” by asking for rent (Ibn al-
Jawzī, Ṣifa III 230, pu. ff.; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma 284, ult. ff., after
Ibn Ḥanbal).
37 The room did not have a miḥrāb, as Bakkār noted (ibid. 28, 7f.). In Sāmarrā many private
houses would have a mosque later (T. al-Janabi in: World Archeology 14/1983/312f.). Yazīd
b. Hārūn disapproved of the miḥrāb even here (see p. 488 below), and in Medina Mālik b.
Anas spoke against this kind of luxury in general (Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī, Jāmiʿ 165,
3f.). Maybe this kind of appointment was considered too showy; after all, private chapels
were known only in palaces such as Khirbat al-Mafjar. There may also have been a move-
ment to ensure that prayer should always be performed in public. Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī
characteristically had a separate mosque built at his expense, as wealthy merchants
sometimes do to this day (see p. 393 above).
38 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 211, 8, mentions another mawlā named Yazīd (or maybe it is the same
man?). It did not matter that Ibn ʿAwn was a mawlā himself (see p. 392 above).
39 This was interesting form a legal point of view, and controversial among the different
schools of law (EI2 I 188a s. v. Ad̲ h̲ān, and III 1057a s. v. Iḳāma; cf. also Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat
al-mujtahid I 105, –7ff., and 110, 11ff., and Howard in: JSS 26/1981/219ff.).
40 Or, more prosaically: “There was nothing for which he called that was not then brought to
him”?
41 Maybe from politeness towards his guests, but more likely because one was not supposed
to enter a mosque while smelling of garlic (see p. 129f. above). Cf. also ibid. 26, 23ff.
iraq 409
and he washed his hands;42 then he brought a towel, and he dried his
hands on it.
This is the ideal image of a pious citizen, collected in sources since Ibn Saʿd’s
day under the heading of “conscientiousness” (waraʿ).43 There are more ac-
counts that fit into this image, most of them narrated with respect, but some
also with derision. He paid the zakāt twice a year, once in his own circle and
once to the authorities, presumably because he doubted the latter’s will to dis-
tribute it appropriately.44 He did not shake anyone’s hand, probably so as not
to compromise his ritual purity.45 He stepped into a puddle because in order to
step around it he would have had to walk on a tree trunk that did not belong to
him.46 His constant courteousness got on Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī’s (who was a gen-
eration older) nerves to the degree that he advised Ibn ʿAwn to stop apologising
all the time as it sounded dishonest.47 There are numerous stories about him
conquering his anger;48 Bakkār b. Muḥammad never heard him scold anyone,
not even a slave, a servant or an animal.49 He did not quarrel with anyone, but
did not make jokes or recite poetry, either; he concentrated on himself, i.e. his
own sinfulness.50 If he gave presents or performed other good deeds, he did so
in secret.51 He recited a seventh of the Quran every night; if he did not succeed,
he would catch up on it the next day.52 In his younger day he seems to have
spent some time among the volunteer force on the Byzantine border, even kill-
ing an enemy on one occasion.53
When transmitting hadiths he exercised caution and reticence as well. He
did not permit people to run after him because of hadith,54 and he disliked it
when someone spoke to him about it in the street.55 It is quite obvious why
42 Not, as was the general custom, afterwards only.

43 IS 24, ult.
44 TD 351, 4f.
45 IS 28, 5ff.; cf. p. 268 above.
46 Ibid. 28, 8ff.
47 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 91, 7f.; similar II 190, 6f. Regarding his politeness also ibid. II 318, 15.
48 IS 28, 13ff. = Ḥilya III 39, 9ff.; ibid. 26, 26ff.; 25, 26ff. etc.
49 IS 25, 24f.
50 Ibid. 25, 20f.
51 Ibid. 27, 10ff.
52 Ibid. 28, 20f.
53 Ibid. 28, 14 and 18ff.; also TD 353, 5ff., with an eye-witness account by Mufaḍḍal b. Lāḥiq, a
mawlā of the Raqāsh (regarding him Khalīfa, Ṭab. 533 no. 1861).
54 Ibid. 25, 18ff.
55 Ibid. 25, 12ff.
410 chapter 2
he was so sought after: he had heard hadith from Rajāʾ b. Ḥaywa (d. 112/730) in
Syria, from Qāsim b. Muḥammad (d. 107/725) in the Hijaz, apparently also from
ʿIkrima (d. 105/723) and Nāfiʿ, ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar’s mawlā (d. 117/735);56 he had
also spent some time in Kufa and met Shaʿbī there.57 The poet Muḥammad
b. Munādhir, himself a Muʿtazilite sympathiser, recommended that people
should hear hadith from Ibn ʿAwn and Mālik b. Anas.58 But Ibn ʿAwn only
transmitted in a small circle, at home early in the morning after “contemplat-
ing God” (dhikr) which he was wont to do after the early prayer; the masses
were not admitted.59 Of his pupils he asked inner focus instead of mere col-
lectors’ zeal.60 He quoted his teachers ʿIkrima and Nāfiʿ to the effect that one
must not request hadith but wait until the teacher wished to pass it on.61 The
responsibility linked to this craft weighed heavily on him;62 he recalled that
certain traditions had only emerged during his lifetime63 and worried that
he might unwittingly add or omit something.64 Shuʿba praised him as one of
the few who felt qualms about emending an isnād (tadlīs).65 He showed Ibn
Sīrīn the material he had collected in his younger days in Kufa before passing
it on.66 There were many tābiʿūn from whom he did not transmit at all because
they indulged in their own private views (raʾy) too much.67 Even among his
teachers he distinguished between those who transmitted by meaning only
(Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, Shaʿbī and Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī in Kufa), and others who pre-
served the precise wording (Ibn Sīrīn in Basra, Rajāʾ b. Ḥaywa in Syria, Qāsim b.
Muḥammad in Medina).68 He himself came to the fore more noticeably only
56 Fasawī I 548, 2ff. = 368, 6ff; regarding Qāsim cf. also ibid. I 671, apu. ff., and GAS 1/279; also
EI2 Suppl. 311f., VII.
58 Agh. XVIII 198, 7. Further detail p. 445f. below.
59 IS 25, 14f. and 22ff. The philologists Naḍr b. Shumayl (d. 204/819–20) and Aṣmaʿī (d. 213/
828) heard hadith from him in their youth (Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 99, 19; Anbārī, Nuzha
48, 5f., and 115, 1).
60 IS 25, 15ff.
61 Fasawī II 249, 1ff. and 8ff.
62 IS> 25, 11f. > Fasawī II 238, 6f.; also al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Sharaf aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth 118, 11f.
Regarding the translation cf. IS lvi, editor’s note on the passage.
64 IS 25, 8f.; also Fasawī II 249, pu. ff.
65 TD 340, –5f.
66 IS 25, 6ff.
67 Fasawī II 250, 7ff. We should like to know more detail, but he distanced himself explicitly
only from Shahr b. Ḥawshab (d. 111/730 or 112/731), and we do not know the reason why in
this case, either (AZ 681 no. 2078 = Fasawī II 97, pu. ff.; regarding him Mīzān no. 3756).
68 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 322, 9f.; with addendum IV 394.
iraq 411
after Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī’s death; before that time there had been only around
half a dozen hadiths known through him.69
He was known to disapprove of written records: they lead humans astray.70
He pointed out that Abū Bakr and ʿUmar did not take notes,71 and Ibn Sīrīn
did not like writing things down either.72 His pupil Ḥammād b. Zayd ex-
plained this attitude as concern that these books might distract people from
reading the Quran,73 but this may be merely a retrospective interpretation,
as the early Ibn al-Madīnī insisted that Ibn ʿAwn read a hadith of Samura b.
Jundab (d. late 59 or early 60/Oct. 679) in his “book”.74 He was even said to
have asked Nāfiʿ for hadith in writing.75 We must bear in mind that the written
versions at the time were often in the form of aṭrāf, aides-memoire which
noted only fragments of the respective hadith “with beginning and end”.76
This was the form in which Ibn Sīrīn preserved his teacher ʿAbīda al-Salmānī’s
traditions77 to which Ibn ʿAwn had access as well, although he did not make
use of them, probably once again due to fear of inadvertent falsification.78
Bakkār b. Muḥammad believed that neither he nor Ibn Sīrīn owned a “book”
that contained even one complete hadith.79
Of course Ibn ʿAwn was not completely opposed to writing per se. Ibn ʿAsākir
preserved a paraenetic letter that was traced back to him;80 and a letter from
ʿUmar addressed to Christians who had apostatised after previously convert-
ing to Islam was transmitted via him as well.81 It is probable that the numer-
ous items regarding Iraqi legal practice he had learnt from Ibn Sīrīn and from
69 TD 327, 8f.; 328, 6ff.; 329, 1ff. Some of his hadiths, in particular those that remained iso-
lated, were preserved by Abū Nuʿaym (Ḥilya III 42, 2ff.).
70 al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Taqyīd al-ʿilm 21, 1 = 57, 6f.
71 Fasawī II 285, 10f. = Khaṭīb, Taqyīd 48, 15.
72 Taqyīd 48, 12.
73 Ibid. 57, 10ff.; cf. also Abbott, Arabic Literary Papyri II 7ff., and Cook in JSAI 8/1987/173.
74 ʿIlal 57, 6.
75 Azmi, Studies 75 and 97 with further information.
76 Azmi 185. The form was still cultivated later, with greater precision; cf. e.g. Mizzī’s Tuḥfat
al-ashrāf bi-maʿrifat al-aṭrāf (ed. ʿAbduṣ-Ṣamad Sharafuddīn, Bombay 1965ff.). Other titles
in Kattānī, Al-risāla al-mustaṭrafa 167ff.
78 IS 27, 17ff. (wrongly vocalised ʿUbayda). Regarding his attitude to aṭrāf cf. also AZ 675
no. 2041.
79 IS VII1 141, 22f.
80 TD 363, 1ff.: on the power of Satan.
81 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma 180, 1ff.
412 chapter 2
Shaʿbī also existed in written form.82 Historical information was transmitted

via him as well: on the murder of ʿUthmān,83 the battle of the camel,84 or pay-
ing homage to Yazīd I.85 Like Ibn Sīrīn he believed in dream visions; he had him
interpret his dreams and once saw him in a dream.86 Once he even saw the
prophet, but this was only a short time before his death.87
As in the case of Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī his conscientiousness was not ex-
pressed in his bearing, his dress or hairstyle; he was not one to despise worldly
pleasures (nāsik). He considered declining invitations to feasts, as was ʿAmr
b. ʿUbayd’s habit, to be wrong.88 We have seen how he got dressed up and put
on perfume for Friday prayers, and Ibn Saʿd described his demeanour in some
detail.89 Among other garments he owned a burnouse made from fine wool
that had belonged to ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar and that he had acquired90 from the
estate of Anas b. Sīrīn, a brother of Muḥammad b. Sīrīn.91 Anas b. Mālik, he
noted, had dressed in silk as well.92 He did not gather his garments, as they fell
to his feet at the back.93 His cap (qalansuwa) was exceedingly large,94 which
may have been the latest fashion at that time.95 His sandals had one strap only,
rather than two like the sandals worn by the ascetics, one being considered
the more elegant style.96 However, he took care, Bakkār hastened to add,
to avoid the very soft footwear made from specially tanned ox skin (niʿāl
82 On the first qāḍī in Basra under ʿUmar (Wakīʿ II 269, apu. ff.), on Iyās b. Muʿāwiya (ibid.
I 331, apu. f., and 342, ult. f.) and most importantly on the Qāḍī Shurayḥ (ibid. II 326–30
after Ibn Sīrīn; also earlier II 215, 220 etc., frequently after Shaʿbī). Despite his close ties to
Ibn Sīrīn’s family he was said not to have been quite as precise in his information as Ayyūb
al-Sakhtiyānī (Ibn al-Madīnī, ʿIlal 68, –4ff.).
84 Ṭabarī I 3213, 11ff., and 3216, 8ff.
85 Ibid. II 175, 17ff. – Cf. also Abū Yūsuf, Kharāj 134, ult. ff., where, however, Ibn ʿAwn’s identity
is not certain.
86 IS 28, 1ff., and 27, 12ff.
87 Ibid. 29, 18ff.
88 Jāḥiẓ, Bukhalāʾ 213, 10f.
89 IS 29, 5ff. The facts are not always entirely comprehensible.
90 IS VII2 29, 11ff.
91 Regarding him IS VII1 150, 11 and 22ff.; Khalīfa, Ṭab. 513 no. 1777.
92 TD 326, 2f.
93 IS 29, 16f.
94 Ibid. 29, 4f.; see p. 393 above regarding Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī.
95 EI2 V 737b s. v. Libās, and Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī in: MMʿIʿI 13/1966/425.
96 According to the ʿahd ʿUmar the ahl al-dhimma should also be wearing sandals with dou-
ble straps (cf. Noth in JSAI 9/1987/303); see also p. 438 below.
iraq 413
sibtiyya),97 presumably because the prophet had spoken against it.98 He

did not trim his moustache but kept it at medium length; his hair grew to the
middle of his ears. “When you saw him, you would have said: ‘He is not from
this class (ṭabaqa, i.e. the pious people?); he spends much time among people’.99
He wore a ring engraved with the seal of Solomon, i.e. what we call the star of
David,100 and had some of his teeth set in gold.101 When Sufyān b. ʿUyayna ad-
monished him for being overly fond of money he replied that he had found it
quite useful.102
All the same, he seems to have left more than 10,000 dinars of debt on his
death. No ready money was found at all, his two houses in Basra being his only
assets.103 Bakkār b. Muḥammad accused Ibn ʿAwn’s sons of haggling over his
shroud: his wife had to contribute a considerable amount of her own money.104
Here we seem to find some tensions: it was a most costly shroud, apparently
from the warehouses of the Ibn Sīrīn family who were, as we have seen, cloth
merchants,105 and enterprising ones at that. Furthermore they, and not the de-
scendants, were the heirs – within legal limits: after the debts had been paid
Ibn ʿAwn left a fifth of his property to Bakkār b. Muḥammad’s father to dis-
tribute among relatives rich and poor.106 His servant Azhar b. Saʿd al-Sammān
also received a legacy.107 It is possible that all this was reported to show how
closely he adhered to all the advice of the Quran; after all sura 2:180 states that
someone “who is visited by death” should “make testament in favour of his par-
ents and his kinsmen honourably” – besides the normal intestate succession,
as would be interpreted later; an agreement had also been reached that this ap-
plied only once all debts had been paid.108 This rule, however, does not appear
97 IS 29, 15f.; cf. p. 608 below.

98 Cf. Conc. II 390 s. v. sibtiyya; also Lane, Lexicon 1288.
99 IS 29, 7ff. Regarding the fashion in moustaches see p. 438 below.
100 Ibid. 29, 3f.
101 Ibid. 29, 17f.
102 Ibid. 29, 1f.
103 Ibid. 30, 1f. and 4ff.
104 Ibid. 29, 21ff.
105 Cf. EI2 III 947 b s. n. Ibn Sīrīn.
106 Ibid. 30, 2f.
107 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 513, 5f.; regarding him cf. Mīzān no. 696. I am assuming that he is
the same Azhar whom Ibn ʿAwn sent to do the shopping in his old age (IS 28, pu. f.); he is
cited as an authority e.g. ibid. VII1 146, 6f. It is possible that awṣā ilā means that Ibn ʿAwn
appointed him his executor, but after the preceding this is not very probable. Cf. Dozy,
Suppl. s. v. w-ṣ-y II.
108 Cf. HW 797 s. v. Waṣiyya.
414 chapter 2
to explain everything: in his old age Ibn ʿAwn complained that he was being
left alone and unable to leave his house; when Anas b. Mālik was this age, he
said, he had had people lead him around on a mount, even though Ibn ʿAwn
was more infirm.109 This is probably a reference to the fact that he had broken
his ankle on the stairs of his house, and it did not heal properly,110 making him
miss his sons’ help very much. One of them was mentioned in an unexpected
context by Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ,111 a second one in passing by Ibn Saʿd,112 but it
may be significant that Ibn Saʿd never cited either of them as authorities for
his biography.
We are never told what Ibn ʿAwn’s profession was. Letting his two houses
made him some money, but it is possible that he simply married into a wealthy
family. In his opinion only a few mawālī had been lucky (ḥaẓẓ) in Basra.113 It
is true that he had had more troubles than Ibn Sīrīn, who had been able to
marry a free Arab woman without repercussions. Ibn ʿAwn, on the other hand,
when he did the same thing only a generation later, met with opposition from
Qatāda and was flogged on the order of the qāḍī Bilāl b. Abī Burda.114 He had
been forced to give up his wife, who was of the same tribe as Qatāda, which
would have been unusually severe at that time.115 Bilāl considered himself to be
superior to him; when to make matters worse Ibn ʿAwn pointed out to him that
they disagreed on the weighting of the divorce formula, he made it clear that in
his view Ibn ʿAwn was no more than a slave who could not teach him anything
about the law.116 The event must have taken place some time between 110/729
when Ibn Abī Burda took office, and 117/735 when Qatāda died; Ibn ʿAwn would
already have been around 50 years old.
Still, he was no revolutionary, nor did he become one. His recollection of how
he saw Ibn al-Ashʿath in his youth illustrated this: the latter sat cross-legged on
109 IS 25, 1ff.

110 Ibid. 29, 19ff.
111 Taʾrīkh 187, 15.
114 Wakīʿ, Akhbār II 28, 6ff.; Fasawī II 63, 11ff.; Abū l-ʿArab, Miḥan 326, 3ff. Cf. p. 158 above.
115 The parallel cases known to us were all earlier (cf. Juda, Die sozialen und wirtschaftlichen
Aspekte der mawālī 180).
116 Wakīʿ, Akhbār II28, 11; Abū l-ʿArab 327, apu. This may of course be an attempt on the au-
thor’s part to present Ibn ʿAwn as the better lawyer, thus allowing him at least a small
triumph. Because of the question of whether the batta formula entailed a reversible or an
irreversible divorce there were riots in Mosul in 121 (Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 41, 1ff.); regard-
ing the issue see Schacht, Origins 195ff.
iraq 415
the pulpit, making grandiose promises.117 He never mentioned his humiliation

at the hands of Ibn Abī Burda later.118 Ghaylān al-Dimashqī’s critical view of the
authorities was anathema to him; he claimed to have seen Ghaylān crucified
outside the gate of Damascus.119 He also recalled that Shaʿbī warned him against
Bayān b. Samʿān and Mughīra b. Saʿīd, who were executed on Khālid al-Qasrī’s
orders in 119/737.120 He was an ʿUthmānite121 and consequently had to abhor
all seditious zeal, noting with satisfaction that his Medinan teacher Qāsim b.
Muḥammad (d. 107/725), a grandson of Abū Bakr’s, prayed for forgiveness for
what his father had done to ʿUthmān.122 Interestingly several of the reports of
the caliph’s murder in Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ’s Taʾrīkh go via him,123 even though
he also denounced Muḥammad’s b. Abū Bakr’s actions.124 At some point, cer-
tainly still during the Umayyad era, he did get into trouble with the authori-
ties: a mawlā of the Abbasid Sulaymān b. ʿAlī claimed to have seen him as well
as Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī (who died in 131/749) bound in the street.125 This may
have happened just before the revolution,126 as Sulaymān b. ʿAlī subsequently
intended to give him, as well as Yūnus b. ʿUbayd, 2000 dirhams, which Ibn ʿAwn
declined as he did not want to be beholden.127 Even so he was clearly on the
Abbasid side during Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh’s uprising. The “Muʿtazila” denounced
him to the ʿAlid, and he left the city until the riot broke out,128 at which point
he had the gates onto Mirbad Street, where he lived, locked, and let nobody
enter or leave.129 When Salm b. Qutayba, who had been governor briefly in 132,
just before the Abbasid coup, held the position once again for two months in

118 IS 25, 26ff.; also TD 357, 9ff.
119 TD 316, –6ff.; also Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad II 109, 14f.
120 Fasawī II 776, apu. ff. Shaʿbī died in 103/721, at a time when those two did probably not
play an important part.
121 IS 24, ult.
122 Balādhurī, Ansāb V 93, 5f. Goitein; TB IX 74, 14f.
123 182, 19ff. (adopted from Ibn ʿUlayya); 187, 13ff.; also Ṭabarī I 2989, 15ff.
124 Ibid. 189, 4ff. Considering this attitude it is not surprising that he did not think highly of
Kufa, either (AZ 505 no. 1325; Fasawī II 786, 4ff.).
125 TD 367, –5ff.
126 Regarding a possible cause see p. 1 above.
127 TD 355, apu. ff. The bearer of the money was called Ḥumayd, possibly the Abbasid dāʿī
Ḥumayd b. Qaḥṭaba (Akhbār al-ʿAbbās 219, pu., and 221, 2).
128 IS 27, 4ff. > Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 212, 7ff. Unfortunately I have not been able to identify the
town of al-Qurayẓiyya to which he fled. Might it be a Jewish settlement?
129 Ibid. 27, 8ff.; cf. also Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 189, 5f.
416 chapter 2
146/763,130 Ibn ʿAwn was able to speak quite freely before him.131 Salm’s son
Saʿīd heard hadith from him.132 After his death the current governor’s police
chief133 said the prayer over him.134
He was firmly opposed to Qadarite doctrine. As he lived to see the year 145
he was able to assess its consequences, and, as he grew to be older than his
two fellow-believers mentioned above, his ideas had more time to evolve and
to take root in Basran public opinion. He expanded the “myth” of Maʿbad al-
Juhanī, heard in an earlier version from Yūnus b. ʿUbayd: Maʿbad was seduced
by a newly converted Muslim, apparently a scion of the asāwira.135 Ibn ʿAwn
seems to have deliberately employed hadith against the Qadarites as well; we
find him in the isnād of a tradition according to which God created paradise
and hell in the very beginning, as well as the people who are destined for ei-
ther.136 He traced this back to Ibn Sīrīn, claiming he had also heard from him
that fornication was predestined – the exemplary sin that had been one of
the earliest starting points of the discussion around qadar.137 As for how one
should behave towards Qadarites, he recommended in accordance with sura
6:68: “If Satan should make you forget (to contemplate God?), (at least) do not
sit, after the reminding, with the people of the evildoers (any longer)”.138 He
abided by it, not greeting any Qadarite he passed.139 He may have been the first
one to – after 145? – carry this boycott through, as he is the only one of whom
it is reported so widely and without limiting it to ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, as in the case
130 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 652, 14, and 675, 2; regarding the first term in office ibid. 610, 11, and 615, 9f.;
also 621. 4.
131 IS 27, 23ff. I am reading ʿalā instead of ʿalayya, referring the pronoun in annahū to Ibn
ʿAwn; an interpretation that seems to me to be easier than the one suggested by Sachau, p.
lvi. It is hypothetical to date the anecdote to the second term in office, but it would make
it more comprehensible due to historical constellations in general as well as Ibn ʿAwn’s
more advanced age.
132 TB IX 74, no. 4658.
133 ʿUqba b. Salm b. Nāfiʿ; not a son of Salm b. Qutayba’s. Regarding him cf. Ṭabarī III 359, 9,
and 366, 19f.
134 IS 30, 7ff.
135 Ibid. 27, 1ff.; cf. also Festschrift Meier 62ff. and 76.
136 TD 315, apu. ff.; this is a variant of the hadith I discussed HT 39ff. On the wider issue see
p. 313 above, and Festschrift Abel 124ff.
137 Ājurrī, K. al-Sharīʿa 219, –7ff.; also HT 95, and vol. I 23 above. He transmitted Ibn Sīrīn’s
attitude to qadar elsewhere as well (cf. IS VII1 143, 24ff.).
138 Ḥilya III 41, 3ff.
139 IS 25, 3ff.
iraq 417
of the two previously named.140 We do not have much information regarding

his attitude towards ʿAmr. He was said to have been annoyed when ʿAmr was
mentioned,141 and accused him of falsifying hadith.142 He was in favour of peo-
ple discrediting ʿAmr by means of hadith.143
A number of these reports may be projections. After all, it seems that Ibn
ʿAwn transmitted from ʿAmr’s father ʿUbayd b. Bāb.144 But despite all the doubt
concerning the details we can be sure that the view later generations had of
him was correct as far as his fundamental attitude was concerned, at least that
of his later years. He, too, was described by the phrase that he “had hope for
all Muslims”,145 but on the other hand he stressed that people must not rely
on the number of his works as they could not know whether God accepted
them.146 Projection is to be suspected most in what he was claimed to have
said about Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. He was said to have come to Ḥasan’s defence against
Rajāʿ b. Ḥaywa’s accusation of Qadarite leanings,147 and in fact people claimed
to have heard him transmit a dictum of Ḥasan’s in which the latter refuted
the doctrine most harshly.148 At the same time, however, he transmitted Ibn
Sīrīn’s critical statement that the Qadarites seduced Ḥasan with beautiful
words.149 Ḥasan’s “knowledge”, he thought, was not unusual in any case; it was
his withdrawal from the world that was outstanding.150 He was also impressed
by Ḥasan’s command of language, comparing it to that of Ruʾba.151
140 IS 25, 5.
141 ʿAbdallāh b. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, K. al-sunna 131, 14ff.; TB XII 173, 17ff.; similar Ḥilya II 40,
–5ff.
142 TB XII 181, 20ff.
143 Fasawī II 261, 4ff. = TB XII 177, 18ff. = Dāraquṭnī 21f. no. 6 (with more detailed deliberations
on the legal issue under discussion). Cf. also Ibn Waḍḍāḥ, K. al-bidaʿ IX 16–17.
145 IS VII2 16, 3f.; Ḥilya III 41, 8f.; p. 396 above.
146 TD 364, 4ff.
147 AZ 683 no. 2085.
148 Fasawī II 44, –4f.
149 Ibid. II 47, 7ff.
150 Ibid. II 50, 6ff.; cf. also the remark on Ḥasan’s hadith methods. Traditions concerning
Ḥasan cf. e.g. ibid. II 43, 6ff. and 45, 6ff.
151 Ibid. II 51, 8ff.
418 chapter 2
2.2.7.1.4 Sulaymān al-Taymī

The youngest of the group, Abū l-Muʿtamir Sulaymān b. Ṭarkhān al-Taymī,
d. Dhū l-Qaʿda 143/Feb. 761,1 possibly aged 73,2 was a mawlā of the Murra b.
ʿUbād but later lived among the Taym in Basra to whom he was related on his
mother’s side, hence his nisba.3 His father appears to have been a high-rank-
ing Turk taken prisoner of war by the Muslims;4 the sequence of names is
never traced back beyond him. Sulaymān was married to a daughter of Faḍl
al-Raqāshī’s with whom he had a son Muʿtamir who was to play a significant
part in Basran hadith;5 a second wife is also mentioned.6 We do not know
what his profession was. One passage tells us that he was imam for 40 years,7
but it is doubtful that this would provide enough income to live on. He seems
to have owned a house, but when it collapsed he moved into a large felt tent
(fusṭāṭ, qubba), apparently for around 30 years.8 It was noticeable in Basra
that he supported ʿAlī,9 as we know because he transmitted from Salmān al-
Fārisī10 and circulated his biography.11 He was thought to have heard hadith
from ʿIkrima as well when the latter visited Basra, but when he interrupted his
1 This much detail only in TH 152, 6f., elsewhere only the year (IS VII2 18, 15; Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh
645, 4 etc.) Ṭab. 526, 7f. also has “144”.
2 Ibn Saʿd already said that he was younger than Ibn ʿAwn, who was probably born in 66
(VII2 24, pu. f.; cf. also AZ 298 no. 522); cf. also p. 404 above. Dhahabī’s claim (TH 151, 2)
that he lived to 93 can only be reconciled with the other information if we assume it to a
mistake for 73.
3 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 526 no. 1831; more briefly also IS VII2 18, 9f. > Fasawī II 130, 3; cf. also Samʿānī,
Ansāb III 124, 8ff. Should this read ʿUbayd instead of ʿUbād? (Regarding the Murra b.
ʿUbayd cf. e.g. Ibn Durayd, Ishtiqāq 24, 1f.). The additional nisba al-Qaysī is found only in
later sources (TH 150, –5; also Mīzān no. 3481, but only as an addendum; Samʿānī, Ansāb
III 124, 5 with reservations).
4 Ṭarkhān, from Turk. darqan, was a title among Transoxanian nobles (cf. Petech in:
Festschrift Gabrieli 626; also Juda, Mawālī 81); they were exempt from taxes and entitled
to stand to the left of the ruler’s throne (Doerfer, Türkische und mongolische Elemente im
Neupersischen II 460ff. no. 879). The ruler of the Hephthalites bore this title, too (Frye in:
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 14/1951/124f.; cf. Altheim, Geschichte der Hunnen III 10).
5 See p. 193 above. He was born in 106 (IS VII2 45, 18). This also suggests that the father’s date
of birth of 46/666 given in GAS 1/285 is too early.
6 Ḥilya III 29, ult.
7 Ibid. 29, 9.
8 Ibid. 30, –8ff.
9 IS 18, 13f.
10 Ṭabarī I 91, 3ff. (on the creation of Adam); I 411, 12ff.; also HT 36, n. 93.
11 Fasawī III 272, pu. ff.
iraq 419
lecture in order to listen to a song, Sulaymān did not attend any longer.12
Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī resented his cool attitude towards ʿUthmān,13 but the
accounts he transmitted of ʿUthmān’s murder show that his support of the
Shīʿites soon found its limits.14 He wrote a biography of the prophet the ijāza
of which was preserved by al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī.15 In Iraq it was superseded
over time by Ibn Isḥāq’s work, but at a comparatively late point, during the
second half of the fifth century, it made its way to Spain.
Ibn Khayr, Fahrasa 231, 3ff., with an east Iranian riwāya; the text clearly
survived there. MS Vienna 881, which von Kremer used for his edition
of Wāqidī’s K. al-maghāzī (Bibl. Indica, Calcutta 1855), from fol. 160 on-
wards (= von Kremer 360, –5ff.) contains an addendum in a different hand
which is a fragment of Sulaymān al-Taymī’s book, a gloss on the frontis-
piece tells us (Intro., 5f.; cf. M. Jones in the introduction of his edition
p. vii). Its authenticity is most doubtful (in more detail cf. M. Jarrar, Die
Prophetenbiographie im islamischen Spanien 78ff.). Sezgin tried to unearth
fragments in Ṭabarī’s history and in Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ. But at the very least
the accounts of the murder of ʿUthmān in Ṭabarī’s text (see n. 14 above) are
too recent for a K. al-maghāzī; the only quotes remaining are I 1278, 12ff.,
and possibly I 12, 1ff. In Bukhārī’s Maghāzī chapter, Sulaymān al-Taymī
does not appear more frequently than other transmitters (e.g. in Bāb 8 or
30), and it has so far been impossible to discover the origins of these pas-
sages. He also spoke of Muḥammad’s journey to heaven (Bayhaqī, Dalāʾil
al-nubuwwa II 113, 5ff.). All the material available to us goes via Sulaymān’s
son Muʿtamir, who is also the first transmitter of the riwāya in Ibn Khayr.
Later generations remembered him not so much as a historian as because of

his piousness. Like Ibn ʿAwn he practised “David’s fasting”, on alternate days.16
Together with his son Muʿtamir he walked from one mosque to the next at
night, praying sometimes here, sometimes there.17 Over forty years he spent
his nights without sleep and without sexual intercourse, being able to “per-
form the morning prayer with the ablution of the last evening prayer”; because
12 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 456, 5ff.; Yūnus b. ʿUbayd reacted like this, too.
13 Cf. the text in: ZDMG 136/1986/519.
14 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 181, 7ff.; Ṭabarī I 2963, 1ff., and 3006, 1ff., but cf. the report of ʿUmar’s
actions against Fāṭima in: Balādhurī, Ansāb I 586, 1ff. Ḥamīdullāh.
15 GAS 1/285.
16 Ḥilya 28, 16f.
17 IS VII2 18, 11ff.
420 chapter 2
of this the Kufan khaṭīb Raqaba al-Maṣqala (d. 129/747) saw God blessing
Sulaymān’s house in a dream.18 Abū Nuʿaym presented him as the ideal ʿabīd,19
and Ibn al-Nadīm counted him among the zuhhād.20 He never tired of giv-
ing alms,21 he visited the sick and walked along with funerals.22 He detested
nabīdh of any kind, even that which Bakr b. ukht ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd or
Sufyān al-Thawrī permitted until later.23 Women seemed to him to be a great
temptation.24 A well-known prophetic dictum that was a favourite of pietis-
tic circles was traced back through him, that “in my community polytheism
(shirk) is more securely hidden than the step of an ant on hard stone, and only
the omission of prayer stands between the servant and unbelief”.25
Overall there were around 200 hadiths from him.26 He was suspected of
emending the isnāds,27 but on the whole he was considered to be fairly thor-
ough. He did not allow his listeners to make notes during his lectures, but he
never transmitted more than five hadiths at any one time, presumably so as
not to exhaust his listeners’ memory.28 When he was offered Jābir b. ʿAbdallāh’s
ṣaḥīfa, he refused to accept it29 as nobody had the right to transmit it.30 On
the other hand we are told that he, too, did not work entirely without written
notes.31 He appears again and again in the isnāds of hadiths that could be used
against the Qadarites,32 and it was rumoured that he only agreed to transmit
to his pupils if they professed the doctrine according to which fornication,
18 Ashʿarī, Maq. 214, 10ff.; the story is quoted there as it allowed the conclusion that Raqaba
was an anthropomorphist. Regarding him cf. Jāḥiẓ, Bayān, Index s. n.; TT III 286f. no. 541;
Massignon, Essai2 170; also p. 115f. above.
19 Ḥilya III 28, 1ff. and pu. ff.; cf. Fasawī II, 1f., as well as the poem in al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī,
Sharaf aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth 72, 14. Ibn al-Jawzī adopted the image (Ṣifat al-ṣafwa III 218ff.).
20 Fihrist 235, 15.
21 Ḥilya III 28, –6f.
22 Ibid. 28, 5.
23 Cf. the hadith transmitted by him in Ḥilya III 36, 9ff., also 32, 1ff. and 33, 10f.; cf. p. 135 and
vol. I 257 above.
24 Cf. the hadith ibid. 35, –7; also Suhrawardī, ʿAwārif al-maʿārif, transl. Gramlich § 21, 6.
25 Ibid. III 36, –4ff.; cf. Gedankenwelt des Muḥāsibī 46.
26 TH 151, 3. Some examples Ḥilya III 33, –5ff.
27 So-called tadlīs; cf. Mīzān no. 3481.
28 Bukhārī II2 20f. no. 1828.
29 IS VII2 18, 14ff. = Fasawī III 11, 9f.
30 Cf. GAS 1/85.
31 Azmi, Studies 102. Cf. Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 218 no. 1362 (?).
32 Cf. the examples HT 43, 78, 167, maybe also 144f. Also Festschrift Meier 71.
iraq 421
too, was predestined.33 Even so, he was convinced that God did not – as the
Qadarites might infer from this – wrong humans.34 He transmitted a prophetic
dictum according which everyone who does not assign God associates will
enter into paradise, but this must not be said out loud in order for people to
continue to compete in their actions.35
He was reported to have refused to pray behind a Qadarite.36 His biography
confirms that he was serious: he had moved from the Banū Murra to the Taym
because the Murra chased him from their city quarter when he turned against
Qadarite doctrine, while the Taym appointed him their imam.37 If it is true
that he was imam for around thirty years this would have been after Ḥasan al-
Baṣrī’s death, and possibly considerably later than that. When he married Faḍl
al-Raqāshī’s daughter he was by no means quite so strict; in fact, if we are to
believe Ibn Ḥazm, the two were, in fact, friends.38 The Muʿtazila claimed he
had admitted that the name Qadariyya was not invented by his people but had
instead originally been directed at them. Only with the support of the authori-
ties had it been possible to turn it back on the defenders of free will; now his
people were called mujbira, thus going from bad to worse.39
2.2.7.1.5 Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ

ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s opponents whom we have portrayed so far came from the
well-to-do bourgeoisie. While they were probably wealthier than he, they were
basically of the same rank: they were all clients, but their families had had the
better starting conditions. Furthermore in Ibn Sīrīn they had found a teacher
who had made bourgeois decorum a matter of principle. It is true that they had
attended Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s lectures, but his asceticism incorporating Qadarite
features did not appeal to them. Their opposition to ʿAmr can consequently
not be explained merely as difference of temperaments and differing religious
ideas found among Ḥasan’s pupils; this is how it is presented by those sources
33 Ḥilya III 33, 1ff.; cf. HT 93. An anachronistic, anti-Jahmite variant ibid. 33, 8.
34 Ibid. 33, 16f.
35 Ibid. 34, 4ff.; also Khaṭīb, Sharaf 90 no. 195. This is probably why the ascetic Ghulām Khalīl
counted him among the Murjiʾites (Massignon, Essai2 168; cf. also p. 396 above).
36 Ibid. 33, 13f.
37 Ibn Khayr, Fahrasa 231, 4f.
38 Naqt al-ʿarūs 246, 21ff.
39 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 345, 2ff., and Mughnī VIII 332, 8ff.; both passages are corrupt and
must be emended against one another. Anonymous Mānkdīm, ShUKh 772, pu. f. Cf. HT
125, with an uncertain conclusion. The story is traced back to ʿUthmān al-Ṭawīl.
422 chapter 2
that attempt to retain Ḥasan for the “orthodox cause”. We will have to go back
to Ḥasan’s own time; only ʿAmr was his pupil in the true sense of the word.1
The picture changes when we turn to the philologist and Quran reciter Abū
ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ (d. ca. 154/770). He was a free Arab, a member of the Banū
Māzin in whose city quarter he lived.2 He had not much in common with
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī as he read the Quran differently from him.3 Because of his ori-
gins, and probably also in his capacity as a philologist, he associated with gov-
ernment circles: with the judges Bilāl b. Abī Burda and Sawwār b. ʿAbdallāh,4
or with Abbasids like Sulaymān b. ʿAlī, the first Abbasid governor of Basra,5 or
Yazīd, the caliph Manṣūr’s son.6 His house in Basra was situated behind that of
Jaʿfar al-Sulaymān, one of Sulaymān b. ʿAlī’s sons.7 His last journey was to visit
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. Ibrāhīm, Manṣūr’s nephew and governor of Syria;8 when he
died unexpectedly in Kufa on the way to Damascus, the governor of that city,
Muḥammad b. Sulaymān, another of Sulaymān b. ʿAlī’s sons, said the prayer
over him.9 He died a decade after ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, but appears to have been
the older one. Marzubānī went so far as to list him among the tābiʿūn.10 His
frugality was noted11 – and remarkable indeed in a man of his distinguished
position – but it may only have been the result of a passing phase of renounc-
ing the world (nusk) during which he was also said to have burnt his notes.12
It seems that his critical attitude towards ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd was emphasised
mainly by his exceedingly “orthodox” pupil al-Aṣmaʿī (d. 213/828?) who may have
intended to counter the Qadarite trend to which the Basran philologists had
1 This probably explains the – otherwise rather anachronistic – report that Ibn Sīrīn did
not want to have anything to do with ʿAmr (Ibn Waḍḍāḥ, K. al-bidaʿ IX 15).
2 Wakīʿ, Akhbār II 84, 10f.; regarding his genealogy cf. Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 212, –6ff. Regarding
his biography in general cf. R. Blachère’s detailed article EI2 I 105f.
3 Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. Ibrāhīm al-Ahwāzī (d. 446/1055) collected the variants; an edition
of this text is being prepared by ʿUmar Yūsuf Ḥamdān. Regarding his qirāʾāt see also
GAS 9/41f., and the analysis of his sources in Pellat, Milieu 76ff.; also Maḥmūd Ḥasanī in:
Dirāsāt 12/1985, issue 3/85ff.
4 Wakīʿ II 35, 8, and 84, 10f.; regarding Sawwār b. ʿAbdallāh see p. 178f. above.
5 Qifṭī, Inbāh IV 127, 13f.
6 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 56, 5f.
8 IKh III 469, 4f.
9 Qifṭī, Inbāh IV 130, 2f.
10 Nūr al-qabas 25, 19.
11 Ibid. 26, 1ff., and 37, 6.
12 Ibid. 25, 17f.; more precisely Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 321, 6f.
iraq 423
succumbed.13 After all, he had heard hadith from ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn.14 Aṣmaʿī
tells us that when the Basran traditionist Jarīr b. Ḥāzim (d. 170/786)15 was pass-
ing in the company of Ḥammād b. Zayd (d. 179/795),16 Abū ʿAmr showed him a
piece of paper (ruqʿa) the contents of which visibly outraged Jarīr, whereupon
he indicated that the note was from ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.17 Unfortunately Aṣmaʿī did
not consider it necessary to reveal why Jarīr was so exercised.
The second story that goes back to him, and was circulated widely, is
different;18 the theological argument is clearly expressed, albeit briefly so as
to fit the anecdote. It is directed at a Muʿtazilite exegesis the Quranic basis
of which, while not explicitly stated, would have been clear to every reader:
in Quranic usage God “promises” punishment to the unbelievers (e.g. in sura
21:38 and 97); elsewhere it is said clearly that he keeps his promises (sura 2:80,
14:47 etc.). Consequently he has determined: he cannot forgive an unbeliever.
It was not even necessary to combine different passages, as sura 13:31 has the
two statements next to one another: “And still the unbelievers are smitten by
catastrophe for their actions [. . .] until God’s promise comes true. God will not
break his promise (lā yukhlifu mīʿād).” This passage of course refers to punish-
ment in in the world, and to unbelievers rather than sinners in general, but it
could not be denied that such statements usually refer to the Day of Judgment,
and consequently this “promise” also applied to Muslim sinners (cf. e.g. sura
18:21, 30:60, 31:33).
This was probably the communis opinio; the philologist’s refutation did not
even refer to the Quranic evidence. Rather, Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ pointed to a lexical dis-
tinction: “Breaking one’s word (khulf) means that one promises something good
and then does not carry it out”; if, on the other hand, one “promised” something
bad, this is in fact a threat, and not carrying out a threat is by no means shame-
ful and breaking one’s word, but on the contrary generosity and merit. This was
certainly how the ancient Arabs saw it; ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd had fallen for a barba-
rism (ʿujma). After all, the story insinuated, he was himself of Persian origin,
ʿajamī; Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, on the other hand, had deeper insight into linguistic phe-
nomena not only because he was a philologist but also because he was a true
Arab. When ʿAmr asked for evidence, Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ was able to quote two verses
13 Cf. p. 99f. above.

14 See p. 410, n. 59 above.
16 Regarding him and his family cf. Pellat in EI2 Suppl. 284b; he had close ties to the “four”,
and was a client of Jarīr b. Ḥāzim’s family (TH 228 no. 213).
17 TB XII 179, 14ff.
18 Text XI 1.
424 chapter 2
in which the poet (either Ṭarafa or ʿĀmir b. al-Ṭufayl) emphasised proudly that
he “broke his threat” and “fulfilled his promise”. Similarly God does not break
his word when he does not carry out a threat, but rather behaves like a noble-
man. This was presumably different from Muʿtazilite exegesis not only as to
the result but also in the method employed; while the Qadarites elucidated the
Quran by means of the Quran and used a theological approach, in this instance
extra-Quranic usage – namely the language of ancient Arabic poetry – was ad-
duced in order to interpret scripture.
This anecdote made a great impression, as illustrated by Muʿtazilite at-
tempts to moderate it by means of additions. There can be no doubt that the
latter are secondary. Their only common feature is that ʿAmr was given the
opportunity to respond, but what he said is different in each case. Firstly there
was the muʿāraḍa on the basis of the supporting verse. The poet said that he
“breaks his threatening word”, and thus he, too, used the words “breaking his
word” in the case of a threat. Consequently the expression seems to be affirmed
by this verse, but this is, we may add, all that can be gleaned from the support-
ing verse. God, after all, said by no means that he would “break his threatening
word”; on the contrary. Arab high-mindedness had no place in exegesis. There
can be no doubt that in the Quranic verses cited “breaking his word” refers to
a threat, even if they speak of a “promise”. What the verse proves is that God
might as well have said “threat” instead of “promise”. This version of the story
goes back via Mubarrad to the philologist Abū ʿUthmān al-Māzinī (d. 248/862?),
who cited a certain Muḥammad b. Misʿar as his authority.19 As al-Māzinī was a
member of the same tribe as Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, it is tempting to identify his
source as the very Muḥammad b. Misʿar b. al-ʿAlāʾ whom Ṭabarī has report on
the uprising of Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh, who was a nephew of Abū ʿAmr’s.20 He still
remains vague; the most important factor is Mubarrad’s Muʿtazilite attitude.
Another isnād was not traced back even this far: the Muʿtazilite Abū Mujālid
transmitted to Khayyāṭ,21 from whom Kaʿbī heard the anecdote and included it
in his K. al-ghurar.22
19 Thaʿālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr (Damascus) I 464, 11ff./(Cairo 1352/1934) II 117, –7ff./ed. ʿAbd
al-Ḥamīd, Cairo 1956, II 133, 12ff.
20 III 289, 8ff.; this would correspond with the information that he was a Shīʿite (Mīzān
no. 8164) as, indeed, was Māzinī (see p. 486 below).
22 Mufīd, Fuṣūl I 38, 15ff./40, 3ff. > Majlisī, Biḥār (quoted in Ashʿarī, Maq. 148, n. 1); togeth-
er with another tradition Abū Mujālid traced back to Abū l-Hudhayl; also in al-Manṣūr
billāh, Shāfī III 56, 8ff.
iraq 425
Secondly there is the attempt to produce counter-evidence in poetry. This

motif has clearly been added to an earlier version in which ʿAmr’s response
is merely a sneer ad hominem,23 followed by a reference, sometimes clearly
separate,24 to an entirely anonymous verse praising someone for never reneg-
ing on his promises or threats.25 The conclusion e contrario was that “breaking
one’s word” after a threat was not in itself praiseworthy, and certainly not no-
bler than severity and consistency. Finally there was a response that refused to
accept poetry as valid evidence, returning to theology: poets cannot be trusted;
they do not always speak the truth. God on the other hand must be truthful; if
he says “Truly, I will populate hell with jinn and humans” (sura 11:119 and 32:13),
he must carry this out.26 This seems to imply that he cannot then pardon ev-
eryone from sheer nobility, which sounds surprising: why should this verse not
refer to the true unbelievers whom nobody would wish to pardon in any case?
But the exegetic question around which the whole discussion revolved was not
asked at all – more evidence in favour of the response being derivative.
All of this does not confirm that the original anti-Qadarite version is
genuine,27 as it can be called thus only in the more general sense that it presents
a genuine controversy debated by two protagonists of the opposing positions
in the form of an anecdote. It seems that the Muʿtazilites did not distinguish
neatly between waʿd and waʿīd at first,28 which was actually in keeping with
Quranic usage. The philologists, on the other hand, if they did not themselves
have ties to the Muʿtazila, felt challenged. Abū ʿAmr was said to have studied
the issue in more depth. He noticed that sura 7:44 uses waʿada “to promise” with
reference to paradise as well as hell, and explained that there was a distinction
23 Zubaydī, Ṭab. 34, 11f.

24 Thus in Mufaḍḍal al-Tanūkhī, Taʾrīkh al-ʿulamāʾ al-naḥwiyyīn 145, pu. ff.; with a further
epilogue also Ibn Manẓūr, Mukhtaṣar TD XXIX 82, ult. ff.
25 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 294, 6ff. > IM 84, 1ff.; Abū l-Ṭayyib al-Lughawī, Marātib al-
naḥwiyyīn 38, 5ff.; al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī III 56, –8ff.
26 Faḍl 294, 2ff. > IM 83, 1ff.: brought by Jubbāʾī against the Basran traditionist and man of let-
ters Abū Khalīfa al-Faḍl b. al-Ḥubāb al-Jumaḥī (d. 305/917–8; regarding him EI2 XII 284).
In Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Abū Khalīfa is misspelt as Abū Khanīfa. The reference to the Quranic
verse cited was already prepared in the Basran Jahmiyya (cf. Text XX 16).
27 I take back some of the claims I made in Trad. Polemik 32f.
28 When we read later that Ḥasan al-Baṣrī already interpreted waʿd only in the positive sense
(Ṭūsī, Tibyān III 642, 1ff., it is probably backdated. The uṣūl al-khamsa, which distinguish
between waʿd and waʿīd, were probably only formulated by Abū l-Hudhayl (see ch. C
3.2.1.2 below).
426 chapter 2
between waʿada and awʿada only if no object followed.29 Azharī (d. 370/980)
would later make the same distinction, with reference to the exact verse cited
in the anecdote.30 While it is a further step to judging “breaking one’s word” dif-
ferently in the case of a promise and in the case of a threat, it may have already
been suggested by Abū ʿAmr. The Muʿtazilites certainly thought him capable
of it, otherwise they would hardly have produced so many versions arguing
against it.
They clearly considered him a worthy opponent, as illustrated by the fact
that there are several instances of discussions between him and ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd
in a direct attack, rather than in a secondary reaction as in earlier reports. The
linguistic usage of the “Arabs”, i.e. the Bedouins, is at issue again: ʿAmr asking
the philologist whether he had ever heard an Arab say in a situation where
nothing could possibly be done that one “did not put in enough effort” or “was
negligent” (farraṭa). When Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, as was to be expected, answered in the
negative, ʿAmr pointed to sura 39:56 where a sinner says on the day of judg-
ment “Alas, how I regret to have neglected my duty to God!” This makes sense
only if he really, as the Qadarites assumed, had the faculty of independent ac-
tion (qudra).31
From a Muʿtazilite point of view Abū ʿAmr’s position appeared “Murjiʾite”:32
despite their sins, Muslims are certain to go to paradise. Ashʿarī classified it as
such, too, although he left it anonymous, referring only to “a philologist” (baʿḍ
al-ʿulamāʾ bil-lugha). A gloss, however, adds Abū ʿAmr’s name, undoubtedly
correctly as the kinship with the anecdote is conspicuous.33 The essence of the
problem is clearly presented notwithstanding the brevity of the doxographi-
cal report: the binding character of the divine revelation. If God announces
that he will reward someone, he will do it; but if he says of Muslims that he
will punish them, he will not abide by this, because of his magnanimousness.
It is interesting that not even a temporary punishment in hell is considered,
and the idea that God is free to decide what he wants and could thus punish
a Muslim but does not have to, is not expressed either. The accent is on the
Muslim’s certainty of salvation: God is more magnanimous than he is just.
29 Zajjājī, Majālis al-ʿulamāʾ 79, 5ff.; Qifṭī, Inbāh IV 133, 14ff. Ṭabarī does not mention the issue
in the relevant passage at all (Tafsīr 3XII 446 no. 14670).
30 Tahdhīb al-lugha III 135a, 1ff. > Lisān al-ʿArab III 463b, –6ff.
31 Text X 11. Paret translates: “ . . . Gott gegenüber Missachtung (disregard) gezeigt zu haben”;
the precise meaning of farraṭa is controversial among exegetes (Paret, Komm. 138 on sura
6:31).
32 Faḍl 293, 5; thus also Abū l-Ṭayyib al-Lughawī, Marātib 38, 5.
33 Text XI 2.
iraq 427
It is tempting to suggest the explanation that the phrase was adopted from a
Muʿtazilite heresiographical source, but a preceding passage (one very close to
Abū ʿAmr’s views, and probably describing the same intellectual background)
presents the position in a similarly one-dimensional fashion.34 Faith alone
brings salvation; the Quran’s threatening verses only apply to non-Muslims.
A passage such as 4:93, that allows the interpretation that a Muslim who mur-
ders a fellow-believer would be condemned for eternity, was restricted: it ap-
plies only to those who believe that murder is permitted. They do not only act
wrong, but there is something wrong with their faith, too. We recall that the
Bakriyya interpreted the verse in the exact opposite sense – maybe the passage
is an attack on them even more than ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.
2.2.7.2 The Next Generation

Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ could certainly be counted among the Murjiʾites with
more justification than his four contemporaries discussed earlier. He not only
felt “hope” for all Muslims, but came up with an argument that changed hope
into certainty. Still, we do not know whether he thought about the concept of
faith like the Ghaylāniyya; he was probably only a philologist and exegete. He
also differed from the Ghaylāniyya due to the fact that he was no Qadarite.
How important this was can be seen from the example of a man who was a
generation younger, although Yaḥyā b. Mubārak al-Yazīdī (d. 202/817)1 placed
them side by side in his qaṣīda on the Basran grammarians:
Abū Salama Ḥammād b. Salama b. Dīnār al-Rabaʿī al-Baṭāʾinī,
a mawlā of the Rabīʿa b. Mālik of the Tamīm who died in Dhū l-Ḥijja 167 dur-
ing the feast of the sacrifice/ca. 4 July 784.2 “Faith increases and decreases”, he
transmitted from the prophet’s companion ʿUmayr b. Ḥabīb al-Anṣārī,3 and a
variant contains an addition explaining how this works: “If we think of a trans-
gression and fear it, it means that (faith) is increasing, but if we are careless,
forgetful and negligent, it means that it decreases”.4 Or, differently, according
to Anas b. Mālik: “Faith is to profess God (i.e. his existence), to believe it to be
34 Text XI 3.

2 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 537 no. 1878, and Taʾrīkh 691, 10. Ibn al-Nadīm is the only one to give the date as
“Muḥarram 165” (Fihrist 283, 14). Regarding the verse cf. Qifṭī, Inbāh I 330, 7.
3 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 37, –5ff.; regarding ʿUmayr b. Ḥabīb cf. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Istīʿāb 1213 no. 1979.
4 Ibid. I 38, 7ff.
428 chapter 2
true in one’s heart, and to obey the fundamental commandments (arkān)”.5

It was probably no coincidence that he heard ʿUmayr b. Ḥabīb’s dictum from
the latter’s grandson Abū Jaʿfar al-Khaṭmī who, when he settled in Basra, did
all he could to denigrate Ghaylān’s memory.6 Abū Muṭīʿ al-Balkhī listed
Ḥammād as an authority for hadiths expressing the opposing view as well,7
but while he may have recorded both points of view – either conscientiously
or uncritically – there is no doubt where his sympathies lay. He transmitted
the well-known hadith about the religious position of the adulterer, which was
used to discomfit the Murjiʾites,8 and he mocked the juristic manoeuvres of
the Ḥanafites.9
He was more reticent when it came to the Qadariyya. While he does appear
in hadiths that played a part in the critical debate about the Qadariyya, they
all advise reticence10 or are not entirely devoid of respect for the opposition.11
Like them, he believed in primitive monotheism as a corollary of the covenant
God made with humans when they were still reposing in Adam’s loins. This is
how the fiṭra, to which much thought was devoted at the time, should be un-
derstood, although, as Ibn Qutayba added, unlike the Qadarites, Ḥammād did
not consider it to be identical with Islam, consequently there was no reward
for it.
Ibn Qutayba, Iṣlāḥ al-ghalaṭ, in: MUSJ 44/1968/171, 4ff. In HT 112f. I proba-
bly assumed this position to be too close to that of the Qadarites. Besides,
I ought to have distinguished more clearly between the (very brief) sum-
mary of Ḥammād’s doctrine and the subsequent interpretation at the
hands of Ibn Qutayba.
While he was a philologist like Abū ʿAmr,12 his true domain was in fact hadith,
although he considered an understanding of grammar to be indispensable
in this field, too,13 probably because he was most careful to preserve exact
5 Ibid. I 34, 10ff.

6 Cf. Anfänge, Index s. n.
7 Suyūṭī I 38, 12ff. Different again ibid. 43, 5ff.
8 Ḥilya VI 256, 10ff.; cf. vol. I 234 above.
9 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān III 18, 5ff.
10 HT 156f.
11 Ibid. 167; after Ḥumayd al-Ṭawīl (d. 142/759) who was his uncle on his mother’s side.
12 Cf. Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 47, 12ff.; Sīrāfī, Akhbār al-naḥwiyyīn al-Baṣriyyīn 42, apu. ff.;
Qifṭī, Inbāh I 329f. no. 220; Yāqūt, Irshād IV 135ff.; Ibn al-Anbārī, Nuzha 40ff. etc. The sub-
stance is the same everywhere.
13 Qifṭī, Inbāh I 329, 11f.
iraq 429
wording.14 He was also versed in Quranic recitation, albeit not to the expert
level of Abū ʿAmr.15 Unlike the latter, he was another mawlā. His grandfather
had probably been a slave; the genealogy does not go back beyond him, and
his name seems to reveal that he was bought for one dinar – slightly more ex-
pensive, at least, than the ancestor of Ḥammād’s namesake and contempo-
rary Ḥammād b. Zayd b. Dirham (d. 179/795).16 Ḥammād was a cloth merchant
(bazzāz), dealing mainly in linings as witness his nisba al-Baṭāʾinī.17 He was
certainly not poor, but complained that he had no more than 300 dirhams in
ready money.18 The explanation offered was that he did not want to make a
profit from business, as he was particularly wary of wrongful gain,19 this being
part of the image of an honest merchant. He allegedly married 70 women, but
had no offspring. Later generations took this to be a particular proof of absti-
nence and counted him among the abdāl – wa-llāhu aʿlam.20
It remains to be researched whether Dīnār and Dirham were always

slaves’ names. Suyūṭī, Al-mustaẓraf min akhbār al-jawārī 28ff. no. 18, men-
tions a female slave named Danānīr. On the other hand, Dīnār is given as
the name of a true Arab in Ibn al-Faraḍī, Taʾrīkh al-ʿulamāʾ bil-Andalus I
31, no. 51; in pre-Islamic times there were the Banū Dīnār b. Najjār (Ibn
Ḥazm, Jamhara 350, 1ff.; Ibn Durayd, Ishtiqāq 454, 12; Ṭabarī, Index s. n.).
A poet was named Dīnār b. Bādiya (Ishtiqāq 409, 2), another Dirham b.
Yazīd al-Awsī (GAS 2/287). The radiance of a face might have been just
as plausible a determining factor as the buying price of a slave; or the
generic fact that someone had been bought as a slave. Cf. Sublet, Le voile
du nom 58.
Ḥammād started collecting early. He came to Mecca for the first time in 114/
732, the year of ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ’s death, as he noted;21 he also heard from
14 AZ 471 no. 1221; al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Kifāya 242, 1ff.

15 Ibn al-Jazārī, Ṭab. I 258 no. 1169.
17 TH 202f. no. 197. This is the only instance of it, and it is probably meant as a description of
his occupation. Samʿānī lists him under his laqab al-Khazzāz, “the silk merchant” (Ansāb
V 111, 12ff.).
19 Mīzān no. 2251 (I 591, 12ff.); Ḥilya VI 250, –6ff.
20 TH 203, –7; regarding the abdāl see p. 104 above. Abū Nuʿaym does not report anything
characteristic about his piousness, recording mainly hadiths (Ḥilya VI 249ff.).
430 chapter 2
Qatāda (d. 117/735).22 His Muṣannaf was read in Spain;23 in Basra this work,
besides those of Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba24 and Rabīʿ b. Ṣabīḥ,25 was one of the first
systematic collections of the kind. He worked from written notes,26 but people
were convinced that he remembered his material so completely that when
someone went and lost his “book” of Qays b. Saʿd (d. 119/737) he was able to
reconstruct it entirely from memory.27 He permitted his pupils to take notes
or copy down what he said; Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn would later compare 18 of these
lecture notebooks in order to eliminate all mistakes.28 In the long run his fame
became a burden to him. People crowded to him, and everyone wanted per-
sonal dictation;29 finally he employed a mustamlī: Sībawayh held this position
for some time in his youth.30
However, due to his collector’s zeal many details insinuated themselves that
would become a source of concern to later generations. Ibn Saʿd was only the
first to point it out.31 Ḥammād appears to have compiled the first collection
of Isrāʾīliyyāt.32 When he was still a boy, Iyās b. Muʿāwiya had once taken his
hand and foreseen that he would become a qāṣṣ; probably because he had
such a good memory. In the meantime this profession had become slightly
less desirable, but he did admit to having been a qāṣṣ at one point.33 The an-
thropomorphic hadiths he transmitted caused the greatest outrage; the most
22 Ibid. II 282, 4f.

23 Ibn Khayr, Fahrasa 134, 1ff. Probably the same as the K. al-sunan mentioned by Ibn al-
Nadīm (Fihrist 283, 14f.).
24 Cf. p. 72 above.
25 See p. 121 above. Cf. also Azmi, Studies 128.
26 E.g. by Ḥammād b. Abī Sulaymān (Azmi 82).
27 Fasawī II 153, 12f., and III 29, 10ff.; cf. also Azmi 159).
28 Azmi 129 and 231. Regarding the volume of his collections cf. also Abbott, Papyri II 67ff.
160f.; also Stauth, Mujāhid 82ff. and 102. In Iraq, a century later ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad
Ibn al-Marzubān al-Baghawī, known as Ibn Bint Manīʿ (214/829–317/929!) collected
a number of his traditions; the work survives in a MS in the Chester Beatty Library (cf.
Catalogue III 12f. no. 3524.2; also Arberry in: IQ 3/1956/20f.).
29 Samʿānī, Al-imlāʾ wal-istimlāʾ 11, 12ff.
30 Ibid. 105, 13ff.; Yāqūt, Irshād IV 135, 8ff.; Qifṭī, Inbāh II 349, 14, and 350, 3; Weisweiler in:
Oriens 4/1951/52. Sellheim reads Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 95, 7, incorrectly yastamillu in-
stead of yastamlī.
31 IS VII2 39, 21f.; the remark is often repeated subsequently. Cf. also Fasawī II 194, 7ff.
32 Thus Kister in CHAL I 354.
33 IS VII2 39, ult. f.; cf. as an illustration the fantastical tale transmitted from him according
to which the prophet was given an apple in paradise out of which stepped a houri who
was destined for ʿUthmān, the martyr (!) (Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 314, 6ff.).
iraq 431
important ones were collected by Fück.34 Several explanations were proposed

later: it was said he had heard them on a visit to ʿAbbādān.35 He did indeed
transmit a prayer of the prophet’s in which he asked to be granted a sight of the
divine face;36 elsewhere he said that God is an eternal light that does not know
night or day.37 He believed that the increase (ziyāda) that would be granted
the blessed in paradise was the visio beatifica, as did the anthropomorphists
in Transoxiana at the same time.38 Still, they were not Ḥammād’s source, and
ʿAbbādān is unlikely, too. After all, Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī was also thought to
have believed it possible to see and touch God;39 Ḥammād reported of him
that he accused the Muʿtazilites of believing that there was nothing in heaven.40
It is interesting that the Muʿtazila did not polemicise against Ḥammād later,
trying on the contrary to claim him as one of their own. Maqdisī quotes a had-
ith by him according to which even Gabriel is separated from God by a curtain
and thus cannot see him.41 Marzubānī called Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn to witness that
Ḥammād transmitted the ruʾya hadiths only because he did not want anything
to get lost if it seemed reliable to him.42 A Quran reciter who had studied
under Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ but did not pay much attention to hadith,
Abū l-Mundhir Sallām b. Sulaymān al-Ṭawīl al-Qāriʾ
(d. 171/787–8), a client of the Muzayna, met with derision.43 He apparently

wrote attacking the Qadarites, although Ibn al-Nadīm was unable to find any
titles.44 The Muʿtazilites twisted his kunya to read Abū l-Mudbir, which sounds
rather like “reactionary”, and they told jokes about him like the one where he
observed from the minaret how one of his servants slept with one of his female
34 In: Festschrift Kahle 95ff. = Arabische Kultur und Islam im Mittelalter 267ff., esp. p. 269ff. Cf.
also ch. D 1.2.1.1 and 1.2.1.4–5 below.
35 Fück 271; Ritter, Meer der Seele 445. Ibn Ḥanbal, himself an anthropomorphist, did not
include any negative opinions of Ḥammād in K. al-ʿilal.
36 Ibn Manda, Radd ʿalā l-Jahmiyya 96, 7ff.
37 Ibid. 99, 4ff.; also Ṭabarī I 59, 18ff.
38 Ibid. 95, 3ff.; cf. Fück and p. 617f. below.
39 Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd, ShNB II 236, –4f. after Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī’s K. al-taṣaffuḥ.
40 Dhahabī, ʿUlūw 164, 8f. The idea of “increase” was also circulated in a hadith by the Basran
ascetic Thābit al-Bunānī (Ibn Ḥanbal, Radd ʿalā l-Jahmiyya 63, 1ff.).
41 Badʾ I 182, 1ff.
42 Nūr al-qabas 48, 5ff.; cf. also Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd, ShNB III 225, 9.
43 Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭab. I 309 no. 1360. Regarding his hadith cf. ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 160 no. 666, and
Mīzān no. 3345; he transmitted from Yūnus b. ʿUbayd among others.
44 Fihrist 230, –8ff.
432 chapter 2
slaves, but then freed him when the servant pointed out that fornication was
predestined.45 All the same, the Qadarite ʿAmr b. Fāʾid al-Uswārī walked in his
funeral cortege.46 – Similarly bad press among the Muʿtazilites was accorded
Abū l-Muthannā Muʿādh b. Muʿādh b. Naṣr al-ʿAnbarī,
a pupil of both ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn and Sulaymān al-Taymī,47 who lived from
late 119/late 737 to Rabīʿ II 196/Dec. 81148 and assumed the position of judge
in Basra shortly after Ḥammād b. Salama’s death. He was an educated man,
Quran reciter like those discussed above,49 and a true Basran in his approach
to the law. He had a very low opinion of Abū Ḥanīfa;50 he permitted in shāʾa
llāh to be said as part of the creed, which annoyed the Muʿtazilites greatly.51
His anthropomorphism, however, caused offence. He was said to have been
persuaded to agree that God’s flesh was the same as a piece of marinated sacri-
ficial meat. In his view, God was a male being, and those who wanted to know
every detail had him confirm that God’s masculinity lacked nothing.52 These
are, of course, topoi and exaggerations; the latter claim had already been made
of Mughīra b. Saʿīd.53 It was clearly expected that there were tensions between
Muʿādh and Ḥammād b. Salama,54 but then we do find Muʿādh in the isnād
of an anthropomorphist prophetic dictum he transmitted from the latter.55
Above all: he offended the Muʿtazilites wherever he could.
45 Ibid., and Ḥākim al-Jushamī, Risālat Iblīs 59, 9ff. Further stories in Jushamī, ibid. 64, 10ff.,
and 79, 4ff.
46 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 234, 7f.; regarding him see p. 94ff. above.
47 TB XIII 131, 5f. Regarding Ibn ʿAwn cf. also Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 295 no. 1920, and 310 no. 2016;
Muʿādh preserved some notes from him (Azmi, Studies).
48 Regarding the dates cf. IS VII2 47, 22ff.; Khalīfa, Ṭab. 544 no. 1917. The date of his birth may
be calculated from the age he was when he died (77 according to Ibn Saʿd), but it is con-
firmed by a statement by Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān (TB XIII 131, 14f.). In his Taʾrīkh, Khalīfa listed
him under 117 by mistake; 195 instead of 196 is another mistake (514, ult., and 154, 12).
49 Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭab. II 302 no. 3622.
51 Ibn Baṭṭa, Ibāna 48, 13; cf. also vol. I 259f.
52 Ḥākim al-Jushamī, Risālat Iblīs 31, 5ff., and Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd, ShNB III 224, ult. ff., after the
same source.
53 Ashʿarī, Maq. 7, 4f.; cf. also ch. D 1.2.1.4 below.
54 Jushamī, ibid. 31, 6f. = ShNB III 225, 8f.
55 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 25, apu. ff. after Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad.
iraq 433
He did so in two ways. Firstly using oral propaganda: he transmitted Qatāda’s

saying of “lone fighters” (muʿtazila),56 and circulated several of the attacks on
ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd with which we are already familiar.57 His accounts reveal that he
himself studied under ʿAmr and became disillusioned gradually; he also took
part in the uprising of 145,58 although he would later stress that one should not
transmit from ʿAmr.59 When Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd b. al-Qaṭṭān continued regardless,
he is said to have criticised him publicly in the mosque of Basra.60 The version
of the Ghaylān legend he circulated was directed against the heroicising ver-
sion so beloved of the Muʿtazilites.61 The second wrong he did them was that
he did not accept their testimony,62 even viewing someone who believed in the
createdness of the Quran as a zindīq.63
This brought a new dimension to the conflict, individual criticism chang-
ing into official discrimination. Muʿādh belonged to the same tribe as the last
two great governor–judges of the city, Sawwār b. ʿAbdallāh and ʿUbaydallāh b.
al-Ḥasan al-ʿAnbarī.64 In his younger days he occasionally assisted the former;65
he was distantly related to the latter.66 Muḥammad b. Sulaymān b. ʿAlī, the
governor of Basra, had appointed Muʿādh qāḍī around 170/786, still during al-
Hādī’s reign,67 but removed him from office when he sent a high official from
Fārs to prison because he was suspected of having murdered his son.68 In
Rajab 181/Sept. 797 he was reinstated by Hārūn al-Rashīd, staying in office until
Rajab 191/may 807.69 Abān al-Lāḥiqī dedicated a congratulatory poem to him
that is still extant.70 The Muʿtazilites were up in arms against him, but when he
was summoned to the caliph because of their complaints, he was granted full
rehabilitation.71 He only had to resign after ten years; he was allegedly so much
56 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 101 no. 607; cf. p. 385 above.
57 Text VI 1; Trad. Pol. 29 no. 14, and 33 no. 17 (cf. p. 347 above).
59 TB XII 184, 10ff.
60 Cf. Text VI 1, commentary.
61 Trad. Pol. 35 no. 20; Anfänge 195f. and 220.
63 Fasawī III 394, 4ff. NB the early date.
64 Regarding his genealogy cf. Wakīʿ II 137, apu. ff., and TB XIII 131, 3ff.
66 Cf. his genealogy (p. 179, n. 23 above).
69 Ibid. II 145, –4ff., and 154, 7.
70 Ṣūlī, Awrāq (Shuʿarāʾ) 28, 6ff.
71 Wakīʿ II 149, pu. ff., and 151, 9ff.; also TB XIII 132, 5ff.
434 chapter 2
loathed that his successor had the pebbles washed in the place where he had
dispensed justice (presumably in the courtyard of the mosque).72 Muʿādh had
to go into hiding and went to Baghdad.73 Even so, when he died the governor, a
Muhallabid, said the prayer over his bier. 74
2.2.8 The Muʿtazila in Basra during the Second Half of the Second Century
Muʿādh b. Muʿādh persecuted the Muʿtazila, but not, apparently, the Qadariyya;
he transmitted hadith from Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba and ʿAwf al-Aʿrābī.1 Around the
year 150 public consciousness regarded the separation of the two groups as
complete,2 probably in part in consequence of the uprising of 145. This prob-
ably also explains why Muʿādh was able to proceed with such severity; it was
known that he, although involved in the rebellion himself, asked to have this
taken into consideration during the witness hearing.3 It was certainly possi-
ble for the Muʿtazilites during his term in office to show some self-confidence
again; otherwise they would not have brought a complaint against him. During
the first decade after the uprising circumstances had been different. ʿAmr b.
Shaddād was executed as late as 156;4 until that time the rebels could not ap-
pear in public in the city. Several of al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s relatives were thrown
into prison after 145 and died there;5 the fate of many collaborators who were
not able to flee is likely to have been the same. As we have seen from the fate of
the duʿāt, the Muʿtazilites lost their main functionaries, achieving a true renais-
sance only at court, where they then did their utmost to dissolve any link to the
muʿtazila of the uprising.6
However, we are anticipating. In Basra the Muʿtazilites had their roots in
the bourgeoisie and set great store by continuity. How they achieved it is illus-
trated by a document dating to around 160, the abovementioned qaṣīda by the
Muʿtazilite poet Ṣafwān b. Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī.
72 Ibid. 154, 8ff. It was a comparatively frequent occurrence that a pulpit was washed
to cleanse it if it was considered to have been sullied by the previous incumbent (cf.
Bosworth in: Ṭabarī, History, transl. vol. XXXII, p. 101, n. 319).
73 Ibid. 154, –6f.
74 IS VII2.
1 TB XIII 131, 6. Ibn Ḥanbal is exaggerating when he says (ʿIlal no. 2504) that Muʿādh did not
accept the testimony of Qadarites.
2 Cf. Kashshī, Rijāl 283, 1f. and earlier.
4 See p. 377 above.
5 Cf. the list provided by Veccia-Vaglieri in: A Francesco Gabrieli 338.
6 Cf. the remark made by Naẓẓām in K. al-Nakth (p. 120 in my Fragmentensammlung).
iraq 435
2.2.8.1 Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī

Everything we know about him goes back to Jāḥiẓ, who mentions him a num-
ber of times under the name of Ṣafwān b. Ṣafwān;1 Yāqūt’s Ṣafwān b. Idrīs2 is
certainly a mistake, and indeed only in a secondary quotation.3 Jāḥiẓ met him
in person.4 He spent some time in Multān at the court of Dāwūd b. Yazīd b.
Ḥātim,5 a Muhallabid6 who had briefly succeeded his father as governor of
Ifrīqiya in 170/787 and, after an eventful career in the service of the Abbasids,
was appointed governor of Sind by Hārūn al-Rashīd in 184/800.7 He seems
to have held this office until he died in 205/820–21.8 Ṣafwān was probably
not young anymore at that time, either: he is known to have quarrelled with
Bashshār b. Burd before 168/784.9 However, he did return to Basra once more,
where he told Jāḥiẓ of the trained elephants he had observed in India.10 He
probably did not meet Wāṣil.
Judging by the surviving fragments he appears like a Muʿtazilite apologist,
but this is probably an optical illusion perpetuated by Jāḥiẓ who used him as
a key witness for the origins of the movement and the quarrel with Bashshār
in his K. al-bayān wal-tabyīn. We know that Ṣafwān wrote about other subjects
as well, e.g. on the palm tree;11 while in Multān he earned his daily bread as a
panegyrist, as did other poets, too, e.g. Ṣarīʿ al-ghawānī.12 The qaṣīda we are
looking at here may be part of the context of the quarrel with Bashshār, which
has led us to the date suggested above.
1 Ḥayawān VII 76, 4; 77, 10; 114, 2.

2 Irshād VII 225, 2f.
3 After Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 22, 6.
4 Ḥayawān VII 76, 4 (if the editor’s insertion is correct); probably also ibid. 114, 2.
5 Ḥayawān VII 114, 2; also 76, 4f., which has incorrect Mazyad instead of Yazīd (as does Agh.
XX 105, 13).
7 Ṭabarī III 649, 15f. Ch. Pellat collated further details on the poet in: Festschrift Wickens
21ff. (esp. 22ff.); cf. also Miles, Numismatic History of Rayy 52f., and MacLean, Religion and
Society in Arab Sind 106. In his youth, under al-Mahdī, he appears to have been accused of
zandaqa once but was released after admitting his guilt (Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 370, 15f.).
8 Ṭabarī III 1044, 9. Khalīfa, on the other hand, has the date of 200/815 (Taʾrīkh 763, 15); but it
is probable that a five was misread for a zero. In Ṭabarī’s account the information is more
obviously linked with the context.
10 Ḥayawān VII 114, 2ff.
11 Ḥayawān VII 78, 5f.
12 Cf. the qaṣīda in his Dīwān (ed. Dahhān) 151ff., transl. Rescher, Beiträge zur arabischen
Poesie II 42ff. (cf. ibid. p. 48 v. 78); regarding him GAS 2/528f.
436 chapter 2
The date, however, is by no means certain, as the addressee is not Bashshār

but a certain Ibn Ḥawshab. Only the topic is related: it seems that Ibn
Ḥawshab called Wāṣil “the yarn spinner”, just like Bashshār did (cf. Text
XII 1, v. 1 and 12 with commentary; also p. 274 above). Regarding Ṣafwān’s
poems attacking Bashshār see p. 9f. and 15, n. 67, above; also p. 448 below;
regarding his description of Wāṣil’s appearance before ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar
b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz p. 278 above. A verse praising Wāṣil’s eloquence is found
in Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 22, 6 (adopted by Kaʿbī in Maq. 65, 10, and Yāqūt, Irshād
VII 225, 3). Regarding a further verse probably composed by Asbāṭ b.
Wāṣil al-Shaybānī cf. vol. I 120f. above.
2.2.8.1.1 The Image of the Early Muʿtazila in Ṣafwān’s qaṣīda

It seems that Ṣafwān composed the qaṣīda that interests us in Basra, as he
never appears to have made it to Baghdad.1 It reflects the nascent glorification
of the early days of the movement. Political troubles are not touched upon, the
characteristic of the community that also expressed its continuity being the
outward appearance. This was, as we have seen, observed with keen eyes every-
where. The biographers’ remarks on who dyed his hair and beard in old age,2
and on who wore silk garments,3 are almost stereotypical. This was apparently
not done among Muʿtazilites, although ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s opponents thought
differently. Still, we must take care not to draw the boundaries too rigorously,
as dying one’s hair was not generally practised among traditionists, either, and
the Muʿtazilites presumably shed all those facets of their ascetic demeanour
that could have appeared revolutionary (e.g. the woollen garments) after 145.
The image each had of the opposing side was clouded by prejudice: the phi-
lologist Abū Zayd al-Anṣārī, a pupil of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s, was afraid every time
he lectured to the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth that they would steal his sandals;4 clearly the
hadith people were simply thieving plebeians in his eyes.
1 Taʾrīkh Baghdād has no entry for his name. K. al-aghānī and other anthologies of poets do
not mention him either.
2 Thus e.g. in Ibn Saʿd or in Abū Nuʿaym’s Dhikr akhbār Iṣfahān; cf. also the list in Ibn Ḥanbal,
ʿIlal 184, 14ff. Also Ḥalīmī, Shuʿab al-īmān III 85, 8ff.; Ibn al-Dawādārī, Kanz al-durar I 380, 1ff.;
Mez, Renaissance 369f.; Juynboll in: Arabica 33/1986/49ff.
3 Cf. the list in Ibn Qutayba, Ashriba 82, –5ff.
4 Qifṭī, Inbāh II 33, 10ff.
iraq 437
Dyeing one’s beard was a Persian custom, but we find reports of it in pre-
Islamic Arabia as well (Morony, Iraq 259f.). The procedure was lengthy
and painful, at least if one wished for a black shade; henna caused no
difficulties (Morier, Reisen 289f.). Later, some mystics who disagreed
with the Sufis’ taqashshuf, such as Ibn ʿAṭāʾ, Junayd’s pupil who redacted
Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq’s so-called Tafsīr, would follow the example of Ayyūb al-
Sakhtiyānī and his companions (Massignon, Passion 2I 133f./transl. I 93;
cf. vol. I 351f.).
Ṣafwān described the appearance of the duʿāt, naming some of them

individually.5 The details he describes are only partly accessible to us as we
have too little information on the facts. Firstly, the headdress. The duʿāt wore
turbans “over white (i.e. undyed) hair”.6 This was not the fashion everywhere
at the time; in Syria the majority would still be wearing the kūfiyya in use to
this day.7 In Iraq the turban was presumably widely worn; many hadiths speak
of it.8 Muʿtazilite missionaries wore it in the style “known in men’s meet-
ings (maʿāshir)” at the time.9 This sounds as if it was worn on special occa-
sions – perhaps only among Bedouins, as maʿāshir may also be translated as
“tribal gatherings”. A turban was regarded as a “sign of dignity in a gathering
(nadī)”;10 for a khaṭīb it was as essential as a staff.11 There is no doubt that
this was an Arab and also Bedouin custom;12 rich mawālī, as we have seen,
sometimes wore an Iranian qalansuwa.13 However, if Ṣafwān imagined that
the duʿāt were assimilating to Bedouin custom in their activities, it becomes
less certain that the Muʿtazilites in Basra were wearing turbans at the time. We
do not know whether this headdress was worn in a particular fashion, either;
Ṣafwān only said that the missionaries “wound it several times”.14
5 Text XII 1, vv. 1–2 and 4.

6 v. 20.
7 See vol. I 159 above; also EI2 V 734f. s. v. Libās.
8 Conc. IV 348f. s. v. ʿimāma, and Wensinck, Handbook 232; also Kulīnī, Kāfī VI 460f.
Regarding the wearing of turbans under the Abbasids cf. Ahsan, Social Life 31f.
9 V. 17.
10 Thus Abū l-Aswad al-Duʾalī in Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 100, 6.
11 Bayān III 92, 4f.
12 Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī, Jāmiʿ 228, 5ff.; possibly also Agh. VII 75, 14 (cf. 75, 10).
14 v. 20. We learn from other sources that the so-called taḥannuk, fastening under the chin,
was not customary in cities (Badrī Muḥ. Fahd, Al-ʿimāma 16f.).
438 chapter 2
Their sandals had two central straps;15 ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn, on the other hand,
was clearly described as wearing sandals with one strap only.16 They cut the
fringes off their long loincloths (izār);17 this had already been reported of the
companions of the prophet.18 Full sleeves, as mentioned in the same verse,
were generally a sign of middle-class dignity; Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī liked to wear
them, too.19 Unfortunately we are not told whether they were short or long.
Ayyūb wore his long, but the Sufis (later?) cut them to only half the length, just
as they wore their outer garment only to the middle of their legs.20
The strongest symbolic significance was reserved, as it always had been, to
the hair style. Wāṣil’s messengers trimmed their moustaches and apparently
shaved their lower lips, too.21 This was clearly not usual. Those who did not
want to look sanctimonious let their moustaches grow and wore their hair
long.22 There were attempts at regulating the matter by means of hadith,23 with
the result that it became even more complex. When it came to self-assured
Arabs, there was a psychological factor as well: cutting someone’s beard off
was a popular kind of chastisement, and nobody wanted to look like a convict.24
Among the ascetics, however, the custom took hold;25 Muḥāsibī railed against
this “eye-service” with which people tried to show their particular attachment
to the prophet.26 Over time the question arose of why these matters were not
mentioned in the Quran; one explanation given was that they had already been
introduced by Abraham, like circumcision.27 Of course it was also possible to
15 V. 21.
16 See p. 412 above; also Wensinck, Handbook 213 s. v. Shoes.
17 v. 20.
18 Bukhārī, Libās 6. Regarding the izār cf. Ahsan, Social Life 34f.
19 See p. 393 above; also Ahsan 36f. and Stillman, Jews in Arab Lands 70.
20 Muḥāsibī, Riʿāya 100, 18; Sarrāj, Lumaʿ, transl. Gramlich 288. Even in 822/1419 an edict in
late Mamluk Cairo forced Christians and Jews to have their sleeves tailored close-fitting
(Maqrīzī, Sulūk IV1 495, 10f.).
21 Vv. 20–21.
22 Regarding the group around Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī see p. 393f. and 412 above.
23 Cf. e.g. Ḥalīmī, Shuʿab al-īmān III 87, 9ff.; also Conc. III 91 s. v. shārib, and Wensinck,
Handbook 35 and 156.
24 Ibn Muhannā, Taʾrīkh Dāraiyā 85, pu. ff.; cf. vol. I 124 above.
25 One of the hadiths against long moustaches was transmitted by a certain Muḥammad b.
Ibrāhīm al-ʿAbbādān (Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 266, 6ff.).
26 Masāʾil 103, 9; cf. also Tirmidhī, Nawādir al-uṣūl 9, –10ff.
27 Abū ʿUbayd, Al-khuṭab wal-mawāʿiẓ 119f. no. 68f.; Ibn al-Dawādārī, Kanz al-durar I 376, 17f.
It was still unusual to shave one’s moustache off entirely. Abū Dulaf’s Qaṣīda Sāsāniyya
tells us that at the time, i.e. during the second third of the fourth century, this was the
custom among the Sufis (Bosworth, Underworld 203).
iraq 439
interpret hadiths this way and that; the caliph al-Mahdī who noticed that Yūsuf
al-Samtī trimmed his moustache (which implies that the caliph did not do so
himself) quoted his ancestor Ibn ʿAbbās with the interpretation that the iḥfāʾ
mentioned in a prophetic dictum28 only meant that one shaved a little29 at the
edge of the upper lip.30 Ibn al-Athīr, on the other hand, stated that iḥfāʾ meant
that one had shaved too much.31 This was probably the Muʿtazilite interpreta-
tion as well – if indeed they based their decision on hadith at all.
Ṣafwān felt no doubt that this external appearance was matched by genu-
ine inner conviction: the duʿāt always spoke as they thought; they spent their
nights in prayer, and their face wore a specific mark (sīmā), presumably the
callus on their foreheads they had acquired by frequent prostrations.32 At the
same time they did not keep aloof from the world as their mission demanded
that they spent time among people. They probably prayed together; a specifi-
cally Muʿtazilite mosque is documented in Basra in the late second century.33
And there was probably more than just this. Ṣafwān seemed to presume that
the Muʿtazilites looked after the orphans and the “tribe inferior in number”, i.e.
people without protection, since Wāṣil’s day.34 Wāṣil himself was said to have
given the 20,000 dirhams he had inherited from his father to the needy among
his followers, and expected the well-off to do the same.35 ʿUthmān al-Ṭawīl
emphasised that personal property was not recognised during the master’s
lifetime,36 the movement assuming the character of a social care organisation.
This was probably a result of its being managed mainly by mawālī with the
intention that the socially less advantaged should feel at home in it. There was
also an element of self-protection. During the years of anarchy following the
year 126, Muʿtazilite youth militias were probably engaged in protecting the
streets in which the Muʿtazilites lived and merchants stored their wares; a de-
cade and a half later in 145, this grew into a political power factor.37 As Ṣafwān
28 Nasāʾī, Zīna 2 = Conc. III 91a.

29 Wakīʿ, Akhbār II 130, 5ff.; as part of a longer tradition.
30 uṭra, used instead of iṭār here.
31 yubālighu fī qaṣṣihā. Shortley afterwards aḥfā is explained as istaʾṣala “to take away en-
tirely” (Nihāya I 410, 8ff. s. v.).
32 Vv. 18f.
33 See p. 444 below. They were also buried together; we hear of the Qadarites who were laid
to rest by the Masjid Shabba (Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya VI 386, 4f.).
34 V. 13.
35 Faḍl 239, –5ff. The story may well be idealising.
36 Faḍl 237, –6f., where the editor erroneously vocalised malik instead of mulk.
37 Cf. the material p. 328f. and 372f. above; later conditions in Baghdad under Sahl b. Salāma
are also informative (see ch. C 2.4 below).
440 chapter 2
put it, the duʿāt were not intimidated by “the sarcasm of the ruling class”;38
they looked out for themselves.
2.2.8.2 The Principle of amr bil-maʿrūf wal-nahy ʿan al-munkar

All these activities, charitable as well as militant, as well as the missionary
activity in general, were subsumed under the motto of amr bil-maʿrūf wal-nahy
ʿan al-munkar; Ṣafwān did not miss the opportunity of pointing it out, either.1
The term is originally Quranic where “command what is just and prohibit
what is reprehensible” has the meaning of “ensure the rule of law; help the
established principles, especially the moral ones, to victory”.2 The “rule of the
hypocrites” on the other hand is characterised by them “ordering what is repre-
hensible and prohibiting what is just”.3 Muḥammad could assume the phrase
to be well-known, as the ḥilf al-fuḍūl agreed between some Quraysh tribes after
the Fijār war shortly before his time was based on the same principle.4 To this
day maʿrūf is the law sanctioned by custom in southwest Arabia.5 The phrase
has always been quoted by Muslims, Theodore Abū Qurra considering it a cru-
cial mark of Muḥammad’s message.6
The problem lay in how to interpret it and who from among the Islamic
community should take this upon themselves. Members of the ruling class
naturally insisted that this was their right alone, although it would later be
assumed that they should delegate it to the muḥtasib.7 Legal scholars would
consequently increasingly regard it not so much as an individual duty (farḍ
ʿayn) but a collective one enjoined upon the entire community (farḍ kifāya).8
38 V. 4.
1 v. 15. For a general overview see Madelung in EIran I 992ff. s. v.

2 Cf. sura 3:104 and the numerous parallels collected in Paret, Kommentar 76; the passages
are also collected in Ābī, Nathr al-durr I 86ff.
3 Sura 9:67. Cf. Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qurʾān 213ff.
4 Agh. XVII 291, 4f.; cf. EI2 III 389 s. v. Regarding the semantic extent of maʿrūf and munkar
in pre-Islamic poetry cf. G. Müller, Ich bin Labīd 82 and 199f. (n. 20).
5 Also called sharʿ but not the same as Quranic law (Serjeant in: BSOAS 41/1978/21).
6 Mīmar fī wujūd al-khāliq 210 § 67; cf. also Griffith in: La vie du Prophète 125. Goldziher,
Livre d’Ibn Toumert 86, n. 1, points to a similar phrase in Jewish literature.
7 Cf. P. Chalmeta Gendrón, El „señor del zoco“ en España 246ff., and Index s. v. ordenar y
bien y prohibir el mal. Regarding the muḥtasib cf. also Klingmüller in: Festschrift E. Seidl
88f. Regarding the authorities’ interpretation of amr bil-maʿrūf see Lambton, State and
Government 310ff.; Nagel, Staat und Glaubensgemeinschaft, Index s. v. – Regarding amr wa-
nahy in the sense of “sovereignty” cf. also Rotter, Zweiter Bürgerkrieg 147.
8 Ṭūsī, Tibyān II 549, 9f.; also Ḥalīmī, Shuʿab al-īmān III 216, –5ff.
iraq 441
During periods with a weak central government, on the other hand, the idea
soon took root that each individual, within the framework of an organisa-
tion – such as the aḥdāth – where necessary, had a responsibility to keep the
community on the right path. Revolutionary movements in particular made
this claim.
During the development stage of Islam, when the state was without an es-
tablished hierarchy of officials and legal issues had not been determined in a
binding fashion, the motto proved to be particularly explosive. The Khārijites
invoked it,9 as did, e.g., Yūsuf b. Ibrāhīm al-Barm later,10 or al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s
canvassers;11 Aḥmad b. Naṣr al-Khuzāʿī cited it when he protested against the
khalq al-Qurʾān,12 as did a certain Abū Ḥarb who posed as the promised Sufyānī
in Jordan in 227/842.13 Towards the end of the century we find the motto in
numerous passages in the writings and proclamations of the Zaydite imam al-
Hādī ilā al-ḥaqq who established his reign in Yemen. Further examples could
easily be found.
It is self-evident that the interpretation met with opposition from the very
first. Interestingly the first one to challenge it was ʿAbd al-Malik after ʿAmr b.
Shaʿīd al-Ashdaq’s uprising in 75/695.14 Al-Maʾmūn’s behaviour after entering
Baghdad in 204 was characteristic. The anarchy that had spread during the civil
war and Ibrāhīm al-Mahdī’s brief rule had forced the notables to take the reins
themselves. The caliph disapproved of the continued independent administra-
tion of justice in individual quarters of the city and forbade the amr bil-maʿrūf
wal-nahy ʿan al-munkar.15 The theologian Faḍl b. Dukayn, who had provided
theological justification of the citizens’ actions, was arrested and brought be-
fore the caliph.16
The quarrel was reflected in hadith, although the revolutionaries, as was
only to be expected, were not given any support there. While there are hadiths
recommending taghyīr al-munkar, actively changing what is reprehensible,
9 Ṭabarī I 3349, 15f.; regarding the Ibāḍiyya in general see Ṭālibī in: Abū ʿAmmār, Mūjaz,
Intro. I 138ff., and the passages listed by Madelung in EIran I 993a.
10 Yaʿqūbī, Taʾrīkh II 478, 16f.; he led a rebellion under al-Manṣūr (cf. Daniel, Khurasan 166f.).
11 van Arendonk, Opkomst 49, n. 1, after Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Muʾayyad’s Ifāda, together
with the principle of ḥukm bil-kitāb; also ibid. 51, n. 1, and 54, n. 1.
12 Cf. Lapidus in: IJMES 6/1975/380f.; regarding another example see ibid. 372. Regarding
Aḥmad b. Naṣr see ch. C 3.3.3 below.
13 Ṭabarī III 1320, 3. He had the sobriquet al-Mubarqaʿ; regarding his uprising cf. Eisenstein
in: Orientalia 55/1986/454ff.
14 Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī, Awāʾil I 362ff.
15 TB XII 350, 2ff.; cf. ch. C 2.4 below.
16 Lapidus, loc. cit.; regarding Faḍl b. Dukayn see vol. I 271 above.
442 chapter 2
they never added “using the sword” (bil-sayf), but less violently, “using the
hands”, “using the tongue” and, if one cannot put up any resistance, “in your
heart”.17 Ibn Ḥanbal defined “using the hands” as by no means using the hands
to hit, but just to separate those who are fighting.18 In the eyes of later ju-
rists, beating and maiming were the prerogative of the state.19 We must keep
in mind, however, that hadith regarded amr bil-maʿrūf as a purely individual
commandment; it was out of the question that an official like the muḥtasib
might fulfil this function on behalf of the believers. This view led to a degree
of vigilantism which, while not precisely revolutionary, did infringe the state’s
sphere of control. Sufyān al-Thawrī was angered by a gang of religious fanatics
who climbed over walls into houses to police people’s morals. In his view, this
was a wrong interpretation of amr bil-maʿrūf, but the members of this group
called themselves muḥtasibūn. They were puritans; one of them bore the sobri-
quet al-Ṣūfī.20 Later it was of course the Ḥanbalites who, hadith-abiding though
they were, broke into houses in order to pour away the wine and break musical
instruments.21
One last thing must be considered with regard to the early period: amr bil-
maʿrūf is not necessarily about public or private morals yet. Just as there was
disagreement concerning who was the right person to give the “command” and
how far one could go, so it had not been decided what actually was maʿrūf.
While Muqātil b. Sulaymān interpreted the scope of “command” as it was set
out in hadith,22 he understood maʿrūf – at least in the Quran – to mean “pro-
fessing God’s unity vs. polytheism”, or “following the prophet vs. denying him”,23
fundamental truths of Islam rather than legal rules. The Shīʿites thought along
similar lines, but, in keeping with their style, they personalised the idea en-
tirely, maʿrūf being ʿAlī, and munkar his opponents.24
Thus when Abū l-Hudhayl declared the amr bil-maʿrūf wal-nahy ʿan al-
munkar to be one of the five principles of the Muʿtazila,25 he was commenting
17 Muslim, Īmān 49 no. 78; Tirmidhī, Fitan 10; Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad III 20, 7ff., and 49, 9ff.
Similar in Al-fiqh al-absaṭ 44, 10, and 48, 2.
18 K. al-waraʿ 92, 5ff./summary in: Hespéris 39/1952/117.
19 Regarding Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī cf. e.g. Lambton, State and Government 243f.
20 Ibn Ḥanbal, Waraʿ 92, 13ff./Hespéris 117.
21 Cf. Heine, Weinstudien 48; also Glassen, Der mittlere Weg 31. The probably referred to pas-
sages such as Abū Dāwūd, Masāʾil al-Imām Aḥmad 278, 10ff., and 279, 3ff.
22 Without referring to any particular hadith (Tafsīr khamsmiʾat āya 279, apu. f.; also Al-
wujūh wal-naẓāʾir 114f. no. 14).
23 Al-wujūh wal-naẓāʾir 113 no. 13; Tafsīr khamsmiʾat āya 278, –5ff.
24 Majlisī, Biḥār X 208, –5ff.; Tawḥīdī, Baṣāʾir II 539, 9ff./2VIII 162 no. 561.
iraq 443
on the past of the movement with which he identified, but he was also leaving
the door open to interpretation. He himself would have restricted the com-
mandment as much as advisable under the watchful eye of the authorities,
but he probably also took past events into consideration that did not entirely
tally with this attitude. Even those who disagreed with the involvement in the
uprising of 145 might regard the Muʿtazila as a mass movement that could
wield some influence in Basra. ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd was believed to have driven
Ibn Abī l-ʿAwjāʾ out of the city because his behaviour was a danger to young
people.26 His followers were called an “army”, presumably with reference to
the years preceding the revolution, and he himself a muṭāʿ, the person com-
manding their deepest respect.27 He was said to have called on Ibn Shubruma
in Kufa to take up the holy struggle (jihād) in order to fulfil his obligation to
amr bil-maʿrūf wal-nahy ʿan al-munkar.28 According to Ashʿarī, Muʿtazilite amr
bil-maʿrūf wal-nahy ʿan al-munkar meant “using tongue, hands and sword, de-
pending on what each is able to contribute”:29 “The Muʿtazila taught: If we are
a closed community (jamāʿa) and the majority believes that we can defy our
opponents, then we will gather round our leader, and we will rise up. Thus we
will kill the ruler (al-sulṭān) and do away with him, and we will force people to
abide by our doctrine. If they follow our doctrine, i.e. the dogma of the oneness
of God and of free will, it is good; otherwise we will kill them”.30 When, on the
other hand, Abū l-Muʿīn al-Nasafī was enumerating the uṣūl al-khamsa in his
Baḥr al-kalām later, he forgot the amr bil-maʿrūf altogether.31
2.2.8.2.1 The Case of Muḥammad b. Munādhir

Even though the Muʿtazila was too weak to be influential beyond its own
circle after 145, it always ensured internal discipline. They denounced
Muʿammar1 as well as the “heretics” Aḥmad b. Khābiṭ and Faḍl al-Ḥadathī to
the authorities.2 A passage in Wakīʿ – admittedly not entirely clear and pos-
sibly corrupt – seems to imply that in the 220s Muʿtazilites lodged a complaint
against the loggias (ghuraf) on the upper floor in houses in Basra where the
26 See p. 6 above. Regarding Bashshār b. Burd see p. 9 above.

27 Faḍl 250, 6ff.; also p. 328 above.
29 Maq. 278, 8f.; also 466, 8f.
30 Maq. 466, 5ff.; cf. also Text XIII 31.
31 P. 75, –5f.

2 See ch. C 3.2.2.2.7.3 below.
444 chapter 2
women spent their time; presumably they allowed too much of an insight into
the intimacies of family life.3 The greatest amount of information available
to us concerns a scandal surrounding the poet Muḥammad b. Munādhir (d.
198/814)4 an account of which is found in K. al-aghānī.
Ibn Munādhir came to Basra from Aden in his youth and had acquired a
good reputation for being very pious. He was a Quran reciter5 and imam at
a mosque in the quarter of the tribe to which he was linked as a client.6 He
transmitted hadith from Shuʿba and Sufyān al-Thawrī, among others; he had
studied grammar under Khalīl and Abū ʿUbayda,7 but he became the object
of gossip due to his infatuation with a young man. To make matters worse the
latter was the son of a respected traditionist, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. ʿAbd al-Majīd
al-Thaqafī, who died in 194/810 at the age of 84.8 The father had no objections
to the friendship. He was elderly, and he believed Munādhir to be a gentleman
until he was imprudent enough to write love poems to the youth, providing
proof for public opinion.9 In the mosque where he was prayer leader some-
one threw a slip of paper into the miḥrāb with a few verses intimating that he
was not wanted anymore.10
This was the moment when the Muʿtazila intervened as well. He had been
esteemed among the Muʿtazilites; indeed, he had boasted that some of them
were extremely keen on him.11 Now, however, they admonished him and
threatened him with trouble (makrūh); in the end he was forbidden to enter
the mosque. We do not know whether this was the mosque where he had led
the prayer, but it certainly was the mosque where the Muʿtazilites gathered,
for he was able to take revenge on them by pouring ink into the wash basins
with the result that those who came to pray before the first light blackened
3 Akhbār al-quḍāt II 175, 13f. Regarding the issue cf. Noth in: JSAI 9/1987/302; regarding the
style of houses see Goitein, Mediterranean Society IV 76. Similar outrage was directed at
pigeon racing, as this required people to climb onto roofs where they could observe oth-
ers during their siesta (cf. Grotzfeld in: Festschrift Roemer 193ff.; also Ahsan, Social Life
250ff.).
4 Regarding him in general GAS 2/505f.; Pellat in: EI2 III 890.
5 With a few idiosyncrasies; cf. Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭab. II 265 no. 3481.
6 Agh. XVIII 175, 7ff.
7 Ibid. 172, 15ff.
8 Mīzān no. 5321; TT VI 449f. no. 934. According to Fasawī I 177, –6, he was born in 108/726–7.
9 Agh. XVIII 175, 7ff.
10 Ibid. 172, 15ff.
11 Ibid. 171, 15.
iraq 445
their faces and clothes.12 He was also believed to have set some scorpions loose
there.13 When the Muʿtazilites tried to teach him a lesson, things became pre-
carious as his master’s clan, the Banū Shubayr, was made up of only “two and
a half men”.14 In the end, however, tribal solidarity prevailed: fifty shuyūkh of
the Banū Riyāḥ to whom the Shubayr belonged sent the Muʿtazilites packing.15
The affair came to an end when the youth suffered an accident shortly after
his marriage: he fell off a roof and broke his neck.16 Ibn Munādhir dedicated
several elegies to him one of which, ending in the rhyming letter d, became
famous not least because of its length.17 The puritans found this even more
cause for outrage and were apparently preparing to start criminal proceedings
against him, at which he left the city and went to Mecca.18 These events took
place during the seventies or early eighties. In Basra Ibn Munādhir witnessed
ʿUbaydallāh al-Anbārī being dismissed from office in 166, and later attacked his
successor Khālid b. ʿAbdallāh b. Ṭalīq in libellous poems. The Muʿtazilites were
presumably on his side when he supported Anbārī.19 After 170/186 he com-
posed paeans to Hārūn al-Rashīd and the Barmakids. By 186/802 or 188/804 he
was living in Mecca in humble circumstances.20
12 Ibid. 170, 19ff.; already discussed by Goldziher in: Der Islam 8/1918/208f. = Ges. Schr. V 411f.,
although Goldziher interprets muʿtazila as simple ascetics. Also Tritton, Muslim Theology
60; Fück, Arabiya 56.
13 Thus Yāqūt, Irshād VII 107, ult. ff. after Ibn Maʿīn. Later tradition moved the event to the
Masjid al-ḥarām in Mecca (Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, Maʿrifa 135, 10f.; Mīzān no. 8205).
14 Agh. 171, ult.
15 Ibid. 172, 14; the poem in which called on the entire tribal federation of the Tamīm for help
is at 171, 3ff. = Yāqūt, Irshād VII 109, 6ff. They were the Riyāḥ b. Yarbūʿ after whom a quarter
of Basra was named (Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam qabāʾil al-ʿArab I 457b).
16 Ibid. 178, 9f. and 19ff.
17 This dāliyya is extant (cf. GAS 2/506). Two longer fragments in Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ṭabaqāt
al-shuʿarāʾ 122, 14ff.; followed by a shorter fragment of a second marthiya (124, pu. ff.). Cf.
Agh. 178, 15f.
18 Jāḥiẓ seems to imply that he was exiled (Agh. XVIII 169, 14ff. = Irshād VII 107, 15ff.).
According to other accounts he left of his own accord (Agh. 170, 3ff. after Mubarrad; Ibn
Qutayba, Shiʿr 747, 3ff.). Cf. also Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ṭab. 119, 13f., and 120, ult. ff. It seems that
he made enemies in other quarters as well (cf. e.g. Agh. 196, 18ff.).
19 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 345, 6ff.; Wakīʿ, Akhbār II 126, 11ff. > Agh. 198, pu. ff. Regarding the date see
p. 182 above; also p. 361.
20 Cf. the anecdote in Agh. 201, 1ff., which is set during a hajj undertaken by Hārūn after the
fall of the Barmakids. The possible dates are the two years mentioned (cf. Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh
733, 2, and 735, 2).
446 chapter 2
He had become a follower of Sufyān b. ʿUyayna there; upon his death in

196/812 he – by that time of advanced age himself – composed a poem of
mourning.21 He never denied his Basran origins, protesting against the accu-
sation that the Arabic spoken in his home was sub-standard,22 and writing a
poem attacking the Medinan Qadarite Ibn Dāb al-Laythī 23 in which he recom-
mended ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn as well as Mālik b. Anas as men with whom better to
study hadith. When the verses became known in Iraq Mālik was replaced with
Yūnus (b. ʿUbayd).24 This did not improve his reputation; some people believed
him to be a Dahrite.25
2.2.8.3 The Position of the Muʿtazila in Basra after 145

Another name emerged in the context of this story, that of a Muʿtazilite named
Ibn ʿUmayr who lived next door to Ibn Munādhir and denounced him to his
people. His memory survives only because the poet paid him back this trick
by composing a few insulting verses. Muʿtazilite biographers know nothing of
him; he was certainly not a theologian,1 but he came from a respected family,
which is just as interesting for our topic. His ancestor ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmayr al-
Laythī was a half-brother of ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĀmir b. Kurayz, a Quraysh and mater-
nal cousin of ʿUthmān’s who had been governor of Basra under the latter’s and
Muʿāwiya’s rule;2 they had had the same mother, a noble woman from a Sulamī
family.3 He had governed the province of Sijistān on his behalf and taken part
in the eastern campaigns.4 If a descendant of this man considered himself a
Muʿtazilite in Hārūn’s time, this is at the very least proof that the Muʿtazila was
not a movement of the lower class only.
21 Irshād VII 110, 3ff.; cf. Agh. XVIII 170, 11.
22 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 18, pu. ff.
24 Agh. 198, 7 and 10f.; cf. p. 409 above. When swearing by ʿAmr and Zuhrī in another poem
(191, 8) he was probably not referring to ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd but ʿAmr b. Dīnār (regarding him
see p. 718f. below).
25 Agh. 172, 12f.; cf. Vajda in: RSO 17/1938/215.
1 It is most improbable that he is linked to the Ibāḍite ʿĪsā b. ʿUmayr, who was probably
from Kufa in any case (see vol. I 486 above).
2 Regarding him cf. EI2 I 43.
3 Agh. XVIII 183, 5ff.; also Ṭabarī I 2828, 19f., and Zubayrī, Nasab Quraysh 149, 11ff. In Abū
Faraj’s text the correct reading is Asmāʾ in the mother’s name, not Ismāʿīl.
4 Ṭabarī I 2829, 1f.
iraq 447
Even so, all in all it was not in a very strong position under Hārūn. While the
Barmakids were favourably inclined towards the controversial theologians, the
persons they invited to the court came from Kufa rather than Basra.5 Muʿādh
b. Muʿādh had become judge there before Hārūn acceded to power,6 and if
he did not accept the Muʿtazilites’ testimony, this was certainly not without
sanction from above. The governor who appointed him had the hand cut off
a certain ʿĪsā al-Ṭabarī, described as an ascetic and mutakallim; Thumāma b.
Ashras was said to have requested his dismissal from Hārūn when he had the
caliph’s attention during the hajj one time.7 The last part is only a Basran leg-
end, as Thumāma was far too unimportant in those days to have been a danger
to an Abbasid – for he was that – and one much older than the caliph at that.
Chronologically, too, the tradition is untenable: the governor died in Rajab 173/
Dec. 7898 at which time Hārūn had not been on the hajj since he had become
caliph.9
Furthermore, the climate did not change significantly later on. In late 174/
early 791 ʿĪsā b. Jaʿfar, a grandson of Manṣūr’s, took the helm in Basra. He fre-
quently had a Muhallabid fill in for him, a man who, as Ibn Ḥazm put it, was
“most prejudiced against the Muʿtazila”.10 This was the same man who had Abū
ʿAmr al-Ḥaddād flogged because he believed God’s names to be created,11 pos-
sibly around the same time or as late as 180 when the same power constellation
returned once more.12 Abū l-Hudhayl, too, came in conflict with the authori-
ties around this time.13 In Rajab 181/Sept. 797, Muʿādh b. Muʿādh was appoint-
ed qāḍī once more. Things changed only under his second successor ʿAbdallāh
b. Sawwār al-ʿAnbarī who, although a member of the same clan, seems not to
have been fond of him.14 He was the founder of the library in Basra where it
was possible to study Muʿtazilite theology under an expert.15 This may have

6 See p. 434 above.
7 Faḍl 274, 6ff. after Ibn Farzōya’s K. al-mashāyikh > IM 67, 5ff.
8 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 713, 2f.; regarding him TB V 291ff. no. 2795.
9 He performed it for the first time in this very year (Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 713, 9).
10 Jamhara 369, ult. f.; regarding the date cf. Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 743, 5f.
12 Khalīfa 743, 10f.
14 Cf. Wakīʿ, Akhbār II 155, 6ff.
15 Muqaddasī, Aḥsan al-taqāsīm 413, 15ff.; only saying “Ibn al-Sawwār”. He also founded a
second, smaller, library in Rāmhurmuz, leading us to conclude that the date may not nec-
essarily have been during his term in office as qāḍī. The Muʿtazilite professor, too, may
have been a later institution.
448 chapter 2
been only after Hārūn’s death. Ibn Sawwār took office in 192/808 and held it
until 198/814.16
During the second half of the third century, after the end of the miḥna,
the Muʿtazila was persecuted again in Basra. At this time the quṣṣāṣ still
led the community (Tanūkhī, Faraj II 32f.).
2.2.8.4 The Development of Theology and Law

In these circumstances theology could hardly thrive; after all, it relied on public
debate. We do not know what people discussed in the private houses of Basra,
but Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī may have an answer, as his discussion with Bashshār
b. Burd shows that like the latter he embraced a doctrine of elements, only
based on different premises. He defended earth against fire, and he did this by
pointing out its usefulness: all living creatures depend on it.1 Then, however,
he did not list everything that grows on it, the marvels of creation, but that
which is inside it: metals and minerals, showing off words that have no place
in poetry: quicksilver and sal ammoniac, red ochre, lead oxide and marcasite,
pitch, alum, and sulphur, bismuth and zinc bloom.2 This is the kind of vo-
cabulary we know from the Petrology and from alchemy.3 Interestingly verse
8 evokes the “tops of the mountains behind the Muqaṭṭam”, which were not
really part of the horizon of a poet whom we can assume to have lived in Iraq.
In alchemy, where it is called Jabal al-Muqaṭṭab, the Muqaṭṭam was a topos.4
There are, however, no direct alchemical terms or concepts, nor cosmogonic
or cosmological theories or the interaction between earth and other elements,
e.g. through mixture. Even fire is only mentioned as being within the earth
and consequently subordinate.5 Instead the argumentation turns to salvation
16 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 739, 5f., and 758, 11; regarding him Wakīʿ II 155ff. and Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān III
343, 2ff./transl. Souami 309ff. Interestingly Maʾmūn asked him for a personal statement
during the miḥna; he died around that time (see ch. C 3.3.4 below).
1 Text XII 2, vv. 5–7.

2 Vv. 8–17.
3 Thus already Fück, Arab. Kultur 279 and 246. Cf. e.g. the system of the minerals in the
K. al-khawāṣṣ al-kabīr of the Corpus Ǧābirianum in Ullmann, Natur- und Geheimwissen-
schaften 140ff.; cf. also Rex, Theorie der Naturprozesse 42ff. and 108ff.
4 I am grateful to M. Ullmann for this information. He refers me to the text in his Katalog
der arab. alchemist. Hss. der Chester Beatty Library I 224, 2.
5 V. 1. The Muqaṭṭam, too, could be explained differently. The Muhallabid whom Ṣafwān vis-
ited in Multān had previously been governor of Egypt; Ṣafwān might have accompanied
him there as well (thus Pellat in: Festschrift Wickens 22f.). In this case the poem would
iraq 449
history. Rocks, notable points in the earth made from earthen matter, remind
us of the progress of revelation: of Abraham in the Kaʿba, of Khaḍir by the pond
where he found the water of life, and of Ṣāliḥ’s she-camel that stepped from a
rock together with its calf.6 Ultimately the author was a theologian after all; in
his main attack on Bashshār b. Burd he referred to him as a Shīʿite sectarian.
Pitting the elements against one another in religious argumentation is an
age-old tradition. The Hebrew prophet Elchasai, whom even Mani quoted,
said with reference to the baptism he introduced and in rejection of the tradi-
tional fire sacrifices: “Water is more agreeable to God than fire”.7 Still, the text
mentioned stands alone within Muʿtazilite theology. What could be done with
the theology of elements was illustrated by Hishām b. al-Ḥakam in Kufa, who
would also later show the way for it to return to the Muʿtazila. In Basra, on the
other hand – if, indeed Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī can be claimed for Basra at all – it was
lost for a generation. It is possible that this was in part due to the persecution
of heretics of which Bashshār was one victim.
Intellectual conversation continued in citizens’ homes, and with Muʿtazilite
participants, too, as Jāḥiẓ reported. People were not quite so puritanical in
these surroundings, either. Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Abraṣ al-ʿAmmī drank like a bot-
tomless pit when visiting the house of the Ziyādīs; he sparkled with ideas
every time.8 Jāḥiẓ said clearly that he was a Muʿtazilite, but he recorded only
his views on the strength of the buck during the rut.9 Of another mutakallim,
a certain Ṣaḥṣaḥ, he remembered that he praised the advantages of naivety:
taken all in all, stupidity is more useful than intelligence as it gives security and
prevents many a worry. That is why dumb animals grow fat more quickly than
nervy intellectuals.10 Of course this was narrated out of enjoyment of scur-
rilous things, but it was not entirely unrelated to Muʿtazilite thought. Ṣaḥṣaḥ
may have been a physician or natural philosopher like Maʿmar Abū l-Ashʿath;11
have been written in Egypt, which would give rise to the question of why Ṣafwān was at-
tacking Bashshār b. Burd there.
6 Vv. 18–21. Cf. also the shorter version of the same thoughts in Text XII 3, vv. 1–3, where they
are presented without the link to Bashshār – yet more evidence that Ṣafwān developed
them not merely from polemical intentions, but identified with them.
7 K. Rudolph, Antike Baptisten, in: SB Sächs. Ak. Wiss. Leipzig, Phil.-Hist. Kl., Vol. 121, 4, p. 22.
8 Ḥayawān II 227, 4ff.; regarding the Ziyādīs see ch. C 3.2.2 below.
9 Ibid. II 240, 10f.
10 Bukhalāʾ 4, 20ff./transl. Pellat 7.
11 Regarding him see p. 42 f. above.
450 chapter 2
if as a Muʿtazilite12 he also believed in the power of intelligence, the tension

between nature and intellect could not have escaped him. None of which was,
in fact, theology. If we want to discover what theology looked like beyond all
this speculation on the natural world, and maybe beyond the salons, we must
leave poetry, adab and historiography aside and consult the heresiographers.
2.2.8.4.1 Al-Aṣamm
Now, however, we are struggling with the fact that the biographers tell us noth-
ing. Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Kaysān, known as al-Aṣamm “the deaf one”,
d. 200/816 or 201/817,1 was considered an outsider even by the Muʿtazilites
themselves. Ibn al-Nadīm listed him together with Ḍirār b. ʿAmr, Hishām al-
Fuwaṭī et al. among those who “came up with innovations”.2 The only point at
which he looked in more detail was that Aṣamm did not think much of ʿAlī.3
This might have been because Aṣamm had Ibāḍite leanings, which is indicated
by a passage by Tawḥīdī that mentions him in connection with the Ibāḍiyya;
however, the passage is not entirely clear and may have to be read differently.4
Furthermore Aṣamm disagreed with Ibāḍite doctrine in a central matter.5
Judging from the fragment of Kaʿbī’s Maqālāt edited so far, this author ignored
him entirely, but Ibāḍite Ṭabaqāt works did not pay much attention to him,
either. Only in his capacity as a jurist did the latter take notice of him; the late
Ibn Baraka cites him besides Mālik, Abū Ḥanīfa, Shāfiʿī and Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī.6
However, as we shall see,7 this is not unusual, and he does not play a prominent
part here.8 In Ibn Baṭṭa’s view he was a Jahmite9 as he wrote concerning the
12 Text XVI 44 seems to indicate that he was a Muʿtazilite, mentioning him together with
Muʿammar and Abū l-Hudhayl. Ṭāhā al-Ḥājirī also wishes to link the remark Ḥayawān II
96, pu. f., to him (cf. Bukhalāʾ 258).
1 Thus according to Ibn al-Nadīm 214, 11.

2 P. 214, 1ff.
3 See p. 468 below.
4 Cf. Text IV 23 with commentary.
5 See p. 462 below.
6 Wilkinson in: Der Islam 62/1985/247.
8 Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl’s Sīra (Al-siyar wal-jawābāt I 282, 5, and 285, 8) informs us that
Muʿtazilites and Ibāḍites did not separate immediately in Oman. Interestingly the only
extant anecdote from Aṣamm himself is found in an Ibāḍite source (Text XV 25).
9 Ibāna 91, 15f.; once more 92, 16, as an abhorrent opponent of the Sunna.
iraq 451
names of God,10 the very subject because of which Abū ʿAmr al-Ḥaddād was
punished. Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān regarded him as a Qadarite.11
Malaṭī, Ashʿarī, Ibn al-Nadīm and Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār listed him among
the Muʿtazilites, the last-named relying on Ibn Farzōya’s K. al-mashāyikh.12
Nobody, however, made an effort to position him organically within the his-
tory of the school; unlike Abū l-Hudhayl, no teacher could be found for him
in the preceding generation who might have provided a link with the early
fathers. Shahrastānī, finally, jumbled the chronology so much that he ended
up as a follower of the – considerably younger – Hishām al-Fuwaṭī.13 Neither
he nor Baghdādī, on whom he often relied, elevated Aṣamm to the position
of leader of a Muʿtazilite “sect” in the way that they tended to do with signifi-
cant mutakallimūn. It seems that Aṣamm did not always live in Basra; Yaḥyā
al-Qaṭṭān mentioned sojourns in Madāʾin.14 He may also have visited Wāsiṭ
once, as the traditionist Yazīd b. Hārūn who lived there15 branded him as an
infidel whose blood should be shed because he supported the createdness
of the Quran.16 When Indian physicians came to Iraq on the initiative of the
Barmakids,17 he converted one of them to Islam; he is said to have accompa-
nied him to India at times.18
Not only his views distinguished him from the Muʿtazilites at whom we have
looked so far; he was in fact an entirely distinct type. He is presented to us as an
author: Ibn al-Nadīm listed 26 titles by him,19 and while there may have been
a doublet or two,20 he must have made a great impression with his output.
He was probably the first man in Basra who wrote so much, if we assume that
10 Catalogue of Works XIII, no. 4.

11 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 5, 1 > Mīzān no. 5018.
12 Faḍl 267, 14ff.
13 Milal 19, 4/31, 9f.; cf. also Gimaret, Livre des Religions 144, n. 156.
14 ʿUqaylī III 5, 2f. > Mīzān, loc. cit.
16 Abū Dāwūd, Masāʾil al-Imām Aḥmad 270, 2f. (= Nashshār-Ṭālibī, ʿAqāʾid al-salaf 110, –4f.);
Bukhārī, Khalq al-afʿāl in: ʿAqāʾid al-salaf 129, 16ff. > Yāfīʿī, Marham 186, 12f., where zindīq
is added to kāfir. However, Yazīd b. Hārūn mentions not only Aṣamm but also Bishr al-
Marīsī, who lived in Baghdad and may never have been to Wāsiṭ; it is possible he was
merely criticising the detrimental foreign influence. – Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī even gave
Aṣamm the nisba al-Balkhī once (Mafātīḥ al-ghayb IX 93, 17); but we cannot be sure
whether he was referring to the same person.
18 Thus according to the Risāla Hārūniyya, quoted by Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī in: MMʿIʿI 34/1983/8.
19 Cf. the Catalogue of Works XIII.
20 Titles 5 and 6, 9 and 10 or 24 and 25 can only come from different lists.
452 chapter 2
Ḍirār b. ʿAmr was really at home in Kufa, where theologians had begun writing
treatises rather earlier. Malaṭī said he wrote on subjects on which nobody had
commented on before him.21 He may even have done so at the behest of high-
er powers; it was believed that “the authorities” (al-sulṭān) corresponded with
him.22 He did not, however, forge closer ties; he was poor, and his pupils were
disappointed that while he instructed them in the law, he did not find them po-
sitions as judges.23 Among the population this scholarly modesty would have
increased his reputation: 80 shuyūkh were said to have prayed behind him in
his mosque in Basra.24
2.2.8.4.1.1 Aṣamm’s “Ontology”

When describing his doctrine, the doxographers were – as usual – interested
only in the differences. In his systematic approach they noticed particularly
what they called his “denying of the attributes”. What they meant was that he,
unlike later kalām custom, did not arrange the earthly reality according to sub-
stance and attributes. He only recognised the spatial, three-dimensional body;
this is what we see with our eyes and can consequently grasp with our intellect.1
We may view it differently at different times, but that is not because something
became separated from it and was replaced by something else, as it would be
said about an attribute; nor has anything emerged from the body that was pres-
ent within it previously.2 Change does, of course, exist; but it is executed by
God directly, as transformation. It might take place quite suddenly: God can
transform a mustard grain into a mountain from one moment to the next.3 We
note this event as our senses get an impression of a physical body twice in suc-
cession. Thus Aṣamm by no means denied that something happened to a body.
He recognised events such as movement, or qualities such as colour; but they
cannot be separated even by speculation from the body together with which
21 Tanbīh 31, 13/39, 7.

22 Faḍl 267, –5 > IM 57, 4. Especially treatises against those of different faiths and zanādiqa
were most likely commissions (nos. 22–26 of the Catalogue of Works).
23 Ibn al-Nadīm 214, 8f.
24 Faḍl 267, pu. f. > IM 57, 4ff.
1 Text XIII 1, a; 5, b; 6, b; 9, c.
2 Text 7, dating back to Zurqān, who probably interpreted this by means of a comparison
with Naẓẓām; the two were occasionally linked elsewhere as well (e.g. in Text 4).
3 Text IV 22–23. It is not stated explicitly that Aṣamm interpreted every change as a trans-
formation of this kind.
iraq 453
they occur. Later students of his “system” were not entirely sure of this and
burdened the discussion with an imaginary problem.4
It is interesting that there were disagreements concerning the interpretation
at all. Aṣamm, although he wrote so much, does not seem to have discussed the
ontological core of his theory in any detail; none of the 26 titles attributed to
him even indicates this. He did not engage with Ḍirār b. ʿAmr who represented
the, so it seemed, opposite approach in Kufa at the time: that there are “at-
tributes” only.5 This leads us to assume that Aṣamm’s approach was entirely
self-evident at the time, rather than the philosophically untenable caprice as
which the doxographers presented it. After all, we are looking at simple sensu-
alism, and sensualism could be found everywhere until the second half of the
second century: with the zanādiqa as well as with Hishām b. al-Ḥakam. “Plato
the Copt”, whom the author of K. sirr al-khalīqa quoted, said like Aṣamm: there
is no action and no movement, but there is that which acts and that which
moves.6 While Aṣamm fought against the zanādiqa, as was right and proper
in his day,7 he did not have to reject all their axioms out of hand. In addition
he had worked as Maʿmar Abū l-Ashʿath’s assistant, like Abū Shamir;8 in his
circle people presumably thought the same. The doxographers by no means
overlooked this affinity which from a later point of view had to place him in the
heretic corner: they grouped him together with the Sumaniyya,9 the Dahriyya,10
and with Hishām b. al-Ḥakam.11
When Aṣamm defined the physical body by means of its three dimen-
sions, this is entirely normal for the time, and is also found in antiquity.
John Philoponus is the first in whose writings this is linked to denying
materia prima (cf. Sorabji, Matter, Space and Motion 24ff.); this is pre-
sumed here, too, as indeed throughout early kalām (regarding Naẓẓām
cf. e.g. Text XXII 80).
4 Text XIII 1, cf. also Text IV 23, c.

5 Cf. ch. C 1.3.1.2 below.
6 Bālīnūs, Sirr al-khalīqa 28, 6ff.; regarding him see p. 801 n. 13 below.
7 Cf. the Catalogue of Works no. 24–26, also 23.
9 Baghdādī, Uṣūl al-dīn 36, ult. ff.
10 Ibid. and 7, 14ff. (= Text XIII 3).
11 Text IV 22–23.
454 chapter 2
Hishām b. al-Ḥakam, on the other hand, had been more consistent in his own
way. He had extended the concept of “body” to include God.12 Aṣamm could
not have agreed with this; he would have regarded it as anthropomorphism.
He refuted Hishām with regard to his tashbīh, explaining his own view, which
was certainly based on the Muʿtazila – and the Ibāḍiyya – in a K. al-tawḥīd.13
By keeping God outside his system he had no need to define “body” anew, but
he did have to ask what God was, and of course he answered in the negative:
God is neither body nor attribute.14 Jahm b. Ṣafwān had embraced a similar
approach15 which, too, left open how one could know God. The doxographers
did not comment on this point, but it does become clear that Aṣamm did not
reject conclusions drawn from what happened to things, their “transforma-
tion” for instance, or from the consensus of humans.16 Thus it is possible that
he believed that God could be known rationally; furthermore, there was always
revelation that allowed him to “read” the names of God.17
He did not doubt, either, that the revelation was binding on humans, God’s
“argument” that could not be defied.18 By using this term he built on discus-
sions conducted by Ibāḍites of the previous generation.19 Still, revelation man-
ifests itself in a physical body, namely the Quran, which is of course created.20
Aṣamm wrote on the khalq al-Qurʾān,21 and, as we have seen, his opinion was
seen as an unforgivable transgression outside Basra. He probably regarded the
Quran as an earthly book. After all, it is not possible for the Quran to exist as a
heavenly archetype in which God wrote down all future events, as God has no
foreknowledge of the future: he can know only “something”, but that which is
not is not “something”; only a physical body is something.22
This once more recalls Hishām b. al-Ḥakam, and Kufan theology in general.
However, in Aṣamm’s case this theologoumenon was much more closely
linked to his belief in human free will. We do not know what his book on

13 Cf. Catalogue of Works no. 2–3.
14 Text 9, c.
15 Text XIV 15, b–c; cf. p. 561 below.
16 Cf. text 12.
17 See p. 213 above. Expanding the theory of nafy al-aʿrāḍ Shahrastānī claimed that he de-
nied God’s qualities (ṣifāt) (Milal 53, 7/115, 3), which was probably only true insofar as he
may have recognised them as “names” only in the revelation.
18 Cf. the title Catalogue of Works no. 5.
20 Text 9 with commentary.
22 Text 8.
iraq 455
Rasāʾil al-aʾimma fī l-ʿadl was about, or who the aʾimma were in this case,23 but
there cannot be any doubt that he conformed to the Muʿtazila and the Basran
Qadarites. He polemicised against the determinists (mujbira) quoting Quranic
verses against them.24 If Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir found something to refute in his
K. al-makhlūq,25 it may have been because his ontology interfered with his de-
liberations once again. It did indeed inform his image of humans. Humans,
like everything else, are bodies perceivable to the senses – “this concrete body,
nothing else”. While every human is he himself (nafs), a person, this individual-
ity is not something that is added to him, but only refers to the same “himself”.
As an individual he is a combination of body-and-soul, not possessed of a soul
(rūḥ) in the sense that it could be separated from the body, let alone survive
after the body’s death.26 Thus to Aṣamm it certainly was not immortal, but the
breath of life that pulsates through the “unified being” or “unified substance”
we call a human.27 Nor was there a separate faculty of action innate in humans,
that they might employ to act or that God – as the determinists believed – cre-
ated within them at the very moment of action.28 God could not create such a
thing; given the ontological concepts it was unimaginable.29 Aṣamm presum-
ably saw this as the guarantee of human freedom: the faculty of action is iden-
tical with the person, and God knows of the actions only once they are being
performed. Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir may have perceived that the same model
could be employed as justification of determinism.
School tradition tended to regard Abū l-Hudhayl as the one who smashed
Aṣamm’s position, due to the fact that he, too, came from Basra. He knew
Aṣamm but did not esteem him, calling him the “donkey driver” in an allusion
to his lowly origins, using a Persian word30 to render it even more stinging.
Which makes it all the more surprising that in the two extant anecdotes Abū
l-Hudhayl is not debating with Aṣamm himself, but with one of his followers
23 Catalogue of Works no. 8. Might this text have discussed the older authorities of the
Ibāḍite community of whose about-turn to a belief in predestination he disapproved?
24 Catalogue of Works no. 10–11.
25 Ibid., no. 9 and refutations a.
26 Text 5.
27 Text 6. In this text the existence of the soul is explicitly denied – an exaggeration in the
sense of Text 1, e. I do not think it is entirely certain that Aṣamm himself used the term
jawhar “substance”.
28 Text 2.
29 Text 4.
30 kharbān (Malaṭī, Tanbīh 31, 14/39, 8; also Mufīd in Text 28, where the word has been cor-
rupted to j.ryāl). Did Abū Muslim have this nickname, too? kharbān might be behind the
so far unexplained incorrectly written word in Masʿūdī VI 58, pu. f./IV 77, pu. f.
456 chapter 2
whom he met in ʿArafāt.31 Maybe he never dared approach the master. Unlike
Bishr he never wrote directly against him, either, but he wrote a K. tathbīt al-
aʿrāḍ32 which may have been the source of those arguments. They are indeed
directed against the ontological model. Abū l-Hudhayl asked his interlocutor
why he was hoping for reward for prostrating himself here in ʿArafāt, as the re-
ward was not for the face that touched the ground, nor for the dust in which he
prostrated himself, and least of all for the air between the face and the ground,
but only for the act of prostration itself. Which is nothing – being, as we must
add, an attribute. Or: in Aṣamm’s view, flogging was nothing more than the
hand of the executioner and the back of the person being flogged; it was lim-
ited to its physical components. Now fornication was punished with a hundred
lashes, and slander with eighty. As the flogging, being an attribute, is nothing,
this results in one nothing being twenty more than another nothing. This was
directed at faithful minds who had only the barest idea of Aṣamm’s teachings;
Aṣamm himself would certainly not have been impressed. He showed that
“movement”, the classic instance of change, was the core of the problem in
his view by composing a separate book on the subject. Hishām al-Fuwaṭī, who
based some of his own ideas on Aṣamm’s,33 criticised this book in particular.34
That the two anecdotes are exemplary in character is illustrated by the

second one, which was even more memorable than the first, being attrib-
uted differently in tradition. While Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār narrated it in the
third person, a – presumably secondary – parallel in Sharīf al-Murtaḍā
(Amālī I 180, apu. ff.) has it narrated by Abū l-Hudhayl himself, who
vaguely refers to his opposite as someone “who rejected the movement”.
Of course people wanted to know who this might have been, which is
probably why the Zaydite imam al-Nāṣir named him as Ḥafṣ al-Fard (p.
97, 18ff.), choosing someone who was known to have in fact argued with
Abū l-Hudhayl (see p. 817 below), but who had nothing to do with this
context. Other texts named Aṣamm himself as the opponent (e.g. Ḥākim
al-Jushamī, Al-risāla fī naṣīḥat al-ʿāmma, fol. 39a, apu. ff., and Nazwānī,
Al-jawhar al-muqtaṣir 55, –6ff.). Nazwānī claimed to have found the story
in one of Abū l-Hudhayl’s books. – Dāwūd al-Muqammiṣ had already
pointed out that the sensation of pain is the reductio ad absurdum of
denying the attributes (ʿIshrūn maqāla III 11 = p. 80 Stroumsa).
31 Faḍl 262, apu. ff. (where the correct reading is probably ṣāḥibanlil-Aṣamm rather than
ṣāḥib al-Aṣamm).
32 Catalogue of Works XXI, no. 42.
34 Catalogue of Works no. 18 and refutation b.
iraq 457
2.2.8.4.1.2 Aṣamm’s Quranic Commentary

Of course, the issue of free will and the faculty of action always had an ex-
egetical aspect, too, although by that time it had been raised onto a theoreti-
cal level. It was this exegetical aspect which Aṣamm discussed in his Quranic
commentary, as we can infer from his comment on sura 2:8 where he, following
established Qadarite tradition, understood the “sealing” of the human heart as
the corollary of human unbelief, thus exculpating God. Indeed, going even fur-
ther, he appears to leave God out of the argument even as the instigator of this
“sealing”; if unbelief holds sway in people’s hearts, it is as if they were sealed.
To him, the expression was only a metaphor.1
Aṣamm’s Tafsīr is sure to have contained a number of such theologically
relevant remarks,2 but extant fragments show that the work also contained
historical explanation3 and explored philological issues.4 Aṣamm was consid-
ered to be a knowledgeable linguist.5 We know that he had an understanding
of poetry,6 permitting himself critical assessments of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ7 and
Muḥammad b. Jahm al-Barmakī.8 After Qatāda and ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd he and
ʿAmr b. Fāʾid al-Uswārī9 were the first to devote themselves to exegesis on a
larger scale. All the same, Naẓẓām grouped him together with ʿIkrima, Kalbī,
Suddī, Ḍaḥḥāk, and Muqātil b. Sulaymān, clearly regarding him as the repre-
sentative of an earlier age and an outdated method: like them, he interpreted
scripture arbitrarily; the more colourful, the better.10
This verdict is remarkable in that Naẓẓām did not point out with even a
single word that Aṣamm was the only Muʿtazilite in this line-up, showing no
1 Text 17. Cf. also Text 18, b, where Aṣamm clarifies that according to sura 2:17 God takes
away the light of the munāfiqūn in the otherworld as they have already extinguished the
light within them.
2 Regarding an anthropomorphist interpretation cf. e.g. Ṭabrisī, Majmaʿ I 58, 8, with refer-
ence to sura 2:19.
3 Cf. e.g. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-ghayb IX 87, –11ff. regarding sura 3:168, or 97, apu.
ff. regarding sura 3:172. Quite interesting also Ṭabrisī IV 5, –9: the ancestors removed their
shoes during ṭawāf.
4 Rāzī VII 199, 4f., and 211, –9f. regarding sura 3:11 and 14; VIII 208, 9f. regarding sura 3:117;
also Text 20, b.
5 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 267, –6 > IM 56, 18; cf. also the aphorism in Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 80, 1f.
6 At least if the ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Kaysān quoted in Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān IV 203, 6ff. was the
same person. In that case Jāḥiẓ met him in person. The verse quoted appears to be his
own, as suggested by the context. Cf. Goldziher in: Der Islam 6/1916/174, n. 2.
7 Jāḥiẓ, Dhamm akhlāq al-kuttāb, in: Thalāth rasāʾil, ed. Finkel 44 = Rasāʾil II 195, 7ff.
8 Jāḥiẓ, Risāla fī dhamm akhlāq Muḥammad b. al-Jahm, in: Al-kātib al-Miṣrī 5/1947/58, pu.
ff.; cf. also ch. C 3.1 below.
9 Regarding them see p. 162f., 339f. and 94f. above.
10 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān I 343, 5ff.; transl. Goldziher, Koranauslegung 111f.
458 chapter 2
trace of school solidarity. Jubbāʾī, too would later say that Aṣamm would have
been better advised to remain silent on theological matters in his Tafsīr, limit-
ing himself to linguistic and juristic questions. But then Aṣamm was the only
authority Jubbāʾī quoted at all – presumably concerning linguistic and juristic
questions in particular.11 The text survived in Iran, where Jubbāʾī composed his
Tafsīr as well. Māturīdī consulted it for his Taʾwīlāt ahl al-sunna,12 Thaʿlabī (d.
427/1038) a century later for his Kashf wal-bayān,13 then the Muʿtazilite Abū
Yūsuf al-Qazwīnī (d. 488/1095),14 and above all the Zaydite Ḥākim al-Jushamī
(d. 484/1091). The last-named quoted him on nearly every page, usually, how-
ever, together with other authorities from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī to Jubbāʾī and Abū
Muslim al-Iṣfahānī; consequently a direct reconstruction of the work would be
difficult.15 The line was continued by Abū l-Futūḥ al-Rāzī (first half of the sixth/
twelfth century),16 his contemporary Ṭabrisī17 and finally by Abū l-Futūḥ’s fa-
mous compatriot Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī,18 although they did not all go back to
the original. Compared to Ḥākim al-Jushamī they mention Aṣamm only spo-
radically. It remains to be examined whether Ṭabarī, although he did not quote
Aṣamm anywhere, was in fact familiar with his work.19 It is noticeable that nei-
ther Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s K. mutashābih al-Qurʾān nor Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī’s
Tibyān refer to him at all.
11 Faḍl 268, 1ff. > IM 57, 6f. Unfortunately the passage was badly transmitted in Qāḍī ʿAbd
al-Jabbār’s text, and furthermore not entirely clear as to its content. I interpret it in the
same way as Ibn al-Murtaḍā (even though he left out the illegible passage). In her disser-
tation on Jubbāʾī’s Tafsīr R. Gwynne interpreted it differently, that Jubbāʾī quoted Aṣamm
only once, with regard to sura 4:54 (p. 37). This does not seem to be to me philologically
tenable, although it is true that Jubbāʾī did not refer much to earlier exegetic works in gen-
eral, which is confirmed by the extensive excerpts in Ibn Ṭāwūs, Saʿd al-suʿūd 142, pu.–183,
18 (which Gwynne does not take into account).
12 Cf. Text 19–20.
13 GAS 1/615. The riwāya cited by Thaʿlabī in the introduction to his work is Iranian but not
Muʿtazilite (ed. Goldfeld 49, 4ff.) It leads from Aṣamm via his pupils (aṣḥāb) who are not
named.
14 Cf. Madelung in: EIran I 399a.
15 I am basing my assessment on the MS Ambrosiana B 44 which contains the fourth volume
of the work, and on the textual witnesses preserved in Ṣanʿāʾ. Jushamī quotes Aṣamm in
the context of maʿnā every time, not under lugha or iʿrāb. Cf. also Zarzūr, Jushamī 131.
16 Cf. Massé, Mélanges W. Marçais 245, n. 1. Regarding him see McDermott in EIran I 292.
17 Cf. Text 17; also Ḥusayn Karīmān, Ṭabrisī va Majmaʿ ul-bayān II 117.
18 Cf. for the time being Text 21 and 23; also the list by Jomier in: MIDEO 15/1982/152f.
19 He draws the same conclusion as Aṣamm from e.g. sura 2:32 (cf. Text 19 and Ṭabarī I 494,
pu. f.). The theory is contradicted by the data in Text 20 (cf. the commentary); and Ṭabarī
does not consider the remarkable interpretation of sura 2:17 (in Text 18) at all.
iraq 459
Ṭabarī as well as Ṭūsī recognised Aṣamm as a legal scholar (see p. 473 and
472, n. 21, below). – I have established in WO 10/1979/54f. that MS Istanbul,
Kılıç Ali 53/8 does not, as Brockelmann stated (GAL S 2/984 no. 7), con-
tain the Tafsīr of our Aṣamm, but rather a text by an author from the
tenth/sixteenth century.
The time is not ready for a final verdict. So far we can base our conclusions
on a few fragments collected rather randomly, although we may, as long as we
apply the necessary prudence, ask the question of what it was in this text that
impressed later authors particularly – if they did not, as Ḥākim al-Jushamī
did, analyse the entire commentary. To begin with, there was Aṣamm’s com-
prehensive style of exegesis, uncovering the meaning of longer self-contained
passages,20 which was not at all a matter of course at the time. Aṣamm ap-
proached the Quran argumentatively, collecting the reasons that led him to
a particular interpretation or a general theological conclusion. He appears to
have looked to Quranic theology more firmly than other authors, as we can see
e.g. in the way in which he refuted Satan’s being an angel. While he did base his
arguments on Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, he went his own way with his statement that the
angels – as opposed to the jinn – were created from light.21
He pursued this entire subject further. Angels can sin, and occasionally do,
as we know from Hārūt and Mārūt (sura 2:102). Only as long as they have not
lapsed into sin are they superordinate to the prophets.22 Like most of his con-
temporaries Aṣamm believed in the prophets being free from sin,23 and may
have laid this down in his “Brief text on the prophets”.24 At least one extant pas-
sage of the Tafsīr belongs in this context as well. Aṣamm found corroboration
of Muḥammad’s miraculous gift in the Quran, a gift of expressing things that
could not be grasped rationally. Thus e.g. when he said at the beginning of the
fourth sura that God created all humans out of one being: it is not possible to
understand by intellect only that Adam was the ancestor of all humans as there
are far too many.25 Consequently if the prophet, illiterate (ummī) and untaught
20 Thus e.g. in Text 18.

21 Cf. Text 20 with commentary. Among Kufan Shīʿites, too, the majority appear to have
agreed with Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (Biḥār LXIII 262 no, 132; also 286, 1ff.). Regarding the issue cf.
Ashʿarī, Maq. 441, 11ff., and ch. D 2.2.2 below.
22 Text 22. Thus he differed from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī with regard to Hārūt and Mārūt (see p. 52
above).
23 Text 23.
25 Text 21, a and e.
460 chapter 2
as he was, proclaimed this inspired by divine enlightenment, he expressed a

“hidden secret” (ghayb).26 The same train of thought was evolved at the same
time, but using different examples, by the secretary Abū Rabīʿ Muḥammad
b. al-Layth, when he wrote to the basileus Constantine VI at the beginning
of Hārūn’s caliphate, a quarter of a century before Aṣamm’s death.27 Naẓẓām
would later adopt this.28 It is also interesting that Aṣamm introduced a kalām
device into his Tafsīr at this point, letting the opponents speak for themselves.29
The final memorable passages were those in which Aṣamm focussed on
general questions of the structure of the text. Firstly there was the problem of
abrogation. In the crucial verse 2:106 Aṣamm understood nansakh to mean “to
cancel” while retaining the words – naskh al-ḥukm dūna l-tilāwa, as it would be
described later –, nunsikha on the other hand as meaning a complete deletion,
naskh al-ḥukm wal-tilāwa. It seemed to be understood that an abrogated verse
was not necessarily replaced with another.30 In this interpretation Aṣamm did
not really say anything new, following, as before, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s ideas.31 In
Mecca, among Mujāhid’s circle, people were convinced that God had to pro-
vide a replacement every time;32 Ṭabarī, too, followed this view.33
Aṣamm was rather more original in the second controversial issue with which
tradition presented him: the delimitation of muḥkamāt and mutashābihāt in
sura 3:7. He did not believe in mysteries; even “ambiguous” passages in the
revelation can ultimately be grasped using reason, they just require longer
thought. This corresponded to his ontology, where everything can be grasped
with the senses, too. Even so, his understanding of the Quran was that of a legal
scholar: God argued against those of different faiths. Proof against which the
opponents have no recourse is muḥkam: when God confronts the ahl al-kitāb
with something from their own scripture, which they can read there, or when
he speaks to the heathen by reason of existential and natural circumstances.34
26 Ibid., b–c.

28 See ch. C 3.2.2.2.4.2.2.2 below.
29 Ibid., e. I am assuming that Text 21 goes back to Aṣamm in its entirety and was not dis-
torted by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. This is not necessarily certain.
30 Rāzī, Mafātīḥ III 230, ult. ff.
31 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr 3II 472 no. 1745, and 474 no. 1754.
32 Ibid. 473 no. 1748ff.
33 Ibid. 471, pu. ff. Regarding Ṭabarī’s abrogation theory cf. C. Gilliot, Aspects de l’imaginaire
islamique commun dans le commentaire de Ṭabarī (PhD Paris 1987), p. 428ff.
34 Compare Text 15, a–d, and Text 16, a–b. It seems not to have mattered to him that one of
the verses he quoted on the subject contained a hapax legomenon the meaning of which
must be guessed (abb in sura 80:31). After all, it did not affect the meaning of the verse as
a whole.
iraq 461
Mutashābih, on the other hand, are statements regarding future things: the res-
urrection, the Day of Judgment, and also passages that do not fit smoothly into
the composition, such as the abrogated or “forgotten”, i.e. omitted verses. In
these instances the heathen, to whom no scripture has spoken of these things,
may evade and, as we know from the Quran, ironically request proof of the
truth. Which can, indeed, be provided, but it requires more reflection and es-
pecially an open mind. The heathen are only ignorant because they are “bent
on strife”, which is why they are punished.35 This rationalistic interpretation,
which really only left the question of why God attached so much importance
to this distinction, was embraced as late as a century later by Zajjāj (d. 311/923)
in his Maʿānī al-Qurʾān.36 There is nothing directly corresponding in Ṭabarī,37
who did not cite Ḥasan al-Baṣrī in this context, either.
2.2.8.4.1.3 The Consensus of Muslims

Besides revelation and reason there was a third criterion for Aṣamm: the con-
sensus of Muslims, of the ahl al-ṣalāt or ahl al-milla, as he seems to have said
with an almost Ibāḍite dread of using the word muslimūn.1 His expectations
of prophetic tradition were low: hadiths were frequently not very well docu-
mented and consequently carried too little weight.2 Even if among a hundred
hadiths collected by someone only one were unreliable, his verdict would have
to be suspended until he knew which one it was and could delete it.3 Which
leads us to ask why Aṣamm, if he had such strict standards, put more faith in
consensus as that, too, could have been at risk of individual Muslims judging
under someone else’s influence, or simply telling an untruth. The difference
was probably that a consensus took place among contemporaries and could
thus be verified at any time. In addition, being a Muʿtazilite Aṣamm, like Ḍirār
b. ʿAmr, was not well-disposed towards the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth, and was in turn
treated quite roughly by e.g. Yazīd b. Hārūn. The defining force of the consen-
sus may have been familiar to him from the jamāʿat al muslimīn in the Ibāḍite
community.
He relied on consensus not only in legal decisions, but also in theological
issues and in his political theory. It is due only to consensus that we know that
a Muslim who is a grave sinner cannot enter paradise, as all Muslims agree that
35 Text 15, e–h, and 16, c.

36 Cf. Wansbrough, Quranic Studies 150.
37 Cf. the range of opinions Tafsīr VI 169ff.; the closest is 178, 1ff.
1 Cf. Text 12 and 10, b.

2 Text 41.
3 Text 43. Cf. Turki, Polémiques 100f.
462 chapter 2
a grave sinner may be vilified with impunity. This is in fact only permitted in
the case of an “enemy of God”, and every “enemy of God” will go to hell.4 The
train of thought is noticeable, not to say remarkable. It appears very techni-
cal and accords such influence to the verdict of the community that one is
once again inclined to think of an Ibāḍite legacy. The Quranic verses which
were usually adduced to determine hell as a punishment for Muslims did not
convince Aṣamm; he said explicitly that neither the revelation (tanzīl) nor the
exegesis (taʾwīl) led to an unambiguous conclusion. Even so the impression re-
mains that Aṣamm put the cart before the horse. Would it not have been better
for him to say that people ought to stop vilifying Muslims?
Things become slightly clearer when we learn that Aṣamm could not find
it in himself to strip a grave sinner of his status as a believer. Consequently he
could not refer to the relevant Quranic verses, as they do not refer to believ-
ers, but to kāfirūn and munāfiqūn; also they are not universally applicable as
every Muslim can repent, and so go to paradise.5 Still, punishment in hell for
unrepentant sinners mattered very much to him, as after all God revealed his
commandments in order for humans to earn the afterlife.6 While the correla-
tion between these thoughts is still not quite clear,7 there is no doubt at all
that Aṣamm did not really fit into any of the existing categories. He disagreed
with the Ibāḍites as he refused to call a Muslim sinner a kāfir; he rejected the
Muʿtazilite manzila bayna l-manzilatayn; he did not even follow Ḥasan al-
Baṣrī’s precepts: a Muslim’s profession of God’s oneness and the good deeds
he performs are so powerful that he does not deserve the designation “hypo-
crite” either.8 While someone who has committed a grave sin is indeed a fāsiq,
a fāsiq still remains muʾmin. Ibn Ḥazm even thought that in Aṣamm’s view all
Muslims, being believers, would eventually enter paradise;9 sinners, being “en-
emies of God” would be sent to hell, but not for eternity. Still, the statement
does not sound entirely reliable as Ibn Ḥazm is generalising very much. It is no-
ticeable that only Basran Murjiʾites like Abū Shamir linked fisq and īmān;10 on
4 Text 12.
5 Thus according to Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Al-baḥr al-zakhkhār I 80, –4f.
6 Hinted at by Ibn Mattōya (Muḥīṭ II 389, 7 and earlier) as being Aṣamm’s doctrine.
7 Did Aṣamm believe that the heathen cannot repent? This would be most unusual in a
Muʿtazilite. Or did he think that the heathen can repent of their transgressions while
remaining heathen?
8 Text 10–11.
9 Text II 34.
iraq 463
the other hand, in a different context Aṣamm is quoted as having threatened

sinners – and even the companions of the prophet among them – with dam-
nation and eternal fire.11
Things would look different if Aṣamm had believed hell to be transient,

as we know some Jahmites did (see p. 568f. below). But we only learn that
like his teacher (sic!) Hishām al-Fuwaṭī he believed paradise and hell not
to have been created as yet, and even this is insufficiently documented,
as it is reported only in Ṣafadī’s Wāfī (X 270, 15) and may have been a
generalising interpretation of Shahrastānī’s ideas, on whom Ṣafadī relied
throughout (cf. Shahrastānī 51, 8f./110, 6f.).
2.2.8.4.1.3.1 Consensus and Political Theory

It was on the field of political theory that the idea of consensus had the most
far-reaching consequences. Aṣamm considered the ruler to have been lawfully
chosen only if all Muslims recognised him.1 In that case the consensus would
be binding forever and could not be revoked if people believed to have found
a better man. Of course the majority should be as great as possible if it was
to guarantee that the best candidate was chosen, maybe even from beyond
the Quraysh, among non-Arabs and clients, if Jāḥiẓ is to be believed.2 Humans
change, as do the criteria, and if a decision could be questioned every time,
one would “depose a ruler every day, and appoint another one”.3 There was no
room for revolution in this model. Aṣamm refuted those always ready to take
up arms in a separate treatise,4 restricting even the Muʿtazilite commandment
of amr bil-maʿrūf to heart and tongue. Interpreted strictly, duty only requires
fulfilling the commandment with one’s heart. It is commendable to speak up
with words, but use of weapons is only for the authorities.5
11 Text 28, f.
1 Text 24.
2 In his Jawābāt fī l-imāma, where he probably summarised Aṣamm’s and his followers’
doctrine (Rasāʾil IV 285, 11). The definitely attributed extant reviews do not discuss this
detail.
3 Text 26, a–c.
5 Text 13–14, probably after K. al-amr bil-maʿrūf wal-nahy ʿan al-munkar (Catalogue of
Works no. 12).
464 chapter 2
Aṣamm did, however, admit that one might draw one’s sword against “vio-
lent persons” (ahl al-baghy) as long as one agreed on a “just” leader.6 He prob-
ably based this opinion on sura 49:9, where the phrase ahl al-baghy is used in
a similar context, but the question remains who he thought this applied to.
Presumably less a tyrannical ruler and more his unrestrained followers, maybe
tax collectors, land owners, governors, but in particular anti-government ele-
ments disturbing the rule of law, i.e. rebels.6a It is unlikely that the assumption
was for the ahl al-baghy to be working for the ruler; the Islamic Empire was far
too vast for him to have his eyes everywhere.
This last experience led Aṣamm to allowing the Muslims the right to gather
under several princes. “In times like these”, he said, “it is sensible to spread over
(several) rulers, as one ruler on his own cannot keep (all humans) under con-
trol, and he will not get all their votes; nor can he know all the excellent men
in every country and in every town in order to invite them to his entourage and
ask for their advice and assistance.”7 Aṣamm tried to rescue the ideal of the
shūrā for his time, but realised that the vast distances had made it impossible.
“Visitations are a heavy burden on the inhabitants of distant cities and remote
provinces (the ruler wishes to consult)”;8 the journeys involved were simply
too long. In this situation Aṣamm advocated decentralisation.
This doctrine could easily be misunderstood; Aṣamm never put it in wri-
ting, only speaking of it in a small circle of his pupils9 and doing everything
possible to mitigate it. Individual princes must “assist one another in integrity
and fear of God”,10 and of course the people were always free to agree on one
single ruler, as was the case in such exemplary fashion in early Islam.11 Still,
decentralisation happened even in the early days, as the prophet appointed
governors in the lands that had converted to Islam, who were entitled to dis-
pose freely, and after his death it was the population who decided who looked
after its affairs. Central power had not really been established at that time.12
Historically, Aṣamm was correct: Southern Arabia, on which he was likely to
6 Text 31.
6a The latter are probably referred to in the deliberations Fiqh absaṭ contains on the subject
(p. 48, 2ff., and earlier 44, 10ff., where the association is with the Khārijites); cf. also Lewis,
Political Language 81f.
7 Text 34, h–i, l.
8 Ibid., k.
9 Ibid., a.
10 Ibid., c.
11 Ibid., b and f.
12 Ibid., d–e.
iraq 465
have focussed, had been divided into ten administrative districts until the
Ridda.13
Thus the consensus determines not only who the ruler should be, but also,
up to a point, the type of government. Aṣamm went one step further in this
matter, not only questioning monarchy but actually believing it to be expend-
able. If the Muslims “treated one another fairly and did not wrong one another”
they would not need a ruler.14 They only needed to know the scripture – and
abide by it, of course.15 The consensus would then automatically support the
community. This aspect has been emphasised by the doxographers again and
again, as it fitted so beautifully into a systematic paradigm exemplifying the
extreme left – but, as we have seen, a law-abiding left.
This gives rise to the question of whether Aṣamm’s “unwritten doctrine” for
all its alleged esotericism did not in fact inspire the authorities. It is noticeable
that it was during his lifetime that Hārūn al-Rashīd divided the realm between
his sons, proving that decentralisation was more than mere theory. Aṣamm’s
doctrine would not have remained secret in any case: his pupils spread it so
diligently that Jāḥiẓ was able to describe it in great detail.16 Still, one would
hope that if he was indeed working for the caliph, he would have composed
a memorandum – but the tradition rules this out. His K. al-imāma mentioned
by Ibn al-Nadīm seems to have had different subject matter,17 but it is pos-
sible that he saw the division of the empire as an instance. Still, he would have
found before his death that the model had failed, in which case one might
wonder why his pupils still stood by it.
Goldziher, on the other hand, considered a connection with a Greek text.
He believed to have found the idea that the ideal community does not need a
ruler in a letter from Aristotle to Alexander concerning the art of government
(Risālat Arisṭūṭālīs ilā l-Iskandar fī l-siyāsa).18 The text was probably accessible
during Aṣamm’s lifetime; recently there have been more voices suggesting that
the Arabic translation dates from Hishām’s era and was produced in Sālim Abū
13 Stookey, Yemen 29. One probably ought to speak of tax collectors rather than administra-
tors or governors; regarding circumstances in general cf. Shoufany, Al-Riddah 77ff.
14 Text 33.
15 Text 32. Cf. also Laoust, Politique de Ġazālī 231.
16 Rasāʾil IV 285ff.; cf. Pellat in: SI 15/1961/38f. Despite its detail the summary is not very pre-
cise; in particular it is impossible to say where it ends. Furthermore, it is only a fragment;
the context in Jāḥiẓ’ text does not survive.
17 Catalogue of Works no. 14. More information p. 467f. below.
18 Der Islam 6/1916/176f.
466 chapter 2
l-ʿAlāʾ’s chancellery.19 Even if we believe Ibn al-Biṭrīq, who also translated the
K. sirr al-asrār, which discussed similar subjects, into Arabic, to have been its
translator,20 Aṣamm (although he did not live in Baghdad where the transla-
tors were active) could have known of it. The difficulty is in the subject matter:
there are few similarities. Ἀλέξανδρος ἢ ὑπὲρ ἀποίκων21 merely says that a ruler
is needed in times of war only; furthermore this suggestion, as one would ex-
pect in a letter addressed to Alexander, is rejected.22
Goldziher in his day used the edition by J. Lippert, Halle 1891 (with a
Latin translation); another edition was produced by Cheikho in: Mashriq
10/1907/311ff. Regarding the research history cf. Bielawski–Plezia 6ff. The
Greek original is not extant, but Bielawski and Plezia believe the text to
be genuine. More in detail K. von Fritz in: Gnomon 44/1972/442ff., and
G. A. Košelenko, Aristotel’ i Aleksandir, in: Vestnik drevnej istorii 1974,
Issue 1, p. 22ff.; Grignaschi in: BEO 19/1965–6/14; Manzalaoui in: Oriens
23–24/1974/202; especially detailed P. Carlier, Etude sur la prétendue
lettre d’Aristote à Alexandre transmise par plusieurs manuscrits arabes, in:
Ktema 5/1980/277ff.; also R. Weil in: Festschrift Moraux 485ff.
The Greeks were probably not necessary in order to relativise the necessity of
the caliphate. In the case of a Basran like Aṣamm, Ibāḍite influence is more
probable, as the Ibāḍiyya had always believed that the ideal community would
be a community of the just who govern themselves; to them, this was not even
utopian.23 They had had to practise polycentric organisation from the first,
even living under two imams in the same place in Tripoli in 131, a case that be-
cause of its tragic development led to discussions in Iraq that also influenced
the Muʿtazila.24 Aṣamm, too, would have heard of this, but his doctrine appears
original due to its self-contained nature.
19 Thus Grignaschi in: Muséon 80/1967/223ff.; adopted by Bielawski and Plezia who under-
took the definitive edition of the text: Lettre d’Aristote à Alexandre sur la politique envers
les cités. Texte arabe . . . J. Bielawski, commentaire . . . M. Plezia (Breslau/Warsaw/Cracow
1970), p. 16.
20 Cf. Peters, Aristoteles Arabus 67.
21 Thus according to Plezia’s identification. Previously the relevant text was believed to be
Περὶ βασιλείας.
22 § 2 Bielawski; cf. the commentary p. 82f.
23 Similar also among the Najdiyya in the Hijaz (Ashʿarī, Maq. 125, 11f. after Zurqān).
24 In more detail in ch. C 1.3.1.6 below.
iraq 467
The diarchic model would later be considered by Fārābī; ʿĀmirī contra-

dicted him in this matter. But Fārābī was thinking of the coexistence of
prophetic and secular authorities in the same place (Walzer, Al-Farabi on
the Perfect State 449). Regarding the subject in general cf. M. Hamidullah,
Règne conjoint. La théorie et la pratique islamiques, in: RSO 28/1953/99ff.
It is most significant that Aṣamm only found himself in the line of fire of criti-
cism once he applied his theory to the past. There was much more sensitivity
regarding the past than concerning possible models for the present. Aṣamm
acquired the reputation of wishing ʿAlī ill. Even the Muʿtazilites thought he
had gone too far, especially in the debate with Hishām b. al-Ḥakam – which
may not have taken place at all.25 Ibn al-Nadīm believed that he was excluded
from the ranks of the “true” Muʿtazilites because of it,26 an image probably
due to Bishr al Muʿtamir who refuted Aṣamm’s K. al-imāma.27 But then Bishr
himself had Shīʿite tendencies.28 Later, Imāmites like Faḍl b. Shādhān and the
Shaykh al-Mufīd took the same line.29 They were only partially correct; basi-
cally, Aṣamm was simply applying his theory of the consensus.
He was probably aware that consensus had been implicit rather than explic-
it under the first two caliphs; in their case it was clear that they each had been
the best candidate for the position of ruler. An explicit consensus only emerged
when ʿUmar appointed an electoral commission upon his death, immediately
proving that this procedure does not always result in the best man being ap-
pointed. The most excellent candidate would have been ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b.
ʿAwf, who proved this by declining the office. He suggested ʿUthmān, and after
him, ʿUthmān was indeed the best man. As soon as everybody had agreed on
him, the rule was immediately his by right.30
In ʿAlī’s case, things had been different. The community had not agreed on
him; he had not been appointed by an orderly electoral commission, and he
immediately met with opposition from competitors. While he did overcome
them, “leadership is not won by the sword”.31 This was particularly true of his
25 We have no more detailed information concerning it; it may have been extrapolated from
his K. al-Jāmiʿ ʿalā l-Rāfiḍa (Catalogue of Works no. 20). He argued with Hishām on the
question of tashbīh (ibid. no. 3).
26 Akhrajathū l-Muʿtazila min jumlat al-mukhliṣīn (Fihrist 214, 10f.). Also Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār,
Faḍl 267, –4ff. > IM 57, 1f.
27 Catalogue of Works no. 14 and Refutations a.
28 See ch. C 1.4.3.1.1.4 below.
29 Catalogue of Works, Refutations c–d.
30 Text 26, d–g.
31 Ibid., h–k; also 25, a.
468 chapter 2
participation in the uprising against ʿUthmān. On the other hand Aṣamm was
not going to claim that his rivals Ṭalḥa and Zubayr were right, either. On the
whole they appeared in a more favourable light – presumably because they
did not usurp the power but only fought usurpation, maybe also because they
hoped to avenge ʿUthmān, but as leadership is not won by the sword, every-
thing depended on their intention. If their ultimate objective was to enable
free elections, they were doing the right thing; if, on the other hand, they were
pursuing their own interests, they deserved “condemnation and eternal pains
of hell”.32 Of course we do not know their true intention as the partisan strife
obscured everything; consequently we must abstain from judging. This in turn
exculpated ʿAlī to a certain degree; his intention in marching against them
might well have been merely to end the civil war quickly, at the same time
preventing them from seizing power unjustly.33 Nawbakhtī’s conclusion was
presumably correct: that after all only those who retained their neutrality in
this quarrel remained unchallengend at the end; “they did not want anything
to do with this war and left matters to God”, like Aṣamm himself did.34
His prejudice against ʿAlī was noticeable only where the Ibāḍites, to whom
he may have been close, were most engaged: the arbitration tribunal of Ṣiffīn.
This could have been interpreted as proof that ʿAlī left the decision to the com-
munity, but Aṣamm once again put the emphasis on the intention: we do not
know whether ʿAlī was not trying to seize power. Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī was cer-
tainly in the right when he ousted him, as this was the only way in which the
community was able to gather under one single ruler in accordance with its
own consensus.35
Like Ṭalḥa and Zubayr, Muʿāwiya had once again more arguments in his fa-
vour. Of course he, too, would have been in the wrong if he had waged war on
ʿAlī merely for selfish reasons, and we do not know whether he really turned
against him only “for people to leave one another in peace and finally agree on
one ruler”,36 but he had after all been appointed governor of Syria lawfully by
ʿUmar, and confirmed in this office by ʿUthmān. After ʿUthmān’s murder “his
duty was to hand Syria to none but a ruler on whom the people had agreed” as
they had on the two predecessors, and if someone like ʿAlī, who had not carried
the vote, tried to “take it from him by force, his duty was to wage war on him”.37
32 Text 28, e–f, i.

33 Ibid., a–d, g–h; 29, a–b.
34 Text 30.
35 Text 27.
36 Text 29, c–d.
37 Text 26, l–n.
iraq 469
Once he became caliph everything was well once more, as the Muslims had
agreed on him after ʿAlī’s death.38 While this may be a very technical train of
thought, it is entirely consistent.
I see no reason to call Aṣamm’s views “incongruous”, as Madelung did

(Qāsim 42) – albeit before the significant unique materials in Pseudo-
Nāshiʾ became known. Aṣamm most certainly was no friend of the
Shīʿites, but his views clearly follow the wake of the Basran ʿUthmāniyya.
Iskāfī consequently called him an ʿUthmānite in his refutation of Jāḥiẓ’
K. al-ʿUthmāniyya (p. 305, 7). The question remains who the Muʿtazilites
were who excluded him, as this is difficult to imagine in Basra. Maybe Ibn
al-Nadīm was thinking of the Baghdad group around Bishr b. al Muʿtamir,
who were Zaydites. Aṣamm did not simply rail randomly, as illustrated
by the way in which he narrated the story of ʿAlī resting on the prophet’s
bed. He did not doubt the trust that existed between the two, regarding
it as proof of ʿAlī’s heroism (cf. Jāḥiẓ, ibid. 44, ult. f. and 327, 7). It can
consequently not be ruled out that he is the Abū Bakr Muḥammad b.
Kaysān al-Aṣamm who, according to TB XII 315, 9f., transmitted a dictum
by Ḥasan b. ʿAlī.
2.2.8.4.1.4 Aṣamm the Lawyer

On the field of jurisprudence, where the concept of consensus found its home,
Aṣamm thought just as independently as he did as a theologian and politi-
cal theorist; and while we do not even know whether he ever used the term
ijmāʿ, it does seem probable. The only summary we have avoids the term, but
it seems that it is not referring to the precise concept known subsequently, but
that the earlier train of thought covered a wider scope. If a sufficient number of
Muslims agree, they can enact laws, it says;1 an idea presumably based on the
“grassroots democracy” model we have seen: the community has legislative au-
thority and does not require a ruler. It certainly was not intended to be as radi-
cal as it sounds, as of course the community, too, would make decisions based
on the Quran; and rulers having no influence on divine commandments would
of course later become a fundamental train of Islamic thought. Still, this stage
of the development had not been reached and shortly after Aṣamm’s death
Maʾmūn would emphasise the ruler’s prerogative most firmly. We are prob-
ably also well advised to proceed with caution in the assumption that when
38 Text 25, b.
1 Text 35.
470 chapter 2
he said “community” Aṣamm meant the ʿulamāʾ; the latter would only come
into their own once hadith became a source of law besides the Quran. What is
still discernible is what M. Bravmann discovered to be the origin of ijmāʿ: the
formal consensus of the tribal gathering.2 Still, juristic competence could not
really be overlooked in legal matters; the early Ibāḍiyya already believed that
an argument (ḥujja) would be recognised as necessary and correct by means
of consensus among those competent to judge.3 Aṣamm’s definition of the
sufficient number agrees with Wāṣil’s: the number must be so great that it is
impossible for people to agree secretly on a lie.4
He was known to follow the Basran tradition: Masʿūdī drew a line from
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, ʿUbaydallāh al-ʿAnbarī, ʿUthmān al-Battī through him and on
to Ibn Abī Duwād.5 Aṣamm, however, rejected ʿAnbarī’s hypothesis according
to which every mujtahid was right,6 as he believed to hold an absolute crite-
rion of truth that was rational insight, rather than consensus. He did not yet
restrict this to the conclusion by analogy, and he did not distinguish between
jurisprudence and theology. There is proof of every truth, proof so unmistake-
able that one could entertain no doubt of having found the truth.7 Those who
miss the proof are by no means excused, although not all fallacies are equally
grave. In fundamental matters of faith, the image of God or the recognition
of Muḥammad, unbelief will be the result; in less weighty matters such as the
visio beatifica or the khalq al-Qurʾān it leads to grave sin, and in legal matters
only to a transgression (ithm), a mistake with which one incurs guilt.8 Even
in the last-named case, however, the truth is so unmistakeable that a judge’s
wrong verdict must be repealed.9
It is well known that this rationalistic self-confidence did not prevail with-
in fiqh in the long term, but, as we shall see, to begin with it found followers
within the Muʿtazila as well as beyond it; Naẓẓām even expanding its scope.10
2 The Spiritual Background of Early Islam 198.

3 Abū ʿAmmār did not find any traces of this doctrine in his day (Mūjaz II 172, 3ff.).
4 Text 35; cf. p. 318f. above. Ibn Ḥazm’s vague remark probably refers to a similar approach
(Iḥkām 1IV 188, –5ff.; transl. Turki, Polémiques 182f., but with a different identification of
Aṣamm).
5 Tanbīh 356, 10ff.
7 Text 36.
8 Text 37 and 38, a.
9 Text 38, b.
10 See ch. C 3.2.2.2.3.3 below.
iraq 471
Shīrāzī linked it to the Shāfiʿite Abū ʿAlī Ibn Abī Hurayra (d. 345/956)11 or Abū
Bakr al-Daqqāq (d. 392/1002).12 Consequently we cannot be certain whether
Aṣamm had formulated the doctrine in its entirety. The titles of books on the
subject we know are not definite enough: a K. ʿalā ahl al-fatwā, a K. al-Maʿrifa or
Maʿrifat wujūh al-kalām.13 Later sources were not sure of the chronology at all.14
Over time the debate probably focussed on the field of law, and thus on the
conclusion by analogy; Ghazzālī counted Aṣamm among the qāʾilūn bil-qiyās.15
It is important to be aware that while Aṣamm recognised the conclusion
by analogy, he also had high expectations of it. It could be proved by rational
means that it is a feasible and useful procedure,16 but it ought to be applied as a
so-called qiyās al-shūrā, a complete analogy in which the two things compared
formally correspond in every detail. He either did not yet know the qiyās al-
ʿilla in which a partial analogy is established by means of ratio legis or, rather
more probably, considering his dates, rejected it.17 In some questions of detail
this led him to conclusions that would seem obvious, but contradicted the cus-
tom of the time, and would later be considered aberrant (shādhdh). He did not
consider the so-called takbīr al-iḥrām, with which one introduces the prayer
and enters into a state of consecration,18 to be obligatory, as the next takbīr is
not obligatory either;19 also assimilating the middle jalsa, seating oneself after
sujūd, to the last jalsa, once again with the result that neither was obligatory.20
In his view they were two formally similar actions to which the same rule
had to apply; opponents interpreted only the hadiths it was based on without
11 Text 38, 1. Regarding him cf. Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya III 256f. no. 169; Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam
III 220 (with appendix XIII 381); GIE II 689f.
12 Turki, Polémiques 341, where Aṣamm is once again identified wrongly. There were several
legal scholars with the sobriquet al-Aṣamm (regarding this problem cf. Turki, Index for
Bājī, Iḥkām al-fuṣūl 882), but due to the connection with Ibn ʿUlayya and Bishr al-Marīsī
emphasised repeatedly in the sources (see below) there can be no doubt that he is the
Muʿtazilite. The key word for the systematists, on the other hand, was ithm or taʾthīm.
Thus the doctrine was rejected by Ibn Ḥazm (Turki 195).
13 Catalogue of Works no. 21 and 16–17.
14 Cf. Text 37.
15 Ibid.
16 Text 39, b–c.
17 Regarding the concept of ʿilla see p. 171 and 343 above. General information in Hallaq in:
Der Islam 64/1987/42ff. (unfortunately with numerous errors).
18 Regarding the concept cf. HW 638b and 201a.
19 Regarding the problem cf. Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid I 121, –4ff.; Ibn Rushd was not
entirely sure of the reasons proposed by the supporters of this opinion (122, 18ff.).
20 Regarding the problem cf. Ibn Rushd I 136, 10ff. Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī, Muʿtamad 842, ult.
f., reports the same thing of Ibn ʿUlayya. In general, Text 40.
472 chapter 2
looking at the analogy. The same train of thought appears to have been at the
base of his allocating the same period of waiting after divorce to a female slave
as to a free woman, contrary to the practise of most other Sunni jurists.21
Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī would later regard this type of qiyās as too superficial.22
Aṣamm, on the other hand, certainly saw adherence to the rational methods
he applied, here as elsewhere, as a step towards objectifying the law. As long as
it was believed that every mujtahid was right, current administration of the law
was largely dependent on the person of the judge, who had to be respectable
and above reproach. Aṣamm did not consider this necessary; after all, truth
carried its proof within itself. The presumption was, of course, always that the
qāḍī had been appointed according to the rules, but in that case his verdicts
were binding even if he himself was a dissolute man.23 This legalist approach
is similar to that concerning the person of the ruler, although a judge could of
course be replaced by the authorities. However, that, and his sins, was his own
problem. The judgments he pronounced were independent of his person.
Juwaynī, who transmitted Aṣamm’s view on qiyās, emphasised his disap-
proval with the remark that Aṣamm rejected rent and pre-emptive right, too.24
The first of these is of interest to us as it may lead us back to Aṣamm’s ontol-
ogy. Under Islamic law, renting is a kind of purchase, although the hirer does
not buy the item itself but only the use of it; this was the very point where
Aṣamm saw a problem: purchase is a do ut des transaction (muʿāwaḍa) where
a concrete item (ʿayn) is exchanged for its price, while in the case of renting
only the use of something is sold, and this use does not (yet) exist at the time
of concluding the contract. Thus according to the reason cited by our sources.25
Aṣamm was denying the analogy between purchase and hiring, but it seems
that something else played a part as well. Sarakhsī would say later when dis-
cussing the question that the “beneficial uses” (manāfiʿ) are attributes of things
21 Ṭūsī, Tibyān II 262, 5, following sura 2:234. Ṭūsī notes that Aṣamm, probably for an entirely
different reason, agreed with the Imāmites in this instance. The Ẓāhirites, too, would later
think like him (Ibn Rushd, Bidāya II 96, ult. ff.).
22 Loc. cit.
23 Text 43.
24 Text 40, g.
25 Ibn Rushd, Bidāya II 220, 8 and 15ff.; also Kāshānī, Badāʾiʿ al-ṣanāʾiʿ (Cairo 1910) IV 172,
20ff.; Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Al-baḥr al-zakhkhār V 29, 2f. (but cf. 30, 10f.); discussed without
names in, among others, Shāfiʿī, Umm III 250, 13ff., and Sarakhsī, Mabsūṭ XV 74, 13ff.
Regarding the question in general cf. Brunschvig in: SI 52/1980/5ff. and, briefly, Udovitch
in: SI 65/1987/19; with regard to lease contracts in detail Johansen, The Islamic Law on
Land Tax and Rent 27ff.
iraq 473
and consequently part of them.26 The Ḥanafites shared this opinion during the
classical era, 27 but Aṣamm denied the existence of attributes. Might this have
been why he insisted that a business transaction had to concern something
concrete?
We would be more certain if we could prove that Aṣamm followed this
guideline in other cases as well, but the field of furūʿ has not been studied
sufficiently, and tradition is too incomplete. So far it has not been possible to
discover Aṣamm’s opinion on the pre-emptive right (shufʿa).28 Further infor-
mation is incidental and isolated. The Ibāḍite Qalhātī reported that he did not
consider a bloodied garment to be impure no matter how large the quantity.29
Baghdādī preserved the information that in his view it was possible to perform
the ablutions using vinegar.30 The fact that he commented on the catalogue
of formulas used in official documents indicates that he, although he never
became qāḍī, was a practising lawyer.31
2.2.8.4.2 Ibn ʿUlayya

On the field of theology Aṣamm was, as Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār put it, “one of
those who dominated only during their lifetime”.1 As a lawyer, on the other
hand, he was still taken seriously by Ṭabarī who accorded him a place next to
other great heads of schools such as Mālik and Abū Ḥanīfa in the first version
of his K. ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ, naming him a representative of the ahl al-naẓar,
the legal scholars working with rational principles; later, however, he omitted
him.2 Aṣamm had at least two important pupils on the field of law who are
26 Brunschvig 11.

27 Johansen 29 and 45f., no. 26–27. Rents in cities were comparatively high at the time
(Ahsan, Social Life 169ff.).
28 The reasons might have been similar to those against lease contracts.
29 Al-kashf wal-bayān, ed. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Jalīl in: Ḥawliyyāt Tūnis 18/1980/209, –4ff.
30 Uṣūl al-dīn 195, 3f.
31 Ṭaḥāwī, Al-shurūṭ al-kabīr I 466, 6ff.; regarding the value of a formula when recognis-
ing the claim to an item or a token. Further material may be found in Qaffāl al-Shāshī’s
K. ḥilyat al-ʿulamāʾ fī maʿrifat madhāhib al-fuqahāʾ (ed. Yāsīn Aḥmad Ibrāhīm Darādika;
Mecca 1988), a text that has not been evaluated and only partially explored via its index;
cf. e.g. I 171, 1f., and III 119, ult.
1 Faḍl 267, ult. > IM 57, 5f.

2 Yāqūt, Irshād VI 446, 5ff. The passage is unclear towards the end; cf. the diverging transla-
tions in Rosenthal, History of al-Ṭabarī, Introduction 102, and Gilliot, Exégèse, langue et
théologie en Islam 42. – Regarding a later reference to Aṣamm in a similar context see
p. 450 above.
474 chapter 2
usually mentioned together with him, and who made his doctrine known be-
yond Basra, but without the Muʿtazilite theological aspect. The first one, Bishr
al-Marīsī, will occupy us elsewhere.3 The second one,
Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm b. Miqsam al-Asadī, known as

Ibn ʿUlayya
(162/778–218/833),4 came from a wealthy merchant family who, although origi-

nally from Kufa, had settled in Basra and in the second half of the second cen-
tury founded a branch in Baghdad as well. Their rise was one of the success
stories so typical of the early Islamic period. Miqsam, the grandfather, had been
taken prisoner in Baluchistan5 and became the property of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b.
Quṭba of the Asad Khuzayma in Kufa. Long since freed, his son Ibrāhīm al-
ready ran such a flourishing cloth business that he could sell his wares in Basra
as well. As he did not wish to be lonely during his visits to that city, he married
a client of the Shaybān named ʿUlayya bt. Ḥassān and set her up in a house
in the ʿAwaqa quarter. She was a comparatively emancipated woman, receiv-
ing well-known scholars such as the Qadarite Ṣāliḥ al-Murrī.6 She used these
connections to ensure her son Ismāʿīl (b. 110/728)7 received a good education,
giving him into the care of ʿAbd al-Wārith b. Saʿīd, ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s pupil.8 For
his later fame it was even more advantageous that he also attended lectures by
the early fathers of “orthodox” hadith, Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, Yūnus b. ʿUbayd
and others.9 The very religious Ḥammād b. Salama thought that he was cut
from the same cloth as the last-named.10 The result appears to have been surly
pietism: Ismāʿīl b. ʿUlayya was said not to have laughed at all for twenty years.11
Of course, he did not take his eyes off the business, either,12 but in due course

4 On the eve of the ʿArafa day according to Ibn Taghrībirdī, Nujūm II 228, 8. – Named as
Aṣamm’s pupil in TB VI 21, 12; Bayhaqī, Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī I 457, 4ff.
5 Regarding this and the following IS VII2 70, 6ff. > TB VI 230, 7ff. Regarding the interpreta-
tion of the passage see also Pellat, Milieu basrien 89, n. 9. Concerning Qīqān = Baluchistan
cf. EI2 V 102a.
7 Thus TB VI 230, 13 and passim; Ibn al-Nadīm’s “116” (283, 17) is an error.
8 TB VI 231, 12ff.; regarding the identification 233, 11, and p. 367ff. above.
9 Ibid. 229, 2ff.; also al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Taqyīd al-ʿilm 79, 6f. Regarding his hadith notes
cf. also Azmi, Studies, Index s. n.
10 Ibid. 235, 2f., and 237, 10f.
11 Ibid. 235, 3ff.
12 He is mentioned as being a bazzāz ibid. 231, 1.
iraq 475
he accepted one of those small official positions that rich people often took on
as a side-line, collecting taxes from the merchants of Basra.13 He did not make
himself any friends in this way; it seems that ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak from
Marv, a wholesaler14 who had put a fair amount of business in his way over the
years, broke off relations.15 While Ismāʿīl was said to have been downcast at
this, he did become appeal court (maẓālim) judge in the early nineties under
Hārūn.16 He had bought a house in Baghdad where he lived until his death in
Dhū l-Qaʿda 193/Aug. 809.17
His son Ibrāhīm on whom we will focus here grew up with him in the capi-
tal. He was a late child, born when his father was already over fifty years of
age. Like his father he became known under the name Ibn ʿUlayya, which had
been a source of irritation to his father,18 as to him it was a dishonour to be
called after one’s mother, even if it was exclusively thanks to her that he be-
came a scholar who was included in Ṭabaqāt works at all. He had already shown
an interest in jurisprudence, composing a K. al-ṭahāra, a K. al-ṣalāt and a K.
al-manāsik,19 but these were probably simply “books” in which he compiled
hadiths on the subject; transmitting even fundamental legal mottoes such as
kullu muskir ḥarām as prophetic dicta.20 His son employed a different style,
having become a systematist under Aṣamm’s influence, and consequently
leaving the circle of the muḥaddithūn. They regarded him, like his teacher, as
an evil Jahmite21 who supported the khalq al-Qurʾān22 as indeed he confirmed
at the beginning of the miḥna in the year of his death.23 His father had been
13 Ibid. 230, 15 < IS VII2 70, 15f.; also Fasawī II 242, apu. ff. for the year 178/794.
15 TB 235, 13ff.
16 Ibid. 229, 9, and 230, 15f.
17 Regarding the date IS VII270, 17f.
18 TB 230, ult, and 231, 3f.
19 Ibn al-Nadīm 283, 9f. Also a Tafsīr Ṭabarī appears to quote in his Taʾrīkh (cf. Index s. n.
Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm al-Asadī).
20 TB VI 229, apu.
21 Ibn Baṭṭa, Ibāna 91, 16; also 92, 16; Mīzān no. 42 > Lisān al-Mīzān I 34, –6ff.
22 TB VI 20, 16; Ājurrī, Sharīʿa 79, 5ff.; also Mīzān, loc. cit.
23 Ṭabarī III 1121, 8ff., and 1124, 6; cf. ch. C 3.3.1 below. Both passages call him Ibn ʿUlayya “the
elder”. Could this be linked to his having had a brother named Muḥammad who only died
in 264/878 (!)? (cf. Dhahabī, Siyar XII 294f.; TT IX 55f. no. 54). It was said that Ibn Ḥanbal
as well as Shāfiʿī tried to talk him out of the khalq al-Qurʾān (Ibn Taghrībirdī, Nujūm II 228,
7; Bayhaqī, Iʿtiqād 33, pu. ff.).
476 chapter 2
suspected – possibly with good reason – of the same heresy, but was so well-
respected that a counter-tradition was put about.24
Ibn ʿUlayya left Baghdad in 198/813. Life in the capital had become uncom-
fortable, the troubles of the civil war between Amīn and Maʾmūn having cer-
tainly had a detrimental effect on business. Harthama b. Aʿyan, al-Maʾmūn’s
general who had taken the city at the beginning of the year was said to have
driven him out.25 The khalq al-Qurʾān may have played a part here, too, as
other adherents of this doctrine suffered the same fate.26 Ibn ʿUlayya went to
Egypt; the family business may well have had a branch there. In Fusṭāṭ he gath-
ered a circle of pupils around himself, lecturing by the gate of lost sheep (Bāb
al-Ḍawāll).27 In the later view this was Shāfiʿī’s turf, and people would recount
how he emphasised his divergent view, or refuted Ibn ʿUlayya directly.28 The
main source of disagreement was the recognition of hadith. Ibn ʿUlayya was no
more accepting of āḥād than Aṣamm had been, and he probably considered
more dicta to be khabar al-wāḥid than Shāfiʿī did. He even – possibly while
still in Iraq – wrote a book attacking him,29 but their hostility does not seem
to have gone very deep all the same; Muzanī claimed to have seen them going
for a walk together.30 After all, Shāfiʿī had studied under Ibn ʿUlayya’s father in
Iraq.31 While the pupils amused themselves by playing the two professors off
against one another,32 they still took the opportunity of attending the lectures
of both.33
24 TB VI 237, 14ff., and 239, 12ff.

25 Lisān al-Mīzān II 30, –7ff.
26 Regarding Bishr al-Marīsī see ch. C 2 below; cf. also p. 819 regarding Ḥafṣ al-Fard.
27 TB VI 21, 12.
28 Bayhaqī, Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī I 409, 9ff., and 211, 5ff.; TB VI 21, 1ff.
29 TB VI 22, 4. Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī claimed to have refuted it (ibid. 22, 7f.), possibly in his own
K. khabar al-wāḥid (Fihrist 272, 12).
30 Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya II 99, 11ff.; the anecdote tries to show that Ibn ʿUlayya loathed
singing while Shāfiʿī did not. Cf. also Ibn Taymiyya, K. al-istiqāma I 337, 1ff.; in anoth-
er place Ibn Taymiyya points out that the Medinans were most fond of music, while
Kufan scholars rejected it (I 274, 2ff.). Regarding Shāfiʿī’s attitude cf. Gramlich in: Sarrāǧ,
Schlaglichter über das Sufitum 403.
31 Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb I 132, –7f.; he quotes him with a tradition after ʿUthmān al-Battī in K.
al-umm VII 162, 12.
32 TB VI 21, 7ff.
33 Der Islam 44/1968/44; however, the persons named belong in Iraq.
iraq 477
The Mālikites were, of course, less than pleased at the competition, as Ibn
ʿUlayya made a point of writing a book attacking their founder whose influence
spread in Egypt only gradually.34 When after his death the miḥna broke out, all
those concerned suffered. From 227 onwards the chief qāḍī Muḥammad b. Abī
l-Layth al-Khwārizmī (226/841–235/850),35 a foreigner whom Baghdad had ap-
pointed to Egypt, favoured the Ḥanafites so clearly that a eulogistic poet was
able to claim that Shāfiʿī and all his followers had been dashed to pieces, the
Mālikites silenced, and Ibn ʿUlayya’s doctrine failed to take hold.36 As later de-
velopments would show, this was a slightly premature statement. Towards the
end of the third century Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Aṭrābulusī, a heretic Ibāḍite
from Tripolitania, followed Ibn ʿUlayya’s doctrine.37 The Spaniard Khushanī
knew that Ibn ʿUlayya considered a prayer invalid unless it included a recita-
tion from the Quran.38 In Iraq, the Christian philosopher Qusṭā b. Lūqā, re-
futing Ibn al-Munajjim’s K. al-burhān in the late third century,39 named Ibn
ʿUlayya together with Abū Ḥanīfa.40 In Rāmhurmuz in Khūzistān he had fol-
lowers as late as the fourth century.41 Towards the end of the same century the
Mālikite Muḥammad b. al-Muʾammal al-Baghdādī in Baghdad, who had stud-
ied under the famous Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Abharī (d. 375/985)42 and
was therefore known as Ghulām al-Abharī, thought it appropriate to refute the
doctrine of Ibn ʿUlayya in seventy points.43
2.2.8.4.3 Further Basran Muʿtazilites

In Abū l-Ashʿath’s circle Aṣamm encountered two further Muʿtazilites who
would later find fame as jurists above all. They had studied under Abū ʿUthmān
al-Shimmazī and consequently followed the tradition of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd. The
first of them,
34 Lisān al-Mīzān I 35, 7.

35 Kindī, Wulāt Miṣr 449, 6ff.; Ibn Taghrībirdī, Nujūm II 246, 8ff.
36 Kindī 451, 6f., and 452, 9ff.; more in ch. C 3.3.4 below.
37 Shammākhī, Siyar 262, 8ff.; regarding him see vol. I 487 above.
38 Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ Ifrīqiyya 287, 11ff.
39 Cf. ch. C 8.2.2.3.6 below.
40 Burhān (in PO 40/1981) § 214.
41 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 316, 3.
42 Regarding him GAS 1/477; also Muranyi, Materialien 83f.
43 Ibn al-Nadīm 253, 19ff.; regarding him TB III 312f. no. 1409, and Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb II 764, 5ff.
(where he is named as Abū Bakr rather than Abū Jaʿfar as in Ibn al-Nadīm.
478 chapter 2
Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Rawḥ al-ʿAffānī al-ʿAskarī,1
was occasionally adduced by Jāḥiẓ as an authority for information on ʿAmr2 or

Wāṣil,3 as he transmitted not only from Shimmazī but also from Wāṣil’s pupil
ʿĪsā b. Ḥāḍir.4 Like his teacher he could quote a great number of hadiths, and
he also claimed to know “the two tafsīrs” by heart.5 Later tradition, however,
on the whole ignored him, Dhahabī only reluctantly divulging that he even
transmitted from Sufyān al-Thawrī.6 He came from a family that ought to have
been dear to the pious – especially in Basra: his father Rawḥ b. ʿAnbasa b. Saʿīd
b. Abī ʿAbbās was descended from a client of ʿUthmān’s while his ancestress
Umm ʿAbbās had been a slave of Ruqayya’s, the prophet’s daughter and wife of
ʿUthmān.7 But he sided with the wrong people. Incidentally he, too, was a cloth
merchant. He died in 215/830.8 – The second one,
Abū ʿĀmir Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad al-Anṣārī,
remains in the dark.9 His complete name is found in one place only, where
we see that like ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Rawḥ he drew on Medinan hadith tradition
via the theologian Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Abī Yaḥyā, in order to refute the
vision of God in the afterlife.10 He appears to have been a wealthy man, as we
1 Regarding him Faḍl 280, 4ff., and 253, –4ff.; regarding his kunya cf. Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 18, 13.
2 Bayān I 114, 1ff.; Ḥayawān I 337, –5ff.
4 Ḥayawān I 337, –5ff. He also knew the poet Ibn Munādhir (Bayān I 18, 13ff.).
5 Faḍl 253, 18f.; 280, 6. Which texts is he referring to? Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s Tafsīr was certainly
one of them, but which was the other commentary?
6 Mīzān no. 5161.
7 Baḥshal, Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 265, 9ff.; also Mīzān no. 2808. According to Mīzān no. 6508 the cor-
rect reading would be ʿAyyāsh rather than ʿAbbās. This note also informs us that there was
no connection with the Basran Qadarite ʿAnbasa b. Saʿīd (regarding him see p. 64 above).
The nisba al-ʿAffānī is explained by the affiliation with ʿUthmān. It is found in Malāḥimī,
Muʿtamad 467, 4; Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 280, 4, misread it as al-Ghifārī.
8 TT VI 372f. no. 710. Did he have a son named Muḥammad? (Cf. ch. C 5.1.2).
9 Regarding him see Faḍl 270, 5ff. > IM 60, 1. Daiber, Muʿammar 45 conflates him with
ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Rawḥ, as I did in: Der Islam 44/1968/25. However, the Flügel edition of
the Fihrist which we both consulted omits a wa between the two names (100, 29; cf. the
Tajaddud ed. 113, 19). In this way the “six” mentioned by Ibn al-Nadīm have become seven.
10 Malāḥimī, Muʿtamad 488, 8ff.; regarding ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Rawḥ cf. ibid. 467, 4ff. The latter
also used other Medinan material (ibid. 466, 1ff.; 471, ult. ff.; 488, ult. ff., and 489, 4ff., in
iraq 479
are told that it was in his house in Basra that Abū Hudhayl debated with Ḥafṣ
al-Fard.11 A debate between him and a determinist was also recorded.12 One
of his pupils, named Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, lived in ʿAskar Mukram where he
seems to have been a much respected dignitary,13 which gives new meaning
to ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Rawḥ’s second nisba. It seems that both these theologians,
maybe superseded by Aṣamm’s influence, or driven out by other adverse cir-
cumstances, sought their own sphere of activity beyond Basra in the future
Muʿtazilite stronghold of ʿAskar Mukram. Still, ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Rawḥ was
also invited to ʿAbbādān, to debate with his namesake and fellow believer
ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Hishām.14
The latter was his match as a jurist, having studied a number of local school
traditions on his travels: Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī’s in Kufa, Saʿīd b. al-Musayyab’s in
Medina, ʿAṭāʾ’s (i.e. ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ’s in Mecca), and ʿUthmān’s (i.e. presum-
ably ʿUthmān al-Battī’s in Basra).15
2.2.9 Basran Shīʿites

Life for Shīʿites was not easy in Basra. There were some, but they were always
in danger of being branded extremists straightaway. Abū Hārūn ʿUmāra b.
Juwayn al-ʿAbdī (d. 134/752) owned a ṣaḥīfa by ʿAlī which he was said to have
each case using an abbreviated form of the name); presumably he was the greater expert
in hadith. Regarding Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Abī Yaḥyā see p. 781ff. below; his name
is abbreviated or misspelt in Malāḥimī every time. Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad al-Anṣārī ap-
pears without his kunya in Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 16, 14, next to ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Rawḥ. Qāḍī ʿAbd
al-Jabbār, on the other hand, names him by his kunya only, without the ism, Abū ʿĀmir
al-Anṣārī; this is probably the correct reading of Ḥayawān I 337, –5 (instead of Abū ʿAlī
al-Anṣārī). He has no connection to the Muʿtazilite Ibrāhīm al-Anṣārī in Ḥayawān III 293,
5. According to Bayān II 43, 7f. the latter was a descendant of the philologist Abū Zayd
al-Anṣārī (d. 215/830 at the age of 94 or 95; regarding him see p. 99 above) and was called
Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad al-Maflūj. In another place Jāḥiẓ calls him a muḥaddith (Burṣān
282, 2f.); cf. also Mīzān no. 187.
11 Ḥākim al-Jushamī, Risālat Iblīs 69, ult. ff.
12 Ibid. 43, 3ff.
13 See ch. C 7.5 below. Might he have been his son?
14 This is probably what jumiʿa baynahū wa-bayna ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Hishām means (Faḍl 280,
6).
15 Faḍl 280, 8ff.
480 chapter 2
called ṣaḥīfat al-waṣī,1 Ibn Ḥibbān believed him to be a Rāfiḍite because of

this.2 Shuʿba had seen the booklet and refused to transmit from him since that
time.3 This was rather vexing as Abū Hārūn also preserved material from the
prophet’s companion Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, the son of a connection of the Anṣār
who was actually rather well-respected,4 but people said that one of the had-
iths described ʿUthmān as an unbeliever.5 Ibn Ḥajar made light of this from a
historian’s comfortable distance: it was no more than the usual “Shīʿising”; the
Basrans were simply very precise in these matters.6 Of course they, too, made ex-
ceptions: in the case of the respected Qadarite ʿAwf al-Aʿrābī Ibn Saʿd only used
the term tashayyuʿ,7 while his pupil Jaʿfar b. Sulaymān al-Ḍubaʿī (d. 178/784)
was handled more roughly by the critics and called a Rāfiḍite, although he had
studied under the orthodox keepers of the grail Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, ʿAbdallāh
b. ʿAwn, and Yūnus b. ʿUbayd. His hadith was only slightly tendentious, and he
did transmit some traditions praising Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, but people had also
heard him say that he hated those two from the bottom of his heart.8
There was indeed a Shīʿite community in the city at the beginning of the
second century who followed the words of the imams; Muḥammad al-Bāqir
wrote to them. The Risāla was linked to Jābir al-Juʿfī,9 and was thus probably
not remarkably orthodox. A generation later the Basrans would be awaiting
apocalyptic change to be brought about by Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, presumably after 145
when the Ḥasanid uprising had collapsed. When Jaʿfar died a few years later,
people refused to believe in his death.10 The sect was called the Nāwūsiyya
1 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 314, 3ff.

2 Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn II 177, 5.
3 ʿUqaylī 313, pu. ff. and 5ff.
4 Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Istīʿāb 1671f. no. 2997.
5 ʿUqaylī 314, 12ff.
6 TT VII 413, –4f. Regarding Abū Hārūn cf. also IAH III1 363 no. 2005; Dhahabī, Mīzān
no. 6018, and Taʾrīkh V 284, apu. ff., with essentially corresponding material. Bukhārī
III2 499 no. 3107 said nothing of Abū Hārūn’s pro-Alid tendencies; the Shīʿites did not
include him in their biographical tradition. Dāraquṭnī furthermore tried to turn him into
a Khārijite, as he found him a dazzling personality (yatalawwanu; Dāraquṭnī, Ḍuʿafāʾ 345
no. 381).
7 IS VII2 22, 8f.; similar Fasawī III 135, 8. Regarding him see p. 63f. above.
8 Regarding him ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 188f. no. 235; Mīzān no. 1505; TT II 97ff. no. 145. Dhahabī
called ʿAwf al-Aʿrābī a Rāfiḍite, too (Taʾrīkh al-Islām VI 112, 11ff.).
9 Najāshī 94, –6f.
10 This was based on the statement of a certain Shihāb b. ʿAbdrabbih, a Kufan money chang-
er or banker, who transmitted from Muḥammad al-Bāqir and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (Kashshī 414
no. 782). Regarding him and his brothers, all of whom were clients of the Asad, cf. Kashshī
413 no. 778, and Ardabīlī, Jāmiʿ I 402f.
iraq 481
after its founder;11 it is most elusive. However, one of its followers found his
way into the Shīʿite rijāl books, because he transmitted from Jaʿfar and even
from Mūsā al-Kāẓim, and because he was a good jurist:12
Abū ʿAbdallāh Abān b. ʿUthmān b. Yaḥyā b. Zakariyyāʾ al-Aḥmar al-Luʾluʾī

al-Bajalī,13
a mawlā of the Bajīla who moved back and forth between Basra and Kufa.14
In Kufa he studied under Zurāra15 and Abān b. Taghlib,16 while his own most
important pupils were in Basra: Abū ʿUbayda and al-Jumaḥī.17 Clearly he was
also versed in language and poetry; Jumaḥī obtained a considerable amount
of material for his Ṭabaqāt al-shuʿarāʾ from him,18 and Jāḥiẓ quoted him from
time to time.19 He also composed a History from the beginning of time to the
ridda, discussing in particular the prophet’s maghāzī;20 Wāqidī was said to
have quoted from this.21 Kashshī tells us that he was a Nāwūsite;22 later Shīʿites
11 This man’s name is cited in different versions, ʿAjlān b. Nāwūs according to Ashʿarī (Maq.
25, ult.) or ʿAbdallāh b. Nāwūs according to Mufīd (Al-fuṣūl al-mukhtāra II 88, –4f./247,
pu.); Nawbakhtī did not know of him any more (Firaq al-Shīʿa 57, 9ff. > Qummī, Maq. 79,
pu. ff. § 155). His Basran origin, however, is confirmed everywhere. Ritter collected docu-
ments regarding the Nāwūsiyya in the bibliography of Maq. 25, and Muḥammad Jawād
Mashkūr in the commentary on Qummī, p. 212f.
12 Kashshī 352 no. 660; cf. the material collected in Ardabīlī, Jāmiʿ I 12ff.
13 The name is found in this form only in Yāqūt, Irshād I 35f.; it is unusually long for a mawlā.
It is usually shortened to Abān b. ʿUthmān; Suyūṭī has A. b. ʿU. b. Yaḥyā (Bughya I 405
no. 805), Ṣafadī, A. b. ʿU. b. Zakariyyāʾ (Wāfī V 302 no. 2364). The nisba al-Luʾluʾī is not re-
corded in all the sources either. If it was indeed his, he might have been a pearl merchant.
14 Ṭūsī, Fihrist 7, 12ff.
15 Ardabīlī I 12b, 14; regarding him see vol. I 373ff. above.
16 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 37f. no. 21; Mīzān no. 13. Regarding him see vol. I 392.
17 Ṭūsī, loc. cit.; cf. also the summarising note in Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān I 24 no. 20.
18 Cf. the edition by Maḥmūd Muḥammad Shākir, Index s. n.; also Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān III 11, 2;
Marzubānī, Muwashshaḥ 230, –5f., and Nūr al-qabas 185, 21.
19 Cf. Ḥayawān, Index s. n.
20 Ṭūsī, loc. cit.; Najāshī 10, 6ff. It was transmitted in Kufa and in Qom after two riwāyāt.
21 Thus according to ʿUqaylī, loc. cit.; but there is no hint of it in Jones’ edition. My pupil
M. Jarrar pointed out to me that there are numerous quotations referring to him, some-
times explicitly to a written original, in Majlisī’s work (cf. e.g. Biḥār XX 95, pu. ff. and XXI
55, pu. ff.). It will be necessary to examine to what degree he was confused with Abān,
the caliph ʿUthmān’s son, to whom a maghāzī work was attributed as well (cf. GAS 1/277f.;
cf. Faruqi, Early Muslim Historiography 217ff., and Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf in: Mizzī,
Tahdhīb al-kamāl II 19, n. 1).
22 Rijāl 352 no. 660.
482 chapter 2
could barely believe it,23 even though the sect appears to have existed for sev-
eral generations more. Some also counted ʿAbdallāh b. Aḥmad b. Abī Zayd al-
Anbārī among its followers, a scholar from Wāsiṭ who wrote around 140 “books”
on theological and legal matters and died in 355/966.24 Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067) dis-
cussed it briefly,25 but only as an instance demonstrating the unworldliness
of long-departed eccentrics; by Mufīd’s time, i.e. around the turn of the fifth/
eleventh century, it did not exist anymore.26
We do not know whether the Shīʿite community in Basra had a significant
number of members. Maybe it was due to its small size that, unlike Kufa,27
no one showed an interest in Jaʿfar’s succession; unlike Kufa, the hopes tied
to Jaʿfar never having spent themselves in an uprising – i.e. Abū l-Khaṭṭāb’s.
“Imāmite” continuity was not a self-evident model. ʿUmar b. al-Riyāḥ al-Qallāʾ,
too, who had “not gone beyond” Muḥammad al-Bāqir, could have been from
Basra, as could his sons.28 The Basran Shīʿa took a step further towards theolo-
gy, albeit rather later than Kufa. One of Hishām b. al-Ḥakam’s sons, named Abū
Muḥammad al-Ḥakam, settled in the city as a client of the Kinda, taking part in
theological disputations in which he defended his father’s doctrine; it was also
said that he had composed a treatise on political theory (imāma).29 Maybe he
was the one with whom Aṣamm debated.30 Still, it is clear that the reputation
of another Shīʿite theologian, who had distanced himself from Hishām b. al-
Ḥakam, was much greater in Basra:
Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Ismāʿīl b. Shuʿayb b. Mītham b. Yaḥyā al-Tammār,
who was named for his ancestor, the early Kufan martyr Mītham b. Yaḥyā, a
date merchant,31 sometimes al-Mīthamī, sometimes ʿAlī b. Mītham or Ibn al-
23 Ardabīlī, loc. cit.; Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Wasīlat al-Shīʿa XX 117, 1ff. Regarding him cf. also Ziriklī,
Aʿlām I 21; Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam I 1f.; A. Sharīʿatī in: GIE II 342f. s. v. Abān-i Aḥmar.
24 Ṭūsī, Fihrist no. 400; Ardabīlī 466f.
25 Ghayba 218, –6ff., and 119, 3ff.
26 Al-fuṣūl al-mukhtāra II 90, –4ff./250, 6ff.
27 See vol. I 375ff. and 403 above.
28 Regarding him see vol. I 328f. above; regarding his Basran origins also GIE II 395b.
29 Najāshī 99, 5ff. > Āghā Buzurg, Dharīʿa II 325; also Kashshī 279, –4f., where his name is
given, presumably as the result of confusing kunya and ism, as Muḥammad b. Hishām.
iraq 483
Tammār.32 He was born in Kufa but had lived in Basra for a long time,33 ap-
parently trading in soap.34 “The young men of the Muʿtazila got their hands
on him”, as Khayyāṭ put it;35 ʿAlī al-Uswārī in particular “knocking him flat”.36
Of course, the Shīʿites had their traditions, too; recording that Abū l-Hudhayl
was not yet his equal.37 He had certainly been respected enough during the
days of the Barmakids for them to bring him to Basra, where he met Ḍirār b.
ʿAmr in their circle.38 This was probably how he ended up in prison with other
Shīʿites around 179/795.39 After Mūsā al-Kāẓim’s death he joined ʿAlī al-Riḍā
and would later be able to report in some detail on his life and circumstances.40
He had no patience with those who were awaiting Mūsā’s return; tradition was
unable to decide whether he or Yūnus al-Qummī called them “rain-drenched
curs”.41 His train of argument when dealing with Christians appears to have
been no less drastic.42 When he met an atheist (mulḥid) in the company of
Maʾmūn’s father-in-law Ḥasan b. Sahl, he treated him with condescending wit.43
It may be excessive to presume, as ʿAbbās al-Qummī did, that he lived well into
Muʿtaṣim’s time, i.e. the 220s,44 but there is no doubt that he was younger than
Hishām b. al-Ḥakam.
32 Thus at least according to H. Ritter’s identification in: Nawbakhtī, Firaq al-Shīʿa, Index 97
s. n.; adopted by Muḥ. Jawād Mashkūr, comm. on Qummī, Maqālāt 141. It remains a little
doubtful (see p. 484f. below). After all, every member of the family might have been called
“Ibn al-Tammār”.
33 Najāshī 176, 13.
34 Ibn Ḥazm uses the nisba al-Ṣabūnī for him (Fiṣal IV 181, pu.).
35 Intiṣār 103, –5.
36 Thus Text XXIII 5, c; regarding him see p. 98 above. Ibn Ḥazm mentions discussions with
Naẓẓām (Fiṣal IV 181, pu. ff. after Jāḥiẓ).
37 Al-fuṣūl al-mukhtāra I 5, –9ff./6, 1ff. > Biḥār X 370f. no. 1; also Biḥār 371 no. 2. According to
Fuṣūl I 52, 8ff./55, 5ff. > Biḥār 374 no. 7, the two met in the house of a certain ʿAlī b. Riyāḥ.
38 For a discussion with him – not, however, located specifically – cf. Fuṣūl I 9, –4ff./10, 12ff.
> Biḥār X 371f. no. 3. People believed that he took part in the “symposium” on love hosted
by the Barmakids (Masʿūdī, Murūj VI 369, 2ff./ IV 237 § 2566; cf. ch. C 1.3). Tawḥīdī pre-
served an anecdote in which he describes one of Yaḥyā b. Khālid’s officials (Baṣāʾir II 414,
8ff./2VIII 84 no. 286).
39 Kashshī 262, pu. f.; cf. vol. I 412 above.
40 Ibn Bābōya, ʿUyūn akhbār al-Riḍā I 12 no. 2; regarding his father ibid. 14 no. 3, 16f. no. 2 etc.
41 See vol. I 457 above; also ch. C 1.4.1 below.
42 Fuṣūl I 31, 9ff./32, 15ff. > Biḥār X 372 no. 4.
43 Fuṣūl I 44, 15ff./46, 7ff.
44 Kunā III 187, 12.
484 chapter 2
Thus already Madelung in: Isl. Phil. Theology 129, n. 3; differently EI2,
Suppl. 393b. The date of his death “around 250” proposed by Bağdatlı
Paşa, Hadīyat al-ʿārifīn I 669, is pure phantasy. – ʿAbbās al-Qummī
would be confirmed if we could adduce a passage in Tanūkhī according
to which the historian ʿUmar b. Shabba (d. 264/877) questioned ʿAlī b.
Mītham concerning the qāḍī Ibn Shubruma (d. 144/761) when he was ap-
parently already over a hundred years old (Faraj baʿd al-shidda III 150,
5ff.). According to Ṭabarī, however, ʿUmar b. Shabba’s authority was in
fact called ʿAlī b. Ismāʿīl b. Ṣāliḥ b. Mītham (III 249, 13f.; 254, 16f., and 287,
ult. ff.); he also bore the nisba al-Ahwāzī (ibid. III 288, 1). He was prob-
ably a distant relative; a son of Mītham’s named Ṣāliḥ is documented in
Kashshī (80, 6). – The Ibn al-Tammār named in Fihrist 358, –7 does not
belong in this context, as the correct reading of his name is Ibn al-Yamān
(see p. 633 below).
Mītham’s disagreements with Hishām related to the latter’s doctrine of the

attributes. Like Abū Mālik al-Ḥaḍramī, from whom he probably transmitted,
he considered divine will to be “movement” and distinct from God,45 imbu-
ing movement with an almost hypostatic quality; Ashʿarī shrank from the idea
in horror.46 It probably merely meant that ʿAlī b. Mītham did not know what
to make of the compromise Hishām expressed as “neither identical nor not
identical”; Abū l-Hudhayl had also greeted it by shaking his head.47 He prob-
ably conducted the argument with Hishām in person; a K. majālis Hishām b.
al-Ḥakam was attributed to him.48 He was clearly shaped by his Basran envi-
ronment. While he was a anthropomorphic to some degree,49 in his definition
of faith he clearly distanced himself from all Kufan–Murjiʾite tendencies: faith
is not only professing it, but living it; whoever does not abide by the command-
ments will forfeit his faith. Such a sinner may not be an unbeliever, as it is still
permitted to enter into marriage with him or inherit from him, but he is fāsiq.50
45 Text IV 61. Regarding Abū Mālik see vol. I 408f.

46 Maq. 516, 4.
47 See vol. I 419f. above. But then he did apply it himself in a different context (see ch. C
3.2.1.3.4.2).
48 Catalogue of Works IV d, no. 3 with commentary.
49 People did not know for sure whether he was still linked to Hishām al-Jawālīqī or already
influenced by Hishām b. al-Ḥakam (Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd, ShNB III 224, 6). Is he the “Mithām
al-Tammār” who, according to Ibn al-Dāʿī, Tabṣira 174, pu. f., believed that humans would
see God with their own eyes at the time of the resurrection? Cf. also Kulīnī, Kāfī I 101, 1f. >
Ibn Bābōya, Tawḥīd 69, 10ff.
50 Text IV 62.
iraq 485
This is the Muʿtazilite position down to every detail; that Ashʿarī did not state
this clearly and did not use the key words manzila bayna l-manzilatayn is prob-
ably due only to his counting ʿAlī b. Mītham among the Rāfiḍites, and to his
source applying purely Shīʿite categories. We may safely assume that ʿAlī b.
Mītham agreed with the Muʿtazilites overall on the subject of the faculty of
action as well.51
It was only with regard to his image of history that he clashed with them.
If Ibn al-Nadīm’s rather surprising claim that ʿAlī b. Mītham “was the first
who discussed imāma”52 was not simply an error, it would appear to refer
to Basra and the impression the Muʿtazilites received there. He apparently
adapted here, too, as Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī counted “Ibn al-Tammār” among
the Zaydites,53 and Nawbakhtī described his position in such a way that the
reputation of the two first caliphs remained intact: the early community was
burdened with guilt only because it did not recognise ʿAlī as the most excellent
of men from the very first, not because it elected Abū Bakr and ʿUmar caliph.54
This was precisely the point of view Hishām b. al-Ḥakam denounced as a bad
compromise.55 If they are indeed referring to one and the same person, Ibn
Mītham was no “Rāfiḍite”, his only harsh judgments concerning ʿUthmān and
ʿAlī’s later opponents in the battle of the camel and at Ṣiffīn: they were the ones
“Ibn al-Tammār” regarded as pure unbelievers.
Thus also Text IV 63, c. One wonders why he abandoned his habitual mod-
eration and said kāfir instead of fāsiq. Ashʿarī, however, noted a doctrine
according to which ʿAlī’s opponents had to be called kuffār rather than
fussāq in case their opposition meant they rejected the prophet’s com-
mandments (Maq. 57, 5ff.) Regarding the correspondence with Sulaymān
b. Jarīr al-Raqqī’s views in this didactic passage see p. 538f. below. – It is
interesting that Ibn Mithām commented on a sermon of ʿAlī’s (according
to Biḥār X 128, –4, and 129, 1). Did he already have access to parts of the
Nahj al-balāgha?
51 It seems that Abū ʿUbayd’s K. al-īmān contains a reference to Ibn Mithām’s position
(p. 102, 10; cf. also Madelung in SI 32/1970/253).
52 Fihrist 223, 16; also Catalogue of Works IV d, no. 1–s.
53 Text IV 64. Thus also in a passage in Ibn Ḥajar (Lisān al-Mīzān III 80, 3f.; after Ibn Ḥazm?),
where Ibn al-Tammār is named next to Sulaymān al-Raqqī.
54 Text IV 63, 1–b.
486 chapter 2
He was a legal scholar as well, his special field apparently being marriage law.56
He wrote on mutʿa among other things, and as it was Najāshī who preserved
the title, we may safely assume that his point of view was the Zaydite rather
than the Imamite one.57 One of his pupils was the philologist Abū ʿUthmān
al-Māzinī (d. 248/862?) who, however, disagreed with him as to the concept
of faith.58
The Shīʿite theologian Abū l-Aḥwaṣ Dāwūd b. Rāshid al-Baṣrī (Maq. 63,
12f.) did in fact bear the nisba al-Miṣrī; furthermore, he does not belong
within the time discussed here. He was a contemporary of the author of
Firaq al-Shīʿa and debated with Jubbāʾī (Ṭūsī, Fihrist 369 no. 813; Ardabīlī,
Jāmiʿ II 364), which makes him one of those mutakallimūn from among
the circle of the Nawbakhtī who “got involved with the Muʿtazila” (Ibn
al-Murtaḍā, Munya 19, –4 = 87, –6). [It is worth noting that Ibn Taymiyya
read Dāwūd b. Asad rather than Dāwūd b. Rāshid in the manuscript of
the Maqālāt available to him (Minhāj al-sunna 2II 412, 1). Ritter adopted
this form in his Index (p. 632), but also changed the nisba to read al-Miṣrī.
Cf. also the editor’s note on the relevant passage in Ibn Taymiyya.]
56 Cf. Catalogue of Works IV d, no. 4–6.

57 Cf. EI1 III 837 s. v. Mutʿa. Regarding Ibn Mītham see also Kaḥḥāla VII 37. The ʿAlī b.
Haytham mentioned in Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 93, 12, probably refers to him as well.
58 Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 220, 6; cf. p. 99 above.
iraq 487
2.3 Wāsiṭ
Wāsiṭ was situated opposite Kashkar, an old Christian bishopric, on the east-
ern bank of the Tigris.1 Ḥajjāj had founded the city halfway between Kufa
and Basra, ruling from there since 84/703 surrounded by his Syrian troops.
His intention had been to avoid the power struggles caused by tribal differ-
ences. However, while the absence of political tensions facilitated governing,
it also stifled any attempt at theological and ideological debate of the kind
that characterised life in the two amṣār. Ḥajjāj had originally permitted only
Arabs to migrate to the city, while no man from the surrounding area, the so-
called sawād, could stay there overnight.2 Soon, though, he also brought in
Turks from Basra, presumably mainly prisoners of war who had not settled
there entirely.3 Of course, the foremost requirement was administration staff,
and we have already seen that Iyās b. Muʿāwiya from Basra was coordinator
of the economy in Wāsiṭ for a time.4 The most competent experts were fre-
quently mawālī who used their experience of the older cultures to do the jobs
the Arabs thought beneath them. Bashshār b. Burd would later describe it in
his way: Tom, Dick and Harry came to the city, “every kind of shit”, Aramaeans,
louts from the country (aʿlāj), people from Khuzestan.5 They were far too intel-
ligent – and too isolated – to take to the streets for their religious convictions
if, indeed, they had any, as people did in Kufa or Basra. The Syrian military, too,
was not likely to have had much interest in theological intellectual exercise,
and the troops were probably exchanged frequently.
Consequently Aslam b. Sahl al-Razzāz, called Baḥshal, “the black man from
the wilderness”,6 the author of Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ, had more than a little trouble sat-
isfying civic pride, introducing his book with a collection of affirmations of
Wāsiṭ’s being a city (miṣr).7 Intellectually, Wāsiṭ was provincial; there was no
hiding the fact that young men went elsewhere to study, and in the end, neces-
sity was made into a virtue. Among the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth at least, Basra appears
to have been more popular than Kufa.8 It was not until the end of the second
1 Cf. EI2 IV 724f. s. v. Kaskar; Morony, Iraq 201. Regarding the topography cf. Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī in:
Sumer 26/1970/237ff, and 27/1971/153ff.
2 Baḥshal, Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 46, 4ff.; Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 275, 8.
3 Cf. Streck in EI1 IV 1221ff. s. v. Wāsiṭ.
4 See p. 148 above. Baḥshal, 44, 5ff. informs us of the arrangement of the sūq.
5 Cf. the verses in Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān.
6 Al-aswad al-ghalīẓ after Lisān al-ʿArab s. v.
7 Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 45, 3ff.
8 Cf. the chapters Man rawā ʿan Shuʿba, ʿan Qatāda etc. in Baḥshal. Pseudo-Nāshiʾ, Uṣūl al-niḥal,
too, lists the traditionists from Basra and Wāsiṭ together, separate from those from Kufa.
488 chapter 2
century that the city produced a great son of whom it could be proud and who
remained faithful to it on the whole, the traditionist
Abū Khālid Yazīd b. Hārūn b. Zādhī,
118/736–early Rabīʿ I 2069/early August 821, a mawlā of the Sulaym, whose

grandfather had been a cook in the governor’s palace.10 He himself worked in
the administration of justice from time to time, but it seems that he had barred
himself from a straight official career by his support for Hārūn b. Saʿd al-ʿIjlī in
145.11 In the long run, teaching hadith probably paid enough for him to live on:
when as an old man he presented his store of knowledge in Baghdad, 70,000
people were believed to have attended his lectures.12 Of course, with audienc-
es of this size he had to employ a mustamlī.13 Ibn Ḥanbal and later opponents
of the Muʿtazila such as Muḥāsibī or Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Karābīsī attended his
lectures.14 He had studied mainly in Basra,15 but was also said to have visited
Abū Ḥanīfa shortly before the latter’s death.16 His approach to jurisprudence
was eclectic; his knowledge was expounded in a book on inheritance law.17 In
Wāsiṭ it was remembered above all that he had once had the miḥrāb pulled
down in a private mosque while it was being built, clearly considering this to
be an innovation.18 Outside of the city, however, such as in Ḥanbalite circles
in Baghdad, it was emphasised that he had fulminated against the khalq al-
Qurʾān long before the miḥna, even cursing Jahm b. Ṣafwān because of it.19 He
was probably actually thinking of Aṣamm, who may well have visited Wāsiṭ.20
9 Regarding the exact date cf. TB XIV 346, 16f.

10 Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 159, ult. He might be the one referred to in the note that Yazīd originally
came from Bukhara (TB XIV 338, 5ff.), as the name Zādhī could be interpreted as Iranian.
The long paean to Yazīd (ibid. 343, 3ff.) does not, of course, discuss such obscure matters.
12 TB XIV 346, 2f.; Samʿānī, Al-imlāʾ wal-istimlāʾ 16, 11ff.
13 We are told of several (cf. e.g Baḥshal 185, 5ff.; TB 340, 4; Samʿānī 86, 5f. and 90, 4f.; Ṭabarī
III 1116, 14f.).
14 TB VIII 64, 4, and 211, –6; regarding them see ch. C 6.2 and 6.3 below.
15 Cf. the list of his teachers in TB XIV 337ff. no. 7761.
16 IAW II 220, 3ff.
17 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 284, 14; cf. also GAS 1/40.
18 Baḥshal 158, apu. ff.; cf. also p. 408, n. 37 above.
19 Ibid. 154, 11f.; TB 342, pu. ff.; also Abū Dāwūd, Masāʾil al-Imām Aḥmad 268, 2ff.; Khallāl,
Musnad after Madelung in: Festschrift Pareja 507.
iraq 489
Finally it was claimed that it was because of him that al-Maʾmūn refrained
from declaring the dogma openly;21 this may have been due to the recollection
that in 202/817 he had incited the people of Baghdad against Bishr al-Marīsī,22
but it may also have had the objective of doing away with an embarrassment. It
is certain that someone who had been Yazīd’s mustamlī in Baghdad professed
the khalq al-Qurʾān at the beginning of the miḥna, an event that the conserva-
tives would have been reproached with repeatedly later.23 One of his students
in Wāsiṭ did not have a fixed opinion on this critical matter, and Ibn Ḥanbal
would later call him a Jahmite for it:
Abū Ibrāhīm Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm b. Hūd al-Wāsiṭī al-Ḍarīr.24
He was a Quran reciter and had studied in his home city under Isḥāq b. Yūsuf
al-Azraq (d. 195/810), who followed Ḥamza’s Kufan tradition.25 He does not
seem to have excited much remark, despite this “divergent” style. – Someone
who did cause remark was a traditionist and theologian diametrically opposed
to the Jahmites:
Abū Sulaymān Dāwūd b. Rāshid b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm26 al-Jawāribī,
apparently a stocking knitter by profession, and dabbling in anthropomor-

phism on the side. Yazīd b. Hārūn’s view of him was disdainful: “Dāwūd al-
Jawāribī crossed the bridge in Wāsiṭ only once, and it collapsed immediately,
all those who were on it drowning. (Only) a Satan emerged once more, saying: I
am Dāwūd al-Jawāribī”.27 We cannot be certain whether the anthropomorphist
actually cheated death in this way once, but the comment tells us what nobody
else would have told us: that he lived in Wāsiṭ. His full name was recorded by
Baḥshal, but not mentioned anywhere else.
21 TB 342, 5ff. (after Yaḥyā b. Aktham); adopted in TH 320, 6ff. Cf. also Jadʿān, Al-miḥna 113ff.
23 Ṭabarī III 1116, 13ff.; cf. ch. C 3.3.1 below.
24 IAH1 157f. no. 528; Mīzān no. 837 and also 964. The kunya is mentioned in Dāraquṭnī,
Ḍuʿafāʾ 282 no. 89. Cf. also p. 367 above.
25 Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭab. no. 746; cf. no. 738.
26 Or ʿAbd al-Raḥmān; cf. Baḥshal 196, 10 and 196, 12.
27 Mīzān no. 2661.
490 chapter 2
There was also a Dāwūd b. Saʿīd b. ʿAbdallāh al-Jawāribī both of whose

grandsons Ṣāliḥ b. Khalaf and Faḍl b. Khalaf transmitted hadith in
Baghdad in the third century, the former even together with his son
Muḥammad (TB IX 317 no. 4855; XII 368 no. 6804; V 362 no. 2887).
However, he is documented even less. Ibn Taymiyya’s claim that Dāwūd
was from Basra (Bayān al-muwāfaqa, in the margin of Minhāj al-sunna IV
123, 6) is probably simply an error. Going by Samʿānī III 363ff. no. 963 the
nisba appears to have been quite frequent in Wāsiṭ. Maybe such a factory
was based there?
Yazīd b. Hārūn was not all that far from being an anthropomorphist himself.
He transmitted the hadith that those who entered paradise would see God like
the full moon on a moonlit night, and he was even said to have affirmed it ex-
plicitly.28 Dāwūd al-Jawāribī, too, referred to such confirmation. The only had-
ith of his recorded by Baḥshal is the following, transmitted with a Kufan isnād:
“Gabriel came to the prophet and said: ‘When the day of the resurrection comes,
God will put the heavens here – namely his thumb, earth here – his forefinger,
the mountains here – the middle finger, the creatures here – the ring finger,
and the soil (al-tharā?) here – the little finger.’ Thereupon the prophet smiled
and said: ‘ . . . On the day of the resurrection, he will hold the whole earth in his
hand, and the heavens folded in his right hand’ (sura 39:67)”.29 That was the
kind of exegesis the anthropomorphists loved.30 It furthermore seemed to pre-
sume that God will not, as the Quranic verse suggests, distribute heaven and
earth among his two hands, but that he will hold everything in one hand, his
right one (which could also just about be read into the verse). From Ṭabarī we
know that this was precisely the problem under discussion.31 It was probably
based on the idea that God could not have a left hand. Ṭabarī also recorded the
abovementioned tradition, even in several versions, without, however, Dāwūd
putting in an appearance in any of the isnāds.32 The difference between him
and the normal muḥaddithūn was that his anthropomorphism assumed a the-
oretical form.
28 Thus according to Ṭabarī’s ʿaqīda, ed. Sourdel in: REI 36/1968/195, 12ff.
29 Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 196, 10ff.
30 Cf. Text XX 13, e, and Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mutashābih al-Qurʾān 598, 1ff.
31 Tafsīr 2XXIV 25, 13ff.
32 Ibid. 26, 16ff. Cf. also the hadiths quoted in Graham, Divine Word 131ff. (where it is a Jew
rather than Gabriel proclaiming the subsequent version [= 13b] to the prophet!). For fur-
ther details cf. ch. D 1.2.1.4.
iraq 491
There are two statements the heresiographers attributed to him, always in

the same words, and presumably based on the same source in every case: he
imagined God as “hollow from the mouth to the chest, but solid everywhere
else”,33 and when asked about his appearance answered: “Do not ask about his
private parts or his beard, but you may ask about everything else”, i.e.: there are
instances regarding everything else in the Quran or the prophetic tradition.34
It does become clear that soon people did not know what to make of him;
no-one completed his name, and his nisba was often incorrect.35 The heresi-
ographers did not classify him historically but systematically, their decisions
varying: usually he was linked with Muqātil b. Sulaymān,36 but sometimes
with the Shīʿite theologians from Kufa.37 Samʿānī listed him under the nisba
Hishāmī, as a pupil of Hishām al-Jawālīqī’s.
While he may have been a Shīʿite – Dhahabī said so, too,38 and the Kufan
isnād of the hadith quoted at least does not contradict it39 – he certainly was
not a pupil of Jawālīqī’s. The latter already embraced a rather more spiritual
anthropomorphism, God in his view being made up out of light rather than
flesh and blood.40 Dāwūd, on the other hand, believed the latter, as Ashʿarī and
33 Maq. 153, 5 = 209, 10f.; Maqdisī, Badʿ V 140, pu. ff.; Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs Iblīs 84, –9f.; Ibn
Abī l-Ḥadīd, ShNB III 224, –6. The source in all cases is probably Nawbakhtī’s K. al-ārāʾ
wal-diyānāt.
34 This is Shahrastānī’s explanation, probably a correct one (143, 5ff./405, 3ff.). Cf. also Ibn
Abī l-Ḥadīd 224, 11f.; Baghdādī, Uṣūl al-dīn 74, 10f., and Farq 216, 13f./228, 4f. > Isfarāʾīnī,
Tabṣīr 107, 1f./120, pu. ff.; Samʿānī, Ansāb XIII 414, –4f. The Andalusian Ibn al-ʿArabī links
the same statement to the Ḥanbalite Abū Yaʿlā (ʿAwāṣim 283, 6ff.) Cf. also p. 432 above.
35 Juwaynī, Shāmil 288, ult., even has Khwārizmī instead of Jawāribī, as presumably did
Sharīf al-Murtaḍā, Shāfī 16, –11f. This directly confuses him with someone who did not die
until 239/853–4 (TB VIII 367f. no. 4467).
36 Thus Khayyāṭ, Intiṣār 54, 6; Ashʿarī, Maqdisī and Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd, loc. cit.; Ibn al-Jawzī,
Talbīs Iblīs 84, 4f.
37 Thus Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 93, 11. Shahrastānī, while discussing him in the section on Shayṭān
al-Ṭāq, clearly counts him among the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth (143, 5f./405, 2f.; cf. also 77, 6ff./175,
3ff., in the chapter on the Ṣifātiyya).
39 Ardabīlī names a certain Dāwūd b. Rāshid al-Kūfī al-Abzārī, complete with the variant
Dāwūd b. Saʿīd b. ʿAbdallāh (Jāmiʿ 303 b, 2f., and 304 b, 7f.). This one’s dates would cor-
respond as he transmitted from Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, but Ardabīlī has no further information.
Furthermore, Mufīd believed Dāwūd al-Jawāribī to be a Ḥashwī, i.e. not a Shīʿite (Ifṣāḥ 107,
apu., and earlier).
492 chapter 2
Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd tell us; which linked him to Muqātil.41 He differed from
Muqātil in the first of the formulae named: while Muqātil believed God to be
entirely solid, in Dāwūd’s view, only God’s lower half was solid.42 For God re-
quired a “form” in which he could address humans,43 but this form also needed
a mouth that opened, and a chest to house the heart “from which his wisdom
springs forth”.44 The Quran, being God’s speech, emerged directly from inside
his body,45 consequently God could not be solid, ṣamad, here; this must be as-
sumed only from the navel downwards – not least to rule out the possibility of
any vegetative functions.
It is understandable that Bishr al-Marīsī took exception to this view,46 but
traditionists, too, were horrified; they were even reported to have asked the
governor to intervene. It seems that Dāwūd died before measures could be
taken, but none of the scholars of Wāsiṭ were prepared to say the prayer for
the dead over his body.47 While the account was probably toned down, the
names of the people involved tell us that Dāwūd lived during the second half
of the second century,48 and that consequently he was indeed younger than
Muqātil. This makes it all the more remarkable that during his lifetime, or
shortly before, someone who had apparently been close to Muqātil49 was qāḍī
in Wāsiṭ:
41 See p. 594 below; cf. also Text XIV 21 with commentary.
42 Ever since Kulīnī and Baghdādī this has been transferred, wrongly, onto Hishām al-
Jawālīqī, which was the cause of all the confusion (Kāfī I 101, 1f.; Ibn Bābōya, Tawḥīd 69,
12f.; Farq 216, 8ff./227, apu. ff., and 321, 1/332, pu. f.; Uṣūl al-dīn 74, 12f.; Shahrastānī 141, ult.
f./399, 6f.). Kulīnī and Ibn Bābōya both employ the characteristic phrase “hollow down to
his navel”.
43 Ibn al-Rēwandī with reference to Hishām al-Jawālīqī in: Intiṣār 104, pu. f.
44 Thus, once again referring to Hishām al-Jawālīqī, Baghdādī, Farq 216, 10/227, ult. The
phrase was already used with reference to Mughīra b. Saʿīd al-ʿIjlī (Ashʿarī, Maq. 7, 3). It
was a widely recognised idea that the chest and heart were the seat of knowledge and
understanding; cf. the legend of opening up the chest, but also IV Ezra, 14:38–40.
45 Cf. Text XXXIII 47, b–c; also ʿAmr b. Dīnār’s dictum quoted by Madelung in: Festschrift
Pareja 511, and ch. D 1.1 below.
46 Lālakāʾī, Sharḥ uṣūl iʿtiqād ahl al-sunna 531 no. 933 after the “Muʿtazilite” ʿAlī b. ʿĀṣim (see
p. 364 above).
47 Ibid. 532 no. 935 after Wakīʿ.
48 This also becomes clear from the isnād of the hadith mentioned above. Bishr al-Marīsī
was still comparatively young at the time (see ch. C 2.4.1 below).
49 The two of them are named together in TB XIII 164, 20, although the name is misspelt.
iraq 493
Abū Shayba Ibrāhīm b. ʿUthmān al-ʿAbsī,
d. 169/785–6, a Kufan mawlā whose reputation among traditionists was not

good. His mother’s second marriage was to the Shīʿite jurist Ḥakam b. ʿUtayba50
who may have imported anthropomorphic ideas from Kufa. Yazīd b. Hārūn of
all people was his secretary in his younger days.51 Baḥshal did not pay any at-
tention to him at all.52
Shīʿites as such were numerous enough in Wāsiṭ.53 Griffini pointed out how
frequently the nisba al-Wāsiṭī occurred in Shīʿite circles.54 When Hārūn b. Saʿd
al-ʿIjlī governed the city on behalf of Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh in 145, he found sup-
port from those committed to the faith.55 Yazīd b. Hārūn, not yet thirty at the
time, supported him, as did the Quranic exegete and legal scholar Hushaym b.
Bashīr al-Sulamī (104/722–183/799). The latter was said to be particularly pug-
nacious; one of his sons and his brother Ḥajjāj died in battle.56 Some time be-
fore this date Abū Khālid, Zayd b. ʿAlī’s spiritual mentor, had found sanctuary
in Wāsiṭ, when Kufa became too dangerous for him.57 Several Ḥasanid families
were also living in the city,58 but the Ḥusaynids, too, could count on support,
as can be seen from the fact that one of Mūsā al-Kāẓim’s financial administra-
tors, a man named Ḥusayn b. Qayyāmā, was at home in Wāsiṭ. He appears to
have come from the autochthonous Aramaean population and looked after the
(secret) collection of the zakāt. All the more vexing that he did not recognise
ʿAlī al-Riḍā; he was a Wāqifite.59 He was not alone in this: Durust b. Abī Manṣūr
Muḥammad al-Wāsiṭī took the same decision – he was a serious legal scholar

51 TB VI 112, 19.
52 Regarding him cf. Wakīʿ, Akhbār III 322, 7; TB VI 111ff. no. 3144; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 59f. no. 54;
Mīzān no. 145. He was the grandfather of the historian and traditionist Ibn Abī Shayba (d.
235/849; cf. GAS 1/108f.).
53 Khallāl, Musnad 163, –7.
54 Corpus Iuris clxxxi, with reference to Ṭūsī’s Fihrist. It must be borne in mind, however, that
the place-name occurs more than once (cf. Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān s. n.).
56 Abū l-Faraj, Maqātil 359, 4ff.; 363, 1ff.; 377, 10ff.
58 Ibn Ṭabāṭabā, Muntaqilat al-Ṭālibiyya 341, apu. ff. (referring, however, to a later time).
59 Kulīnī, Kāfī I 321, 4ff.; Ardabīlī I 251a; Husain in: Hamdard Islamicus 5/1982, issue 4/26.
Regarding the name cf. Syr. qayyāmā “persisting, surviving”; more information ch. C 1.4.1
below.
494 chapter 2
a fragment of whose hadith booklet is extant to this day.60 Since 145 the aṣḥāb
al-ḥadīth had kept their distance. Yazīd b. Hārūn transmitted from Ḥarīz b.
ʿUthmān al-Raḥabī who had spoken out so harshly against ʿAlī in Ḥimṣ.61 He
was said to have left it to his pupils whether they preferred ʿUthmān or ʿAlī,62
but hadiths praising ʿAlī would never cross his lips, as he believed one was never
safe from Shīʿite partisanship with those who transmitted them.63 Hushaym b.
Bashīr, who moved to Basra, appears to have embraced the theory of the four
caliphs that would take hold a generation later.64 If Ibn Qutayba believed him
to be a Shīʿite this may well have been due to his support for al-Nafs al-zakiyya,65
and it was probably for the same reason that Shahrastānī counted him as well
as Yazīd b. Hārūn among the Zaydites.66 Together with the father of the Basran
Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj his grandfather had been the builder responsible for erect-
ing Ḥajjāj’s palace in Wāsiṭ.67
Basran influence was a problem for the Shīʿites, and they complained to ʿAlī
al-Riḍā that the ʿUthmānites were constantly finding fault with them.68 There
is a documented case – although admittedly a slightly earlier one – which
proves this. A certain
al-Faḍl b. Dalham69 al-Qaṣṣār,
who made a living as a bleacher in Wāsiṭ,70 returned home from Basra with
an ʿUthmānite hadith.71 He traced it back to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, having studied
60 In: Al-uṣūl al-sitta ʿashar (Tehran 1371/1951) 158ff., where he sometimes transmits after
Hishām al-Jawālīqī. Regarding him cf. Kashshī 556, 1f.; Ṭūsī, Fihrist 134 no. 285; Ardabīlī I
310f., and vol. I 408, n. 118 above.
62 Khallāl, Musnad 163, –7ff.
63 Ibn Abī Yaʿlā, Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila I 292, 8ff.; cf. also Madelung, Qāsim 227f.
64 Pseudo-Nāshiʾ, Uṣūl al-niḥal 65, 13ff., where l. 13 should probably read Hushaym b. Bashīr
rather than Hishām b. Bishr. The conjecture Hishām b. Sanbar I suggested in the notes
may be graphically closer, but really one would have expected the more usual Hishām
al-Dastuwāʾī. More information vol. I 271f. above and p. 497 below, also ch. C 2.4.3.
65 Maʿārif 624, 15.
66 Milal 145, 9f./415, 1f.
67 TB XIV 88, 18. Regarding him cf. also IS VII2 70, 3ff.; Baḥshal 152ff.; Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist
284, 10ff.; IAH IV2 115 no. 486; Mīzān no. 9250; GAS 1/38; Azmi, Studies, Index s. n.; Aguadé,
Messianismus 22f. (where he is treated as a Zaydite).
68 Kulīnī, Kāfī VIII 247 no. 346.
69 Regarding dalham “the pitch-black one” cf. Lisān s. v., and Fischer, Farbbezeichnungen 282.
70 qaṣṣār (Baḥshal 119, 7ff.). Because of this account I prefer the laqab al-Qaṣṣār to the form
al-Qaṣṣāb transmitted elsewhere.
71 Jāḥiẓ, ʿUthmāniyya 115, 1.
iraq 495
under him and his successor Qatāda.72 He probably died around the middle
of the second century. It seems that he had become infected with the spirit of
his surroundings: Yazīd b. Hārūn called him a Muʿtazilite,73 although it prob-
ably was not quite as bad as all that, as the Muʿtazilites did not notice it, and
neither did numerous other bibliographical sources.74 He had good memories
of serving in Hishām’s army,75 which was more suitable for an ʿUthmānite than
a Muʿtazilite. However, towards the end of the century someone else who had
studied under Wāṣil and greatly respected ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd had a great following
in the city, but Yazīd b. Hārūn did not think much of him, either.76
Murjiʾites are barely tangible in Wāsiṭ, as the Kufan influence was not very
strong outside the Shīʿa. Later, however, Bishr al-Marīsī was able to exert some
influence from Baghdad, which may explain why Yazīd b. Hārūn persecuted
him even there. Those who followed Bishr in Wāsiṭ are barely known to us:
a rug merchant named Muthannā al-Anmāṭī,77 and Shādhdh b. Yaḥyā with
whom Yazīd debated once.78 Neither of them was a traditionist, and they did
not have any ties to the Basran variant of the Murjiʾa. There was only one who
corresponded to the original categories; however, he was considerably older:
Abū Khālid Yazīd b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Abī ʿĀṣim Sābiṭ al-Dālānī,79
a mawlā of the Asad, who lived during the first half of the second century. He
did not fare well in the city. He had to flee to Kufa from al-Manṣūr, where he
lived until the end of his life among the Banū Dālān, a branch of the Hamdān.80
It is not known why he had to flee. His hadith was controversial.81
These few notes do not add up to a reliable image. Not only was Wāsiṭ
younger than the two other cities in Iraq, it also sank back into its provincial
72 Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 113, 6ff.

73 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 445 no. 1494; Mīzān no. 6721; TT VIII 276, 16f.
74 Thus e.g. Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ. Also without references: Bukhārī IV1 116f. no. 518; IAH III2 61
no. 352; Ibn Ḥibbān II 210, –6ff.
75 Ibn Manẓūr, Mukhtaṣar TD XX 275f.
77 Khallāl, Musnad 430, –5ff., and 501, 3ff.; Bukhārī, Khalq al-afʿāl 126, 9ff.
78 ʿAbdallāh b. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, K. al-sunna 11, 13ff. = TB VII 62, 17ff.
79 Listed as a Murjiʾite in Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 138 no. 850; Bukhārī IV2 346f. no. 3270 after Sharīk
b. ʿAbdallāh al-Nakhaʿī (regarding him see vol. I 246 above); Karābīsī in Kaʿbī, Qabūl 216,
14; Mīzān no. 9723.
80 Baḥshal 99, 6f.; Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn III 105, 8ff.; Samʿānī, Ansāb V 298, 3ff.; also IS VII2 59,
17f.; Khalīfa, Ṭab. 846 no. 3187.
81 Fasawī III 113, ult.
496 chapter 2
existence rather more quickly after the foundation of Baghdad.82 The last theo-
logian to have been born there,
Walīd b. Abān al-Karābīsī,
d. 214/829, found his pupils in the capital.83 He was the maternal uncle of
Aḥmad b. Sinān b. Asad al-Qaṭṭān,84 a traditionist from Wāsiṭ whom Baḥshal
cited a number of times.85 There is an anecdote that has him meet Bishr al-
Marīsī at Zābiyān,86 i.e. a canal near Nuʿmāniyya, halfway between Wāsiṭ and
Baghdad.87 He probably traded in Wāsiṭ in white cotton cloth (kirbās), as his
nephew al-Qaṭṭān was in the same trade; but he appears also to have lived
in Basra.88 It was here that Yaḥyā b. Aktham, who became qāḍī of the city in
202/817–8,89 wanted to appoint him court witness, but Walīd did not accept the
position.90 The offer appears to have been fraught with difficulty. Ibn Aktham
was still very young, and a stranger to the city as well; its inhabitants did not
like him.91 Thus it was understandable that he wanted to have the support of
someone from outside. Fortunately Walīd was prudent enough to give general
reasons for his refusal: “There are three things that humiliate a man: transmit-
ting hadith, being prayer leader, and acting as a witness in court”. He seems to
have meant that these made a man dependent; people asked him why he did
not add marriage to his list. However, he conceded that marriage was inescap-
able, but one should never propose unless one was certain of being accepted.92
The aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth did not like the sound of this, but consequently relished
all the more recounting how on his deathbed he converted to them after all,
advising his pupils to steer clear of kalām and look to the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth in-
stead – not, however, to the celebrities (ruʾasāʾ) but to those wearing shabby
82 Massignon, Passion 2I 99ff./I 59ff., has materials on the cultural-historical development
of the city in the third century; Ḥallāj lived here during his adolescence between 249/863
and 258/872.
83 Ibn Taghrībirdī, Nujūm II 210, 13f.
84 TB XIII 441, 16f.
85 Taʾrīkh Wāsiṭ 236, 1ff.; also 107, –6; 123, 11 etc. Cf. also TT I 34f. no. 62.
86 TB XIII 441, 2ff.; cf. ch. C 2.4.1 below.
87 Cf. Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān s. n. Zābiyān and Nuʿmāniyya.
88 Ibn Taghrībirdī, loc. cit., calls him a Muʿtazilite from Basra.
89 IKh VI 149, –7f.
90 TB XIII 441, 9ff.
92 TB 441, 11ff.
iraq 497
clothes, who were constantly mocked by the former.93 Interestingly it was a son
of Abū Dāwūd’s who circulated this story. He believed Walīd to be the great-
est expert in kalām after Ḥafṣ al-Fard, who had died shortly before him and
was well-known in Basra as an opponent of Abū l-Hudhayl.94 This is proof that
Walīd cannot have been a Muʿtazilite, as Ibn Taghrībirdī claimed; this was
probably the view of those to whom any interest in kalām seemed suspicious.
His objectives, however, were different: ʿalā madhhab ahl l-ḥaqq, as al-Khaṭīb
al-Baghdādī put it.95
At the time, a generation before Ibn Kullāb, this was not very common, and
we would like to know further details. However, the sources provide them only
sparingly. He does not seem to have agreed with the khalq al-Qurʾān Maʾmūn
proclaimed for the first time shortly before his death.96 Ḥusayn al-Karābīsī, who
would try to mediate later during the miḥna by proposing his theory of the
createdness of the pronunciation of the Quran, was his pupil.97 He adopted the
inclination of absolving the prophet’s companions who had been on opposing
sides in the battle of the camel.98 This, as we have seen, was nothing new and
might indeed have sprung from the earliest Muʿtazilite tendency; but in his
case it is linked to two ideas that only emerged fully during his lifetime. The
first is the theory of the four caliphs: unlike Yazīd b. Hārūn, who died only ten
years before him, Walīd al-Karābīsī recognised ʿAlī as the fourth rightly-guided
caliph, thus drawing a line under the quarrels of the early Islamic period. In
Baghdad this was successful. The second new aspect, however, was the rea-
soning he employed. In the battle of the camel the prophet’s companions fol-
lowed only their ijtihād, but everyone is right in ijtihād. It was irrelevant that
people lost their lives; after all, this could happen any time capital punishment
is meted out based on ijtihād. Karābīsī thus found himself among the followers
of ʿUbaydallāh al-ʿAnbarī, a Basran, although he was closer chronologically to
the Zaydite Sulaymān b. Jarīr al-Raqqī, who also expressed the idea more fully-
formed.99 We do not know whether the two knew one another.
93 TB XIII 441, 14ff. = Khaṭīb, Sharaf aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth 56, 1ff. (with the correct reading
yuhajjinuhū instead of y-h-j-h); without the memorable conclusion in Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs
82, 4ff.
95 TB 441, 1f.; cf. also 441, 17f. Masʿūdī is said to have esteemed him greatly as a mutakallim
(Ibn Taghrībirdī, loc. cit.); but his evaluation has not come down to us.
96 Ibid. 441, 8f.
97 Ibid. 441, 2 and ult.; regarding him see ch. 6.3 below.
98 Cf. Pseudo-Nāshiʾ, Uṣūl 67, 1ff. § 114 and Text XXXIII 45; also Madelung in: Der Islam
57/1980/222f.
498 chapter 2
2.4 The Jazira
Upper Mesopotamia, the so-called “peninsula” between the diverging courses

of the Tigris and the Euphrates, was culturally a separate province. For cen-
turies the border between Byzantium and the Sasanid Empire had run here,
which meant that the region had been cut off from southern Iraq. Following
this tradition Muʿāwiya had merged it with Syria, and Marwān II even moved
his capital here; but it was administered independently at the time and re-
mained like that until the foundation of modern Iraq. Arabs had immigrated
in pre-Islamic time; the region around Nisibis was called Arvastān in Middle
Persian, and Bēth ʿArabāyē in Syriac.1 More had joined them under ʿUthmān:
when Muʿāwiya was governor of Syria he granted land to the Muḍar and the
Bakr b. Wāʾil, especially their sub-group the Rabīʿa, in regions that had been
depopulated by never-ending frontier wars. Still, the tribes were not yet entire-
ly sedentary, which probably explains why Khārijite movements in particular
took root here again and again until well into the Abbasid era. “The Jazira is
rebellious (khārija)”, Jāḥiẓ said, “Ḥarūrite and renegade”.2 Even in the centuries
preceding Islam, Bedouin raids had frightened the population of the cities.3
The new structure of the province also followed the immigrant tribes. The
Muḍar region was to the west (Diyār Muḍar) with Raqqa as the most impor-
tant city, while the Diyār Rabīʿa in the east were governed from Mosul. Where
the plain did not become mountain, they were bordered to the north by the
territory of the Bakr; ancient Amida, which played an important part at the
time is, of course, called Diyarbakır in present-day Turkey.4 Towns that were
not recently founded like Mosul, continued the traditions established in late
antiquity with their mainly Christian populations: Edessa,5 Nisibis or Mabbōg/
Manbīj, known as Hierapolis under the Greeks. Some parts of the countryside
1 Trimingham, Christianity among the Arabs 150 and earlier; Shahid, Rome and the Arabs 7 and
61, n. 39; cf. also Map II on p. 172f. General information EI2 II 523f. s. v. D̲ j̲azīra.
2 Manāqib al-Turk, in: Rasāʾil III 175, 6; a similar statement also in Ibn al-Faqīh, Buldān 315, 8f.
“Renegade” is a translation of Ar. māriqa here; this, too, is a frequent epithet of the Khārijites
(see p. 273 and 399 above).
3 Segal, Edessa 143ff.
4 Regarding provincial borders in the early Abbasid era cf. the map provided by Forand in:
JAOS 89/1969/105; general information EI2 II 343ff. s. v. Diyār Bakr, Diyār Muḍar and Diyār
Rabīʿa. Regarding administrative districts during the Sasanid era cf. Morony, Iraq 129ff.
5 Cf. J. B. Segal’s monograph Edessa, “The Blessed City” (Oxford 1970), which is worth reading.
iraq 499
were strewn with monasteries, especially Syriac Orthodox ones;6 the monks
had worked as missionaries among the nomad Arab population.7 While
in pre-Islamic times the border between the two empires had separated
Monophysites and Nestorians, now the faiths lived side by side again, even the
Melkites remaining. All of them produced great theologians under the new
rulers. Among the Monophysites the most remarkable was Jacob of Edessa (d.
708/ AH 89), achieving a synthesis of theological and scientific education in
his Hexaemeron,8 while among the Melkites we find Theodore Abū Qurra a
century later (ca. 740–820), who was bishop of Ḥarrān for a time and translated
some Aristotelian writings into Arabic.9 Both are of interest for Islamic theol-
ogy: Jacob of Edessa composed a treatise which discussed, among other things,
the question of whether God predetermined the time of man’s death, which
was very important to the Qadarites.10 Theodore Abū Qurra, on the other hand,
directly attacked the Muslim determinists, stating that in his view denying free
will equalled Manichaeism.11 He also noted as a drawback that Muḥammad
had not worked any miracles12 and expressed veiled criticism of the worldly
concept of paradise in the Quran13 – both, in fact, in Arabic rather than Syriac.
It is unlikely that a Christian in Kufa or Basra would have spoken quite so freely.
He believed that if one had to choose between religions, reason would reveal
6 Cf. the list in W. Hage, Syrisch-jakobitische Kirche 107ff.; also Atlas zur Kirchengeschichte,
Map 38B. For more detail regarding the region of Ṭūr ʿAbdīn cf. P. Krüger’s dissertation
Das syrisch-monophysitische Mönchtum im Tur-Abd(h)in (Münster 1937), especially the
second part published in OCP 4/1938/5ff. Regarding the region east of Mosul cf. J. M. Fiey,
Assyrie chrétienne (1–2, Beirut 1965), and the city itself, id., Mossoul chrétienne (Beirut
1959).
7 Morony, Iraq 372ff.
8 Ed. and transl. Vaschalde, CSCO 92 and 97. As for geography his horizon extended as far as
the Alps and the Sudeten mountains (112b, –6ff./transl. 93).
9 Cf. M. Kellermann, Ein pseudoaristotelischer Traktat über die Tugend 18ff.; Walzer, Greek
into Arabic 68 and 84ff. One should note that we are looking at a Christian, and an unmar-
ried one at that, who bears a kunya. The name Abū Qurra was typical of Ḥarrān (cf. Abel
in: Elaborathin de l’Islam 70, n. 2).
10 Cook, Early Muslim Dogma 145ff.; cf. also Sākō in: Islamochristiana 10/1984/280, and ch. D
2.1.1 below.
11 Mayāmir, ed. Bāshā, p. 9ff.; transl. G. Graf, Die arabischen Schriften des Theodor Abū Qurra
223ff.; cf. also his Mīmar 35 in PG 97, col. 1503ff.
12 Ducellier, Miroir 119 after the dialogue no. XXII. Regarding the argument see ch. C 1.2.3 and
D 4.2 below.
13 Mīmar fī wujūd al-khāliq 252 = XIV 25 and earlier.
500 chapter 2
the truth, and he presented this in the form of a parable in a spirit similar to
that expressed later by Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān.14
A Nestorian, too, found fame in this region during the early Umayyad era:
Isaac (“the monk”) (d. ca. 700) who became bishop of Mosul/Nineveh, and
was then known as Isaac of Nineveh. He remained in the bishopric for only
five months, retiring to live as an ascetic in a monastery in Khūzistān in Iran.15
Besides the Christians there were other religious groups such as Dayṣānites,
Manichaeans, and possibly Markionites; Abū Qurra described all of them as
heresies.16 Above all there were Jewish communities in all cities, as witnessed
by Benjamin of Tudela as late as the 1160s.17 Syrian Christianity had often
grown up out of local Judaism, but there are hardly any contemporary sources
for the time that interests us. However, Dāwūd b. Marwān al-Muqammaṣ, the
oldest Jewish mutakallim (ninth century) came from Raqqa; he had long been
influenced by the Monophysite theologian Nonnus of Nisibis, a relative of Abū
Rāʾiṭa18 who had in his youth, around 815, conducted a memorable debate
with Abū Qurra in Armenia, and later went to prison in Samarra for some time
under Mutawakkil.19
2.4.1 Ḥarrān
When Marwān II made Ḥarrān his capital, one day’s journey from Edessa and
two from Raqqa, he had probably been swayed by several reasons. He was
familiar with the region as his father had been governor of the Jazira under
ʿAbd al-Malik, and he himself had held the same office in his youth between
14 Ibid. 212ff. = VIII 9ff. For general information on Theodor Abū Qurra as a theologian cf.
the dissertations of Ignace Dick, Theodor Abuqurra, évêque melkite de Harran (Leuven
1960) and S. H. Griffith, The Controversial Theology of Theodore Abū Qurrah (Cath. Univ. of
America, Washington 1978); also Griffith in: JAOS 105/1985/53ff., Assfalg in LThK X 38 s. n.,
and the catalogue of writings in Islamochristiana 1/1975/154ff.
15 Regarding him see ER VII 288f. with further references.
16 See vol. I 499 and 506f. above; regarding the Manichaeans references in Tardieu, JA
274/1986/24, n. Cf. also the zindīq from Edessa vol. I 518f. above.
17 Cf. Travels, transl. Adler 32ff.; Rüger, Syrien und Palästina nach dem Reisebericht des
Benjamin von Tudela 66.
19 At first Dāwūd had even converted to Christianity (cf. the text in Sirat, History of Jewish
Philosophy 17). His ʿIshrūn maqāla have been edited by S. Stroumsa (Leiden 1989); cf.
also ch. 5.1.1 below. Regarding Nonnus cf. A. van Roey, Nonnus de Nisibe (Leuven 1948).
If Khwarizmi is to be believed (Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm 24, 5 > Abū l-Maʿālī, Bayān ul-adyān 57,
10f.), Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī (see p. 691ff. below), too, was born in Nisibis.
iraq 501
102/720 and 105/724. While his father might still have resided in Raqqa,1 the
mint had probably moved to Ḥarrān rather earlier.2 The city was situated in a
strategically favourable position: it was possible to keep an eye on Syria and on
Iraq at the same time and consequently put down rebellious Khārijites such
as Ḍaḥḥāk b. Qays much more quickly.3 Above all, Ḥarrān was a centre of the
Qays tribes, Damascus having become too dangerous since the Yaman had be-
come Qadarites.4 Both places were equally shaped by history; it was at Carrhae
that Crassus suffered his defeat against the Parthians in 53 BCE.
2.4.1.1 The Ṣābians

The Arabs held the city dear because according to a well-known tradition
Abraham was born there.1 On the other hand they found it an uncanny place
because a part of the population followed a late Hellenistic “Chaldaean” ce-
lestial religion worshipping in strange temples which stood out because of
their uncompromisingly geometrical shapes.2 Christianity had not taken root
until comparatively late: there does not seem to have been a bishop of Ḥarrān
before the fourth century.3 Emperor Julian had been received with great joy
when he visited the city during his last campaign, and had sacrificed to the
moon god Sin.4 Masʿūdī reported that the heathen of the city did not call him
the Apostate like the Christians did, but rather εὐσεβής/Eusebius “the pious
one”.5 In the words of the Church Fathers Ḥarrān was ἡ Ἑλλήνων πόλις, “the
heathen city”.6 Local Christians, too, regarded the worshippers of celestial
bodies as ḥanpē, heathen, who were furthermore remarkable for their
1 See p. 526 below.

2 For more detail cf. Rotter in: Amer. Numismatic Soc. Mus. Notes 19/1974/166ff., 178 and 198;
esp. 168 n. 14. Marwān also moved the treasury from Damascus to Ḥarrān (Pseudo-Dionysius
of Tellmaḥrē). 46, 11ff./transl. 41f.
3 See p. 524 below.
1 When passing through shortly after 380, the pilgrim Egeria had been shown his house
(J. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels 118 = cap. 20.3). Of course, the Bible already tells us that
Abraham used to live there (Gen. 11:31).
2 Cf. fundamentally D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, 1–2, Petersburg 1856.
3 Cf. ibid. I 423ff. Egeria said that there were no Christians living in the city except a few clerics
(Wilkinson 119 = cap. 20.8).
4 Ibid. I 426ff.; Segal, Edessa 104; Bidez, Julian der Abtrünnige 335f.; Tardieu in: IA 274/1986/1,
n. 4.
5 Tanbīh 145, ult. f.; also Shboul, Al-Masʿūdī and his World 246f.
6 Thus in the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon. Cf. Chwolsohn I 303 and 438f.; also EI2 II 227 b.
502 chapter 2
appearance which included a long-sleeved garment in the style of a tunic

(qabāʾ) and flowing hair.7
Regarding pre-Islamic Ḥarrān cf. the always readable dissertation by

A. Mez, Geschichte der Stadt Ḥarrān in Mesopotamien bis zum Einfall der
Araber (Strasburg 1892); also F. H. Weißbach in RE X 2009ff. s. v. Κάῤῥαι,
K. F. Krämer in LThK II 1023 s. v. Charan and more recently W. Cramer
in RAC XIII 635ff. s. v. Ḥarrān; also S. Lloyd and W. Brice in: Anatolian
Studies 1/1951/88ff. All these descriptions are based on literary reports.
Archaeological research is still in its fledgling stages. Subsequently it may
become necessary to distinguish between two distinct places. In the loca-
tion of Islamic Ḥarrān there was only a Hellenistic city with a temple of
Sin, but beneath it there are layers dating to the third millennium BCE.
Archaeological finds corresponding to the temples with the geometrical
plans described in the Arabic sources are not situated in Ḥarrān itself but
in Sumatar (Sumatar Harabesi) forty to fifty kilometres northeast, where
a supreme god named Mār Ilāhā was worshipped whom the celestial bod-
ies may have served. It is more than sixty years since J. W. Segal undertook
a survey of this location; he reported it in: Anatolian Studies 3/1953/97ff.,
and summarised his findings in a monograph on Edessa (p. 56ff.) as well
as, particularly engagingly, in E. Bacon, Vanished Civilizations 201ff. A mo-
saic containing a Syriac inscription found in Urfa shows what the qabāʾ
mentioned above might have looked like (AS 3/1953/117f. and Plate XII
no. 1; in colour in Edessa, Plate 1; cf. also the relief found in Sumatar, ibid.,
Plate 41). Ṭabarī tells us (I 2424, 5ff.) that after the battle of Qādisiyya near
Kufa Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ visited the house in which Abraham had been
held prisoner by Nimrod, and prayed to the prophets there.
In Muslim ears, however, the word ḥanpē had an entirely different ring:8
ḥunafāʾ, as they knew from the Quran, were worshippers of the one true God
whose representative on earth had been this very Abraham.9 It may be that the
conquerors believed to have found traces of the original Abrahamic religion;
to them, the Christians’ failure to understand the connection could only be
confirmation. On the other hand, in the Quran Abraham had proved himself
7 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 385, 6.

8 For references cf. Segal, AS 108f.
9 Cf. EI2 III 165f. s. v. Ḥanīf. Regarding the semantic development cf. Colpe in: Int. Kirchl. Zs.
76/1986/216, and the slightly altered version in Das Siegel der Propheten 166ff.
iraq 503
to be ḥanīf by turning his back on the cult of celestial bodies.10 This probably
led Bīrūnī to the rather confusing claim that the Ḥarrānians were earlier “in
the books” called ḥunafāʾ as well as idolaters (wathaniyya);11 form and meaning
of Syriac ḥanpē had simply gradually separated in this instance.12 Certainly the
heathen Ḥarrānians were the first to enter into negotiations with the Muslim
conquerors, intending to surrender the city; the Christians joined them only
later.13 The Muslims took away one of their temples, turning it into a mosque.
By naming the new sanctuary after Abraham they showed that they intended
to give new meaning to the local tradition. All the same, they did not treat the
previous owners as heathen but compensated them, giving them a plot where
to build another temple.
Ibn Shaddād, Aʿlāq III2 42, 10ff. (transl. by Rice in: AS 2/1952/38); also
Chwolsohn I 433ff. It is unlikely that anyone would have told the Muslims
that there had long been an anti-Jewish and anti-Christian – and conse-
quently anti-Islamic – Abrahamic legend in Ḥarrān according to which
the patriarch, having destroyed the idols, returned penitently to wor-
shipping celestial bodies. We do not need to go into whether the Quran
referred to this legend (cf. Strohmaier in: Studien zum Menschenbild
in Gnosis und Manichäismus, ed. P. Nagel, p. 223ff.; also Pedersen in:
Festschrift Browne 383ff.). The Abrahamic cult in Urfa/Edessa that at-
tracts so many pilgrims – and European tourists – today appears to be
of a more recent date, presumably having been transferred there from
Ḥarrān. Ibn Shaddād did not mention it, and Segal, while relating some
folkloristic details, does not say anything about their age (Edessa 1f.).
Benjamin of Tudela mentioned that Muslims were praying in Ḥarrān in
the place where the house of Abraham, or his father, had stood (Travels,
transl. 33; Rüger, Syrien und Palästina 67).
In the following generations Ḥarrānians do not seem to have been oppressed

by the Muslim authorities. If Ibn al-Nadīm was able to compile a list of the
high priests from ʿAbd al-Malik’s time onwards complete with the dates of
their time in office,14 this does not convey the impression of an underground
organisation, however one may view the authenticity of the information. They
10 Cf. Speyer, Bibl. Erzählungen 124ff.

11 Al-āthār al-bāqiya 318, 18f./transl. 315, 8; also 206, 9/188, 26.
12 Cf. also Stern in: Journal of Theol. Studies 19/1968 (= History and Culture, no. III), p. 161ff.
13 Balādhurī, Futūḥ 206 no. 458.
14 Fihrist 390, 12ff.; Chwolsohn II 43f.
504 chapter 2
manufactured astrolabes and celestial globes, retaining the monopoly for a

long time.15 It seems that the K. al-iṣtamākhīs, which discussed talismans, was
composed in Ḥarrān.16 The Ḥarrānians became famous as experts in the sci-
ence of antiquity; it was well-known that there were still scholars among them
who were fluent in Greek. When the days of the School of Antioch seemed to
be numbered under Mutawakkil (r. 232/847–247/861), the library was moved
to Ḥarrān and lectures continued there.17 At the same time, or shortly after-
wards, a physician from Ḥarrān appeared in Spain under Muḥammad I (r.
238/852–273/886). He was a Muslim as he built a mosque in Cordoba.18 The
mathematician Thābit b. Qurra (221/836–288/901)19 was from Ḥarrān, as was
the astronomer al-Battānī (d. 317/929), although the latter had grown up in
Raqqa.20 Both of them made a name for themselves in Baghdad, and took some
15 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 342, –6f. (cf. also the names 343, 7); Hamdānī, Ṣifat jazīrat al-ʿArab
132, 22f.; Strohmaier, Die Sterne des ʿAbdarraḥmān aṣ-Ṣūfī 10.
16 Cf. Burnett in: Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages 87f.
17 Thus according to a text found in Fārābī that was emended after Masʿūdī in the relevant
passage (cf. Meyerhof, Von Alexandrien nach Baġdād 24ff.; also Endreß in GAP II 411).
N. Rescher, Studies in the History of Arabic Logic 22ff., has translated the account in con-
text, as did Strohmaier in: Festschrift Moreaux II 380ff. Strohmaier doubted its authentic-
ity, as did Zimmermann in: Fārābī, De interpretatione ciiif. The date is indeed quite late; it
really only serves as evidence that Ḥarrān was by that time the only place where classical
tradition in Syriac clothing found an environment that did not force it to comply with a
Christian syllabus. M. Tardieu has attempted to date the transfer back to ʿUmar’s time, as-
suming a (neo-)Platonic academy in Ḥarrān at the time (in: JA 274/1986/21ff. and earlier).
In her introduction to the Acts of the Simplicius Colloquium Paris 1985 I. Hadot followed
his lead without reservations (Simplicius. Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa survie 10ff.). She assumes
that Simplicius, Damascius, Priscian and the other neo-Platonic philosophers who had
been welcomed at Khosrou Anoshirwan’s court after the School of Athens had been
closed, settled in Ḥarrān on their return; Simplicius is believed to have composed the ma-
jority of his works there. It is for the experts to judge this hypothesis. I would agree with
Tardieu that it is not necessary to separate the presumed neo-Platonic academy quite so
strictly from the native pagan religion; nor does this imply that Fārābī’s account is neces-
sarily incorrect. Cf. also Tardieu’s article in the abovementioned collection p. 40ff., where
the brief note on the different beginnings of the year found in Simplicius’ commentary
on Aristoteles’ Physics is linked to the calendars in use in Ḥarrān. [Endreß has written a
response in: Der Islam 68/1991/134ff.].
18 Ibn Juljul, Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʿ 94f. no. 37; cf. also Vernet, De ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I a Isabel II,
p. 259. The Ṣābian named ʿImrān, with whom ʿAlī al-Riḍā was said to have debated before
the vizier Faḍl b. Sahl in Marv, is probably nothing but a literary fiction together with his
arguments (see ch. C 2.2 below).
19 Regarding him cf. GAS 5/264ff.
20 Regarding him ibid. 5/287f.; Ullmann, Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften 328f.; EI2 I 1104f.
iraq 505
liberties there. Thābit wrote books about the teachings and customs of his an-
cestors in which he glorified the high culture of the ḥunafāʾ freely, making no se-
cret of his contempt for Christianity, “the false doctrine from Nazareth” (ṭuʿyay
de-Nāṣrath).21 It may not be coincidence that the name Sinān was popular
among Ḥarrānians; maybe it sounded to them, in accordance with the mim-
icry prevalent in the Orient, rather like their lunar god Sin.
However, the admiration shown them was tempered with astonishment or
even revulsion, even in the case of an enlightened rationalist like Jāḥiẓ. He
knew of a certain Abū l-Mubārak who was well-respected at the caliph’s court
where he had gained notoriety as a womaniser, and later castrated himself.
This remarkable behaviour, Jāḥiẓ noted, was by no means an isolated case;22
after all, castration had played an important part in the cult of the mother
goddess in Hierapolis, not far from Ḥarrān.23 Of course the Muslims also no-
ticed that “he had not consumed any animal foods for eighty years”.24 The
historian Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ (313/925–386/996) did not eat
beans.25 Wilder rumours abounded. The Ḥarrānians were suspected of rit-
ual child murder,26 and above all there was the story of a severed head that
was preserved in a nutrient solution of oil and borax and then used to give
oracles.27 Hārūn al-Rashīd was said to have persecuted them for this,28 sending
21 Quoted in Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon 176, apu. ff./transl. 180; cf. Chwolsohn I 177ff. We may
safely assume that Bar Hebraeus adopted the passage, which he quoted in Syriac, from an
Arabic text, changing Ar. ḥanafiyya to Syr. ḥanpūthā “the heathen”, which outraged him.
The Muslims of Baghdad saw things differently yet again, and did not resent his attacks
on Christianity either, of course.
22 Ḥayawān I 125, 10ff.; cf. also Radd ʿalā l-Naṣārā in: Rasāʾil III 323, 4f.
23 One of the Christian rulers of Edessa had taken steps against this (Segal, Edessa 56).
24 Ḥayawān 127, ult. f. Due to the date, however, it is not certain that this was indeed a Ṣābian
from Ḥarrān; the term is ambiguous (see below). But cf. the parallel in the text in Oriens
27–28/1981/282.
25 Thaʿālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr II 243, 11ff. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd; regarding the bean taboo see p. 42f.
above. Note the combination of names Ibrāhīm b. Hilāl; hilāl is the “new moon”. One of
Abū Isḥāq’s sons was called Sinān (cf. EI2 IV 21f. s. v. aṣ-Ṣābīʾ).
26 Thus already Ibn al-Nadīm; cf. the instances in J. Hjärpe, Analyse critique des traditions
arabes sur les Sabéens ḥarrāniens (Uppsala 1972), p. 101ff.
27 Ibid. 105ff. with a comparison of the individual versions; cf. Morony, Iraq 397f. According
to Baghdādī, Uṣūl al-dīn 321, 9ff., similar goings-on were reported from Azerbaijan. The
same accusation was levelled against the Manichaeans (Lieu, Manicheism 81). With a hu-
moristic twist the motif even made it into Cervantes, Don Quijote II cap. 62. – Ṣābiʾ mean-
ing “magician” or “madman” is used in TTD VII 217, 2f.
28 Thus according to Mārī b. Sulaymān’s History of the Patriarchs (75, 2f.). Pseudo-Dionysius
of Tellmaḥrē, who recounted the story with tangible delight, dated it to the governorship
506 chapter 2
Yaḥyā b. Khālid al-Barmakī to Ḥarrān “in order to kill the zanādiqa there”.29
When al-Maʾmūn stopped in Ḥarrān during his campaign against Byzantium
in 215/830, he was believed to have remembered that these were “the people
with the head” whom his father had taught a lesson.30 This, too, was spread by
Christians; Ibn al-Nadīm was quoting a certain Abū Yūsuf Īshuʿ al-Qaṭīʿī. They
had no liking for the “heathens”, but there is a core of truth to the matter, as
in 228/843 the Ḥarrānians adopted the title Ṣābians in order to benefit from
the protection the Muslims granted all the ahl al-dhimma mentioned in the
Quran.31 Qaṭīʿī saw this change in relation to Maʾmūn’s visit; his version, dating
from the third century, which narrates events in the form of a vivid anecdote,
has been quoted repeatedly since Chwolsohn’s study.
Chwolsohn II 14ff. and I 140f.; scepticism emerging first in Hjärpe 4ff.

The oldest instance of the name Ṣābian being used for the inhabitants
of Ḥarrān is found in Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq’s letter concerning the translations
of Galen in the year 241/855 (cf. Strohmaier in: Berichte, Humboldt-Univ.
7/1987, Issue 10, p. 18). Qaṭīʿī was an insider, knowing the heathen fami-
lies in the city and providing concrete, if snide information about them.
What he did not like was that those who had converted to Christianity
for reasons of prudence would reject it again after a while, while those
who had converted to Islam were unable to do so. Regarding his dates cf.
Chwolsohn II viif. – It had been presumed earlier that the Ṣābians were
the Ḥanīf/ḥanpē who believed in Abraham; Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh b. Salām,
a client of Hārūn al-Rashīd’s, said so in his translation of an ancient
theological text which was used by Ibn al-Nadīm (Fihrist 24, 5ff.). When
writing in Arabic Christian authors used the name ḥunafāʾ to denote the
heathen Ḥarrānians (thus Abū Qurra in his Mīmar fī wujūd al-khāliq 200,
–6ff., or the author of the Risālat al-Kindī, cf. the translation in Tartar,
Dialogue 117f.; for general information cf. Griffith in: La vie du Prophète
118ff.). That the Christians believed that they had good relations with the
Muslims even before the change of name may be seen from the informa-
tion that it was at the “Ṣābians’” instigation that the governor had newly-
built churches destroyed after Amīn’s death (Fiey, Chrétiens syriaques 63).
of ʿAbbās b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, i.e. between 142/759 and 155/772 (cf. Chabot’s translation
68ff.; also Chwolsohn I 464f. and Hjärpe 120ff.; regarding ʿAbbās b. Muḥammad cf. EI2 I
12b).
29 Ibn al-Abbār, Iʿtāb al-kuttāb 84, 3f.
30 Ibn al-Nadīm 385, 9.
31 Bīrūnī, Al-āthār al-bāqiya 318, 12ff.
iraq 507
It is probably no coincidence that the time during which Ḥarrānian scholars

caused a stir in Baghdad coincided more or less with the change of name: it
made them respectable and accepted at court in the true sense of the word. This
was the beginning of a new era for them. Muslim antiquarians were interested
in the temples and the ritual; al-Masʿūdī who reported on these in great detail
visited the city more than once, the first time probably even before 315/928.32
The Ṣābians themselves stylised their past, and we must ask to what degree
some reports were seen through their eyes.33 They were included in “compara-
tive religious science”,34 suddenly running the risk of confusing the “disciples
of Abraham” and the Brahmins, as both might be called barāhima. Brahmins
were often believed to be derived from Abraham, because they did not follow
a “book”;35 the same, people knew, was true of the Ḥarrānians.36 Conversely,
Buddhists – and many others – were considered ṣābiʾa.37 Shahrastānī saw the
Ṣābians on the one hand and the true followers of Abraham on the other as
the prototypes of all true and false religion and had them conduct lengthy de-
bates.38 All this scholarly work served to obscure reality, and once the Mongols
had destroyed the city, reality could not be brought back even through inspect-
ing the scene.
Regarding the history in detail cf. Fehérvári in EI2 III 228 s. v. Ḥarrān.
Worship of celestial bodies had long died out by that time; the last wor-
shippers had been forced to convert by local aḥdāth, and the remaining
lunar temple converted into a prison (Bianquis, Damas et la Syrie 489;
32 Murūj IV 62, pu. f., and 64, apu./II 392, 1f., and 393, 5; cf. also Shboul, Masʿūdī 11. He does,
however, also refer to the qaṣīda by a certain Ibn ʿAyshūn (d. after 300/913), qāḍī of Ḥarrān,
in which he described the teachings of Ḥarrānians. The texts of the rituals in the various
temples have been analysed by Hjärpe 62ff.; cf. also Marquet in: SI 24/1966/42ff. Regarding
Masʿūdī’s use of the term ṣābiʾa cf. Shboul 289 and Khalidi, Islamic Historiography 65.
33 This problem was brought to wider notice by Hjärpe in particular (cf. e.g. p. 132). This also
includes scholarly reinterpretations that met Islam halfway: when for instance Hermes
Trismegistos, in whom the Ḥarrānians believed, was identified as the Quranic Idrīs =
Enoch (Hjärpe 167f.). This might even date back to the time before the change of name.
34 For general information on the subject see Monnot in: MIDEO 12/1974/26ff. = Islam et
religions 220ff.
35 Shahrastānī 444, ult. f./1270, 3 etc.; Hjärpe 60.
36 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr 3II 147 no. 1107; critically reviewed in Hjärpe 13f.
37 Hjärpe 21; also Gimaret in: JA 1969, p. 279ff. General information by Pedersen in: Festschrift
Browne 387ff., and Stern in: Journal of Theological Studies 19/1968/169f. (= History and
Culture in the Medieval Muslim World, no. III).
38 Milal 26, 7/49, 5, and 180, 6ff./560, 6ff.; esp. 205ff./679ff.
508 chapter 2
Tardieu in: JA 274/1986/11f.). Ibn Ḥazm said around the same time that
there were fewer than forty Ṣābians in all the world (Fiṣal I 115, 14f.).
Chwolsohn already speculated whether they lived on in the mysteri-
ous sun worshippers (shamsiyya) about whom there was talk in Mārdīn
and Diyārbakr even in Carsten Niebuhr’s time (Chwolsohn I 151f. after
Niebuhr’s Beschreibung von Arabien, Copenhagen 1778, II 396f.; sum-
marised in K. Müller, Pseudoislamische Sektengebilde 73f.). It is interest-
ing to see their literary survival in Niẓāmī’s Haft Paykar (cf. Corbin in:
Eranos-Jahrbuch 19/1950/181ff.).
We have moved far ahead of ourselves, but if the tradition of the change of
name is correct, it has the methodological consequence that what was said
before the beginning of the third century about the ṣābiʾūn from sura 2:62, 5:69
and 22:17 did not in fact refer to the Ḥarrānians. It was more than a little; not
only all the material from early Quranic commentaries collected painstakingly
by Chwolsohn,39 but also legal ideas such as the ikhtilāf between Abū Ḥanīfa
and his pupils Abū Yūsuf and Shaybānī of whether the ṣābiʾūn were to be con-
sidered to be “people of the book”, and whether consequently one would be al-
lowed to marry Ṣābian women.40 While Abū Ḥanīfa was more interested in his
own region, there – more precisely: around Wāsiṭ – were Ṣābians there, too.41
The Muʿtazilite jurist al-Jaṣṣāṣ (d. 370/981) recognised the disciples of John in
these; this was the Christians’ name for them.42 Others, especially the Qāḍī
ʿAbd al-Jabbār, reported them as believing in Seth and even possessing a “book”
by him.43 Ibn al-Nadīm called them the “Ṣābians of the swamps” and remarked
that they washed all foodstuffs before consuming them.44 They were Baptist
sects; from among them the Mandaeans survive to this day.
39 II 555ff., still without Ṭabarī’s Tafsīr; Hjärpe 141ff. and earlier 138ff.; McAuliffe in: MW
72/1982/95ff. – This is not the place to discuss the original meaning of the word in the
Quran (regarding the relevant literature cf. Paret, Kommentar 20f., and especially, albeit
a little vague, Hjärpe 13ff. and 49ff.; also Ch. Buck in: MW 74/1984/172ff. and Tardieu in: JA
274/1986/41ff.).
40 Chwolsohn I 190ff.; Hjärpe 8ff. It remains to be studied how it came that Kalbī already
mentioned the Ṣābians’ self-castration (Chwolsohn I 187). It might be proof that this cus-
tom did not originate in Ḥarrān, on the other hand it is entirely possible that Kalbī’s Tafsīr,
which was said to have contained this information, was emended over time (see vol. I 346
above).
41 Bīrūnī, Al-āthār al-bāqiya 206, 12ff./transl. 188; Shahrastānī 102, 3/248, ult.
42 Yūhannāsiyya (Aḥkām al-Qurʾān III 112, –5ff.).
43 Mughnī V 152, 15ff./transl. Monnot in: MIDEO 12/1974/35 = Islam et religions 229; cf. ibid.
30/224.
44 Fihrist 403, pu. ff.; cf. also G. P. Luttikhuizen, The Revelation of Elchasai 165ff.
iraq 509
2.4.1.2 Ḥarrān and Islamic Theology

After this separation of the sources we know even less of what the Muslims
thought of the Ḥarrānians’ pagan religion during the first two centuries of
Islam. While the phenomenon certainly excited their curiosity within the city
itself, Ḥarrān was, in fact, very far away from those places where history was
made, and the time during which it did make history was far too short for de-
tailed information. Consequently we have to rely on hypotheses, and it may in
fact be a good idea to start with one already expressed in the Middle Ages: Ibn
Taymiyya, who came from a Ḥarrānian family himself, claimed that
al-Jaʿd b. Dirham
was influenced by the Ṣābians.1 While we do not have to assume that he

was basing this claim on a local tradition – after all, half a millennium had
passed – the case is still interesting, as al-Jaʿd was the second theologian be-
sides Ghaylān al-Dimashqī to be executed under Hishām, albeit in Iraq rather
than in Damascus. Hishām’s governor Khālid al-Qasrī appropriately planned
the execution for the feast of the sacrifice, remarking in his sermon that he
would slaughter the delinquent instead of the more customary sacrificial ani-
mal. This may not have been as impossible as it sounds, as a governor’s khuṭba
was not necessarily devoid of political cynicism. However, it goes back to
one single source, a certain al-Qāsim b. Muḥammad b. Ḥumayd al-Maʿmarī
(d. 228/843), who called on an eyewitness via a multi-strand and isolated isnād.
The event would have taken place between 105/724 and 120/738; this was the
time when Khālid held the office in Iraq.
Cf. EI2 IV s. v. Khālid b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḳasrī. The dates 124/742 and 125/743
Vajda gives in EI2 III 747f. s. v. Ibn Dirham are consequently certainly
wrong; Sibṭ b. al-Jawzī, too, is mistaken when he presumes a date of 102
or 103 (Gabrieli, Califfato di Hishâm 17). Regarding Qāsim al-Maʿmarī cf.
Mīzān no. 6836; concerning the other links of the isnād chain cf. ibid.
no. 4950, no. 7350 and no. 1695. The tradition is reported in Bukhārī, Khalq
al-afʿāl 118, 2ff.; Khallāl, Musnad 423, 1ff.; Dārimī, Radd ʿalā l-Jahmiyya
4, 11ff. and passim; TB XII 425 no. 6872; Bayhaqī, Al-asmāʾ wal-ṣifāt 325,
11ff.; Dhahabī, Al-ʿulūw lil-ʿAlī al-Ghaffār 167, 1ff.; without the isnād in Ibn
al-Nadīm 401, 13. Even Balādhurī already cited it (Ansāb III 100, ult. ff.),
referring directly to Maʿmarī’s authority. Ājurrī, Sharīʿa 97, –8ff. has the
khuṭba only. Dhahabī suggested that apart from this one story Maʿmarī
had nothing of relevance to offer; his reputation was not above criticism
1 Al-fatwā al-Ḥamawiyya 15, –4f. = ZDMG 53/1899/72.

510 chapter 2
either (Mīzān, loc. cit.). The Shīʿites transferred the motif of the governor
executing (or intending to execute) an unpopular theologian during the
feast of the sacrifice onto Ḥajjāj (Biḥār XXV 243ff. no. 26); further parallels
from later centuries listed by Goldziher in: Der Islam 9/1919/156f.
Al-Jaʿd was a mawlā, his father’s name providing a further indication.2 He

did, however, wield a certain influence at court as he appears to have been
Marwān II’s tutor.3 This position took him to the Jazira, more specifically to
Raqqa.4 It would also explain why he owned a house in Damascus in the cap-
makers’ quarter (ʿinda l-Qalānisiyyīn), as Ibn ʿAsākir specified, not far from
the Bāb al-Jābiya near a church that had not been pulled down at the time.5
Originally he had no ties to Syria at all. His clientage relationship was with the
Hamdān in Kufa6 or, more precisely, with Suwayd b. Ghafala al-Juʿfī,7 an al-
leged prophet’s companion who had fought at ʿAlī’s side at Ṣiffīn and had been
rewarded with lands near Kufa.8 He died in 81/701 or 82/702, at an advanced
age.9 Jaʿd was said to have come from Khorasan,10 his father probably having
been a prisoner of war. Even so, there was a well in Kufa that bore his name; he
had probably had it dug himself11 which means that he must have been a man
of property there. This rapid rise requires an explanation, the key to which
may have been provided by Ibn Nubāta’s – admittedly entirely isolated – state-
ment that Marwān’s mother was a sister of Jaʿd’s.12 It is true that she had not
2 See p. 429 above.

3 Balādhurī, Ansāb III 159, 13ff. after Haytham b. ʿAdī.
4 Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 63, 15f. The family of ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Yaḥyā, Marwān II’s future
secretary, also came from Raqqa (ʿAbbās, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Yaḥyā al-kātib 26 and 42).
5 Ibn Manẓūr, Mukhtaṣar TD VI 50, –4 > Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya IX 350, 8. Regarding the situation
of the church cf. Elisséeff, Description de Damas 220 and 223; also Index s. v. Fabricants de
bonnets.
6 Ṭabarī II 1396, 11.
7 Thus Balādhurī, Ansāb III 100, 13; also Samʿānī III 287, 12 > Ibn al-Qaysarānī, Al-ansāb al-
muttafiqa 31, –4; following him Mžik in: WZKM 20/1910/313.
8 Donner, Conquests 213.
9 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 333 no. 1049; IS VI 46, 14f.; Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Istīʿāb 679f. no. 1120. As he pre-
tended to have been born in pre-Islamic times he must have lived to a fabulously high age;
his vitality was consequently much admired. It had to be admitted, however, that he never
actually set eyes on the prophet.
10 Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya IX 350, 7. Or is this, too, misspelt for Ḥarrān, as in Ibn Manẓūr?
(Mukhtaṣar TD VI 50, apu.; the original of the biography does not seem to be extant
among the MSS of the Taʾrīkh Dimashq). Cf. also Ibn Taymiyya, Tisʿīniyya 35, pu. ff.
11 Balādhurī, Futūḥ 350, 5.
12 Sarḥ al-ʿuyūn 293, 12.
iraq 511
been a free woman and indeed of Iranian origin – a “Kurd”, as people said.13
She was believed to have been a slave of Ibrāhīm b. al-Ashtar, which would
take us to Kufa.14 Ibn al-Ashtar wielded great influence in Upper Mesopotamia
during Mukhtārs reign, bestowing the city of Ḥarrān together with Edessa and
Samosata on an Arab tribal prince.15
Dārimī’s claiming that Jaʿd came from Basra (Radd ʿalā l-Jahmiyya 4, 7)
is probably an error. Kufa is confirmed in Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 63, 14,
and his clientage with the Hamdān in Balādhurī (Futūḥ 350, 5, where,
however, the name reads only al-Jaʿd). The Banū Juʿfī of whom Suwayd
b. Ghafala was a member were a Southern Arab tribal federation (Ibn
Durayd, Ishtiqāq 406ff.) and were probably regarded as being part of the
Hamdān in Kufa. According to Ibn Nubāta, on the other hand, al-Jaʿd was
a mawlā of the Banū l-Ḥakam (Sarḥ 293, 9); they were the closest rela-
tions to the Juʿfī in the next highest federation of the Saʿd al-ʿashīra (Ibn
Ḥazm, Jamhara 407, –4ff.). Of course, one might also think of Marwān’s
ancestor al-Ḥakam, and indeed, Thaʿālibī names al-Jaʿd as a client of the
Banū Marwān (Laṭāʾif al-maʿārif 43, ult.)
Ibn al-Nadīm claimed that Jaʿd tutored not only Marwān but also the latter’s
sons.16 Jaʿd was an ascetic;17 this would have been a recommendation for such
a position. And there is also the isolated verse from a slanderous poem clearly
directed against Marwān, accusing him of having dealings with “bald-headed
men” who “help Jaʿd’s religion to victory” or “deny the promised day (i.e. of
judgment)”.18 This, in fact, is already part of a character assassination campaign
against Marwān started by the Abbasids. Even during the revolution the poet
Ibn Harma (d. 176/792)19 called the caliph “al-Jaʿdī” in an elegy on Ibrāhīm b.
Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, the “imam” and spiritual leader of the movement, who died
shortly before its success in 132/749 as Marwān’s prisoner in Ḥarrān.20 The name
was meant as an insult as a caliph would not normally bear a nisba: al-Jaʿd
13 Ṭabarī III 51, 11 (after Ibn al-Kalbī); Maqdisī, Badʾ VI 54, apu.; further instances in ʿAsalī,
Jahm b. Ṣafwān 48, n. 1. Cf. also Hawting in EI2 VI 623.
14 Balādhurī, Ansāb III 159, 12f.; Ibn ʿAsākir in Munajjid, Muʿjam Banī Umayya 161, 6.
15 Segal, Edessa 194. Regarding Ibn al-Ashtar in general cf. EI2 III 987.
16 Fihrist 401, 10.
17 Azdī 63, 16.
18 Maqdisī, Badʾ VI 55, 1f.
19 Regarding him cf. GAZ 2/444f.
20 Azdī 120, 13f.; regarding Ibrāhīm al-Imām cf. EI2 III 988 and p. 519 below.
512 chapter 2
persuaded Marwān to heresy (zandaqa).21 The execution, of which Kufans had

a very clear recollection, also served to denigrate the pupil.
It is by no means clear, in fact, that the execution did take place in Kufa.
Azdī says so (Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 63, –5), but the eyewitness account men-
tioned above speaks of Wāsiṭ, which also has some circumstances in its
favour. Even Basra was suggested (Saksakī, Burhān 22, 5ff.; according to
another source also ʿAsalī, Jahm b. Ṣafwān 50). – Regarding the origin of
Marwān’s nisba cf. Samʿānī III 287, 12ff. > Ibn al-Qaysarānī, Ansāb 31, –4f.;
also Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh V 298, 7 and –5ff. (after Ibn Abī l-Dunyā). Samʿānī
referred to a work by the traditionist Ibn Shāhīn (d. 385/995; regarding
him cf. GAS 1/209f.) for his interpretation. Sharon derives the sobriquet
from jaʿd “curly-haired”, but does not provide a reference (Black Banners
14). – If the “bald-headed men” deny the Day of Judgment, this is no proof
that Jaʿd did, too. Vajda translates “beardless” rather than “bald-headed”
(jurd), drawing a parallel to the Manichaeans (EI2 III 747b).
How did the execution come about at all? It does not seem to be connected
to that of Ghaylān al-Dimashqī. While Jaʿd appears to have been a Qadarite,22
Qadarite tradition did not identify with him because of his taʿṭīl; Ghaylān was
reported to have pointed this out to him in conversation.23 In another pas-
sage it was Wahb b. Munabbih who played this part – he, too, a Qadarite in
the Qadarites’ eyes24 – stating that people would not speak of the hand of God
if the Quran did not do it.25 Balādhurī was aware that people attempted to
turn Jaʿd into a follower of Ghaylān, but rejected the idea.26 In fact, not even
non-Qadarite circles insisted in this matter. The aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth believed there
was more of a link to Jahm b. Ṣafwān; he, however, was a determinist.27 There
were several ideas on how this might have happened. Ibn ʿAsākir wrote that
after fleeing from the “Umayyads” in Damascus, Jaʿd met Jahm in Kufa.28 Other
21 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 401, 11 (also Vajda in: RSO 17/1938/180, n. 1).
22 Cf. esp. Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ XIII 252, 6ff.; cf. p. 516f. below. Also Baghdādī, Farq 14, ult./19, 1.
23 Balādhurī, Ansāb (MS Reisülküttab 598) 241, 16f.; also Anfänge 233. Cf. also Ibn Taymiyya
in his Risālat al-Furqān (in: Majmūʿat al-fatāwā XIII 177, 1ff.).
25 Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh IV 239, 3ff.; also V 15, 11f.; similar Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya IX 350, –6ff. Rāzī’s
Taʾrīkh Ṣanʿāʾ, where one would hope for more detailed information, only mentions a
debate between the two (p. 401).
26 Ansāb III 101, 2f.
28 Ibn Manẓūr, Mukhtaṣar TD VI 50, ult. f.; Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya IX 350, 16.
iraq 513
accounts were clearer, stating that Jahm transmitted from Jaʿd.29 Someone
even believed that Jahm was his son or grandson,30 the link being once again
the taʿṭīl, as well as the khalq al-Qurʾān.31 Admonition did not come from Wahb
b. Munabbih or from Ghaylān now, but from Maymūn b. Mihrān, whom “or-
thodox” tradition often presented as Ghaylān’s particular opponent;32 he was
also said to have testified against Jaʿd before Hishām, thus setting the ball roll-
ing. Jaʿd fled to Ḥarrān, but was caught and brought before Hishām, who ban-
ished him to Iraq.33
If there is one conclusion to be drawn from this story, overgrown with leg-
ends as it is, it is that Jaʿd’s theology dated back to a time when the political
development in Syria had not yet turned Qadarite views into the primary cause
for outrage. This also explains why Marwān, who became the Qadarites’ bitter
enemy after 126, did not have anything against Jaʿd. Jaʿd was reported to have
conducted a debate with the Khārijite Abū Bayhas,34 but the latter had already
been executed in 94/713.35 Even if we assume that Zuhrī had the intention of
excluding not only the Manichaeans but also the Qadarites and Jaʿd’s followers
from the Islamic community,36 the latter’s school was recognised as a distinct
group beside the Qadarites. The reason given for the execution was without
doubt the one on which all the traditions agree: the taʿṭīl. The eyewitness ac-
count says it explicitly: Jaʿd was believed to have said that God did not have
Abraham as his “friend”, and never spoke to Moses.37
Was this indeed the true reason? Well may we doubt it; there are no indi-
cations that there ever was a major political controversy concerning these
matters, and the caliphs only became the guardians of orthodoxy in the eyes
29 Bukhārī, Khalq al-afʿāl 118, 7f.; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 206, 5; Ibn Taymiyya, Istiqāma 11, 101, ult.
Cf. also Pines, Atomenlehre 124, n. 3, and p. 495, end. Modern secondary sources, on the
other hand, have attempted to prove that Jaʿd was a pupil of Jahm’s (Ḥusayn ʿAṭwān, Al-
firaq al-islāmiyya fī bilād al-Shaʾm 85).
30 Cf. Madelung in: Festschrift Pareja I 505, n. 3, after Khallāl, Musnad.
31 Cf. e.g. Dārimī, Radd ʿalā Bishr al-Marīsī 109, 4f.; Juwaynī, Shāmil 25, 13f., or Ibn Nubāta,
Sarḥ al-ʿuyūn 293, 12ff. Further references in Allard, Attributs divins 154, n. 1. Regarding
these accusations in general cf. Vajda in EI2 III 747.
32 See vol. I 25 above and, in more detail, Anfänge 203ff.
33 Balādhurī, Ansāb III 100, 12f.
34 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 206, 7.
35 See p. 666 below. Should we assume the debate to have taken place in Medina, where the
governor was well-disposed towards Abū Bayhas?
36 TTD III 84, –7f.
37 Besides the sources named p. 512 above cf. also Dhahabī, Mīzān no. 1482, and Taʾrīkh IV
239, 8; Ibn Nubāta 294, 7f.; ʿAlī al-Qāriʾ (Goldziher in: Der Islam 9/1919/156) and elsewhere.
514 chapter 2
of later historiographers. Another reason is more likely: in 102 Jaʿd supported

Yazīd b. al-Muhallab’s uprising. While he may not have been in any actual fight-
ing, he did allow himself to get involved in a controversy with Farazdaq on
behalf of Yazīd’s brother ʿAbd al-Malik, and his name survived in that context.
Four verses of his survive; they extol the honour of the Bakr b. Wāʾil from Upper
Mesopotamia.38 This was probably enough to make him suspect to the author-
ities. Soon afterwards Khālid al-Qasrī became governor of Iraq. It is possible
that Jaʿd was able to elude his persecution at first and fled to Ḥarrān.39 Legend,
however, mentions lengthy imprisonment. His family – or his wife – were said
to have interceded on his behalf with Hishām, but the caliph only replied, “Is
he indeed still alive?”40
Even in present-day circumstances it would be understandable if the ex-
ecution had then been given an ideological explanation, but the way in which
the pretext was expressed might give us a hint to Jaʿd’s spiritual origins. The
“Ḥanīfs” from Ḥarrān believed in God’s transcendent nature and consequent-
ly described him in entirely negative terms, seeing the “wondrously beauti-
ful names” – as Bīrūnī would later describe it from a clearly Muslim point of
view – as metaphor only.41 One Ibrāhīm al-Ḥarnānī believed the only thing
one could say about God was that he is.42 These are neo-Platonic ideas going
back far into pre-Islamic times. The Muslims, at least those in Syria, probably
found them appealing. Those who had grown used to seeing the Christians
as the main enemy found arguments here against “anthropomorphism” and
the worship of images; the “Ḥanīfs” were their allies against shirk,43 their reli-
gion probably appearing familiar in some of its forms: food laws, three prayers
a day, fasting for an entire month.44 However, in order to borrow from them
it became necessary to take leave of one’s own anthropomorphism. It would
not be surprising if it had become a problem in a city like Ḥarrān, especially
with regard to the Quranic idea of God’s friendship with Abraham. In that case
38 Ṭabarī II 1396, 11ff.; cf. also Nuʿmān al-Qāḍī, Firaq 522.
39 See above.
40 Fihrist 401, 11f.; cf. Balādhurī, loc. cit.
41 Āthār 205, 10f./transl. 187; similar also Sarakhsī in Ibn al-Nadīm 384, pu., and Nawbakhtī
in Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mughnī V 152, 9f./transl. Monnot, Islam et religions 228. Cf. also
Hjärpe 153ff.; also ibid. 140.
42 lā yūṣafu illā bi-annihī faqaṭ (Muwaffaq, Iḥāṭa, fol. 45b., 9).
43 Does it mean anything that it was in Ḥarrān that Theodore Abū Qurra provided proof of
Christian worship of images to someone? (Cf. J. Arendzen, Theodori Abu Kurra de cultu
imaginum, PhD. Bonn 1877, and the edition by J. Dick, Mīmar fī ikrām al-īqūnāt, Zouk
Mikhael 1986; also Graf, Arab. Schriften 58ff., and Griffith in: JAOS 105/1985/53ff.).
44 Cf. for more detail Hjärpe 146ff. At first the Muslims, too, knew of three prayers (see p. 695
below).
iraq 515
Jaʿd would have agreed to the deal, and possibly Marwān, too, as Theophanes
claimed that the caliph was influenced by the Ḥarrānians.45 Even in the early
Abbasid period, under al-Manṣūr, a number of Muslims were executed be-
cause they had succumbed to the magic of the foreign cult.46 In Raqqa, on the
other hand, a Muslim “sect” survived for some time which insisted that God did
not address Moses.47
We do not know whether these were followers of Jaʿd, although there is re-
liable evidence that both ideas found followers later. Jāḥiẓ derived khalīl in
khalīl Allāh from khalla “affliction” rather than khulla “friendship”.48 Later theo-
logians came to the conclusion that God himself did not speak to Moses but
had the burning bush speak to him instead, i.e. created speech on an object.49
Jaʿd, on the other hand, had not reached these subtleties. While we have seen
how he was able to become the forefather of the khalq al-Qurʾān,50 like Jahm b.
Ṣafwān he was probably more radical than those who followed.51 Theological
alternatives were still facing one another directly. In Lower Iraq, certainly in
Kufa, but maybe also in Wāsiṭ, the fact that Abraham was God’s “friend” and
that Moses had spoken to the lord was seen as evidence that Muḥammad, too,
had been able to see God on the occasion of his miʿrāj.52 Jaʿd destroyed this
climax, although his main criticism would probably have been that if God
wished to speak, he had to have a mouth; Dāwūd al-Jawāribī would later claim
precisely this in Wāsiṭ.53 Still, the excuse for the execution had been well cho-
sen as it made perfect sense to the Iraqi public. The sources often emphasise
that Khālid al-Qasrī was not really a very religious man, but unconditionally
devoted to the caliph.53a
If Jaʿd’s teachings were indeed at home in the Jazira, there is no reason to be-
lieve that they died with him. Baghdādī quoted from an unknown source that
as late as the second half of the third century or later a group of Muʿtazilites in
ʿAskar Mukram referred to him in a kind of renaissance, albeit with a doctrine
about which we hear nothing anywhere else: that “thought (al-naẓar) which
of necessity produces insight, is in fact the insight itself, rather than effecting
45 P. 426, 11ff., although it is possible that Theophanes, too, was simply taken in by Abbasid
propaganda.
46 Segal, Edessa 206.
47 Qushayrī, Taʾrīkh Raqqa 100, 2ff.
48 Cf. Text XXII 181, commentary.
49 See p. 570 below, also p. 209 above and ch. C 1.3.2.1.1.
50 Cf. Madelung in: Festschrift Pareja 505ff.
52 Thus e.g. in the hadith in Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 75, 12ff., or 272, –4f.; cf. vol. I 405.
53a Agh. XXII 16, 6ff.
516 chapter 2
it”.54 This idea is interestingly entangled with others, some of them of much
more recent date, and one clearly attributable to ʿAbbād b. Sulaymān.55 The
quoted phrase, too, uses more recent vocabulary. That “thought of necessity
produces insight” was said only after the tawallud theory had been applied to
it; since that time the majority of Muʿtazilites believed that thought engen-
dered insight.56 Here, however, this is rejected with reference to Jaʿd; on the
contrary, thought is identical with insight, which sounds very Greek. It gives
rise to the question of whether Jaʿd, for whom human thought probably did
not pose a problem, would not have been more likely to apply it to God: God
the νου̃ς, the thought thinking itself. There is no proof, but what follows seems
to indicate that we are not merely being led astray by a projection:
They also claim that the wine is not the work of God, but that of the vint-
ner (khammār), for God does not cause anything that might give rise to
sin. Humans, so they claim, create certain kinds on animals (themselves),
e.g. when they bury meat or leave it out in the sun and worms emerge,
these worms are created by humans. Similarly the scorpions that emerge
from the straw under the mud bricks are in their opinion created (ikhtirāʿ)
by the person who put bricks and straw together (Farq 262, 5ff./279, 2ff.).
Based on one of these points, but certainly much earlier, a sinister legend grew
up around Jaʿd b. Dirham. He was said to have filled a bottle with soil and water,
and, when worms and vermin appeared, said: “I have created this, for I am the
cause of its existence.” The story has Shīʿite origins, with Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq allegedly
refuting him subsequently.57 The experiment was important to the Muʿtazilites
in ʿAskar Mukram because it helped prove that humans are indeed capable of
creating something. This did place them in opposition to ʿAbbād b. Sulaymān
whom they normally followed and who used the term khalaqa of God only,58
but earlier its usage had not been so restricted: the middle Akhfash quite inno-
cently used the word in either context.59 Furthermore the idea really belonged
in a different context, for Isfarāʾīnī – who in this instance not only transmit-
ted from Baghdādī – emended the passage by adding a further example: “If
54 Farq 262, 3f./278, ult. f.

55 Ibid. 261, ult. ff./278, apu. f.
56 Cf. my Erkenntnislehre 290ff.; also ch. 3.2.2.2.7.2 below.
57 Murtaḍā, Amālī I 284, 16ff.; Ibn Abī ʿAwn, Al-ajwiba al-muskita 20f. no. 103; Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān
al-Mīzān II 105 no. 427; Majlisī, Biḥār X 201, 6ff.
58 See ch. C 4.1.2.1.1.5 below.
59 See p. 209 above; regarding other early theologians cf. Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān II 383, 6f.
iraq 517
someone buries truffles until they become a serpent, the serpent is his cre-
ation . . .”.60 The main issue was thus clearly the theodicy: whatever is harmful
or furthers sin cannot come from God. Elsewhere, another example is that of
procreation,61 which takes us firmly into the realm of the early Qadariyya, as it
probably harks back to the ancient question of who is responsible for the fruits
of fornication.62 There must have been a point at which the Qadariyya began
to identify with Jaʿd – probably less so in Syria and rather more in Basra at the
time when, under Muʿtazilite influence, Qadarite doctrine and taʿṭīl united.63
An anti-Qadarite abjuration formula transmitted by Qalqashandī includes the
words: “. . . I say: humans do not acquire (their actions),64 and al-Jaʿd b. Dirham
must bear the consequences. I say: Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik rightly called for
his blood, and Marwān b. Muḥammad went astray when he followed him. I
believe in the predetermination of good and evil . . .”.65 The school of theology
in ʿAskar Mukram that based its teachings on him bears the name Ḥimāriyya in
the works of Baghdādī and his successors, providing a further link to Marwān
al-Ḥimār.
The Ḥimāriyya lived on for a long time: Abū ʿAlī al-Thaqafī, a Shāfiʿite and
pupil of Ibn Khuzayma’s, who died in 328/940 at the age of 89, met one of
its followers named ʿĪsā al-Khabbāz in Nishapur (Ibn al-Dāʿī, Tabṣira 53,
apu. ff.). The account of the meeting is, however, pure topos. Al-Khabbāz,
too, was said to have claimed that worms that had hatched in a piece of
rotten meat had been created by him, whereupon Thaqafī inquired of
him how many there were. This corresponds exactly to the abovemen-
tioned conversation between Jaʿd b. Dirham and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. Regarding
Abū ʿAlī al-Thaqafī cf. Halm, Ausbreitung 33 and 44 as well as Gimaret in:
JA 277/1989/231f.
Why, though, was Jaʿd a Qadarite if he did not focus on the political reasons,
and had to be discovered by the Basrans? The above examples sound as if
they originally came from a discussion on generatio spontanea.66 The process
60 Tabṣīr 123, 4/140, 2f.

61 Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 347, 26ff.; also Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 202, –7ff., where it is reported of Jaʿd
himself.
62 See vol. I 23 above and esp. HT 88ff.
63 In the passage in Ibn Ḥazm, Jaʿd is described as a Muʿtazilite as well.
64 anna l-ʿabd ghayr muktasib; iktasaba probably understood as a technical term (see ch. C
1.3.1.3 below).
65 Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā XIII 252, –5ff. after ʿUmarī’s Taʿrīf bil-muṣṭalaḥ al-sharīf.
66 For general information cf. E. Wiedemann, Zur Lehre von der generatio spontanea in:
Naturwiss. Wochenschrift 15/1916/279ff. = Ges. Schr. (Ffm.) II 827ff. as well as Ullmann,
518 chapter 2
described could, after all, be interpreted in different ways. In John of Damascus’

Διάλεξις Σαρακηνου̃ καὶ Χριστιανου̃ the Muslim’s objective appeared to be to
prove that God created everything immediately, while the Christian pointed
out that God created only “during the first week”, allowing nature to take its
own course afterwards.67 Jacob of Edessa may have had the same thing in mind
when he, just as it was reported of Jaʿd, mixed water and soil in a vial in order
to demonstrate the process of creation.68 Alchemy, too, was seen as second
creation, creation by man;69 the classical idea that wasps, dung beetles etc.
come into being through abiogenesis had found its way into the writings of the
Corpus Jābirianum.70 If this was the context of our tradition, it would be easier
to understand why Marwān was interested in Jaʿd; after all, a governor could
always use an alchemist.71 Similar expertise was ascribed to the heathen of
Ḥarrān, as illustrated by – among other things – the legend of the talking head;
and if we look at Jacob of Edessa’s Hexaemeron, it does not seem to be entirely
impossible that alchemy was practised in Christian monasteries. Could the
legends around Khālid b. Yazīd have grown up in this way? A limitless field for
research indeed.72
While the relationship between Jaʿd and Marwān II remains in the dark, it
is quite clear in the case of a contemporary of whom we know that he lived in
Ḥarrān,
Abū ʿAmr Sālim b. ʿAjlān al-Afṭas.
He was a client of Marwān’s father Muḥammad, and had to pay for it with his
life: the Abbasid ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAlī had him killed after his invasion of Syria.73 Like
Makḥūl his father had been captured in the region of Kabul in 44/664,74 while
Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften 54f. Regarding Jāḥiẓ cf. also Ḥayawān III 361, 4ff., and
369, 5ff./transl. Souami 212ff.
67 PG XCVI 1345 B–C = IV 436 Kotter; cf. Sahas, John of Damascus 152f.
68 Segal, Edessa 211.
69 Kraus, Jābir II 100: ṣināʿa.
70 Ibid. II 106ff.
71 Cf. the story of the monk whom the governor appointed patriarch because of his alchemi-
cal knowledge, in Pseudo-Dionysius of Tellmaḥrē 66, 13ff./transl. 58.
72 Cf. Ullmann in: EI2 IV 929ff, and in: Der Islam 55/1978/181ff. Regarding the issue in general
cf. P. Lory, Alchimie et mystique en terre d’Islam 10ff.
73 Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 139, 11ff.; Khalīfa, Ṭab. 823 no. 3076 and Taʾrīkh 613, 13; IS VII2 179,
20f.; Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 342, 8ff.
74 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 239, 4f. Probably not he himself, as the passage might also be interpreted,
as he would then have lived to nearly a hundred.
iraq 519
he himself, rather like Jaʿd, moved to the Jazira from Kufa.75 Father and son still
bore typical slave names: “Nimble” and “Healthy”; the son was also remarkable
for his flat nose. He was an administrator looking after Marwān’s possessions
in the Jazira. He also impressed people with his exegetic knowledge,76 basing
his arguments on Saʿd b. Jubayr whose lectures he had presumably attended in
Kufa.77 The report of the latter’s martyrdom under Ḥajjāj goes back to him, too.78
Abū Ḥanīfa had met him.79 Most of the sources agree that he was a Murjiʾite.80
It is tempting to interpret this as an indication that he worked for the authori-
ties – in this case, the wrong ones; in the Abbasids’ view he was the one looking
after Marwān’s most high-profile prisoner, the “imam” Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad,
and consequently in some way responsible for his death.81 However, the inverse
conclusion is probably the correct one: being a Murjiʾite recommended him to
Marwān who was at odds with the Qadarites.82 There were no Murjiʾites as yet
in Syria at the time;83 consequently Sālim met with rejection among the Syrian
dignitaries,84 but it allowed the caliph to bind him ever more tightly. – Another
Murjiʾite living in Ḥarrān,
Abū ʿAwn Khuṣayf b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jazarī al-Ḥaḍramī,
was a mawlā of the Umayyads as well, who served them as financial director85
and survived the revolution. Interestingly he later moved to Iraq where he died
in 137/755 or 138/756.86 His reputation as a traditionist was not high among

76 Azdī 140, 1f.
77 Ṭabarī I 95, 15f., and 365, 13; Fasawī I 538, ult. ff.; cf. also GAS 1/28f.
78 Ṭabarī II 1265, 7ff. He believed him to be a Murjiʾite (Fasawī II 793, 8ff.).
80 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 299 no. 1949; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 151 no. 653; IAH II2 186 no. 806; Fasawī
II 793, 8ff. as well as III 230, apu., and 241, –4ff.; Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 342, 5ff.; Mīzān
no. 3056; TT III 441f. no. 814; Hady al-sārī II 129, 11ff. Nothing in Bukhārī II2 117 no. 2157.
81 Ibn Ḥajar, Hady al-sārī II 129, 15f. Regarding the event itself cf. Blankinship in: JAOS
108/1988/601ff.
82 Ibn Ḥajar, ibid. II 179, 17, describes Sālim as a Qadarite, too; this is probably an error.
84 Particularly apparently from Maymūn b. Mihrān, who died in 117/735 (Ṭabarī, Tahdhīb al-
āthār: Musnad Ibn ʿAbbās 645 no. 963); cf. also Khallāl, Musnad 308, 7ff.
85 IS VII2 180, 17ff.; TT III 143f. no. 275. He is named as a Murjiʾite in ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 31f.
no. 453; Dhahabī, Mīzān no. 2511 and Taʾrīkh V 240, –8; Ibn Manẓūr, Mukhtaṣar TD VIII
56, –8; TT, loc. cit. There is no information in the early sources: Ibn Saʿd; Bukhārī II2 228
no. 766; IAH I2 403 no. 1848; Ibn Ḥibbān I 287, 11ff.
86 Regarding the date cf. Mīzān loc. cit.
520 chapter 2
the Iraqi experts,87 even though he possessed notes88 and had attended the
lectures of the best teachers in Mecca, among them Mujāhid on his Tafsīr.89
His pupil
Yūnus b. Rāshid al-Jazarī
was also believed to be a Murjiʾite. He became qāḍī of Ḥarrān, and although

it is not quite certain when, we may safely assume that it happened during
the Abbasid era. He was no Ḥanafite; the time had not yet come when Abū
Ḥanīfa’s pupils would become influential beyond Kufa. Thus his case furnishes
proof that by this time Murjiʾites were welcomed in the city; the only resis-
tance against them coming from Syrians.
Bukhārī IV2 412 no. 3527, listed him as an active Murjiʾite; see also Mīzān
no. 9904; TT XI 439 no. 849. Nothing in IAH IV2 239 no. 1003. Regarding
him and other quḍāt of Ḥarrān at this time cf. Juynboll, Tradition 226.
2.4.2 Diyār Rabīʿa
2.4.2.1 The Khārijites

It would not be considered remarkable in any case that Marwān found his offi-
cials among the mawālī of his own family, but an added consideration was that
he could not really trust the Arab tribes who had settled in the Jazira. As we
mentioned earlier, they had ties to the Khārijites, who probably favoured this
region not least because it was mountainous and offered many places to retreat
to during guerrilla warfare. Ṣāliḥ b. Musarriḥ1 and Shabīb b. Yazīd al-Shaybānī,
who staged an uprising in 76/695 and fought against Ḥajjāj,2 came from here.
Ṣāliḥ resided in Dārā in the Mārdīn region, which the Byzantines had called
87 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 224 no. 1408; ʿUqaylī, loc. cit.; Fasawī II 175, 4ff.
88 Azmi, Studies 146 and 187.
89 Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 82, 6ff.; cf. also the quotation Ṭabarī I 95, 13f., and 132, 16ff.
1 This is the usual vocalisation, although Dhahabī appeared to prefer Musarraḥ (Mushtabih
591, ult.). Both forms frequently occur as names (cf. Fīrūzābādī, Qāmūs I 228, 10). Ashʿarī
called the same person Ṣāliḥ b. Abī Ṣāliḥ as well (Maq. 122, 13f.; cf. Strothmann in: Der
Islam 19/1931/219f.).
2 A brief description of events is included in Wellhausen, Oppositionsparteien 41ff., and
Périer, Ḥadjdjâdj 109ff.; cf. also Zetterstéen in EI1 IV 261f. s. v. Shabīb; Shaban, Islamic
History I 107f.; Laoust, Schismes 40f.; Morony, Iraq 477.
iraq 521
Anastasiopolis;3 he was a member of the Imraʾ al-Qays of the Tamīm4 and

thus connected to the Muḍar. Shabīb’s family had originally come from Kufa,5
but he, too, began his activity in the region between Mārdīn and Nisibis – and
probably not by accident: he was a member of the Shaybān b. Thaʿlaba, i.e. the
Bakr b. Wāʾil.6 When Ṣāliḥ fell on 17 Jumādā I 76/3 September 695 on the border
between Iraq and the Jazira, he was believed to have appointed Shabīb his suc-
cessor – less because of his outstanding knowledge, as would be emphasised
later, but because of his valour.7 Ṣāliḥ himself was buried in Mosul; his follow-
ers would continue to visit his grave there and shave their heads, maybe in
imitation of the hajj.8
In fact, he holds more interest for us than his companion and heir. The
warlike Shabīb aroused the historians’ interest – his death when crossing the
Dujayl in Ahwāz9 was particularly memorable,10 and his style of playing cat
and mouse with Ḥajjāj’s army, or allowing a woman who was either his mother
or his wife, people were not quite sure later, to lead the prayer in Kufa,11 all
prove that he was a more colourful character.12 Ṣāliḥ, however, was the author
of a text, still extant, which is one of the oldest documents of Islamic pulpit
oratory, a political sermon (qaṣaṣ) he appears to have delivered several times,
and which was passed from the hands of a certain Qabīṣa b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
al-Quḥāfī of the Banū Khathʿam, a Khārijite who collected all manner of
3 Regarding the location cf. Krawulsky, Iran 432f.

4 Ṭabarī II 880, 15.
5 Wellhausen 42, n. 1.
6 Cf. Levi Della Vida in EI2 IV 1075b. His genealogy may be found in Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 327,
5ff. His father had been married to a Greek woman who later lived as a widow in Mosul.
7 Baghdādī, Farq 89, –5f./110, 10ff.; regarding the date cf. Ṭabarī II 892, 8f.
8 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 410, 15f. > Ibn Durayd, Ishtiqāq 217, 8ff.; Wellhausen 48. For general
information of the sacrifice of hair among the Semites cf. Henninger in: Die Wiener Schule
der Völkerkunde. Festschrift zum 25jährigen Bestand 349ff. = Arabica Sacra 286ff.
9 Not of the Tigris, as I wrote Anfänge 128.
10 Even Christian sources took notice of it (cf. Chronica minora, ed. Chabot 232, pu. f./transl.
176, where he is named as a famous leader of horsemen, but the date and time are incor-
rect). The details of his death are reported in different versions (Wellhausen 46f.).
11 Cf. e.g. Baghdādī, Farq 90, 1f./111, 1f. Also Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 352, 4ff.; Ṭabarī II 964, pu. ff.; a
summary in Djaït, Kūfa 251ff. Shabīb’s camp was on the salt-pan (sabakha) outside the
city, where he had a mosque erected that would stand there for a long time to come
(Wellhausen after Ṭabarī II 958, 5f.).
12 Regarding his uprising cf. Ṭabarī, Index s. n.; also Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 351, 2ff.; IKh II 454f.
no. 288.
522 chapter 2
materials from his environment,13 via an intermediary of the same tribe to Abū
Mikhnaf, who included it in his K. Shabīb al-Ḥarūrī wa-Ṣāliḥ b. Musarriḥ.14
It illustrates very nicely how a qāṣṣ would proceed. The beginning, praise
of God and professing the prophet is mainly a collection of Quranic phrases
or quotations. The main section is introduced with the taqwā formula, a call
to fear God that was in widespread use at the time;15 but with characteris-
tic elements added to it. Further ideals listed are: withdrawal from the world
(al-zuhd fī l-dunyā), and frequent contemplation of death. Religious reasons
are then given for these but, as soon becomes clear, only as a prelude to the
demand raised at the end, not to attach importance to life, to “sell” this life for
the afterlife, as no-one can elude death in any case.16 For renouncing the world
also means distinguishing oneself from the “evildoers” (fāsiqūn); indeed, they
seem to be Ṣāliḥ’s target from the first when he begins with sura 6:1, following
the praise of God with a description of the unbelievers who say that there are
beings equal to their lord (bi-rabbihim yaʿdilūna).17 The verb ʿadala, used here
in malam partem,18 is repeated at the very end, this time in the more common,
positive sense. The antithesis was certainly produced deliberately: one must
not “deviate” with regard to God, but act “justly” in accordance with the truth.19
This one may do through active protest, for while one is obliged to love the
believers and would forfeit paradise otherwise,20 only fellow-believers are, in
fact, believers. In order to show who they are Ṣāliḥ then presents a historical
overview with which we are familiar from other early texts as well:21 all those
who do not identify with the parties that have grown up around ʿUthmān and
ʿAlī. While the first two caliphs followed the prophet’s sunna, ʿUthmān and ʿAlī
went astray, each for different reasons.22 In the Khārijites’ view the “parties”
are always the others, the negative sense of the word having been provided in
the Quran.23
13 Cf. Ṭabarī II 515, 15ff.; the name to be corrected after Abū l-Faḍl Ibrāhīm’s edition. Also II
988, 9ff.
14 Text VIII 7, surviving in Ṭabarī II 882, 1ff.; cf. also U. Sezgin, Abū Mikhnaf 82f. and 191f.
16 Cf. Text VIII 7, d–f with o–q. The tawqā alone is, interestingly, not elucidated further.
17 Ibid., g and a.
18 Regarding the issue cf. Paret, Kommentar 107f. on sura 4:135.
19 Ibid., r.
20 Ibid., d and h.
22 Ibid., i–o.
23 Cf. EI2 III 513a s. v. Ḥizb; Paret, Kommentar 233 on sura 11:17. Regarding the usage of the
word among the Khārijites cf. E. Salem, Political Theory 27.
iraq 523
This is basically a political manifesto, with barely a trace of theology, less

even than in the K. al-irjāʾ. We do not learn more from the correspondence be-
tween Ṣāliḥ and Shabīb which Abū Mikhnaf preserved in the same place; “jus-
tice” and “truth” are the watchwords.24 Still, it is characteristic that the Quran’s
message was interpreted from an ascetic point of view, maybe also because the
call to jihād is not directed outward, but against the Muslims themselves. Ṣāliḥ
taught his followers the Quran – or Quranic recitation – and gave them lessons
in religion (yufaqqihuhum), Abū Mikhnaf tells us; he abased himself before
God and his face was pale – due to asceticism.25 Later, people would consid-
er among which group he should be counted, some calling him a Ṣufrite like
Shabīb; but what this really means is that they both treated their opponents
in a chivalrous fashion and, despite emphasising differences, did not simply
slaughter them like the Azraqites.26 Ashʿarī says, with a little disappointment,
that Ṣāliḥ did not embrace any new ideas.27
Of course there were quarrels in his camp, too. When his men captured a
stranger, possibly a spy, he had him executed when those among them who
knew him refused to confirm that he was a Muslim; others criticised this harsh-
ness as the man himself had after all claimed to be a Muslim.28 This, of course,
was a fundamental question: who can determine who has the right faith? It
led to a rift that would have lasting effects. Shabīb tried to evade it,29 but was
unable to avoid it altogether: during the actual battle against Ḥajjāj someone
demanded a statement from him, and he decided against Ṣāliḥ, as the policing
of people’s faith was very much the last thing on his mind at that moment. The
inquirer, however, saw this as a betrayal and left him.30 His earlier hesitancy
also harmed his reputation, and people called his followers the Murjiʾa among
the Khārijites,31 in the original sense of the word: the Murjiʾites were those
who had not been able to make up their minds to decide between ʿUthmān
and ʿAlī. On the other hand, some Ibāḍites would later revere him so much
that they called those who had left him unbelievers, i.e. did not recognise
them as Khārijites anymore.32 Ashʿarī noted that to his day no Khārijite
24 Ṭabarī II 884, 12ff. and earlier.

25 Ibid. 881, 14f.
26 Cf. Ashʿarī, Maq. 118, 7f.; Baghdādī, Farq 89, 7f./110, 4f.; also the slightly confused account
in Malaṭī, Tanbīh 41, 13ff./51, –7ff. (where Shabīb is confused with Shabīb al-Najrānī).
27 Maq. 118, 7, and 120, 12f. Levi Della Vida regards him as the first true Ṣufrite (in: EI1 IV 538f.).
28 Ibid. 121, 6ff.
29 Ibid. 122, 13ff.
31 Maq. 123, 5ff.
32 Ibid. 123, 1ff.
524 chapter 2
was prepared definitively to commit to him, although this was probably due to
a different controversy; he had once distributed loot in a less bureaucratic fash-
ion than was compatible with some of his comrades’ pedantic understanding
of the law.33 And of course many were critical of his allowing a woman to speak
publicly in a mosque.34
Shabīb’s son Ṣuḥārī also led an uprising, with Ṣufrites as his allies; this, how-
ever, took place in Iraq, in Jabbūl on the eastern bank of the Tigris, and only
in the days of Khālid al-Qasrī in 119/737.35 In the Jazira, on the other hand,
the situation had erupted once again much earlier in the person of Shawdhab
al-Yashkurī, the “tall one” from the Yashkur tribe, who appeared on the stage
shortly after the turn of the century.36 He advanced as far as the Sawād,37 but
his main support came from the Rabīʿa of his home region.38 His own clan was
part of the Bakr b. Wāʾil.39 ʿUmar II had sent him a letter to his hideout in Upper
Mesopotamia with the Murjiʾite ʿAwn b. ʿAbdallāh being one of the messen-
gers.40 This was reported because two of his men followed the caliph’s messen-
ger to Damascus where they were received in audience by the caliph for what
appears to have been an exchange of points of view, which would, indeed, have
been the expected course of events. The result, however, was reported in differ-
ing versions, as is so often the case. The philologist Abū ʿUbayda (d. 209/824–
5), himself a committed Khārijite – whose father or grandfather came, in fact,
from the Raqqa region41 – presented it as if ʿUmar had been persuaded by his
visitors’ arguments, whereupon the alarmed Marwānids poisoned him on the
33 Ibid. 123, 8ff.

34 Baghdādī, Farq 89, apu. ff./110, apu. ff.; cf. also Ḥanafī, Firaq muftariqa 28, 7.
35 Ṭabarī II 1633, 9ff.; Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 327, 9f. Also Wellhausen 49; Gabrieli, Califfato di
Hishâm 20; Cornelius, Ḫālid al-Qasrī 61ff.
36 Shawdhab is only a sobriquet; he was actually called Bisṭām.
37 Ṭabarī II 1348, 6ff.; also Wellhausen 48. The Jūkhā region mentioned there was the home-
land of the Khārijites (Levi Della Vida in: EI2 IV 1075b; Morony, Iraq 137ff.). The Tigris had
changed its course in this place during the late Sasanid period (Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī in: Sumer
27/1971/174ff.). Much earlier, Mani had been born there.
38 Masʿūdī, Murūj V 434, 2ff./IV 24 no. 2188; Ṭabarī II 13348, 9.
39 Ibn Durayd, Ishtiqāq 339, –5.
40 See vol. I 187 above. This might be the letter quoted in Ibn al-Jawzī, Sīrat ʿUmar b. ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz (printed in Ṣafwat, Jamharat rasāʾil al-ʿArab II 326f. no. 337) which is placed into
the overall situation described here. It may have been a later invention as there is another
letter from ʿUmar to certain Khārijites, the message of which is entirely different (Ibn ʿAbd
al-Ḥakam, Sīrat ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz 75, 1ff.).
41 EI2 I 158; more information p. 253 above.
iraq 525
spot.42 In another version the elegantly conducted paradigmatic discussion

resulted in the caliph being able to persuade the envoys’ spokesman to admit
himself defeated, the fact that his victory ultimately led to nothing being ex-
plained with the visitor going back to confer with his companions in the Jazira
where he then fell with them in battle.43
Both versions presume that ʿUmar, in keeping with his wider policy, was
seeking reconciliation with the Khārijites,44 but both versions are also nar-
rated with the knowledge that this initiative – if indeed it was taken – failed in
the end. After ʿUmar’s death Shawdhab occupied the city of Mosul, killing the
governor and remaining in residence there for about half a year. His success
was due in part to Yazīd II’s army, under the command of Maslama b. ʿAbd al-
Malik, being kept occupied in Iraq by Yazīd b. al-Muhallab’s revolt; only once
the latter had been eliminated was Shawdhab defeated as well, in 102/721.45
The Khārijites, however, remained an endemic problem in the Jazira. Once this
had become clear, the reports of the peace conversation with ʿUmar must soon
have sounded like stories from an ideal past: not even a caliph as pious and in-
tent on reconciliation as ʿUmar had been able to get the better of them. Indeed,
it is possible that this was the concept behind the stories from the outset, their
only difference being the person declared the party responsible for the failure.
If this were true, the stories might well have been composed in the time
after 126 when, in the wake of Walīd II’s murder, law and order collapsed in
Iraq as well as the Jazira. Those of truly Khārijite mind could only understand
this event as meaning that the Umayyads’ unlawful regime had now compro-
mised itself. There had been unrest earlier, too. For the year 117 or 118/735–6
Pseudo-Dionysius of Tellmaḥrē reported the uprising of a certain ʿAtīq in the
Sinjār Mountains,46 and shortly afterwards, 119/737, Buhlūl b. Bishr al-Shaybānī,
called Kuthāra, had appeared in the area around Mosul.47 However, it was not
until after Walīd’s murder that things got out of hand entirely. A certain Saʿīd
b. Bahdal took up residence in Mosul during Ramadan 126. Another Khārijite,
42 Thus in Ṭabarī II 1349, 3ff.

43 Masʿūdī, loc. cit.; ʿIqd II 401, 1ff.; Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Sīra 103, 3ff. Cf. also the fictitious
dialogue in Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam 142, 14ff., where the two address the caliph as “o man” (yā
insān).
44 Thus, too, Ibn al-Jawzī, Sīrat ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz II 31, ult. The Khārijite ʿAmr b. Dhukayna
al-Rabaʿī mocked the caliph’s weakness but promised that he would be a brother to him
“once he followed the path of truth” (ʿAbbās, Shiʿr al-Khawārij no. 132, transl. Bellamy in:
Festschrift Watt 147).
45 Cf. G. Rotter’s deliberations in: Amer. Num. Soc. Museum Notes 19/1974/175f.
46 Chronik 30, 12ff./transl. Chabot. 27f.
47 Ṭabarī II 1622ff.; cf. also Gabrieli, Califfato 19f.
526 chapter 2
named Abū Karib, proclaimed himself amīr al-muʾminīn nearby; they soon
came to an arrangement. Bisṭām al-Shaybānī competed against them, having
found followers in Azerbaijan; he, too, occupied Mosul at one point in 127/745.
After Saʿīd’s death early in 127/Oct.–Nov. 744, Ḍaḥḥāk b. Qays appeared on the
stage. Having captured Kufa and Wāsiṭ, he had himself “invited” by the popula-
tion of Mosul as well, and went on to kill the governor there in mid-128/746.
Marwān II, who had in the meantime become caliph, put an end to his ac-
tivities in Iraq in the same year, but another Khārijite immediately emerged in
Mosul, Shaybān b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Yashkurī who, as his nisba tells us, came from
the same tribe as Shawdhab before him. He barricaded himself in the city and
could be driven out only when Marwān, returning from Iraq, advanced on him
in a pincer movement. Ḍaḥḥāk even had coins minted in Mosul, as did a cer-
tain Zuhayr b. ʿAlqama who was governor of the city for another one of those
mentioned. The Khārijites thus settled there quite comfortably.48
Let this suffice as a sample of histoire événementielle; we do not need to note
every single name. The Abbasids found no rest, either. In 133/751 they already
had to battle the first rebels in the Jazira, after which the sources are silent
for fifteen years, only to report a total of eighteen uprisings between 148/765
and 317/929 in the area. There were again Shaybānis and Yashkuris among the
leaders, and Mosul was frequently the city they chose as their base.49 What
interests us is whether these people were mere opportunists, or whether they
represented a particular theology, the precise aspect that the historical sourc-
es that mention the names do not cover, while the heresiographers tend to
mention no names at all, ignoring the historical dimension altogether. Ṭabarī
said of Saʿīd b. Bahdal and Ḍaḥḥāk b. Qays that the Ṣufriyya flocked to them.50
Shahrastānī, too, assessed Ḍaḥḥāk in this way; he was noticeable for not forbid-
ding marriage with other Muslims as long as they were contracted outside the
Khārijite heartland in the so-called dār al-taqiyya.51 This was probably an allow-
ance he had had to make during his campaigns, when the strict rules evolved in
48 On the entire issue cf. Rotter, ibid. 191ff. with references. Regarding Ḍaḥḥāk b. Qays see
also Forand in: JAOS 89/1969/91; regarding Shaybān b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz also Veccia-Vaglieri in:
RSO 24/1949/31f. and 36f.; basic information in Wellhausen, Oppositionsparteien 49ff. In
Chronographia 1597 Caetani interpreted the murgāyē of his Syriac source as “Murjiʾites”,
but they are more likely to be māriqa – Khārijites.
49 Cf. the list provided by Veccia-Vaglieri 39f., n. 5, with a slightly different count. There was
also Ḥassān b. Mujālid’s uprising (see p. 529 below), who is not listed there. Cf. also the
note in Masʿūdī, Murūj V 230, pu. f./III 302, 7ff., and Ashʿarī, Maq. 128, 6. These were often
small groups; ʿUmar’s letter presumes 40 people (Jamharat rasāʾil al-ʿArab II 327, 12f.).
50 II 1900, 4f.
51 Milal 102, 13f./251, 3f.
iraq 527
the seclusion of the dār al-hijra could not easily be applied. This decision was
very controversial, with some people refusing to say the prayer of the dead over
a woman who had married into the group from elsewhere and not converted
to Khārijism.52 – Bisṭām al-Shaybānī, on the other hand, was a Bayhasite,53 but
the Bayhasiyya, which spread mainly in Iran,54 is too complex for us to be able
to determine what it implied in his case. Maybe it only means that he was as
ruthless as the Azraqites;55 as for the question of marriage he probably decided
like Ḍaḥḥāk and in keeping with the principles of Abū Bayhas.56 – A certain
Yāsīn of the Tamīm who led an uprising in 168/784–5 followed “the principles
of Ṣāliḥ b. Musarriḥ”,57 maybe he, too, was a Ṣufrite.
2.4.2.2 Mosul
The rich citizens of Mosul were dependent on the tribes as the surrounding
farmland bordered the steppe where nomads and semi-nomads had their
grazing grounds.1 The city had grown up near ancient Nineveh; Hishām had
owned a summer residence here, and his governor and brother-in-law al-Ḥurr
b. Yūsuf had later furthered its development.2 The citizens were not enthusi-
astic about the Abbasids’ arrival; the population had hoisted the white flags
and allied themselves to the Khārijites of the surrounding area in order to drive
“the Persians” away.3 But the “Persians” returned just over a year later, bringing a
52 Nashwān, Ḥūr 176, 3ff. Parallel passages express this as two “sects” (Ashʿarī, Maq. 111, 6ff.;
Baghdādī, Farq 87, –6ff./108, 3ff.). They are all based on the same source. Khwārizmī,
Mafātīḥ 19, –5, confirms that this Ḍaḥḥākiyya did indeed go back to Ḍaḥḥāk b. Qays.
53 Rotter, loc. cit. 192 after Balādhurī; also Caetani, Chronographia 1597 after Michael the
Syrian.
57 Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 251, pu. ff. > Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil 52, 9ff./VI 78, 7ff.; cf. also Moscati
in: Orientalia 14/1945/351.
1 Kennedy in: BSOAS 44/1981/27f.

2 Regarding the city’s early history cf., besides Rotter’s abovementioned article (esp. p. 178),
Morony, Iraq 134ff., and Athamina in: JSAI 8/1986/191f.; also Fārūq ʿUmar, Buḥūth 148ff. and
Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Imtidād al-ʿArab fī ṣadr al-Islām 101ff. I am aware that during the Umayyad
era Mosul was administered separately from the Jazira in the narrower sense of the name
(Rotter 167); it is only for the sake a coherent presentation that the city precedes Nisibis
and Raqqa here.
3 Pseudo-Dionysius of Tellmaḥrē 51, 22ff./transl. 46. The Abbasids are called “Persians”
throughout this text.
528 chapter 2
great punishment over the city in 133/751, the most prominent victims of which
were the ascetic
Maʿrūf b. Abī Maʿrūf
and his son.4 He was a traditionist and appears to have travelled widely, as
he transmitted from Mujāhid, whom he must have visited in Mecca, and from
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.5 Kaʿbī called him a Qadarite, which is not improbable consid-
ering his teachers.6 The account of his martyrdom contains a topos that was
also applied to Ghaylān al-Dimashqī.7 As in Basra, Qadarites and Khārijites
seem to have been closely connected here.
Further confirmation is provided by the information we have on the
Ibāḍites of Mosul: with their Qadarite ideas they made themselves unpopular
with Abū ʿUbayda al-Tamīmī in Basra.8 They formed a fairly numerous com-
munity as several of the extended families of the Azd had settled in Mosul, e.g.
the Farāhīd from Uman, of whom Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb was a member,9 who had a
branch of their business there (mahājir).10 Yazīd b. al-Muhallab could count on
their support.11 A prominent Azdite named Jābir b. Jabala took part in Mukhtār
b. ʿAwf’s coup in the Hijaz with his entire clan, the Naṣr b. Zahrān Yaḥmad, as
reported in detail by Abū Zakariyyāʾ al-Azdī in his Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil which also
informs us on the further fortunes of the family.12 Around the middle of the
century we are even told of two theologians or jurists. The first one,
4 Azdī 147, 10f., and 148, 2f. > Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil V 341, –9f./V 444, pu. f. Regarding the mas-
sacre cf. Forand in: JAOS 89/1969/92f., and F. ʿUmar, Buḥūth 152ff., and ʿAbbāsid Caliphate
311ff.
5 Azdī 153, 3ff. Cf. also IAH VI1 322 no. 1488, where he is named as Mawṣilī. The Balkhī of the
same name mentioned in Bukhārī IV1 415 no. 1824, and Mīzān no. 8660, however, must be
distinguished from him; he also transmitted from Jarīr b. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd (d. 188/804).
6 Kaʿbī, Maq. 84, 5ff. (after Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shāfiʿī) > Faḍl 338, 4 (where Abī must be
added) > IM 135, 7f.; interestingly Kaʿbī lists him among the Meccans.
7 Cf. Text I 1, u with commentary.
9 See p. 228 above.
10 Azdī 93, 8f., and 96, 1.
11 Balādhurī in Athamina, loc. cit. 192.
12 77, apu. ff.; 111, 6ff.; 113, 5ff. One of his great-grandsons was Muʿāfā b. ʿImrān al-Azdī (d.
185/801) who made a name for himself as a traditionist as well as historian of his city and
whose traditions were admired in Baghdad, especially by the ascetics (cf. TB XIII 226ff.
no. 7198, and vol. I 263 above; also GAS 1/348 and 636). The section of Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil
even tells us how the families were distributed among the different streets.
iraq 529
Abū Firās Jubayr b. Ghālib,
was affiliated to the Ḥimyar. He composed a heresiographical work, but also

works of legal scholarship, besides being a poet and khaṭīb. He seems to
have corresponded with Mālik b. Anas, he certainly wrote one letter to him.13
Whether he was a genuine Southern Arab or whether he had joined the Ḥimyar
as a mawlā had already been forgotten by Azdī’s time.14 – Besides him there
was
Ḥafṣ b. Ashyam
who was a member of the Banū Jarm (probably of the Quḍāʿa).15 In his com-
munity he was mainly known as a jurist; he was the authority before whom
the Ibāḍites concluded contracts. He also transmitted Jubayr b. Ghālib’s K. al-
Firaq.16 The latter boasted of having first met him at the age of only fifteen;17
Ḥafṣ must have been older or more respected – possibly because Jubayr was
indeed only a mawlā. In 148/765, a nephew on his mother’s side, Ḥassān b.
Mujālid of the Hamdān, led an uprising against Manṣūr about which Azdī re-
ported in detail.18 He was a direct descendant of one of ʿAlī’s followers who had
left him after Ṣiffīn. When he failed he fled to Sind or Makrān where he tried to
win fellow-believers for his views.19
Unfortunately we do not know these Ibāḍites’ attitude towards the
Qadariyya. Ḥamza al-Kūfī who, as the Basrans saw it, was up to mischief in
Mosul with his Qadarite views, probably found followers mainly in rural areas;
Abū Maḥfūẓ, a shaykh living in Basra, travelled there in order to ensure that the
ignorant lambs would follow the right road once more. This happened during
the forties at the earliest; possibly even slightly later.20 Furthermore, Ḥafṣ b.
Ashyam and Ḥassān b. Mujālid and his entire clan lived in the countryside, in
Bā Fakhkhāra, a village east of Mosul in the Nineveh region.21 Jubayr b. Ghālib
lived in Kār, a kind of suburb of Mosul, also to the east of the city by the river.22
13 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 234, 1f., and 295, 9ff.

15 Ibid. 205, –4ff.
16 Fihrist 234, 2.
18 Ibid. 203, –4ff.; briefly also Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil V 447f./V 582f.
19 MacLean, Religion and Society 118.
21 Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 205, 4 and ult.; cf. also Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān s. v.
22 Ibid. 206, 3, and Yāqūt s. v.
530 chapter 2
It is by no means certain that these Ibāḍites always supported the Khārijites

who were running riot in the area, nor that all the Azd were Ibāḍites. As always,
small differences played a major part. One of Jābir b. Jabala’s fellow-tribesmen
supported al-Manṣūr with a contingent of a thousand horsemen in the cam-
paign against the Berber imamate in Tripoli, even bringing the caliph the head
of the fallen Ibāḍite imam.23 In 202/816–17 the Azd of Mosul fell out with a
south Arabian Khārijite of the Hamdān who had settled in Nineveh, and killed
him.24
It is not possible to locate another jurist, named Abū Bakr Yaḥyā b.

Zakariyyāʾ al-Mawṣilī (mentioned in Khamīs b. Saʿīd al-Shaqaṣī, Manhaj
al-ṭālibīn I 620, –5f.), more closely. He became known because he moved
to Oman. Regarding him and the later history of the Ibāḍites in this area
cf. Lewicki in: EI2 III 651a. – Regarding the “Jahmites” who appeared there
during the time of the miḥna see ch. C 6.3 below. Regarding the jurist
and historian Muʿāfā b. ʿImrān al-Mawṣilī see n. 12 above. The sciences
of tradition were represented in the city in the second century mostly
by Abū Yaʿlā Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Tamīmī (210/825–307/919), who composed
not only a Musnad but also a Muʿjam of his teachers (GAS 1/170f.). The ex-
tensive Musnad was edited by Ḥusayn Salīm Asad (vols. 1–13 and indices;
Damascus 1404/1984–1409/1988).
2.4.2.3 Nisibis
Nisibis, too, was part of the Diyār Rabīʿa, but it was situated much further west
than Mosul around halfway to Raqqa, although slightly to the north. The city
had been part of the Sasanid Empire and was home to a Nestorian academy
which continued to exist until the early Islamic period, only less documented
as time went on.1 Abū Nūḥ Ibn al-Ṣalṭ al-Anbārī, translator of Greek texts, was
the Catholicos there at the beginning of the third/ninth century, having previ-
ously been secretary to the governor of Mosul.2 Scholarship was demonstrated
23 Schwartz, Anfänge der Ibāḍiten in Nordafrika 229ff.

24 Azdī 343, –5ff. > Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil VI 247f./VI 349.
1 Cf. Vööbus, History of the School of Nisibis (Leuven 1965). In general cf. RGG IV 1499, and
LThK VII 1010 a. v. Nisibis.
2 Among other things he produced a new translation of the first three books of the
Organon which replaced that by Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh b. al-Muqaffaʿ (Al-manṭiq
li-bn al-Muqaffaʿ, ed. Dānishpazhūh 93, –4; cf. p. 41 above). He also translated the Topics
after a Syriac version produced by the Patriarch Timothy. Cf. GCAL II 118; Fiey, Chrétiens
syriaques 36 and 38; Putman, Timothée I 85 and Index s. n.; Islamochristiana 1/1975/154;
iraq 531
to the Muslims, but so was factional strife: the appointment of the bishop had
always been surrounded with much quarrelling.3 It is unlikely that the Muslim
population was very numerous during the first two centuries.4 Outside Iraq
people had rather fairy-tale ideas of the city. The pious genies who, according
to sura 46:29, had listened to Muḥammad’s recitation of the Quran in exempla-
ry silence had come from Nisibis.5 Some of Mukhtār’s followers settled there,
Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya was their leader for a short while.6 Later
a great number of ʿAlids lived in the city,7 but it would be rash to conclude
that there was a strong Shīʿite faction. The only local Muslim theologian whose
name became known,
Abū Ḥāḍir al-Naṣībī,
is difficult to locate. Ḥākim al-Jushamī calls him the head of the “eternalists”
(Azaliyya), because Abū Ḥāḍir believed that creation had been with God from
the beginning, inasmuch he knew about it from the beginning.8 This might be
a reflection of the Christian idea of κόσμος νοητός; even after people stopped
believing, like the Kufan Shīʿites, that divine knowledge had emerged within
time, it did not find much of an echo in Islamic theology.9 In the present case
it was linked, unsurprisingly, to strict predestinarianism, due to which the
Muʿtazilites had no interest in it. Hishām al-Fuwaṭī reacted with a distinction,
providing us with a terminus ante quem.10 Ibn Ḥazm linked Abū Ḥāḍir with a
certain Abū l-Ṣabbāḥ al-Samarqandī; however, the latter would seem to have
Haddad, La trinité divine 39; Endreß in GAP II 421; Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques I
525; also ch. C 1.2.3 below.
3 Morony, Iraq 349ff.; general information on the city also ibid. 131.
4 The scholars listed by Samʿānī, Ansāb XIII 115ff. s. v. an-Naṣībī are of the time from the
third century AH onwards.
5 Ibn Isḥāq, Sīra 281, 11ff.
6 In more detail Rotter, Zweiter Bürgerkrieg 214ff.
7 Cf. the list of families in Ibn Ṭabāṭabā, Muntaqilat al-Ṭālibiyyīn 328, 3ff.; also Ibn ʿInaba,
ʿUmdat al-ṭālib 250, 4ff.
8 Sharḥ ʿUyūn al-masāʾil I, fol. 47a.; adopted by al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī I 136, 12ff., and Ibn
al-Murtaḍā, Munya 120, 2ff.
9 See ch. D 1.3.1 below. Regarding the idea itself cf. R. M. Jones in: Classical Philology
21/1926/317ff., and P. O. Kristeller, Die Ideen als Gedanken der menschlichen und göttlichen
Vernunft (SB Heid. Ak. Wiss. 1989 no. 2), esp. p. 13ff.
10 Text XXIV 18, but Abū Ḥāḍir is not mentioned. Regarding Hishām al-Fuwaṭī’s teachings
see ch. C 4.1.1.1 below.
532 chapter 2
been half a continent away, although we have no further knowledge of him,

either.11 – Also worth mentioning is a traditionist,
ʿUthmān b. ʿAbdallāh al-Umawī,
who certainly lived in Nisibis for a time, and may even have grown up there.
He was a member of the Umayyad family; one of his two different genealo-
gies made him a great-great-grandson of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. al-Ḥakam b. al-
ʿĀṣ, while the other traced him back through ten (!) generations to the caliph
ʿUthmān.12 He had a weakness for pro-Shīʿite hadith and consequently had
the prophet speak of his family as a tree of which he himself was the root,
ʿAlī a branch , and Ḥasan and Ḥusayn twigs; whoever should hold on to one
of the twigs would go to paradise. However, he travelled too much to remain
faithful to his principles. When he came to Khorasan he changed; he is said to
have spread a pro-Murjiʾite tradition he had heard from Abū Muṭīʿ al-Balkhī.13
He settled in Nishapur, where he died towards the end of the second century.
The hadith quoted sounds Zaydite, as the Ḥasanid twig was apparently just as
strong as the Ḥusaynid one. This suited the Jazira quite well, as we shall see on
the last stage of our itinerary.
2.4.3 Raqqa
Raqqa, called Nikephorion and later Kallinikos during pre-Islamic times, and
a bishopric at that time,1 was the main urban centre of the Diyār Muḍar in
the west, and thus suffered much less under the Khārijites.2 Hārūn al-Rashīd
was able to move the seat of his government there in 180/796, although he did
this partly in order to get the hostilities between the Yaman and the Muḍar
under control.3 There were certainly great numbers of Ibāḍites in the city;
Muḥammad b. Saʿīd al-Qushayrī (d. 334/946), the author of Taʾrīkh Raqqa,
11 Fiṣal IV 226, pu. f. (which states explicitly that the nisba al-Naṣībī belongs to Nisibis).
Regarding Abū l-Ṣabbāḥ see p. 631f. below.
12 TB XI 282f. no. 6053. Dhahabī already thought the second genealogy to be extremely im-
probable (Mīzān no. 5523).
13 Mīzān, loc. cit.; also Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 38, –5ff., and 42, apu. ff. (cf. p. 605 below).
1 Regarding the history of the city in this time cf. Honigmann in EI1 III 1196f., and D. Sturm
in: Hallesche Beiträge zur Orientwissenschaft 1/1979/35ff. Another translator who under-
stood Syriac came from here (Ibn al-Nadīm 305, 5f.).
2 Regarding Arab immigration cf. Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Imtidād al-ʿArab fī ṣadr al-Islām 98f.
3 EI2 III 233a.
iraq 533
cites a statement of Sufyān al-Thawrī’s (d. 161/778) in evidence.4 Unfortunately

this orthodox – and also badly preserved – text does not have much informa-
tion about the religious circumstances in the city otherwise. The Qadarites
are included, e.g. Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba, whose Muṣannaf reached Raqqa from
Basra through Khalīl b. Murra (d. 160/777),5 or Ṭalḥa b. Zayd al-Qurashī from
Damascus who had settled near the city and probably brought his Qadarite
views with him.6 Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Walīd b. al-Walīd b. Zayd al-ʿAnsī al-Qalānisī,
who had studied in Damascus under the Qadarite exegete Saʿīd b. Bashīr and
in Ḥimṣ under ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Thābit b. Thawbān, does not occur at all.7 All
these Qadarites were fairly moderate. It is more remarkable that the Shīʿites
were ignored, as there was a whole range of them, evidence of which emerg-
es when the population opposed Muʿāwiya’s title khāl al-muʾminīn.8 Around
120/738 a canvasser for Zayd b. ʿAlī had appeared in the city, a client of the
Banū Hāshim named Yazīd b. Abī Ziyād (d. 136/753–4 at the age of 90), who
had studied under Ibn Abī Laylā in Kufa.9 Later, presumably back in his home
city of Kufa, he prepared the way for the Abbasids – possibly unwittingly – by
transmitting the so-called “banner hadith” according to which salvation for
“people of the house” would come from the east under black banners.10 Raqqa
probably had a Zaydite community from that time onward, but more extreme
Shīʿites also settled there, and the reason why the Abbasids felt quite safe in the
city is that a full 25 years before Hārūn moved his government there, Manṣūr
had had his crown prince al-Mahdī build the new city al-Rāfiqa on the model
of Baghdad.
2.4.3.1 Sulaymān al-Raqqī

We are only able to infer the existence of a Zaydite community, as it produced
a theologian who was one of the greatest minds of the second century and,
although isolated within his own community, gave a number of impulses for
later developments:
4 P. 63, pu. ff.

5 Ibid. 112, 1ff. (read ʿArūba instead of ʿAmrōya); also 127, ult. ff. Cf. p. 72 above; regarding
Khalīl b. Murra cf. Mīzān no. 2672.
6 See p. 372 above.
7 Regarding him IAH IV2 19 no. 82; Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn III 81, 5ff.; Ibn Muhannā, Taʾrīkh
Dārayyā 122, 1. Mīzān no. 9417 calls him a Qadarite.
8 Khallāl, Musnad 190, 9ff.; cf. vol. I 27 above.
9 Abū l-Faraj, Maqātil 145, 13ff.; regarding him see also Ardabīlī, Jāmiʿ II 341.
10 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ IV 379ff. no. 1993 > Mīzān no. 9695; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh V 313, apu. ff.; Ibn
Khaldūn, Muqaddima, transl. Rosenthal II 172ff.; also Nagel, Untersuchungen 133, 5, and
Madelung in EI2 V 1233. Regarding the black banners see p. 555 below.
534 chapter 2
Sulaymān b. Jarīr al-Raqqī al-Jazarī.1
The story of his life is entirely obscure, probably mainly due to his background,
as only the Kufan Zaydites were recorded in those days. In addition, unlike
them he was not active as a traditionist. Strangely, not even Zaydite sources
pay any attention to him; after all, he was a successful theologian with fol-
lowers of his doctrine in ʿĀnāt on the Euphrates, halfway between Raqqa
and Baghdad.2 He was also said to have paid homage to Yaḥyā b. ʿAbdallāh
b. al-Ḥasan who travelled around Iraq and Persia after the fiasco of Fakhkh
in 169/786 and began to be active in Daylam from 175/792 onwards.3 Still, the
key to understanding may be just here. Yaḥyā had agreed to an amnesty prom-
ised him by the Barmakid Faḍl b. Yaḥyā as governor of the entire east. Even so,
he was finally sent to prison in Raqqa on Hārūn’s orders; Shaybānī fell out of
favour at times because he refused to find legitimation for this felony in the
law.4 Sulaymān b. Jarīr, on the other hand, did not go to prison, but appeared
in a long story regarding a discussion he had with Hishām b. al-Ḥakam before
Faḍl b. Yaḥyā’s father, the vizier Yaḥyā b. Khalīd. Sulaymān played the part of
the villain, asking Hishām a trick question that discredited his Zaydite views
at the same time.5 This is probably pure fiction, its objective perhaps to point
out that he was not a Zaydite any more by that time. According to a report,
occasionally attributed to Zayd b. ʿAlī’s learned grandson Aḥmad b. ʿĪsā and
circulating among the Zaydites in particular, he was supposed to have had a
hand in the murder of Yaḥyā b. ʿAbdallāh’s brother Idrīs who had been able to
escape to the Maghreb and found support with “Muʿtazilite” tribes. This would
have been 177/793; Idrīs I died in late Rabīʿ I 177/mid-July 793.6
1 The nisba al-Raqqī is documented in Nawbakhtī, Firaq 9, 6; Maqdisī, Badʿ V 133, 5, and
Nashwān, Ḥūr 148, 9.
2 Khayyāṭ, Intiṣār 68, 6f. The sources call his followers either Sulaymāniyya (thus Isfarāʾīnī,
Tabṣīr 33, 1/28, –4; Ṣafadī, Wāfī XV 360, 2 etc.) or Jarīriyya (thus Maqdisī V 133, 5; Masʿūdī V 474,
apu./V 45, 13 etc.; misspelt in Nashwān 150, pu.).
3 van Arendonk, Opkomst 59ff.; cf. 73 and 291.
4 Abū l-Faraj, Maqātil 468, apu. ff.; also the reports in Ibrāhīm b. Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ, Abū l-ʿAbbās
al-Ḥasanī and Muḥallī (in: Madelung, Arabic Texts concerning the History of the Zaydi Imams
17, 2ff.; 55, 5ff. and 173ff.) as well as al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī I 232ff. Cf. also van Arendonk,
Opkomst 62f.; Madelung, Qāsim 51, Dasūqī, Shaybānī 86ff.; cf. also ch. C 1.4.1 below.
5 Kashshī 259, 4, and 261, 9ff. Cf. also Strothmann, Staatsrecht 34; van Arendonk 73; Madelung,
Qāsim 62f.; also vol. I 412 above.
6 Ibn Abī Zarʿ, Rawḍ al-qirṭās (ed. Tornberg, Annales regum Mauritaniae) 23/transl. Beaumier 21.
iraq 535
Still, most of this cannot be verified. Lévi-Provencal showed that there

is also an earlier date for the death of Idrīs I: the earliest source, Rāzī’s
Taʾrīkh, dating it to 174 (Islam d’Occident 14). The dates of his son Idrīs II
also vary, and the date of his birth in particular, which took place after
his father’s death, cannot be determined. D. Eustache decided in favour
of 175 (EI2 III 1031f.) in both cases, as did Huici-Miranda in his translation
of Rawḍ al-Qirṭās (I 46). At that time Yaḥyā b. ʿAbdallāh would still have
been in Daylam. Of course, the chronological connection between father
and son does not need to be taken quite so seriously. The pregnant slave
who gives birth to the successor to the throne after his father’s death is a
topos found a number of times, e.g. in the context of the twelfth imam; in
the present case it may have been employed to legitimise Idrīs II’s claim
to the throne, or more likely that of his guardian and regent Rashīd.
As for the murderer and his course of action, there is even more confu-
sion. Aḥmad b. ʿĪsā b. Zayd is an authority quoted only in Zaydite sources.
He claimed to have heard from a Berber via his uncle al-Ḥusayn b. Zayd
that Sulaymān b. Jarīr – and that he was the mutakallim is emphasised
explicitly – did away with the ruler by giving him a poisoned fish (van
Arendonk 58, n. 5; Madelung, Qāsim 62). Abū l-Faraj attributes (Maqātil
490, 6ff.) the same version to Dāwūd b. al-Qāsim al-Jaʿfarī, a great-great-
grandson of Jaʿfar b. Abī Ṭālib’s, who was a court official deported from
Baghdad to Samarra in 252/866 together with all the other Ṭālibids, where
they were taken into custody (Ṭabarī III 1682, 3ff., and 1683, 16ff.). He died
in Samarra in Jumādā I 261/Feb. 875. He certainly was not a contemporary
of the events (TB VIII 369 no. 4471; also Ṭabarī III 1522, 17f., and 1617, 13;
also Ṭūsī, Fihrist 131 no. 280; Najāshī 113, 5ff; Ardabīlī I 307).
There is another, much more colourful version, according to which
Sulaymān used poisoned perfume and was wounded during his flight
in a duel with Rashīd; he was marked by his crippled hand henceforth.
This version also tells us that in order to curry favour with the Berbers he
gave lectures on Zaydite doctrine (Maqātil 489, 1ff., after which, abridged
further, Ibn ʿInaba, ʿUmdat al-ṭālib 158, 2ff.). This version goes back to an-
other court official with Shīʿite leanings, Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad
b. Sulaymān al-Nawfalī, who had heard it from his father. The latter
had lived through the uprising of 145 (Maqātil 338, –4ff.). The isnād is
frequent in Ṭabarī, in K. al-Aghānī and in Masʿūdī (GAS 1/312; Prozorov,
Istoričeskaja literatura 181; Ardabīlī 602a).
In a third version the perfume (ṭīb) becomes a physician (ṭabīb) who
poisons Idrīs with a tooth powder. His name is not Sulaymān b. Jarīr but
al-Shammākh, and he is a mawlā of al-Mahdī’s. He was said to have been
536 chapter 2
appointed postmaster of Egypt later in recognition of his deed (Maqātil

490, 1ff.). Abū l-Faraj heard this from ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-ʿAlawī, a late de-
scendant of Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, who wrote a K. akhbār Yaḥyā b. ʿAbdallāh b.
Ḥasan and a K. akhbār ṣāḥib Fakhkh (Najāshī 186, 4ff. > Ardabīlī I 545b).
Ṭabarī included this account in a slightly divergent form and anonymous-
ly, with al-Shammākh bearing the nisba al-Yamāmī (III 561, 7ff.; after him
Ibn al-Faqīh, Buldān 81, 15ff./transl. Massé 99f., Ibn Taghrībirdī, Nujūm
II 59, 8ff., and Ṣafadī, Wāfī VIII, where Yamāmī is misspelt as Yamānī).
According to Ibn Ḥabīb, Asmāʾ al-mughtālīn 197, 8ff., the murderer came
from Medina, which would correspond to the nisba.
Everything else is based on these eastern traditions (which are, of
course, entirely nebulous when it comes to detail): the information in
Baghdādī for instance (Farq 232, 1f./241, 10f.) and especially sources from
the Maghreb (cf. Arendonk 58, n. 5; Talbī, Emirat Aġlabide 370; Ibn al-
Khaṭīb, Aʿmāl al-aʿlām III, transl. Castrillo 121f., which points out misspell-
ings of the name Sulaymān b. Jarīr). Rosenthal was the first to suggest
that the Abū l-Ḥasan al-Nawfalī adduced by Lévi-Provençal might be Abū
l-Faraj’s very authority (Historiography 506, n. 1). In his Ḥulla al-siyarāʾ
Ibn al-Abbār made this quite clear by using the nisba al-Raqqī; on the
other hand when he came to Shammākh he misread al-Yamāmī as al-
Mishmāsī (I 52, 6ff. Monés). Occasionally we find someone attempting
to resolve the contradiction of the names by claiming Shammākh was
Sulaymān b. Jarīr’s sobriquet, passing over the incompatibility of the nis-
bas in the process (thus Ibn Khaldūn, ʿIbar IV 7; adopted by Nāṣirī, K. al-
istiqṣāʾ, transl. Archives Marocaines 31/1925/18). Folklore added a further
shift; the story went that Idrīs was murdered by a Jew named Shlomo
ben Shemma (presumably = Sulaymān b. Shammākh) (D. Cazès, Essai sur
l’histoire des Israélites de Tunisie, Paris 1888).
However one assesses the accuracy of these stories,7 the fact that they were
included in so Zaydite a source as Abū l-Faraj’s Maqātil al-Ṭālibiyyīn shows that
Sulaymān b. Jarīr’s reputation in the later Zaydiyya was not great; nobody ap-
pears to have attempted to clear the man from the provinces of the accusa-
tion. And this even though we know from Ashʿarī, who actually read a book of
his,8 that his intellectual achievement was impressive. Ashʿarī preserved many
7 H. L. Beck, L’image d’Idris II (Leiden 1989) is probably justified in considering them literary
fiction (p. 42ff.).
8 Maq. 73, 5f. This may have been the source of the quotation 64, 5–15, in which Sulaymān
discusses the “Imāmiyya” (Text III 11; cf. p. 538f. below).
iraq 537
details of his “system” which appear to have become famous through Jaʿfar b.
Mubashshir’s converting the people of ʿĀnāt to Muʿtazilite ideas.9
Sulaymān had attacked the Rawāfiḍ quite harshly; presumably events in
Kufa looked even more scandalous and chaotic when viewed from the Jazira.
His using the term Rawāfiḍ says enough:10 they were probably those who by
“refusing” were responsible for the continual defeats of ʿAlid pretenders. More
than that: he had no time for their imams, either; at least since Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq,
which makes him more radical than the Butriyya, who had transmitted from
Jaʿfar and only quarrelled with the Rawāfiḍ concerning the correct interpre-
tation of his teachings. This was an internal Kufan discussion; in the case of
Sulaymān, on the other hand, we find Shīʿite thought that was not tied to Kufa
and that had no interest in the “imams of the Rāfiḍa” – especially because they
did not even attempt to usurp the power. They had their party (shīʿa), but it was
isolated an on the wrong track. Clearly, not even the word shīʿa had a particular
ring to Sulaymān b. Jarīr. Those people within the Shīʿa whom he liked he ap-
pears to have called Imāmiyya.11
He could not, of course, ignore developments in Kufa, but to him they
were intrigue, and as he did not have any contact with Medina he blamed the
imams. He was aware that in Kufa, dicta would habitually be attributed to the
imams without inner legitimation, and were often contradictory, but he did
not regard this as the result of internal Kufan debate, believing on the contrary
that the imams had agreed to every single dictum and thus precipitated the
chaos. This he could understand: if someone was asked for information again
and again, and at the most diverse times – presumably mainly before and after
the hajj – he would not be able to be entirely consistent. What he did find out-
rageous were the excuses the imams offered in order not to be caught out in
an untruth: they claimed that God had willed it differently (badāʾ) or that they
had to be on their guard for their own or their community’s sake (taqiyya). In
this way they could claim whatever they liked; there was no criterion of truth
any more.12
To say it once again, the interesting thing about this argumentation is
its direction. It would have been easy for Sulaymān b. Jarīr to exculpate the
imams and hold their Kufan adepts responsible for the confusion, but criti-
cism of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq began to emerge even in Kufa; ʿUmar b. al-Riyāḥ had
9 Intiṣār, loc. cit.; cf. also ch. C 4.2.1.

10 Text III 6, a. This was not merely the heresiographers speaking, as illustrated by the fact
that Nawbakhtī would never have referred to his own party as the Rawāfiḍ.
11 For more information see p. 538f. below.
12 Text III 6 a–g.
538 chapter 2
been annoyed that the imam was said to have exercised taqiyya with regard to
his own followers.13 It is true that Sulaymān b. Jarīr’s approach was new mainly
because he added the “change of mind” (badāʾ) as a second excuse on top of the
taqiyya. This is not entirely conclusive when Nawbakhtī expressed it as: if God
has changed his mind it was because something happened differently from
the way it was predicted; the chaos, however, was caused mainly by incorrect
legal advice.14 There were two reasons for this contradiction. Firstly, Sulaymān
was aiming less at the legal confusion than at the doctrine of the imams’ omni-
science; they claimed, he said, that like the prophets God told them of past and
future, and that therefore they were free to say whatever they liked.15 Secondly,
Sulaymān’s protest was primarily political, as the Kufans mainly employed the
theory of badāʾ to explain why Jaʿfar’s successor-designate Ismāʿīl had died too
early, and why Abū l-Khaṭṭāb’s uprising had failed.16 This may have been the
reason why the Butrites as well as Sulaymān b. Jarīr attracted followers.17
In Sulaymān’s case, this was not necessarily immediately after Ismāʿīl’s death.
While we can assume that none of the newly-converted “Zaydites” defected to
Mūsā al-Kāẓim, there would still be time for a gathering of the disappointed
later. Sulaymān would certainly have been quite young: if he lived to join the
Barmakids’ circle, we must allow him a further 35 to 40 years.18 This could also
be deduced from the doctrines he embraced. While his ideas of the imamate
were close to those of the Butriyya, there is also something not found, and not
really to be expected in the first half of the second century, among the latter’s
teachings: theology in the true sense of the word, a doctrine of the attributes.
Thanks to Ashʿarī’s having adopted passages from Sulaymān’s works we are
able occasionally to go beyond the heresiographers’ schematic ideas in both
these issues. Sulaymān’s self-image within the framework of the idea of the
imamate appears to become clearer in a doxographical passage in which he
distinguished between two groups of “Imāmites”.19 The first one was identical
13 See vol. I 327f. above; it is possible, however, that ʿUmar b. al-Riyāḥ came from Basra (see
p. 482 above).
14 Regarding “permitted or prohibited”; cf. Text III 6, d.
15 Ibid., b and f. Once again he is of the opinion that this point of view was not so much
ascribed to them as in fact espoused by them.
17 Nawbakhtī 55, 13f. and previously > Qummī 77f. no. 102. Cf. also Brentjes, Imamatslehren 15.
18 The sentence Text III 6, h, is entirely arbitrary. It sounds as though the split had already
happened at the time of transition between Muḥammad al-Bāqir and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, but
this is due only to Nawbakhtī’s thinking in generations of imams; the subsequent sen-
tence leads directly on to the section on Jaʿfar’s succession.
19 Text II 11.
iraq 539
with the Butriyya,20 while he considered himself to be part of the second one.
In the latter’s opinion ʿAlī did not, as the Butriyya believed, renounce his claim
to leading the community in favour of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar; on the contrary, he
kept “the entire faith”, i.e. the decision in all religious issues, in his hands, thus
retaining the leadership, albeit secretly. It then passed from him to his closest
family, the ahl al-bayt, consequently both of them must have been blessed with
protection (ʿiṣma) from sin. Being thus free from sin does not seem to have
implied omniscience as the Rāfiḍites claimed for their imams. The latter are
not considered at all, as in Sulaymān’s view their doctrine was a separate Kufan
development. “Imāmites” to him were Shīʿites of the old school; people who
followed, or wished to follow, an imam, but only an imam who did not look on
like a quietist, but one who fought for his rights and who commanded respect.21
This self-designation (which may also have been used by the Butrites) is not
documented elsewhere; as we know, the Rafāwiḍ would claim it for themselves
later.
We must, however, note that Sulaymān does not mention himself at all in
the relevant passage, and that syntactically the attribution of individual opin-
ions is not always entirely unambiguous.22 Still, other doxographical records
appear to confirm our hypothesis. A chronologically close passage in Pseudo-
Nāshiʾ (i.e. presumably Jaʿfar b. Ḥarb) lists the references he employed to
support the precedence of the ahl al-bayt: sura 33:33, the ordeal by curse in
sura 3:61, and the hadith according to which the Quran and the holy clan are
guarantors of guidance. All of these were adduced by the Kufan Jārūdiyya as
well, and indeed he is quite close to them overall.22a The mubāhala guaranteed
Fāṭima’s key position at the same time, which Butrites such as Ḥasan b. Ṣāliḥ
took for granted by this time.23 Common sense demanded awarding the wuld
Fāṭima the rule; particular respect had always been shown to them.24
Being free from sin as such is not directly discussed here, but in other pas-
sages we learn that in Sulaymān’s view, ʿAlī was above misdeeds. Still, one

21 Madelung, Qāsim 63 after al-Ḥajūrī, who was probably referring to Kaʿbī in his turn.
According to him, Sulaymān also used the phrase muftaraḍ al-ṭāʿa which became charac-
teristic of the Zaydite idea of the imamate (cf. vol. I 298f. above; regarding Sulaymān cf.
also Kashshī 261, –5).
22 I am assuming a change in the subject towards the end (11, g–h; cf. the commentary on the
passage).
22a Text III 7, k–n. Regarding the arguments in detail see vol. I 297ff. above.
23 See vol. I 287. above. Sulaymān’s adducing an exegetic hadith of Shīʿite origin with regard
to sura 33:33 (l) proves that he was referring to an already established tradition.
24 Text III 7, n.
540 chapter 2
should not blame uneducated people, and consequently the majority of the
Sunnites, if they did not believe this; it could only be understood from tradi-
tion, and special training was required to distinguish true from false in this
matter. However, he continued, no report that seemed to imply wrongdoing by
ʿAlī could stand up to a critical examination.25 By not electing him its leader
after the prophet’s death, the community forfeited the very option that would
have been conducive to its welfare (aṣlaḥ);26 paying homage to Abū Bakr and
later ʿUmar was an error (khaṭaʾ).27 On the other hand Sulaymān did not wish
to put the ṣaḥāba in the dock; he refused to agree with the Jārūdiyya and the
Rafāwiḍ declaring them grave sinners (fussāq) or unbelievers,28 as the words
in which the prophet had indicated ʿAlī as his successor had not been binding,
but rather a recommendation.29 In this situation humans are obliged to come
to their own conclusion. And while the conclusion they reached was wrong, it
does not mean that they were guilty.30
Here as in many other points of his political theory, Sulaymān’s views ap-
proach those of ʿAlī b. Mītham.31 Maybe he was inspired in Basra by ʿUbaydallāh
al-ʿAnbarī’s tenet of kullu mujtahid muṣīb; after all, there was hardly a more
fitting maxim for a Zaydite. On the other hand we cannot rule out that it was
the author of the account who was responsible for this correspondence; else-
where ijtihād was replaced with taʾwīl: the ṣaḥāba did not come to an entirely
independent conclusion but rather interpreted certain of the prophet’s sayings
wrongly.32 And finally he presented a third model: Abū Bakr was elected as
the result of shūrā, informal consultation among the important representa-
tives of the community (khiyār al-muslimīn). The consultation was, as could
not be denied, rather hurried, but it is sufficient if only two people meet in
these circumstances. Again, this is pure construction, and again maybe not on
25 Text III 8, i–k. As the text suggests the examination was aimed less at the contents than as
the person reporting, or the isnād.
26 Text III 8, g.
27 Text III 7, c, and 8, f.
28 Regarding the Jārūdiyya cf. Text III 21, e–g; different still the Kufan Nuʿaymiyya (see vol. I
310f. above). The difference between it and the Jārūdiyya is noted in Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 352,
26ff.).
29 Text 7, e. The prophetic dictum quoted previously (b) in this context does indeed not
sound very convincing, resignedly foreseeing ʿAlī’s failure .
30 Text 7, f.
31 At least if we identify him as the Ibn al-Tammār of Text IV 63 (regarding the issue see
p. 482f. above). This passage mentions Sulaymān together with him.
32 Text 8, f, after Zurqān, who based his account on the source Nawbakhtī used, too (cf. the
commentary on the passage).
iraq 541
the part of Sulaymān but rather the heresiographers.33 All of this conveyed
that Sulaymān was not aware of a binding appointment by the prophet, a naṣṣ,
or that he did not believe in it.34 The hadiths adduced by the Rafāwiḍ concern-
ing the issue, such as the account of the conversation by Ghadīr Khumm, were
valid in Kufa only.
It seems that Sulaymān did use the word naṣṣ, but with a much broad-
er meaning: to denote every prophetic dictum that was unambiguous
enough to be seen as binding. He apparently also subsumed Quranic
commandments under this term, as the examples adduced include
prayer rules and how to determine the qibla (cf. Text 8, d–e). This re-
calls the conceptual language of the uṣūl al-fiqh; it has no connection
with the doctrine of the imamate. – If Sulaymān did not believe in the
decree of appointment and considered paying homage to Abū Bakr an
excusable mistake, it is probable that the view attributed to him in Abū
Yaʿlā, Muʿtamad 254, 6f., was formulated on the basis of an incorrect
model. While we must agree with Gimaret that this passage should read
Sulaymān b. Jarīr rather than Sulaymān b. Ḥarb (cf. Doctrine d’al-Ashʿarī
550, n. 6), claiming that our Zaydite believed one had to know the imam
personally and by name is probably overstating the issue. The counter-
part is provided by the Jārūdiyya of whom it was said that while they did
presuppose a naṣṣ, it was one without taʿyīn and tasmiya (cf. Text III 23,
a; also vol. I 297.)
The shūrā theory was revealed as a fiction as soon as it was applied to the elec-
tion of the second caliph, as ʿUmar was appointed by Abū Bakr, and the “best
among the Muslims” had no part in it, not even two of them. This was probably
the reason why Sulaymān, as Kaʿbī reported, added that the ruler (imām) could
appoint his successor himself, but this decision would not be binding on the
community, and it would be preferable if he did not do it. In the case of ʿUmar
the community’s paying him homage seems to have evened things out.35 In the
case of ʿUthmān, the situation was reversed. While he was elected properly by
shūrā, the transgressions he committed during the later years of his caliphate
33 The impression is reinforced in the same context by categorising Sulaymān’s views with
regard to the opposition of imāmat al-fāḍil and imāmat al-mafḍūl (Text 8, a–e). Baghdādī
insinuates that Sulaymān was influenced by the analogy with the marriage contract that
also requires two witnesses (Uṣūl al-dīn 281, 5f.).
34 Thus already van Arendonk, Opkomst 74, n. 1; Madelung, Qāsim 63f.
35 Quoted in Madelung, Qāsim 64; cf. also Baghdādī, Uṣūl al-dīn 285, 16f.
542 chapter 2
led him to become an unbeliever.36 Thus unlike the early Butrites, Sulaymān
did not refrain from judging him (tawaqquf);37 rather his attitude recalls that of
Ḥasan b. Ṣāliḥ b. Ḥayy – and also ʿAlī b. Mītham.38 His condemnation probably
also served as juristic legitimation for the actions ʿAlī and others took against
the caliph.39 ʿAlī’s opponents in the battle of the camel were viewed similarly:
they did not recognise the true imam, who had emerged from his occultation,40
and consequently they were unbelievers.41 Of course this argument was invali-
dated by the fact that all those he condemned in this way, ʿUthmān as well as
Ṭalḥa and Zubayr and also ʿĀʾisha, had already been promised paradise by the
prophet; the first three being counted among the ʿashara al-mubashshara, and
ʿĀʾisha was not easy to condemn, either.42 The account demonstrating the di-
lemma is isolated and its origin unknown; we do not know how it was resolved
in the end.43
ʿAlī’s conduct during the arbitration also became a problem, as the result
appeared to prove that his decision to allow it had been wrong. Doctrine, on
the other hand, demanded that he could not have been in error. Sulaymān be-
lieved that ʿAlī had complete insight into the situation but had feared mutiny
in his army and had thus ultimately allowed himself to be led by his concern
for the unity of all Muslims. The prophet, too, had had to compromise, e.g. in
Ḥudaybiya, when he even surrendered one of his followers to the Meccans for
the greater good. If anyone erred in the arbitration it was the two arbitrators, as
they did not obey ʿAlī’s order to adhere to the Quran and the Sunna.44
There can be no doubt that when one applies the criteria of the later system-
atists, Sulaymān must be counted among the Zaydites, but correspondences
with the Basran Imāmite ʿAlī b. Mītham demonstrate that in fact we are looking
at an example of how the Shīʿa evolved outside of Kufa. Anthropomorphism,
36 Text III 8, h, with the parallels listed; also Ḥākim al-Jushamī (cf. Madelung, Qāsim 63,
n. 128). The phrase that Sulaymān’s followers “renounced” ʿUthmān (Text 8, g) probably
means the same.
38 See p. 484f. and vol. I 287 above; also Text III 2, g, with commentary.
39 Thus Madelung, Qāsim 63.
40 Cf. Text III 11, e.
41 Text 7, h. Nawbakhtī clearly equated ʿUthmān with ʿAlī’s opponents (Firaq 9, 9). Regarding
the reasons cf. Madelung, Qāsim 63.
42 Text 9.
43 The Butriyya apparently also faced this, and the report cannot be easily classified there,
either (see vol. I 276 above).
44 Text 10. A pupil of Sulaymān’s, it was reported, instead used the term taqiyya with refer-
ence to ʿAlī. Sulaymān, who disliked this term intensely, would have disapproved.
iraq 543
which in Kufa included the Zaydiyya, held no interest for Sulaymān.45 His doc-
trine of the attributes, on the other hand, the second characteristic feature of
his theology, proves that he cannot quite be defined through Basran catego-
ries, either. In fact, he was probably not yet able to refer to a Basran model.
Certainly there is no doctrine of the attributes among Aṣamm’s works, and Abū
l-Hudhayl was probably younger than Sulaymān. Most importantly, unlike the
Muʿtazilites he believed that all the attributes had existed with God since all
eternity.46 This corresponded to what Abū Ḥāḍir in Nisibis had said of divine
knowledge; Khayyāṭ even listed it as typically Zaydite doctrine with reference
to this attribute.47 Sulaymān now unfolded it: God’s willing and not-willing
are eternal,48 as are his delight (riḍā) and his “wrath”,49 his friendship and
enmity50 – his love and hatred.51 These were the points where the Muʿtazilites
noticed the difference more than in the case of divine knowledge; after all, to
them, these were activities that had evolved in time. Al-Hādī ilā l-ḥaqq, himself
a Zaydite but strongly influenced by Muʿtazilite thought, emphasised the con-
sequences clearly: someone can behave like a believer, but still be the object of
divine wrath and hatred as God has the foreknowledge that he will lapse into
unbelief at the end of his life.52 Ḥākim al-Jushamī said the same thing of Abū
Ḥāḍir. Like the latter, Sulaymān was a predestinarian, teaching, as Strothmann
put it, “the original and unconditional election by divine grace”.53
The same phrase is used when describing the doctrine in the Khārijite
context; Madelung pointed this out (in: Isl. Philos. Theology 125f.), al-
though those who thought like this were not at home in the Jazira but
in Sijistān and Khorasan (see p. 651f. and 664 below). Consequently they
may be ruled out as influences. The emphasis on the abovementioned
pairs of opposites is typical of the early period (see ch. D 1.3 below).
Sulaymān’s asking the question of how the eternal attributes functioned in re-
lation to God shows us that he probably went beyond “eternalists” like Abū
45 Text III 13, a.

46 Ibid., c.
47 Text IV 41, a.
48 Text III 12, h; van Arendonk, Opkomst 82.
49 Text 12, i; also 17.
50 Text 17.
51 Text 15, b.
52 Text 16.
53 Staatsrecht der Zaiditen 34, n. 1.
544 chapter 2
Ḥāḍir. If he reacted against Hishām b. al-Ḥakam’s concept of the temporality of

the divine being, he must have known Hishām’s theology and could not over-
look the question. And indeed he used the latter’s “formula”: the attributes are
neither identical with God nor distinct from him.54 They are as “something”
(shayʾ) to him, based on which a certain adjective (“knowing”, “powerful”, etc.)
can be predicated on him;55 even so, it is not possible to say that all these are
“somethings” (ashyāʾ) independently of him, as it were.56 Expressed without
terminological niceties this sounded rather clumsy to educated ears, which is
why Muʿtazilite sources sometimes replaced shayʾ with maʿnā, a term more di-
rectly linked to the concept that the designated entity does not have existence
of itself. All the same, incorrect associations occurred here as well.57
Further problems could be found in the theory. Sulaymān had to make an ex-
ception: God’s “face” is entirely identical with God, a paraphrase of his person.58
The formula does not apply in this case, as otherwise it would have been an in-
vitation to anthropomorphism.59 Basran Muʿtazilites soon asked the question
how, under these circumstances, the attributes functioned with regard to one
another; Abū l-Hudhayl adopted the formula in this context.60 It seems that
Sulaymān neglected this aspect, but he did consider the special case of wheth-
er divine omnipotence and divine omniscience might sometimes collide: is
it possible to say that God has the power to do something which he knows
he will never perform? In his view this is mainly a matter of logical thought;
one must take care not to ask absurd questions. If one knows that God will
not do something – whether because he has left no doubt in his revelation, or
whether reason forbids it – it would be nonsensical to ask after it once again.
The case would be different when one does not know; then the question is
permissible – but only due to the limitations of the human horizon. God, who
knows everything, knows in any case whether he will do something or not; on
his level the question would consequently always be absurd. Asking whether
God knows he has the power to do something which he knows he will never
perform makes sense only if it is reflected back onto the human level with
54 Text 12, a, c, e; 13, b; 15, a–b. Regarding the argumentation cf. 13, d; also vol. I 439.
55 Text 12, b and d; 13, b. This appears to be true even of non-Quranic attributes: God is exist-
ing (mawjūd) because of existence (wujūd; cf. Text III 14, commentary).
56 Text 12, f.
57 Text 14–15 with commentary.
58 Text 12, g.
59 Thus also in Zayd b. ʿAlī’s apocryphal Quran commentary, based mainly on Abū Khālid
al-Wāsiṭī (cf. Madelung, Qāsim 58 and 65). We are not told of Sulaymān’s opinion of other
anthropomorphisms; he probably simply ignored them.
60 See ch. C 3.2.1.3.4.2 below; in general also Oriens 18–19/1965–6/117.
iraq 545
reference to an unreal case for human ignorance’ sake and with the answer: he
would have the power if he knew he was going to do it, and he would know it,
if he was going to do it.61 There can be no doubt that in Sulaymān’s view God
does not have the power to do something contrary to his prescience, but it was
not advisable to express it like that. Should one agree to a debate on the issue,
the opponent’s point of view would have to be adjusted from the beginning.
Some Muʿtazilites, such as Murdār, thought along the same lines.62 For them,
the issue was always directly linked to the question of whether God was able
to lie or to do wrong, a question Sulaymān was believed to have considered as
well, and answered accordingly. Of course it is possible that the sources simply
felt the need for conformity.63
Sulaymān apparently understood attributes of act as polar; however, they
do not originate in God’s reacting differently to human actions but rather they
are, similar to jamāl and jalāl to the later mystics,64 two sides of his essence. In
truth they are a unity: God’s wrath against the unbelievers is identical with his
delight in their punishment; if he wants something it implies that he does not
want the opposite.65 It seems to have been pointed out to Sulaymān – or his
pupils – that in this case God’s wrath against the unbelievers would also have
to be identical with his delight in the believers, but Sulaymān did not allow this
change of object. Presumably he saw these attributes as inseparably linked to
their objects in eternity due to divine prescience.66 He does not appear to have
mentioned other divine activities that would soon become problematic for the
Muʿtazilites, such as the act of creating; it is possible that creating to him was
part of divine will. He certainly did not speak of “attributes of act” explicitly.
While Ashʿarī uses the terms ṣifāt al-nafs and ṣifāt al-dhāt in connection with
him, they do not seem to have an opposite, and it is possible that they were in
fact merely imposed on his theory.67
The advantage of Sulaymān’s model was that he did not have to say that
God willed human sin. God only wills good; it is what he has delighted in since
the beginning of time. Sin, on the other hand, he has never willed.68 While
61 Text 18, d–m; also van Arendonk 83.

62 See ch. C 1.4.3.2.1 below.
63 Text 18, a–c. Of course this, too, was about the collision of two eternal attributes, omnipo-
tence and justice.
64 Cf. Meier, Fawāʾiḥ al-jamāl 79ff.
65 Text 12, h–i.
66 Ibid., k; also van Arendonk 82. Regarding the interpretation see also Madelung, Qāsim 65.
67 Text III 12, e, with commentary.
68 Ibid., h; also Madelung 64.
546 chapter 2
Sulaymān was a predestinarian, he was not a determinist, as was confirmed

when he looked at the same problem from the human side. Humans are ca-
pable of an action only at the moment of performing it, but the ability was not
created together with the action but precedes it, being required by the actual
action.69 In truth it is an inalienable part of the human while he is sound in
mind and body, a component part (baʿḍ) of the body and associated (mujāwir)
with it like the colour of its skin, but not on the outside but rather mixed with
it, just like oils are mixed and cannot then be separated again.70
The passage in Ashʿarī, Maq. 586, 7–10, is a crux: “A doxographer reports

that a traditionist taught: whatever is divine knowledge in the Quran71 we
do not call created, nor do we say that it is something distinct from God.
Commandments and prohibitions written in the Quran, on the other
hand, are created. The man in question reported this of Sulaymān b. Jarīr.
In my opinion it is wrong.” Madelung (Qāsim 65f.) and Allard (Attributs
divins 148) claimed this for Sulaymān, Madelung adding the remark that
it “corresponded to his teachings” in order to invalidate Ashʿarī’s conclud-
ing remark; Allard not even commenting on it. Still, in my opinion this
is not the relevant aspect at all, as it seems to me that Sulaymān is not
quoted here as the author of the doctrine but as a doxographer, in which
case a more precise translation would be: “The man in question reported
this on the authority of (ʿan) Sulaymān b. Jarīr”.72 After all, Sulaymān was
anything but a traditionist, but the doctrine is said to have been formu-
lated by one. Ashʿarī has a similar report on Ibn al-Mājashūn immediately
before (586, 5f.); this passage might refer to him as well (regarding him
see p. 780 below).
Strothmann fell victim to another misunderstanding. In: Der Islam
11/1921/273 he refers to Griffini for a Radd ʿalā man zaʿama anna l-Qurʾān
qad dhahaba baʿḍuhū that al-Hādī ilā l-ḥaqq directed against Sulaymān
(Masʾalat al-radd ʿalā Ibn Jarīr), but a comparison with Majmūʿa al-fākhira
69 Text III 19, a–c. Characteristically simplified by Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal III 22, 11 and previously:
humans possess istiṭāʿa at the time of action only.
70 Text 19, d, after a work by Sulaymān that Ashʿarī read himself; also Text 20; cf. Arendonk 84.
71 This probably refers to, as the opposition between “commandments and prohibitions”
illustrates, the statements on events in the past and the future that are unknown to
humans.
72 Brentjes, Imamatslehren 15, has the same translation as Madelung and Allard.
iraq 547
shows that this mixes two different texts, the first one on p. 239ff. is noth-
ing to do with Sulaymān (cf. also GAS 1/564 no. 2); while the second one is
simply the abovementioned refutation of Sulaymān’s doctrine on divine
delight.
In legal matters Sulaymān demonstrated independence as well. We may as-

sume that he would not have applauded Rāfiḍite idiosyncrasies such as the
prohibition of masḥ ʿalā l-khuffayn or of consuming eel. Still, he, too, had his
peculiarities – if we are to believe an entirely isolated account in Saksakī.73 He
prohibited consuming fish altogether,74 and also hares’ meat.75 He permitted
men to marry more than four women at once,76 and to borrow a female slave
for the purpose of sexual intercourse; divorce, on the other hand, he considered
effective only if it had been pronounced in front of two witnesses. If someone
wished to deconsecrate himself early during the hajj, Sulaymān believed he
had to shave the hair of his entire body in expiation, even his beard; someone
sacrificing had to add some of all his hair.
There was a judge in Mecca who, Saksakī asserted, put all these remark-
able exegeses into practice, showing how far Sulaymān’s influence reached. If
al-Hādī ilā l-ḥaqq wrote against him, this was only because there were peo-
ple even in Yemen who believed Sulaymān’s teachings. Indeed, it is a Yemeni
source which informs us of the only extant name of a pupil of his:
ʿAmr b. al-Haytham.
He was said to have been a canvasser for ʿAbdallāh b. Mūsā, a nephew of al-
Nafs al-zakiyya who never emerged from obscurity and lived to a high old age,
73 Burhān 42, 10ff., where his name is given incorrectly as Jarīr b. Sulaymān al-Raqqī.
74 ḥūt. Or is he referring to a particular kind, as opposed to samak?
75 There is an alleged dictum by Shaʿbī which may document hare being taboo in Kufa even
before Sulaymān b. Jarīr. Sunnites regarded it as related to Judaism (Ibn Taymiyya, Minhāj
al-sunna 2I 20, 10, and 16, 4f.; cf. Deut. 14:7). It was widely observed among the Imāmites,
too (cf. e.g. Sharīf al-Murtaḍā, Rasāʾil I 293, –5ff.; Ibn Ḥamza, Al-wasīla ilā nayl al-faḍīla 75,
4, and 77, –6; al-Ḥurr al-Āmilī, Wasāʾil al-Shīʿa XVI 319 no. 20f.; further references in Cook
in: JSAI 7/1986/232ff.). It was even regarded as shibboleth (cf. the story recorded by Ibn
Baṭṭūṭa II 353, 3ff. Sanguinetti/transl. Gibb II 468). Imāmite jurists, however, seem reluc-
tant to delve into the issue, as the custom was not easy to justify. General information in
K. Müller, Pseudo-islamische Sektengebilde 331ff., and J. B. Bauer in: RAC XIII 662ff.
76 Ibn Ḥazm reported that some Imāmites considered up to nine wives to be permissible,
presumably with reference to the prophet’s own practice (Fiṣal IV 182, –7f.).
548 chapter 2
possibly dying as late as 247/861.78 He believed in the Quran’s createdness,

but was said to still have criticised Ibn Abī Duwād because of the miḥna.79 He
could thus not have died before 220/835; consequently he is not linked to the
traditionist Abū Qaṭan ʿAmr b. al-Haytham from Basra who died in 198/814;
furthermore, the latter was a Qadarite.80 This confirms that Sulaymān’s place
was during the second half of the second century; he was presumably slightly
younger than Hishām b. al-Ḥakam.81
2.4.3.2 Extreme Shīʿites

One reason why Sulaymān al-Raqqī’s political theory joined the forces of com-
mon sense against the Kufan Rāfiḍa may have been that the latter had some
adherents even in Raqqa. As early as the beginning of the century there were
“slayers” haunting the town who drowned their victims’ screams with dogs’
barking and other noise.1 During Sulaymān’s lifetime
Abū Sulaymān Dāwūd b. Kathīr b. Abī Khālida al-Raqqī al-Kūfī
taught in the mosque there.2 He was a client of the Asad of whom Imāmite
sources hinted that he was one of the “pillars”, i.e. the chief authorities of the
ghulāt.3 He is indeed listed in the K. al-haft wal-aẓilla as a transmitter of eso-
teric doctrine;4 he was not afraid of allegorical exegesis,5 and he was one of
those who found references to the Imams in obligatory commandments in
the Quran on the subjects of prayer, zakāt, etc.6 He claimed to have heard
78 Regarding the latter Abū l-Faraj, Maqātil, Index s. n., and Madelung, Qāsim 75 and
Index s. n.
79 Ibn al-Wazīr, Tarjīḥ asālīb al-Qurʾān 28, 3ff.; cf. also Madelung in: Festschrift Löfgren 42.
80 See p. 85 above.
81 A tradition found in Murtaḍā, Amālī (I 180, 10ff.), according to which he met Abū l-
Hudhayl in Samarra, is certainly apocryphal. Samarra was not founded until 223/838,
which would be too late even for Abū l-Hudhayl (see ch. C 3.2.1.1 below).
1 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān II 265, 8, and earlier.

2 Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 302, 5f.; cf. ch. C 1.4.2 below.
3 Najāshī 112, –7ff.; Ṭūsī, Fihrist 131ff. no. 281 (with a commentary by ʿAlam al-Hudā); Ardabīlī
I 307ff. Sunnite biographers, if they are aware of him at all, simply list him as majhūl (IAH
I2 423 no. 1928; TT III 199 no. 380).
4 Haft 28, 3 Tāmir/37, –5 Ghālib.
5 Biḥār XXVI 277f. no. 19.
6 Ibid. 303 no. 14; cf. also 309 no. 12.
iraq 549
this from Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq whom he exalted in miracle stories and fantastic nar-
ratives.7 He also referred to him for the claim that the spirits of the imams
and the prophet reach God’s throne on the eve of every Friday;8 Muḥammad,
ʿAlī and the imams were the first to say “Yes” during the alast-covenant in the
pre-existence.9 However, as he only visited Kufa occasionally, and soon was
not considered a canonical authority any more, there was no interest in his bi-
ography; later, it would be impossible to reconstruct it. He was known to have
received a letter from ʿAlī al-Riḍā in prison once,10 which resulted in the con-
clusion that he must have died shortly after him at the beginning of the third
century. His lifespan was greatly extended by this, in particular as he was also
said to have quoted from Muḥammad al-Bāqir.11 One might attempt to resolve
the difficulty by dating the contact with ʿAlī al-Riḍā to before the latter’s jour-
ney to Maʾmūn in Marv. It seems that Mūsā al-Kāẓim informed Dāwūd, who
was by then an old man, of his successor ʿAlī.12
However, it is probably even more complicated, as Dāwūd does not seem to
have transmitted from Mūsā al-Kāẓim at all. If we are not entirely mistaken,
he was a “Sevener”. He pointed out a prophecy by Muḥammad al-Bāqir to ʿAlī
al-Riḍā according to which the seventh one would be the qāʾim, whereupon
ʿAlī al-Riḍā explained to him that al-Bāqir had prudently added in shāʾa llāh.13
This is probably a parallel to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq assuring his followers that Dāwūd
b. Kathīr was to him as Miqdād b. Aswad to the prophet;14 Miqdād having been
a close confidant of ʿAlī’s,15 which made him the guardian of the prophet’s le-
gitimate successor. In the same way Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, the sixth imam, presented
Dāwūd as ready to serve the seventh. This was certainly not Mūsā al-Kāẓim,
as outside Kufa people only converted to his ideas gradually.16 Interestingly
7 Thus in numerous passages in Biḥār al-anwār, esp. vol. XLVII (98 no. 114; 100 no. 119f.;
104 no. 129; 111ff. no. 149; 138, –6ff.; 159 no. 277); also LIX 340f. no. 7.
8 Ibid. XXVI 96f. no. 36.
9 Ibid. XV 16 no. 22.
10 Biḥār XLIX 269 no. 12.
11 Kashshī 408, 2f.
12 Biḥār XLIX 23f. no. 34.
13 Kashshī 373 no. 700.
14 Ibid. 402 no. 750f.; 407f. no. 765f.
15 Regarding him cf. Halm, Gnosis, n. 278 and Index s. n.; also Juynboll in: EI2 VII 32f. s. n.
al-Miqdād b. ʿAmr.
16 Did this refer to Ismāʿīl? In a tendentious Imāmite tradition Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq has Dāwūd
al-Raqqī testify to Ismāʿīl’s death as the first witness from among thirty (Nuʿmānī, Ghayba
327f. no. 8/2227, 14ff.).
550 chapter 2
Najāshī has Dāwūd as the author of a K. al-ihlīlaja.17 The “Myrobalan” is a book

frequently attributed to Mufaḍḍal al-Juʿfī, who was said to have written it to
Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq’s dictation.18 The contents are quite conventional: the imam con-
verses with an Indian physician who is pounding a myrobalan in the mortar in
order to prepare a remedy and uses this as his starting point to rock the latter’s
faith in the eternal existence of the world. This, however, only applies to the
“orthodox” version transmitted in Imāmite tradition.19 The Druze would still
use the word ihlīlaj as a watchword.20 There may well have been other versions;
certainly other authors of a text of this name are suggested.21
Dāwūd’s legal notes were preserved by Ibn Abī ʿUmayr in Baghdad. He had
received them from Ḥasan b. Maḥbūb, who had also been interested in ʿAlī
b. Riʾāb’s,22 taking us to the era of Hārūn.23 This was the time when Dāwūd
b. Kathīr was seen lecturing in the mosque of Raqqa, which indicates that he
was probably older than Sulaymān al-Raqqī. As late as the second half of the
fourth/tenth century Muqaddasī had the impression that the majority of the
population in the city followed the Shīʿite path.24
17 112, ult.; also a K. al-Mazār.

18 Cf. Halm in: Der Islam 55/1978/222f.
19 Biḥār III 152ff. Regarding the medicinal uses of the myrobalan cf. Ullmann in WO
9/1977/108, and Rufus von Ephesos über die Gelbsucht 84.
20 Petermann, Reisen 145.
21 After Najāshī 19, –4f. e.g. Ismāʿīl b. Mihrān al-Sakūnī, a nephew of Bazanṭī (regarding him
see vol. I 450 above) or Ḥamdān b. al-Muʿāfā al-Ṣabīḥī (Halm in: Der Islam 58/1981/81f.).
The most likely author of the original version is Muḥammad b. al-Layth, a secretary of the
Barmakids (see ch. C 1.2.3 below).
22 Ṭūsī, Fihrist 133, 1f.; cf. vol. I 448 and 451. above.
23 Ibid.
24 Aḥsan al-taqāsīm 323, 16.
CHAPTER 3
Iran
3.0 General Preliminary Remarks
When the Arabs set foot in Iran, they were on much less familiar ground
than in Syria or Iraq. They had no cousins living here, and no-one spoke
their language. The religions they came across were frequently positioned
beyond the Quranic image of history, and for the first time they were faced
with genuine heathens again, as they had been in Mecca. Many Arab immi-
grants owned vast country estates appropriated out of Sasanid crown land,
but they still lived, not least for reasons of personal safety, in the cities.1
Only the Khārijites went to the countryside; they were frequently not wel-
come in the cities, and because of their egalitarian ideology they found it
easier to mingle with the indigenous rural population. There were many
of them in various regions; they had settled during the Umayyad era and
had then been widely dispersed in the numerous government campaigns
against them. Unlike in the Hijaz or in Iraq, they had not merely caused
temporary unrest in Iran, but had taken root, with the result that they were
less a political danger than a factor of religious life in general.
Evaluating individual religious phenomena as well as the development as a
whole is difficult. The available sources are much sparser than in the regions
we have discussed so far. Even in the cities it is difficult to establish a coher-
ent and balanced picture. As the Muslims were usually in the minority, local
influences carried considerable weight; Iran in the early Islamic period was the
classic country of syncretism.2 The large number of Khārijites, the Ḥanafite
predominance in the law, and the peripheral position meant that hadith did
not develop until late;3 the caliphs’ law that had superseded the Quran in Syria,
allowing hadith to spread there as well as in Iraq, did not even reach Iran. Even
1 But cf. p. 572 below.

2 Cf. in particular the Iranising sectarian movements which have inspired the scholarly com-
munity to divergent interpretations ever since Gh. H. Sadighi’s dissertation (Les mouvements
religieux au IIe et IIIe de l’Hégire; Paris 1938), most recently B. Scarcia-Amoretti in: CHI 481ff.,
and E. L. Daniel, Political and Social History of Khurasan 125ff.). The progressive assimilation
of the Arab population was already described colourfully by Wellhausen (Arab. Reich 306ff.).
3 Thus determined for Khorasan by Reinert, Tawakkul 246; cf., however, the list of hadith book-
lets only surviving in Iran in Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, Maʿrifat ʿulūm al-ḥadīth 164, 2ff.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi ��.��63/97890043440�0_003

552 CHAPTER 3
so, the impulses from the centre of the empire never stopped. The governors
as well as part of their armies and officials came from Iraq; local families had
connections there as well. The Kufan Ḥanafites discovered Iran as a develop-
ing country for legal purposes. Later the local scholars would start travelling,
too; like their Spanish colleagues, local culture was not enough to sate them.
Influences were extremely diverse in the vast space between Azerbaijan and
Transoxiana. We know most about the east, mainly because that was where the
Abbasid rebellion started, and from then on the Khorasanians became a domi-
nant force in Iraq. The interest Baghdad historians developed in the rebellion
served to throw light on events surrounding it which would have passed un-
noticed in other parts of Iran.
Iran 553
3.1 Eastern Iran
The armies conquering eastern Iran came from the Basran camp, but at a time
when Basra had not yet developed its own theological profile. The movement
that shaped the region in general was the Murjiʾa, which had already taken
root by the time Abū Ḥanīfa’s pupils arrived. As in Kufa it was not favour-
ably inclined towards anthropomorphic tendencies, although these were not
Shīʿite here, and it does not really seem as though the delimitations had been
drawn very sharply. The environment in which people lived in Transoxiana
alone showed that it was possible to have different ideas on images of dei-
ties. Zoroastrianism had not taken root quite so firmly here, being in competi-
tion with Buddhism whose monasteries were spread throughout the country;
Nawbahār’s complex in Balkh was only one prominent example.1 There were
also any number of Manichaeans and shamanists. People had grown accus-
tomed to tolerance more than elsewhere.2
Consequently the new religion did not meet with fundamental opposition;
after all, to a Buddhist the difference between Islam and Judaism or Christianity
would not have appeared very significant at first. Old border lords and new oc-
cupying armies (muqātila) joined forces against the Turks.3 It seems that this
led to numerous conversions in the Iranian upper class,4 but of course not
every convert immediately learned Arabic, resulting in the question of wheth-
er it was permissible to recite the Quran in Persian, too. Unsurprisingly the
Ḥanafite school was the only one to answer this in the affirmative.
1 Regarding Buddhist temples in central Asia in the early Islamic period cf. e.g. Belenickij,
Zentralasien (transl. G. Doerfer in: Archaeologia mundi) 136ff.; regarding the monastery com-
plex of Fundūkistān (Afghanistan) dating from the seventh/eighth century cf. Dupree in EIran
I 537f.; regarding monasteries in Tirmidh cf. Staviskij, Kushanskaja Baktrija (Moscow 1977);
in general EIran IV 492ff., art. Buddhism. Regarding the exemplary position occupied by
Nawbahār cf. Bulliet’s theory in: Iran 14/1976/140ff.; Russell in: Iran Nameh 1/1983/678, n. 20,
disagrees with this view. For more information see p. 572 below.
2 Belenickij 198. In more detail Barthold, Vorlesungen 16ff., 51ff., and 70ff.; also Emmerick in:
CHI III 949ff. Only the central Asian Turks would later shit on the Buddha statues’ heads
in an attempt at demonstrating their impotence (cf. Dankoff in: JAOS 95/1975/69 after
Kāshgharī).
3 Thus Daniel, Khurasan 173.
4 Bulliet attempted to show by means of a graph that conversions in Iran began very early
(Conversion 23; cf. the comparison with other religions in Th. Glick, Islamic and Christian
Spain in the Early Middle Ages 283).
554 CHAPTER 3
Relevant material collected by Tibawi in: MW 52/1962/4f. and 7f.;

Brunschvig in: Mélanges Massé 54ff., and Richter-Bernburg in: JAOS
94/1974/63; general information by Paret in EI2 V 429. Later, when the
Shāfiʿites began to compete with the Ḥanafites in Iran, they used this
as a welcome point of controversy; the Sharīf al-Murtaḍā discussed the
contrast in his Masāʾil Nāṣiriyya (MS Princeton ELS 2751, fol. 176b; also
Bāqillānī, Nukat al-Intiṣār 337ff. and Juwaynī’s caricature in IKh V 180, 8ff.,
esp. 180, ult.). A Persian translation of the Quran survives in an unusually
magnificent manuscript in Shiraz (ed. ʿAlī Rawāqī, Teheran 2535/1976).
The Qurʾān-i Quds, a codex from Mashhad recently edited in facsimile
by the same editor (1–2, Teheran 1364 SH/1985), contains an interlinear
translation which is of great interest to linguistic history (cf. already
Lazard, La langue des plus anciens monuments 122). Cf. also the fragment
with the text of Sūrat al-Māʾida with a Persian interlinear translation ed-
ited in facsimile by Aḥmad ʿAlī Rajāʾī after a fifth-century (?) manuscript
(Teheran 1350 SH/1971).
First conflicts were social and grew out of this very situation: new Muslims
demanded equal rights. They found support from the Murjiʾa who had main-
tained the required anti-authority attitude ever since Ibn al-Ashʿath’s uprising
which had, after all, found its end in eastern Iran.5 When ʿUmar II had become
caliph his reformist ideas encouraged people to complain about the governor
al-Jarrāḥ b. ʿAbdallāh, the same man who would later cause outrage in Armenia
with his cruelty.6 Twenty thousand mawālī served in the army without their
names being entered in the paylist (bilā ʿaṭāʾ wa-lā rizq), it was said, and just as
many converts were forced to continue to pay the poll tax. The man pointing
out these grievances was himself a mawlā; later, however, people were not sure
who he had been, whether Abū l-Ṣaydāʾ Ṣāliḥ b. Ṭarīf al-Ḍabbī or a certain Saʿīd
al-Naḥwī.7 A true Arab was also reported to have supported the cause: Abū
Mijlaz Lāḥiq b. Ḥumayd, a Kufan of the Sadūs who had come to Khorasan with
Qutayba b. Muslim and died some time after the turn of the century while Ibn
5 Regarding the following in general cf. Madelung, Religious Trends13ff.; also B. Składanek,
Doktryny i ruchy społeczno-politiczyne “Wieków Milezenia” (pol. VII–pol. IX w.) 155ff.
7 Ṭabarī II 1353, 15ff. The nisba al-Naḥwī is not linked to grammar in this case but refers to the
Banū Naḥw, a subtribe of the Azd (Samʿānī, Ansāb XIII 52, 6ff.).
Iran 555
Hubayra was governor (102/721–105/724).8 He, too, branded the unjust taxa-
tion, although his emphasis was different: the money did not benefit the prov-
ince itself. ʿUmar was said to have promised to change the practice, but then
died immediately afterwards.9
This is a literary topos10 which only tells us the people’s greatest concern,
although it does name the correct people: a brother of Saʿīd al-Naḥwī was
murdered as a “Murjiʾite” and because of his insubordinate behaviour by Abū
Muslim thirty years later,11 and in 110/729 Abū l-Ṣaydāʾ achieved tax equality for
his clients, apparently mainly Sogdians, for a short time. Things did not go well
for long, and when he had to resort to force, Thābit Quṭna came to his aid. They
were both taken to prison in Marv.12 Six years later, what they had started was
resumed with even greater intensity by Ḥārith b. Surayj. He, too, was believed
to be a Murjiʾite,13 but he soon became so radical that more moderate people,
such as Saʿīd al-Naḥwī’s brother Khalīd, kept a prudent distance.14 He hoped “to
destroy the walls of Damascus’, and he unfurled the black banners announcing
the rule of justice and the restitution of the prophetic sunna.15 When ten years
later two of his envoys visited the caliph Yazīd III who had himself staged a
revolution and promised reforms in his accession speech,16 they apparently
asked Abū Ḥanīfa in Kufa for a letter of recommendation to a prominent court-
ier in Damascus.17 The relevant official, whom Ḥārith b. Surayj had entrusted
with proclaiming his Sīra – presumably his manifesto – shortly before the
8 Ibid. II 1354, 12ff., and 1356, 3ff. Regarding him cf. Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 488, 11ff., and Ṭab. 831
no. 3113; also 499 no. 1708, although 106 is far too late to be the correct date of his death.
“During ʿUmar II’s caliphate” (IS VIII2 157, 20f.), on the other hand, is too early.
10 Cf. the parallel passage vol. I 98f. and p. 523f. above.
12 Ṭabarī II 1507, 8ff.; cf. also van Vloten, Recherches 23; Wellhausen, Arab. Reich 280ff.;
Gabrieli, Califfato di Hishâm 41ff.; Madelung in: Der Islam 59/1982/33.; Hawting, First
Dynasty of Islam 80 and 85f.; Athamina in: Der Islam 65/1988/273ff. Regarding Thābit
Quṭna see vol. I 189ff. above.
13 Ṭabarī II 1575, 10f., and 1576, 9 (in a poem by Naṣr b. Sayyār; cf. the translation in van
Vloten in: ZDMG 45/1891/167f.).
14 Madelung, loc. cit. 34.
17 Ṭabarī II 1867, 9ff. Regarding Ḥārith b. Surayj cf. Kister in EI2 III 223f., and Daniel,
Khurasan, Index s. n.; also Madelung, Religious Trends 17f.
556 CHAPTER 3
decisive battle,18 was a “Murjiʾite” who shaped the theological direction of the
region like no other: Abū Muḥriz19 Jahm b. Ṣafwān.
3.1.1 Jahm b. Ṣafwān

Like Ghaylān al-Dimashqī or Jaʿd b. Dirham, Jahm b. Ṣafwān was only a mawlā;
he had associated himself with the Banū Rāsib.1 However, he was so emanci-
pated as to be able to represent his master’s party against Naṣr b. Sayyār during
an arbitration.2 Being able to persuade his opponent Muqātil b. Ḥayyān3 to de-
clare Naṣr to have lost his position and to suggest restructuring the distribution
of power through shūrā may not have worked in his favour with the governor.
When he was captured in 128/746, not even the fact that he had sworn friend-
ship with the son of Naṣr’s chief of police Salm b. Aḥwaz could save him from
execution.4 He always, as his opponents saw it, engaged in subversive activities;
even in the heat of battle Ḥārith b. Surayj’s troops – i.e. presumably specially
trained functionaries – tried to win over the opposing side by means of moral
and religious arguments.5 Jahm was a qāṣṣ,6 and not even Muqātil b. Sulaymān
who, working in the same field, had been significantly undermined by him in
Marv,7 could not help admiring his rhetorical skill. He only pointed out that
Jahm had never attended a scholar’s lecture, or gone on the pilgrimage.8
18 Ṭabarī II 1918, 8ff. This document had been proclaimed publicly everywhere (ibid. 1920,
19f.). Regarding the meaning of sīra see p. 797 below.
19 Regarding his kunya cf. Ṭabarī II 1924, ult.
1 Ibid. II 1918, 8f.

2 Ibid. 1919, 15ff. Ḥārith b. Surayj himself was a pure-blooded Arab (Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 231,
10ff., which has incorrect Shurayḥ instead of Shurayj).
4 Ṭabarī II 1924, 12ff.; regarding Salm al-Aḥwaz’ function cf. ibid. 1918, 10f., and Akhbār
al-ʿAbbās 244, 8. Yazīd b. Hārūn claimed that the execution took place in Isfahan (Ibn
Baṭṭa, Al-ibāna al-kubrā, MS Dār al-kutub, ʿaqāʾid 181, p. 315, –5f.), but considering the great
distance from the hub of the uprising this is not very likely. According to another tradi-
tion Jahm was killed in the battle of Salm and buried in Marv (Ibn Manẓūr, Mukhtaṣar TD
VI 51, 3f.). Bukayr b. Maʿrūf, who would become qāḍī in Nishapur later (see p. 679 below),
claimed to have seen Salm cutting his head off (in the battle) (Lālakāʾī, Sharḥ uṣūl iʿtiqād
ahl al-sunna 381 no. 638). For a summary on him cf. Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh V 56ff. Cf. Khālid
al-ʿAsalī’s study Jahm b. Ṣafwān wa-makānatuhū fī l-fikr al-islāmī (Baghdad 1965).
5 EI2 III 224b.
6 Ṭabarī II 1919, 17.
7 See p. 581 below.
8 TB XIII 162, 2f. Admiration of his oratorical skills (his excellent Arabic?) also from Ibrāhīm
b. Ṭahmān in: Abū Dāwūd, Masāʾil Aḥmad 269, 11ff.
Iran 557
This was directed at Iraqi ears. Jahm, it implied, was a provincial, and in-
deed, it is not certain whether he ever left Khorasan. The account of his debate
with Abū Ḥanīfa in Kufa is apocryphal,9 as is, of course, the story according to
which even his wife was able to disconcert the famous law teacher with her
deep remarks.10 The only extant fragment of his writings shows how much he
was at home in the east; it discusses the changing relations between Persians,
Turks, and Byzantines.11 He apparently lived in Tirmidh for a long time spread-
ing his teachings; they remained influential there for generations.12 Compared
to this it is insignificant whether he was originally from Balkh as Samʿānī tells
us.13 Ibn Ḥazm’s insisting on giving him the nisba al-Samarqandī is probably
irrelevant, as Ibn Ḥazm was a Spaniard.14
The only lead worth following leads to Ḥarrān. Ibn Ḥanbal was thought to
have heard from some wuld Sāsān, i.e. Persians (regarding the usage see
ch. 3.3.6 below), that Jahm came from this region (Khallāl, Musnad 420,
4ff.; cf. also Cook, Dogma 151). Jahm’s being listed with the nisba al-Khazarī
in one instance (Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya IX 350, 12, maybe after Ibn ʿAsākir)
might have been misread from al-Jazarī. His rejection of the divine at-
tributes recalls Jaʿd b. Dirham’s transcendentalism, but for this reason in
particular it is possible that the report traced to Ibn Ḥanbal was merely
one of those attempts that link Jaʿd to Jahm (cf. p. 512f. above). After all,
Ibn Ḥanbal’s Radd ʿalā l-Jahmiyya states, as usual, that Jahm came from
Tirmidh (29, 3ff./transl. Seale 97). The claim elsewhere that he was ban-
ished there (Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya IX 350, 13) is entirely unsubstantiated, as
he appears to have been an official there, looking after the river cross-
ing (Bayhaqī, Al-asmāʾ wal-ṣifāt 539, 1; Lālakāʾī, Sharḥ 380, ult.; Dhahabī,
ʿUlūw 193, 10; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Ijtimāʿ al-juyūsh 107, 7f.); he prob-
ably policed border crossings and collected taxes from merchants. Ibn
Baṭṭa’s anecdote (Ibāna 91, 10ff.) that has him search “in Syria” for a God
to worship, is pure fiction.
9 Muwaffaq b. Aḥmad, Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa I 145, 5ff.; Kardarī, Manāqib I 186. Cf. n. 29
below.
10 See vol. I 219f. above. According to a different tradition she was conversing with the wife of
Makkī Ibrāhīm al-Balkhī (Dhahabī, Al-ʿulūw lil-ʿAlī al-Ghaffār 318, 5f.); he died in 215/830!
(IS VII2 105, 10). – Lālakāʾī would later claim that Jahm came from Kufa (Sharḥ 380, 11).
11 Jāḥiẓ, Manāqib al-Turk in: Rasāʾil I 82, 3ff.
12 Thus Kaʿbī in ʿAskarī, Awāʾil II 126, apu., or Samʿānī, Ansāb III 437, 9; cf. also p. 626 below.
13 Ansāb, loc. cit.
14 Fiṣal II 129, apu.; IV 204, –6; V 56, 3. Also Mīzān no. 1584.
558 CHAPTER 3
Consequently early observers preferred to connect him to eastern Murjiʾite

tradition. Nawbakhtī mentioned the “Murjiʾa of the Khorasanians”,15 drawing
a parallel with the Iraqi Ghaylāniyya.16 Ḍirār b. ʿAmr, too, polemicised against
the Ghaylāniyya together with the Jahmiyya in one of his writings.17 Nawbakhtī
saw similarities in the theory of government while Ḍirār probably looked at the
concept of faith. The eastern heresiographer Yamān b. Riʾāb18 placed Jahm in
the succession of Abū l-Ṣaydāʾ, in whose school the question had been asked of
whether it was possible to infer a person’s religion from his outward demean-
our, as after all someone might act like a believer while he was an idolater at
heart. The inverse case was also imaginable: someone following the “tyrants”
must have renounced God and was thus perceivable as an idolater, but he
did not deny the resurrection, paradise etc.19 The “tyrants” were probably the
Umayyads and their unlawful governors; the doctrine reflecting the dilemma
of a political group who, because it attributed particular power of salvation to
following Islam, was particularly committed to the rights of new converts, but
found itself obliged at the same time to fight against Muslims and maybe even
ally itself to non-Muslims. Similar claims would then be made about Jahm.20
However, we are immediately faced with the same difficulty as in nearly
all points of Jahm’s teachings: we cannot be sure whether we are looking at
a back-projection. There were Jahmites in Iran until at least the end of the
fourth century; at that time they were documented not only in Tirmidh but
also in Nihāvand in the Jibāl province, ancient Media, where an Iranian prince
would convert them to Ashʿarism with military force.21 In Iraq they gained
influence, and consequently publicity, through Bishr al-Marīsī; the doctrine
would be attributed to him – or to Ibn al-Rēwandī, who was dependent on
him in this area.22 Furthermore the circumstances explaining the minimal-
ist concept of faith continued to exist for a long time, with Transoxiana re-
maining a destination for missionaries for centuries. Naṣr b. Sayyār accused
Ḥārith b. Surayj’s followers of not praying;23 and as late as the end of the
15 Firaq al-Shīʿa 6, 15f. > Qummī 6, 3f.

16 Ibid. 9, 14ff. > Qummī 8 § 28; similar Pseudo-Nāshiʾ, Uṣūl 62, § 105. Also Brentjes,
Imamatslehren 49.
17 Catalogue of Works XV, no. 19.
19 Adopted from Kaʿbī in Ḥajūrī, Rawḍat al-akhbār, fol. 145a, 1ff.
20 Text XIV 1, e; 3.
21 Baghdādī, Farq 200, 5ff./212, 9ff.
22 Cf. Text XX 29, e, with commentary; also ch. C 2.4.1 below.
23 Ṭabarī II 1576, 4, in the same poem in which he described them as Murjiʾites (transl. by
van Vloten in: ZDMG 45/1891/167f.).
Iran 559
fourth century Muqaddasī would meet Murjiʾites who did not possess a
mosque, and did not consider the general ablution necessary after sexual
intercourse,24 i.e. people who might have claimed to be believers in their
hearts, even though they behaved like “idolaters”. At that time it was particu-
larly the converted Turks who were noticeable for their superficial knowledge
of Islamic technicalities.25
Jahm’s standpoint is frequently simply reduced to his not believing the creed
to be constitutive, but that faith consisted in acknowledging God’s existence,
and unbelief consequently in ignorance of God (al-jahl billāh).26 Both take
place in the heart, with the other parts of the body not involved.27 The profes-
sion of faith, on the other hand, is expressed by the lips or, as they would say, by
the tongue. It is secondary, as it presumes instruction by prophets, even though
the angels had been believers long before any prophet had appeared on the
scene.28 Conversely, recognising God, if it is an act of faith, cannot be innate
to every one; which once again leads to the question of what it was in Jahm’s
view. Everything with which the Murjiʾites usually enriched the faith was ruled
out in Ashʿarī’s description on which we are relying here.29 One might imagine
that the Murjiʾites in Transoxiana – and Jahm with them – did missionary work
in the belief that the Turks with whom they came in contact did not know
anything of God, that, being ignorant heathen, they simply did not know him
at all. In these circumstances even agreeing to accept Islam would have been
an act of faith; after all, people who did not speak Arabic and who might even
have trouble communicating, could not be expected to utter an explicit profes-
sion of faith, not even the shahāda.
Now Ashʿarī also wrote that knowledge of the prophets and what they
brought, i.e. the law, was also part of faith; but this is probably expressed
from a later point of view.30 There is no evidence that Jahm attached great
24 In Jibāl; cf. Aḥsan al-taqāsīm 389, 14ff. It is noticeable that the last-named point is empha-
sised in a well-known hadith at the beginning of Fiqh absaṭ (p. 41, 11); the addition is not
found in other, non-Iranian variants (cf. e.g. Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ I 37, 8f.).
25 Ibn Faḍlān listed a few examples (cf. Togan, Reisebericht 20, 22, and 68).
26 Text XIV 2.
27 Text 1, g. Also in Abū ʿUbayd, Īmān 79, 10ff., and 80, 6ff., but without naming Jahm. Cf. the
discussion of the passage in Pessagno in: JAOS 95/1975/385.
28 Text 4, which may also be later argumentation.
29 Text 1, b. In the paradigmatic debate between Jahm and Abū Ḥanīfa mentioned on p. 557
above the Iraqi definition of faith, for which the profession of faith was essential, was
played off against his. Cf. also Ibn Ḥanbal in Ibn Abī Yaʿlā, Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila I 309, 7ff.
30 Ibid., a with commentary.
560 CHAPTER 3
importance to the law.31 The image of God was at the centre of his thinking.
One does not acquire faith by acknowledging the law; rather, faith is created
by God within the human.32 This is the reason, too, why recognising God is not
innate. Still, not only faith but in fact all human existence is ruled by election of
divine grace; it is God who determines everything that comes to pass. While he
creates the illusion in humans that they themselves are acting, creates in them
an act of volition giving them a momentary capacity of action and subsequent
satisfaction, this is in reality no different from height or skin colour, which are
well known to be due to God’s influence alone. Our language deceives us: we
say “the sun is setting” when in fact it is being set by God.
Cf. Text XIV 6 with commentary; also 18, no. 5. Heresiographical accounts
differ concerning whether Jahm conceded human capacity of action or
not (regarding the issue cf. also Gimaret, Théories de l’acte humain 64ff.).
In the summary presented above I followed Ashʿarī’s version, presum-
ing that Jahm at the very least recognised the special position of human
action. Sentences such as “the sun is setting” are meant metaphorically,
as confirmed by Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl mushkil al-Qurʾān 99, 6ff., and later
ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (cf. Ritter, Geheimnisse der Wortkunst 414f.). A
first hint at the thought is also found in the anti-Qadarite Masāʾil attrib-
uted to Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya (cf. Anfänge 108f.), although
it is not expressed through the majāz/ḥaqīqa model there. It is also
doubtful whether we may link the latter to Jahm; there are indications
that Ashʿarī is merely presenting a heresiographical interpretation. The
term majāz appears to have acquired its later meaning gradually. Abū
ʿUbayda, two generations younger than Jahm, uses it to denote every-
thing that “harms the reflectivity of language” and “goes beyond” the cor-
respondence between language and reality (Heinrichs in: SI 59/1984/122f.
and 127). However, it seems that the development towards the later pair
of opposites started earlier than Heinrichs assumed (ibid. 133ff.). By
Jāḥiẓ’ time it would be concluded (cf. Text XVI 15, a and m). In the pas-
sage cited he traced it back to Muʿtazilites like Muʿammar or Thumāma
(regarding Thumāma cf. also Text XIX 3). It is apparently also found in
the K. al-iktisāb (10, pu. f.; regarding the book see ch. C 1.4.3.2 below) at-
tributed to Ibn Samāʿa (d. 233/847 in old age). The idea that God is the
31 One exception is the note that Jahm required the period of waiting in the case of a woman
who is divorced before the marriage has been consummated (Bukhārī, Khalq al-afʿāl 121,
1ff. > Yāfīʿī, Marham 185, 3f.).
32 Text XIV 5.
Iran 561
only cause and everything else beside him has only indirect effects (bil-
majāz) was also recorded by Kindī (Rasāʾil I 182f.). In his discussion of the
futura contingentia Fārābī appears to have chosen the examples in such
a way that the reader would make the association with Jahm’s teachings
(cf. Zimmermann, De interpretatione cxvi); he, too, came from the east.
We are thus not looking at predestination but at universal determinism. Jahm

denied, as Jāḥiẓ would later put it, that there was an “essential core” or a “na-
ture” of things.33 The world was guided by God,34 and a human was merely a
puppet in his hand. What, then, was the worth of his actions? Only later sourc-
es provide an answer to this question: they were good because this was said
in the revelation (samʿan), Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār believed;35 while Ibn Mattōya
elucidated that they were “signs” of one’s destiny in the afterlife. However, he
immediately ruled out any thought of visible predestination: we cannot be cer-
tain of the significance of these signs, for even sickness and other visitations
might be such a sign; indeed, even unbelief could in theory be a sign that one
is chosen for paradise.36 This is logical: as we have seen, actions do not tell us
about what is inside a person. Of course this presumes that “unbelief” is read
as “actions of unbelief”; unbelief itself is not a mere sign, but a punishable
transgression.37
The thought of predestination is out of the question simply because God
does not have any prescience; only once something takes place does he have
knowledge of it.38 He “has nothing in mind”, as would be said later.39 This
belief, which we have already seen in Kufa,40 was widely held all over Iran,
e.g. among the Khārijites in Sijistān.41 Under pressure from the Muʿtazilites
it became an embarrassment to the Jahmites, and consequently we find not
only supporting evidence42 but also suggestions for compromise: that God
was, potentially at least, knowing since the beginning of time,43 or: that while
33 Ḥayawān IV 74, 4f., and V 11, 1f. (= Text XXII 50, d); cf. also Frank in: Muséon 78/1965/404f.
34 Text XIV 20, q.
35 Mughnī VIII 28, 1f.
36 Text XIV 6, f–h.
37 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mughnī XIV 299, 20f.
38 Text 9, a–b; 18, no. 3 and 8.
39 Dārimī, Radd ʿalā l-Marīsī 195, 13ff./550, puff.
42 Text 10, b. Evidence was probably back-projected onto Jahm by Hishām b. al-Ḥakam (see
vol. I 437f. above, also Pretzl, Attributenlehre 18f.).
43 Text 11.
562 CHAPTER 3
knowledge was not eternal, it had existed before things through God having
created it as hypostasis “not in a place” in time.44 These are later construc-
tions, as clearly demonstrated by the heresiographical dissent,45 but also by
isolated reports such as the one that according to the Jahmiyya God knows that
Satan has been “stoned” only at the moment when Satan refuses to prostrate
himself before him.46 Divine prescience was simply not necessary to Jahm’s
determinism.47
Consequently there is no “God’s plan”; God’s actions are omnipresent, but
they do not reveal anything.48 Humans are thus not merely at God’s mercy
but also unable to recognise him, for God is the absolute Other, possessing
none of the qualities we experience in ourselves. He is not even “something”
(shayʾ), which in this context not only means: he is not a “thing or entity” – as
that would have been obvious to anyone who rejected anthropomorphism –
but actually that he is not a “being”.49 Opponents were quick to interpret it as
“he is nothing” (lā shayʾ),50 but the opposite was intended: he is ἐπέκεινα τη̃ ς
οὐσίας. Everything that has being (al-ashyāʾ) is subordinate to him and brought
forth by him.51 This neo-Platonic tone recalls ideas across which we come in
Kindī’s works, but Jahm may well have been part of this tradition without being
aware of it.
Thus F. Zimmermann in debate with Frank, who was the first to empha-
sise the neo-Platonic parallels in his article in Muséon 78/1965 (cf. Pseudo-
Aristotle in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Kraye, p. 135f.). We must of course ask
where the ideas originated. It is less likely than would seem at first glance
that they survived in Iran itself. A Greek text, a fragment of which survived
44 Text 9, c, and 10, a. Cf. also Frank in: Muséon 78/1965/408ff., who believes the theory of the
hypostasis to have been one of Jahm’s original doctrines.
45 Text 9, c–e.
46 Abū ʿAmmār, Mūjaz II 203, 10.
47 Ibn Ḥanbal seems to presume that the Jahmites were not very attached to this theory any
more (Radd 85/transl. 120). Cf. also Frank 408f.
48 Thus once again Ibn Ḥanbal with regard to the later Jahmiyya (Text XIV 20, f).
49 Frank translates as “being” (loc. cit. 389ff.). Cf. Text 7. Pazdawī later construed it in such a
way that Jahm only accepted mawjūd “existing” as a predicate of God (Uṣūl al-dīn 22, 6f.).
50 Text 20, p and r.
51 Text 7, a–b. In a well-known verse Abū Tammām referred to wine as “Jahmite as to its
characteristics”, presumably because it had been dematerialised to the extent that it
could not be designated “something” (Ṣūlī, Sharḥ Dīwān Abī Tammām I 184 with n. 2;
also Wagner, Grundzüge der klassischen arabischen Dichtung II 111, where the theological
nuance is not entirely captured).
Iran 563
in unusual circumstances in the ruins of Ay Khanum, discusses the doc-

trine of the first cause and of the μέθεξις in the form of a philosophical
dialogue (cf. C. Rapin and P. Hadot in: Bull. Corr. Hellénique 111/1987, 1.
Etudes, p. 232ff.). Of course, this was already a millennium in the past
by Jahm’s time; Ay Khanum’s heyday had been during the third and
second centuries BCE. If at the same time the Bactrian ruler Menander
(= Milinda, d. between 150 and 145 BCE) was thought to have invited wise
men to join him in intellectual debate we can only assume that here, too,
the ideas of Antiquity were introduced (cf. Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria
and India 414ff.). In Qandahar Aśoka had one of his inscriptions written
in Greek and Aramaic (EIran II 780a). In eastern Iran the Bactrian Greek
alphabet was used until the time of the Arab invasion at least on coin
legends and countermarks (cf. Göbl, Dokumente zur Geschichte der ira-
nischen Hunnen II 80ff.; 92f.; 117, 139 etc.). The most likely place where
Jahm might have found specifically neo-Platonic ideas in his time might
have been Ḥarrān. We do not know whether his neo-Platonism bore anti-
Christian traits. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī would later adduce some arguments
with which Jahm was believed to have refuted shayʾ with reference to
God, but in all probability these did not originate with Jahm, either, but
rather with his exegete.
It was thus self-evident that God could not be known by means of rational
thought;52 yet another confirmation that faith could only be a gift. The state-
ments in the revelation cannot always be applied literally, either, for God is
the absolute Other. A late, and not always reliable, source claims that in the
sentence “the All-Compassionate sat himself upon the Throne” (sura 20:5)
Jahm believed the “All-Compassionate” (al-Raḥmān) to be a created being, and
that consequently he distinguished between Allah and al-Raḥmān.53 One can-
not make statements on Allah – and the Lord (al-Rabb) – as “one cannot see
him”.54 This is not documented elsewhere, but it would fit quite well. ʿUbayd al-
Muktib in Kufa may have made a similar distinction,55 as did, to a degree, the
Bakriyya in Basra.56 And above all: al-Raḥmān was created first, even before
the throne, which makes him a kind of hypostasis. This is a neo-Platonic – or
maybe Arian – train of thought.
52 Text 18, no. 6.

53 Ibid., no. 1.
54 Ibid., no. 7; cf. also Text 20, e.
564 CHAPTER 3
All in all the theological approach as a whole was riddled with unanswered
questions once it was analysed using later categories. As soon as a catalogue of
divine attributes was applied it turned out that while the reductionist image of
God ruled out attributes, determinism presumed at least God’s omnipotence.
Consequently the qualities denied God were those that he shared with hu-
mans (such as knowledge, among others), while still calling him “omnipotent”,
“acting”, “creator”, “sustainer” (rāziq), “originator of being” or “God”. Baghdādī
claimed that this theory originated with Jahm,57 but we are probably looking
at a later development, as we can see an entire range of retrospective adjust-
ments. Some of his followers believed that only one quality could be attributed
to God, namely his “Godliness”, reducing the doctrine of the attributes to a
tautology.58 Others said that God was “all face”, “all light”, “all power”, but also
“all knowledge, all listening, all seeing”, even though he would share the last-
named qualities with humans.59 Finally, he was called shayʾ in some places,
effectively abolishing the essence of Jahm’s teachings.60
Our main source for the dissent within the “school” is the early heresiog-
rapher Khushaysh b. Aṣram (d. 253/867). He came from Nasā and would con-
sequently have had some experience of Jahmites.61 However, his traditionist
zeal led him to distribute the differences among individual “sects”, without
reporting anything of the historical development or geographical focus. We
can grasp only the points at issue themselves, and the relation between tran-
scendence and immanence received rather more attention than even the attri-
butes. When Jahm said that God was beyond being, it did not necessarily imply
that he was also beyond the world, for “beyond the world” at that time would
signify that he was sitting upon his throne in heaven,62 and thus be locatable
57 Text 8 with the later parallels listed, which can probably all be traced back to Baghdādī
(or his source?); probably also dependent on Baghdādī: Ibn al-Dāʿī in Text 18, no. 2.
58 Text 19, b. Cf. the poem mocking Jahm’s theology cited in Qāḍī, Firaq islāmiyya 722.
This position might still have been influenced by the distinction between Allah and
al-Raḥmān.
59 Text 20, i; also Dārimī, Radd ʿalā l-Jahmiyya 59, 6f. Cf. Madelung, Qāsim 19. Regarding
knowing, hearing, seeing cf. Text 19, c, and 8, b. In Text 20 Ibn Ḥanbal probably sum-
marised several positions; as he used his own words rather than quoting, errors or mis-
representations cannot be ruled out.
60 Text 19, c; also 20, o.
61 He did, however, go to Egypt later (see p. 815 below).
62 Text 19, h.
Iran 565
after all. In truth he is not “in something”,63 nowhere – but at the same time ev-
erywhere.64 As “not-something” he is removed from everything that has being,
but as the only agent he permeates, one might say, all things. He “intermixes”
with creation,65 for being the cause he is immediately linked with every effect.66
Once points of view had become polarised it was only possible to reconcile
them by means of “not like this, but not like that either”.67
Khushaysh reported this quite unmoved, growing nervous only when he
noted a threat to the image of God he, as a traditionist, embraced. As can be
imagined, there were numerous instances, every single one of which he re-
futed with a plethora of Quranic quotations and hadiths.68 They would all
be refuted again and again in the numerous treatises composed against the
Jahmiyya in the east from the second half of the third century onwards.69 This,
too, is of course secondary; the relevance of the things “denied” by the Jahmiyya
was only discovered through polemic. What is interesting to us at this stage is
that when defending Jahm, his pupils used transcendence as well as imma-
nence as arguments. Humans cannot see God because he is not “something” –
or because there is no distance between him and humans at all; after all, only
something that is at a suitable distance can be perceived.70
This point in particular demonstrates how deceptive the similarity with the
Muʿtazila – manifest here in the result – can be. To the Muʿtazila ruʾya was
impossible because one cannot perceive God with the senses. The Jahmites, on
the other hand, were more radical still: reason also fails.71 Recognising God is
63 Ibid., also 20, k.

64 Ibid., k; 20, c.; also Ibn Taymiyya, Al-tisʿīniyya fī l-radd ʿalā l-ṭawāʾif al-mulḥida in: Majmūʿa
(Cairo 1329/1911) II 19, 16ff. Cf. also Frank in: Muséon 78/1965/403f.
65 Ibid., f–g; also n. The expressions used in f–g were apparently used as the foundation of
Jahmite doctrine a generation after Khushaysh, as prefaced by Muḥammad b. ʿUthmān
b. Abī Shayba (d. 297/910) to his K. al-ʿarsh wa-mā ruwiya fīh (ed. Muḥammad b. Ḥamd
al-Ḥammūd, Kuwait 1406/1986, p. 49, –5ff.). Was he merely reacting to a literary phantom?
66 Cf. Ibn Mattōya, Muḥīṭ I 50, –8 ʿAzmī/I 42, 3 Houben (probably to be corrected after
ʿAzmī); also Dārimī, Radd 59, 10f.; Ibn Ḥanbal, Radd 86ff. and 93, pu. ff./transl. Seale 120f.
and 125. Of course there is no tawallud in this system (Pazdawī, Uṣūl al-dīn 111, 15).
67 Ibid., l. It might recall once again Plotinus’ ἓν καὶ πα̃ν. Unfortunately it is impossible to
determine whether the problems briefly mentioned by Ashʿarī, Maq. 208, 10ff., and 209,
5f., belong in this context.
68 Cf. the commentary on Text XIV 19, esp. s–z.
69 In general GAS 1/598; also p. 641, 705 and 714 below.
70 Text 18, no. 7, and 20, e, in comparison with 19, n. The latter is already an Aristotelian argu-
ment linked to the theory of medium (De an. 419a 12ff.; cf. Lindberg, Auge und Licht im
Mittelalter 28f., and vol. I 429f. above).
71 Text 20, h.
566 CHAPTER 3
possible only through conjecture (takhmīn);72 it is impossible to imagine him.73

There is consequently no proof of God; not even his works (fiʿl) which after all
characterise him entirely, allow conclusions.74 Once again people were sliding
into contradictions. After all, faith consists in knowledge of God; Abū Muṭīʿ
al-Nasafī claimed to have heard of a Jahmite group who thought that some-
one who believed and had achieved knowledge of God could not go into the
fires of hell but would only be brought close to them.75 On the other hand he
described certain “heretics” (zanādiqa) within the Jahmiyya who considered it
simply impossible to know God, as all comprehension (idrāk) had to go via the
senses, and the transcendental could not reached in this way.76 These people
probably really existed, as there is a satirical anecdote which has Jahm himself
discomfited by this argument. Some “heretics” were now also quoted as having
said it; being Sumanites – i.e. Indians, possibly Buddhist monks – he might
well have met them in eastern Iran.
Regarding the Sumaniyya see p. 23ff. above; also Gimaret in JA 1969,

p. 299ff., with reference to the same story. I have already pointed out
the different versions of the anecdote in Erkenntnislehre 259. As is easy
to imagine, it enjoyed great popularity. Khushaysh appears to have pre-
served the original form: the Sumanites, “a group of Persians (? ʿajam)
in the Khorasan region”, confused Jahm so much that he stopped pray-
ing for 40 days, with the explanation that he could not pray to someone
he did not know (Malaṭī, Tanbīh 77, 17ff./99, 8ff.; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh V 56,
72 Text 19, b.

73 Ibid., c.
74 Thus after Ibn Ḥanbal; cf. Text 20, f. I would not regard the contrast with Jahm’s own posi-
tion quite as rigidly as Madelung (Qāsim 242).
75 Radd 107, apu. ff.; also Tadhkirat al-madhāhib 133, 8f.; Ḥanafī, Firaq muftariqa 90, 12ff.;
Pseudo-Abū Ḥanīfa, Maʿrifat al-madhāhib (cf. GAS 1/418 no. XIII) in ʿAsalī, Jahm 197f.;
Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 348, –11ff. (where they are listed among the Muʿtazilites). This was prob-
ably based on a divergent exegesis of wāriduhā in sura 19/71. The information is problem-
atic as the doctrine of the transience of the afterlife has been abandoned (Abū Muṭīʿ 107,
ult.).
76 Radd 108, –7ff.: corrupt, and in need of correcting in accordance with Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs
Iblīs 20, –5ff. and Ḥanafī, Firaq muftariqa 95, 11ff. (thus e.g. in l. –6 we must read rabban
after nafsihī, rather than w-bā, and in l. –5 lā yathbutu must be added after lā yudraku).
The name of the sect has to be corrected to read zanādiqa twice. Of course, this is an
imaginary designation thought up by Abū Muṭīʿ or by the tradition to which he referred.
It suggested itself because the zanādiqa, too, were defined as sensualists (see vol. I 530
above). Misunderstood, too, in Pseudo-Abū Ḥanīfa in ʿAsalī 199.
Iran 567
apu. ff., and 57, pu. ff.; Sharḥ al-Ṭaḥāwiyya 448, 13ff.; briefly also Ibn Baṭṭa,
Ibāna 91, 13f.). Later he would be allowed an answer: God is like the air
which one cannot see, either, and just as omnipresent (Bayhaqī, Al-Asmāʾ
wal-ṣifāt 538, apu. ff.; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Ijtimāʿ al-juyūsh 107, 8ff.);
Faḍl b. Shādhān presented this as a generally Jahmite argument (Īḍāḥ 4,
ult. ff.). Or maybe: humans know they have the breath of life (rūḥ) even
though they cannot see it (thus ʿIqd II 413, 2ff., where Jahm is debat-
ing with a Greek). Ibn Ḥanbal turned this into a sneer: Jahm employed
a Christian argument, because according to certain Christian heretics
(zanādiqa) Jesus received his spirit (rūḥ) directly from God (Radd 29,
5ff./transl. Seale 97f.). Ibn Baṭṭa would later quote this word for word, to-
gether with the preliminary remarks, in his Ibāna al-kubrā, but he traced
the report back to Muqātil b. Sulaymān via the usual Baghdad isnād
known from his Tafsīr (MS Cairo, Taymūr IV 3, ʿaqāʾid 181, p. 313, 7ff.) The
Muʿtazilites would later add a punchline: Jahm writing to Wāṣil asking
for his advice. Wāṣil suggested introducing proof by means of rational
thought as the sixth means of knowledge besides the five senses when
debating with the Sumanites: and the Indians converted immediately
(Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 240, 13ff., and abridged 165, 12ff. > IM 34, 9ff.;
transl. Gimaret 301; cf. also Pines, Atomenlehre 132f., and p. 307 above).
This turns the entire event upside down; after all, the Jahmites rejected
rational thought as proof of God’s existence. Shīʿite tradition has the same
train of thought come from Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq who used it to refute the “her-
etic” Abū Shākir al-Dayṣānī (cf. Ivanow, Alleged Founder 95). Elsewhere
ʿAbdallāh b. Sabaʾ has been substituted for Jaʿfar, as to him the doctrine of
God’s omnipresence – which did not fit into the Shīʿite system – gave rise
to the question why, then, one raised one’s hands in prayer (Majlisī, Biḥār
X 107, 3ff.). Faḍl b. Shādhān had directed the same argument against the
Jahmiyya (Īḍāḥ 5, apu.).
Madelung assumed that this report could be “traced back to an ac-
count by the founder of the sect or one of his followers” (Qāsim 242), but
after all the foregoing, it seems hardly likely even for the simplest version.
Still, one can see where the individual motifs could be tied in. There was
a debate in Buddhism as to whether there was a soul or a human “per-
son” besides the five senses, and how it could be recognised; Menander/
Milinda was said to have asked the question most pointedly himself
(MacLean, Religion and Society in Arab Sind 8f.). The idea of a sixth path
to knowledge that Jahm suggested was also developed in Indian texts
(cf. de la Vallée Poussin, Abhidharmakośa 32f.).When Ibn Ḥanbal point-
ed out the influence of Christian “heretics”, he may have thought of the
568 CHAPTER 3
affinity with the Arians: as the “spirit of God”, Jesus must be his first cre-
ation. And that God is as invisible as the spirit was already expressed by
Philo (De Abrahamo 74ff. = Werke in deutscher Übersetzung I 112f.).
Independently of this, we may ask the question of whether, instead of
interpreting Jahm under a neo-Platonic aspect, one should assume Indian
influence in his case. This would not necessarily have to be Buddhist: one
might consider Brahman teachings as well. At Jahm’s time Buddhism was
already on the retreat before Hinduism in its homeland. In this case the
noticeable indecision between immanence and transcendence would
have to be pointed out, as well as the radical determinism which was en-
tirely isolated within Islam. Still, the discussion of this hypothesis must
be left to the experts. I am grateful to B. Reinert, Zurich, for suggestions
concerning this issue.
The idea of God’s immanence had, or at least could have, a mystical colouring,77
but the Jahmites were not able to conform to the mysticism evolving in Basra
or Syria. They did not believe in the “vision of God”, even less so on earth;78
someone who pretends to have seen God in a dream is mistaken.79 Even the
prophet was no exception; he did not actually travel to Jerusalem overnight;80
much less to heaven. The question was also how he would have profited from
it. After all, God is not in heaven but everywhere and nowhere, and in order to
visit paradise and hell these would have to exist first; clearly, many Jahmites
believed, like the Muʿtazilite Ḍirār b. ʿAmr, that the two had yet to be created.81
Khushaysh attributed this idea to Jahm himself, but this is probably inad-
missible extrapolation.82 The origin of paradise and hell was clearly not yet a
problem for Jahm; both are created – and of course created in time, like every-
thing else. This was why it was important to him to emphasise that like every-
thing else created, they would pass. Humans would not enjoy paradise forever;
when the Quran says that “they will remain therein forever” (khālidīna fīhā;
e.g. sura 3:15), this is a rhetorical phrase, a hyperbole meaning nothing more
77 Cf. the particularly instructive example of Bahāʾ-i Walad’s deliberations regarding this
issue (Meier, Bahāʾ-i Walad 116ff.).
78 Text 20, e.
79 Text 19, y, with commentary. Regarding the issue see p. 115 above.
80 Ibid., x. It would be interesting to know how the Jahmiyya interpreted sura 17:1.
81 Ibid., q. According to an isolated report some Jahmites believed that Muḥammad did
go on the miʿrāj, but spiritually only and not physically (Tadhkirat al-madhāhib 134, 2;
Pseudo-Abū Ḥanīfa in ʿAsalī 199). This seems to be a late and atypical compromise.
82 Malaṭī, Tanbīh 104, 2/137, 2; cf. Text 19, q, and the commentary on Text 19 in general.
Iran 569
than “for a long time”.83 From a philological point of view this was certainly
true; the lexical meaning did not allow more, and the parallel in sura 78:23
speaks of “long times, eras” (aḥqāb).84 But Jahm based his thoughts on theo-
logical consideration. He did not determine the boundaries between time and
eternity on an existential but on an ontological basis: the threshold beyond
which one steps outside of time is not death and judgment – paradise and
hell still belong within worldly time. Eternity means, nothing has being besides
God; the Quran confirmed that he is “the first and the last” (sura 57:3).85
In this, Jahm stood not alone. Abū Ḥanīfa was said to hold the same opinion;86
obscured, however, by the fact that his Khorasanian followers – who would
define the image most strongly over time – converted to the opposite view,
presumably out of antagonism against the Jahmiyya and under the influence
of Muqātil b. Sulaymān.87 In Iraq, on the other hand, Abū l-Hudhayl provided
a new argument in its favour.88 Even orthodox minds like Ibn Taymiyya and his
pupil Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya helped it to achieve a renaissance; while Subkī
wrote his K. al-iʿtibār bi-baqāʾ al-janna wal-nār against it.89
In the case of hell the additional question arose of how the body could with-
stand fire forever. A group of Jahmites believed that it would be burnt once and
then stay that way. As this contradicted sura 4:55, the texts they adduced in
corroboration were sura 10:52, 32:14 etc., which emphasise the correlation be-
tween guilt incurred on earth and punishment in the afterlife, pointing out in
addition that unbelievers became unbelievers only once, and then remained
83 Text 13, b, d–e.

84 Cf. Lat. saecula. Regarding the meaning of khālid see p. 314 above; for general informa-
tion cf. Sweetman, Islam and Christian Theology I2 217. Further information ch. D 3 below.
Sometimes aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth who did not want to subject Muslims to more than a finite
punishment in hell also interpreted this as hyperbole (cf. Goldziher, Ges. Schr. III 36f.).
Cf. also Text 13, f, with a further Quranic instance that was probably adduced by later
Jahmites.
85 Text 13, commentary on c; 18, no. 4.
86 TB XIII 386, 14.
87 Fiqh absaṭ 56, 15ff. Interestingly, the report mentioned in the preceding note is attributed
to Abū Muṭīʿ al-Balkhī. When someone asked Muqātil what was meant by the phrase
“everything will perish except His face”, he was said to have concluded from the question
that he must be a Jahmite (TB XIII 161, pu. ff.). Cf. also Kawtharī, Taʾnīb 107ff.
88 See ch. C 3.2.1.3.2.4 below. It seems to have permeated Ashʿarī’s account of Jahm (Text 13,
a). We do not know who the Rāfiḍites were whom Ibn Ḥazm mentions besides him (Fiṣal
IV 83, apu. and ult. f.).
89 GAL S 2/103 no. 26; printed in Al-rasāʾil al-Subkiyya fī l-radd ʿalā Ibn Taymiyya wa-tilmīdhihī
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (Beirut 1403/1983; p. 193ff.).
570 CHAPTER 3
forever.90 This makes quite clear that the Jahmites believed in the resurrec-
tion of the flesh. Everything created is physical;91 the soul played no part in
this concept: it dies with the body. Consequently the idea of the punishment
of the grave made no sense,92 and there was no need for an angel of death
to drag the soul out of the body.93 God, thus the defenders of immanence, is
“mixed” with his creations until they die, at which point he detaches himself
from them.94 We are not told whether he then reunites with them in the af-
terlife. But he is free to create everything once again, even after paradise and
hell have passed.95 This recalls the concept of an expanding and contracting
universe.96
Zurqān explained Jahm’s system itself out of the category of physicality:
Jahm saw movement as a physical “body”, as well as the Quran, as only God
was not a physical body. This is probably too focussed on Aṣamm.97 Jahm used
the term shayʾ. Of course shayʾ is not merely a “being” but also a “thing” in the
physical sense,98 and of course the Quran is created. But it is created above
all because God’s speech like God’s knowledge is not eternal; its being “some-
thing” or a “body” is only concluded from this fact. Only from this point of view
the Jahmites also denied that God spoke to Moses; the utterance was created
with the burning bush.99
90 Ḥanafī, Firaq muftariqa 92, ult. ff.; Abū Muṭīʿ, Radd 109, 7ff. (read ḥarr al-nār for ḥadd
al-nār), Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs Iblīs 20, apu. f.; Tadhkirat al-madhāhib 133, apu.; Pseudo-Abū
Ḥanīfa in ʿAsalī 198 (misunderstood). Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 245, –10 counts the same group
among the Muʿtazila.
91 Text 15, b.
92 Text 19, w. A further, entirely rationalistic argument in Ḥanafī 90, apu. ff.: How can two
angels, each with a four-cubit long balance beam, penetrate the earth?
93 Text 19, z.
94 Text 19, g.
95 Text 14. For Pazdawī this freedom goes so far as to enable God to exchange heaven and
hell; however, this note is isolated and weakened by the fact that it presumes eternal pun-
ishment in hell (Text 12).
96 This, too, recalls Indian thought. According to the belief of Vishnupurāṇa the deity alone
remains at the end of a cosmic epoch.
97 Text 15 and 16; cf. p. 452f. above. Frank puts more trust in the texts (in: Muséon 18/1965/410,
n. 68).
98 Text 9, d.
99 Text 19, d–e; 20, d. Also Madelung in: Festschrift Pareja 506ff.
Iran 571
The Jahmiyya’s most important Quranic evidence for khalq al-Qurʾān is

listed in Bukhārī, Khalq al-afʿāl 135, 10ff. Like elsewhere (see p. 211f. above
regarding Basra and p. 808 below regarding Egypt) the discussion ap-
pears at first to have focussed on the createdness of the divine names
mentioned in the Quran (Abū Dāwūd, Masāʾil al-imām Aḥmad 262, apu.).
Opponents tried to refute this using the example of the name “Allāh”; the
difference between the name and the named were not always perceived,
and not always accepted (Ibn Ḥanbal, Radd 87, apu. ff./transl. Seale 121f.;
cf. ch. C 6.2 below). This is not, however, proof that this doctrine origi-
nated with Jahm himself.
3.1.1.1 The Connection between Jahm and the Jahmiyya

It is not possible to shed light on the historical evolution of the school using
this material. One thing only is apparent: that in Iran there was no clear dis-
tinction between Jahm on the one hand and what would some generations
later be decried as the Jahmiyya, especially in traditionist literature, on the
other.1 We shall use the opportunity to point out a few missing links.2 Ibn
Taymiyya, who was striving to go back in time beyond the Ashʿariyya and
devoted much thought to early theology in this endeavour, thought that the
Jahmites comprised dialectic theologians (mutakallimūn) who worshipped
nothing, and Sufis who worshipped everything.3 This is of course speculation,
presumably based on the same sources we have consulted as well. A trend to-
wards rationalistic theology could be implied in the arguments against escha-
tological details of which people had grown fond in the meantime, such as
the recording angels, the scales, the punishment of the grave etc.4 The Sufis
probably entered the picture only because Ibn Taymiyya believed he recog-
nised currents of his own time, especially Ibn ʿArabī, in the Jahmite theology of
immanence.
All the same, there may be more to this than meets the eye. We hear
of a Jahmite group practising 70–80 prayers a day (and in the night) and
1 Against Watt in EI2 II 388a and Formative Period 147, or Madelung, Qāsim 241f.
2 See p. 637f. below regarding Ibrāhīm b. Ṭahmān or p. 785f. below regarding Ibn al-Mājashūn.
The Jewish theologian Yūsuf al-Baṣīr’s claim that he never met a Jahmite in all the countries
he visited (Muḥtawī, transl. Vajda 405) is irrelevant to the present issue as he lived in the fifth/
eleventh century.
3 Cf. ʿAsalī, Jahm 193 with reference to Majmūʿat al-Rasāʾil (Cairo 1341ff.) I 70.
4 Cf. esp. Ḥanafī, e.g. 91, 9ff., or n. 92 above.
572 CHAPTER 3
implementing community of goods.5 According to them the prophet was a

“wise man” (ḥakīm), a term that would acquire special significance among
Iranian Sufis in particular.6 For a long time resistance against the Jahmiyya did
not come from the common people; it was the traditionists who pushed the
Jahmites into the rationalist corner. Tensions mainly arose in connection with
their closest cousins within the Murjiʾa, the Ḥanafites. In order to grasp this
aspect, we must look at the cities individually.
3.1.2 The Cities
3.1.2.1 Balkh
Besides Marv, Balkh was the most important centre during the first centu-
ries of Islamic rule in Transoxiana. The city had first been sacked by Aḥnaf
b. Qays’ armies in 32/653, and was part of the conquerors’ sphere of influence
from the forties onwards, but it did not come under Muslim rule until the time
of Qutayba b. Muslim in the late eighties.1 Consequently there are barely any
traces of companions of the prophet; and while Rūmān, allegedly a client of
the prophet, was worshipped in the city, nobody knew anything tangible about
him.2 The city had been reduced to rubble anyway; the greatest building, the
Nawbahār, an immense Buddhist monastery encircled by an enclosure wall
several miles long, having been destroyed in the earliest battles.3 The Arabs
had erected a garrison in Barūqān, two parasangs from the city. Within this
warlike environment, religious interests soon emerged, similar to Syria; one
of the earliest exegetes of Islam, Ḍaḥḥāk b. Muzāḥim al-Hilālī, dying there
in 105/723.4 We do not know whether voluntary warriors for the faith who com-
mitted to Islam from the very first played a part in this development, but it
seems safe to assume that in the cultural and intellectual isolation in which the
Arabs found themselves to begin with, the Quran was an important symbol of
5 Cf. Abū Muṭīʿ, Radd 111, 1ff.; Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs 20, ult. f.; Tadhkirat al-madhāhib 133, ult.;
Pseudo-Abū Ḥanīfa, Maʿrifat al-madhāhib in ʿAsalī 198 (where the doctrine is given a wrong
name).
6 Cf. Radtke in: ZDMG 136/1986/551ff.
1 Cf. Barthold, An Historical Geography of Iran 12ff. and 20f.; Frye in EI2 I 1001a s. v. Balk̲h̲, and
Bosworth in: EIran III 588 s. v. Balk̲.
2 Fażāʾil-i Balkh 56ff.; regarding him also Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Istīʿāb no. 803 and 1135.
3 Regarding the sanctuary cf. Fażāʾil-i Balkh 19, ult. ff. A good overview is found in Melikian-
Chirvani in: Le Monde Iranien et l’Islam 2/1974/11ff.; also in EIran IV 496 b. Further literature
see p. 553, n. 1 above.
4 Fażāʾil 62, 3f.
Iran 573
their identity even for the official troops, the so-called muqātila registered in
the pension lists.
3.1.2.1.1 Quranic Exegesis

Ḍaḥḥāk’s Tafsīr lectures survive in later recensions, such as his pupil Juwaybir
b. Saʿīd al-Balkhī’s,1 and in this way reached Ṭabarī or the anonymous Persian
Tafsīr in the collection of the British Museum.2 He was a storyteller of the old
school. Ṭabarī quoted a midrash of his, on the subject of Satan and the cre-
ation of Adam;3 elsewhere we find an exuberant miʿrāj tradition which, going
by the isnāds, could go back to him.4 He embraced the legend of Salmān, this
of great significance for Iran.5 He also devoted himself to moral education;
Ibn Baṭṭa preserved an extensive catalogue of duties, presumably intended to
provide standards for believers.6 Theological considerations of his survive – or
are traced back to him – too.7 Surprisingly the two most important exegetes
of the following generation, Muqātil b. Ḥayyān and Muqātil b. Sulaymān, did
not refer to him particularly.8 Wisdom probably came from the Hijaz or from
Iraq at that time; Ḍaḥḥāk, too, regularly cited Ibn ʿAbbās without, presumably,
having ever met him.9 By this time the Muslims had outgrown Barūqān; Asad
b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qasrī had rebuilt Balkh and moved his seat of government there
from Marv in 118/736. It is probably no coincidence that the two men shared
the same name. While the name Muqātil is documented elsewhere, too, a
child bearing this name in this region embodied the pioneering spirit of the
population.
1 Regarding him Mīzān no. 1593.

2 Tafsīr bar ʿushrī az Qurʾān-i majīd, nuskha-yi maḥfūẓ dar kitābkhāne-yi Mūze-yi Brītāniyā, ed.
Jalāl Matīnī; cf. the Index s. n. Regarding Ṭabarī’s using it cf. GAS 1/29f.
3 Tafsīr 3I 455ff. no. 606/transl. Cooper I 211ff. regarding sura 2:30; after Ibn ʿAbbās.
4 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 63, 9–81, 4 (regarding the isnāds cf. also 81, 6ff.). This version presumes that
Muḥammad was addressed by God and felt his touch. Cf. the differing “Jahmite” exegesis,
also traced back to Ḍaḥḥāk, cited by Abū Dāwūd, Masāʾil al-Imām Aḥmad 263, 1ff. (cf. p. 680
below).
5 Massignon, Salmân Pâk, in: Opera minora I 464f.
6 Al-ibāna al-kubrā 650. 3ff.
7 HT 113.
8 But cf. p. 588 below regarding Muqātil b. Sulaymān.
9 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 218 no. 758.
574 CHAPTER 3
3.1.2.1.1.1 Muqātil b. Ḥayyān

The career of Abū Bisṭām1 Muqātil b. Ḥayyān al-Kharrāz (d. 135/753)2 seems
to show the social flexibility closely linked to the pioneering spirit. He ap-
pears to have been a saddler’s son – at least if we can believe Samʿānī’s claim
that he was also known under the name of Muqātil b. Duwāldūz;3 the Arabic
laqab al-Kharrāz would be a reflection of “leather or strap sewer” in that case.4
This saddler cannot be the same as the Ḥayyān found in the succession of
names, as this was Ḥayyān al-Nabaṭī, a successful Iranian military slave in-
dispensable to the Arabs as a canvasser and leader of local troops.5 He was
a mawlā of Maṣqala b. Hubayra al-Shaybānī who had taken him prisoner in
Daylam, possibly during the campaign against Ṭabaristān in 54/675,6 and then
trained him.7 Qutayba b. Muslim employed him on his ventures8 as did Yazīd
b. al-Muhallab. All the same, there were quarrels9 as Ḥayyān was believed to
have conspired with the Persians.10 The reason for these rumours was probably
that, being one of them, he was constantly compelled to play the mediator,
which was noted with gratitude in Bukhara when Qutayba was surrounded
outside the city.11 When the latter refused to recognise the new caliph Sulaymān
1 Thus Fażāʾil 73, ult.; also Bukhārī IV2 13 no. 1972; IAH IV2 353f. no. 1629; Mīzān no. 8739;
TT X 277ff. Ibn Saʿd, entirely isolated, has Abū Muʿān.
2 Thus after Fażāʾil 74, 8. Elsewhere the dates are less precise.
3 Ansāb V 67, 10; cf. also Dhahabī, Mīzān no. 8740. Dhahabī found the name in an old copy
of Ṭabarānī’s Muʿjam al-awsaṭ and recalled that he was linked with Ibn Ḥayyān, but he
did not want to commit himself. In fact, shortly afterwards he linked him to Muqātil
b. Sulaymān. Regarding the issue see p. 581f. below.
4 Thus TT X 278, 1. The Arabic laqab is documented several times, and the reading was
confirmed explicitly by Ibn Ḥajar in his Tabṣīr al-muntabih I 330, 11. Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt
al-mufassirīn III 329f. no. 641 has incorrect al-Khazzāz.
5 He was perfectly aware of the power he wielded, as witness Ṭabarī II 1329f. He had 700
men at his disposal. He was called al-Nabaṭī not because he was a Nabataean, but because
he had trouble with the pronunciation of Arabic (ibid. II 1291, 6f.). I use the term “military
slave” after Pipes, Slave Soldiers and Islam 127f. Cf. also Juda, Mawālī 81.
6 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 266, 3ff; also Balādhurī, Futūḥ al-buldān 411, –5ff.
7 Balādhurī 413, –6; as mawlā of the Shaybān also TT 278, 13f.
8 For general information cf. Gibb, Conquests 40, 43 and 53, but without analysing the
part played by Ḥayyān. Regarding the wars with the Turks since Qutayba b. Muslim see
Beckwith, The Tibetan Empire 55ff.
9 Ṭabarī II 1253, 4ff.; 1290, 14ff.; 1294, 15ff.
10 Cf. e.g. ibid. II 1329, 3ff.
11 Cf. the story in Barsukhī’s (alternative reading Narshakhī) Taʾrīkh Bukhārā 57, 1ff./transl.
Frye 58, according to which Ḥayyān was a mawlā of Ṭalḥa b. Hubayra al-Shaybānī who,
however, is not documented, unlike his brother.
Iran 575
in 96/715, Ḥayyān withdrew his allegiance, an act that ultimately contributed

to Qutayba’s murder.12 We later find him in the employ of Yazīd al-Muhallab,
who had come to power thanks to Sulaymān. When he travelled through
Ṭabaristān, Ḥayyān was once again able to distinguish himself as a skilful
negotiator.13 Still, all was not harmony: Ibn al-Muhallab imposed a fine of
200,000 dirhams on him.14 Shortly after this, in 102/720, when on the jihad
against the Turks, he was poisoned by malcontent Arab army leaders.15 If
Muqātil, if he really was of low origin, called this man his father, it can only be
explained through adoption.
There is some support of this assumption – which will, however, have to
remain a hypothesis in the end. At the time of Ḥajjāj, i.e. before 95/714, Muqātil
was working with Ḥayyān, who was temporary governor of Samaqand.16 It was
said that he occupied the office of qāḍī in the city.17 The post was not signifi-
cant as Samarqand had only just become Muslim, but Muqātil could not have
been very young any more.18 Ḥayyān’s biological sons, Muqātil’s half-brothers,
were not the same age;19 one of them, Muṣʿab b. Ḥayyān, transmitted historical
reports from him, possibly after a Futūḥ book composed by Muqātil.20 It seems
12 EI2 V 542a; also Taʾrīkh Bukhārā, loc. cit.

13 Balādhurī, Futūḥ 413, –6ff.
14 Eisener, Zwischen Faktum und Fiktion 109.
16 Fażāʾil-i Balkh 77, –6f., in an autobiographical account by Muqātil. He was clearly very
respectful of the authorities, as he claims to have tracked down Saʿīd b. Jubayr, who was
in hiding in Rayy, in order to hand him over to Ḥajjāj. On the other hand this account
disagrees with others (see vol. I 181 above). Ibn Jubayr was an opponent of the Murjiʾites;
consequently this might be a Murjiʾite tendentious tradition.
17 Fażāʾil 78, 8f. 79, 10 shows that this is during the time before Saʿīd b. Jubayr was executed.
18 As illustrated by the story told in Ṭabarī II 1330, 1ff., which took place in 98.
19 There were three in all: Ḥasan, Yazīd and Muṣʿāb (Fażāʾil 74, 1f.; TT X 278, –6f.). Yazīd lived
in Madāʾīn and made it into Taʾrīkh Baghdād (TB XIV 332f. no. 7658; cf. also TT X 159f.
no. 303).
20 Thus Sezgin in GAS 1/36, supported by the fact that a) Abū Mikhnaf, too, referred to
Muqātil (Ṭabarī II 65, 5; cf. U. Sezgin, Abū Mikhnaf 115) and b) the material appears to
be archival, i.e. quoted after written originals, to which Muqātil, being an administrator,
would have had access more probably than someone else (cf. Ṭabarī I 2888, 9ff., and 2900,
3ff.: the conditions of surrender from Marv dated AH 31; ibid. II 1364, 6ff.: a letter from
ʿUmar II; II 1286, 14ff.: regarding Qutayba b. Muslim; also II 189, 10ff.). Muṣʿab added fur-
ther accounts in his redaction (ibid. II 1223, ult. ff.: after his father; also II 1195, 1ff.). He
appears to have been qāḍī (cf. the anecdote in Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 250, 7ff.).
576 CHAPTER 3
that both father and son were mainly administrative experts;21 it is possible
that Ḥayyān found Muqātil among the local population and trained him.
We do not know the name of Muqātil’s biological father, the “saddler”.

Consequently it might be possible to identify him as the Muqātil
b. Sulaymān al-Qurashī mentioned in Taʾrīkh Bukhārā 56, pu. ff./transl.
Frye 58, who gave his name to the Masjid al-Qurashiyyīn in Bukhara.
However, the nisba does not agree with this; like his father, Muqātil
b. Ḥayyān is described as a mawlā of Maṣqala’s (thus Ṭabarī II 1566, 6f.) or
of the Bakr b. Wāʾil to whom the Shaybān belonged (TT X 277, ult. f.). Faḍl
b. Shādhān informs us that his aunt was a servant of ʿĀʾisha’s (Īḍāḥ 79,
5f.), but this does not help us to identify him, either. – P. Crone inter-
preted Narshakhī’s account differently. Muqātil b. Sulaymān al-Qurashī
was not Ḥayyān’s client but his master (both = mawlā), the latter call-
ing his son after the former (Slaves on Horses 243, n. 421, re p. 56; also
Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law 150, n. 48). What this shows, however,
is that while Crone quotes the Persian text, she in fact relied on Frye’s
translation entirely, as Frye indeed translates mawlā as “master”, which
is most improbable, as Ḥayyān is also described as Ṭalḥa b. Hubayra’s
mawlā. This would not only mean that mawlā was used with two differ-
ent meanings in a single sentence, but also that Ḥayyān was the client of
two masters. And there are chronological difficulties. If, like Crone, we
identify Sulaymān al-Qurashī (61, –7f./Frye 63) as Muqātil b. Sulaymān
al-Qurashī, he would have intervened in the fighting during the Abbasid
revolution. At that time Ḥayyān had been dead some thirty years; his
“master” would consequently have been a whole generation younger.
Contrary to Crone and Hinds’ assumption (God’s Caliph 65, n. 49) this
Muqātil b. Sulaymān al-Qurashī has absolutely no connection with the
exegete Muqātil b. Sulaymān who was a client of the Asad or the Azd (see
p. 581 below).
Even after his father’s death Muqātil retained his influence in the city, con-
tinuing to cooperate with the government. When a newly appointed governor
was looking for a suitable qāḍī in 109/727, Muqātil was the man he asked for
21 TT X 278, –6. Thus also Morony in: Studies in the First Century 75, but citing Shaban,
Abbasid Revolution 100 and 110, where this is not actually stated. Shaban believes Ḥayyān
al-Nabaṭī to have been a leading character among the dihqāns of Marv, which may have
been the case, but unfortunately he does not provide any evidence for this.
Iran 577
advice;22 clearly, he had the greatest understanding of where the power lay
in the city. Another newly arrived governor, ʿĀṣim b. ʿAbdallāh al-Hilālī, sent
him to Ḥārith b. Surayj together with several dignitaries to negotiate with him
in 115/733 when he began his uprising.23 Ḥārith, however, had the emissaries
put in chains. By that time he had probably occupied Balkh, for when they
were able to escape, they fled to Marv, where they preached against him from
the pulpit.24 One year later Muqātil was once again member of a delegation25
when in 119/737 Asad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qasrī sent him to Hishām in order to re-
port on the situation in Khorasan;26 he took the opportunity to claim back the
sum of 100,000 dirhams that Yazīd b. al-Muhallab owed his (adoptive) father.27
In 126/744 we meet him as part of a delegation who once again visited Ḥārith
b. Surayj in Āmul, this time sent by Naṣr b. Sayyār.28 When an arbitration
hearing between the two political opponents took place in 128/746, Muqātil
represented his governor’s party; he faced Jahm b. Ṣafwān at the time. When,
however, things took the same turn as in Ṣiffīn, and the commission planned
to remove Naṣr from office in order to enable a shūrā, Naṣr refused to accept
the verdict.29
Besides Muqātil b. Ḥayyān, Naṣr had previously consulted his namesake
Muqātil b. Sulaymān, who was considerably younger.30 It was probably around
the same time that the two, together with the qāḍī of Balkh Mutawakkil
b. Ḥumrān, determined the position of the “new” mosque, later the chief
mosque.31 However, with his verdict in the arbitration, Ibn Ḥayyān had for-
feited Naṣr’s goodwill, and it is not surprising that we find him, still during
the same year, in the camp of Judaiʿ b. ʿAlī al-Kirmānī, the third player in the
Khorasanian power game before the appearance of the Abbasids;32 but Ibn
22 Ṭabarī II 1504, 12f.

23 Regarding the date cf. Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 509, 2ff.
25 Ibid. II 1571, 1ff.
26 Ibid. II 1615, 1ff.
27 Ibid. II 1616, 2ff.; maybe this was the abovementioned fine (which had, however, been
twice as high).
28 Ibid. 1867, 6ff., and 1868, 10f.
29 Ibid. II 1919, 15ff.
30 Ibid. II 1918, 13ff.
31 Asad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qasrī had had the old mosque erected seven years before, presum-
ably during his term as governor between 117/735 and 120/738.
32 Regarding him cf. Gibb, Conquests 81; Daniel, Khurasan 43ff.; Sharon, Black Banners,
Index s. n. He was assassinated by one of Ḥārith b. Surayj’s sons (Daniel 55). Muqātil
b. Sulaymān also put in an appearance there.
578 CHAPTER 3
Ḥayyān found himself under arrest in a tent in the army camp after express-
ing doubts concerning Kirmānī’s sincerity when it came to implementing the
Quranic commandments33 – he seems to have expressed some ideological
criticism at the wrong time. Two years later, after Kirmānī’s death, he went into
business for himself, becoming commander-in-chief of the united armies of
the region, the cities of Balkh and Tirmidh as well as the princes of Tokhāristān
etc., who were trying to defend themselves against Abū Muslim.34 He was un-
able to establish himself in the long run; he had to flee from Abū Muslim and
went to Kabul where he engaged in missionary activities.35 He died in Gardez,
in the depths of Afghanistan, where his grave was shown for some time after-
wards.36 An interesting piece of information tells us that his books were buried
with him, and his favourite slave-woman was buried in the same place as well.37
It is part of the image of this powerful man that he practised asceticism.38
When he, as a qāṣṣ, told people edifying stories, he would cry.39 Ibrāhīm
b. Adham, who also grew up in Balkh, and also among the Bakr b. Wāʾil whose
mawlā Muqātil was,40 transmitted from him, as did ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak
from Marv.41 In a city in which there were probably a number of Buddhist
monks in spite of everything, asceticism would have been a common enough
expression of piety, but it also demonstrated the bearing of a warrior of the
faith. We do not know how much Muqātil knew about fiqh.42 Only after he had
been qāḍī in Samarqand did he set out on a long journey which took him first
to Bukhara and Marv, but then via Nishapur and Jurjān to Iraq,43 where he at-
tended ʿAlqama b. Marthad’s lectures in Kufa.44 It is improbable that he would

34 Ibid. II 1998, 2ff.; cf. also Nagel, Untersuchungen 156f. The note in Fażāʾil-i Balkh 75, pu. f.,
that he was appointed governor by the people of Balkh once, probably refers to this as
well.
35 Mīzān no. 8739; TT X 278, –5ff.
36 Fażāʾil-i Balkh 74, 7f. Regarding the place cf. EI2 II 978 s. v. Gardēz.
37 Ibid. 74, 9f.
38 Ibid. 74, 4ff.; TT X 178, 13f.
39 Ibid. 154, 8f.; also 74, ult. ff.
40 Cf. EI2 III 985b s. n., and vol. I 163 above.
41 TH 174, 7; regarding him see p. 619ff. below.
42 The tradition in Shāfiʿī, Umm IV 7, 20ff., has exegetic character.
43 Fażāʾil 78, 8ff. This journey, if indeed it was not pure legend (in the form of an autobio-
graphical account), probably took place after 95/714; certainly not much earlier (see p. 575
above).
44 Mīzān no. 8739. Regarding ʿAlqama see vol. I 212f. above.
Iran 579
then also have visited the latter’s pupil Abū Ḥanīfa;45 this was probably a later
attempt at co-opting him entirely into the Ḥanafite tradition of Khorasan. In
Jurjān he made the acquaintance of Shahr b. Ḥawshab and noted with surprise
that he performed masḥ ʿalā l-khuffayn even though he had urinated before
(and consequently his shoes were presumably unclean).46 In Wāsiṭ he wit-
nessed Yazīd b. al-Muhallab railing against the Syrians in a sermon.47 This was
probably in 101 or 102; he may have been in touch with his father at the time, as
the latter also appeared in Ibn al-Muhallab’s surroundings.
Ibn Ḥayyān’s Tafsīr seems to reveal the qāṣṣ rather than the qāḍī. The Shīʿite
commentator Abū l-Futūḥ al-Rāzī (first half of the sixth/twelfth century) pro-
vides some information on its contents.48 Thaʿlabī, too, mentioned the work
among his sources,49 but this author did not, of course, always state which
information came from which precise source. Abū l-Futūḥ, on the other hand,
occasionally cited Muqātil’s traditions which, due to their nonchalantly mi-
drashic style, were probably not much liked by Iraqi rationalists. Thus we find
the idea that the sun is taken to the seventh heaven every night where it is kept
beneath the throne;50 just before sunrise God decides whether it must rise in
the east or in the west.51 The creation of sun and moon is also the starting
point of his exegesis of sura 14:33, which takes the form of a didactic conversa-
tion between the prophet and Ḥudhayfa b. al-Yamān and develops into a vast
canvas of the divine creator’s intentions all the way to the Last Judgment; in
the late source in which it has come down to us (Suyūṭī, Laʾālī al-maṣnūʿa)
it fills ten pages.52 He transmits it with different isnāds;53 the authorship ap-
pears established. Elsewhere we hear that Muqātil b. Ḥayyān interpreted the
verse sura 23:18 “And we sent down out of heaven water in (limited) measure
and lodged it in the earth; and we are able to take it away” to mean that the
45 Fażāʾil 75, 6ff.

46 Sahmī, Taʾrīkh Jurjān 186, apu. ff.
47 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 410, 3ff. The editor wrongly identifies the Muqātil mentioned here as
Muqātil b. Sulaymān.
48 Regarding him cf. McDermott in: EIran I 292.
49 Kashf, Intro., ed. Goldfeld 38, 2ff.; also GAS 1/36.
50 Presumably Ibn Ḥayyān believed the throne to be made from light.
51 Cf. ʿAskar Ḥuqūqī, Taḥqīq dar tafsīr Abū l-Futūḥ al-Rāzī II 262f. no. 1122; further instances
ibid., Indices s. n. A variant in Ṭabarī I 61, 8ff./transl. Rosenthal, History I 231ff., transmit-
ted by ʿUmar b. Ṣubḥ al-Khurāsānī (regarding him see p. 598f. below).
52 Laʾālī I 45, apu. –55, –5.
53 The version quoted came via ʿUmar b. Ṣubḥ once again; while another one came via Nūḥ
b. Abī Maryam (56, apu. ff., and 57, –7ff.; regarding him see p. 617 below); in yet another
one Muqātil went back to Ibn ʿAbbās via ʿIkrima.
580 CHAPTER 3
five rivers of paradise, among them the Gihon/Jayḥūn, “the river of Balkh”,
would be diverted from heaven onto earth and then, at the end of time and
as an indication of apocalyptic visitation, would flow back to heaven.54 This
may be the first piece of evidence that local scholars exchanged the Oxus’
original name for the Biblical one.55 God’s long admonition to Jesus to pre-
pare his community for Muḥammad’s arrival may well belong in an exegetic
context as well.56
Ibn Ḥayyān did probably not compose a complete Quranic commentary.
Being a qāṣṣ he would include exegetic deliberations in his edifying lectures,
where they may have been more important than other material, but there was
always something not directly linked to the Quran. These are the phrases that
would later reappear as hadith – as, indeed, did the exegetic fragments. If any
details appeared strange (munkar) to later eyes, the blame would be put on
his pupils: the arch-heretic ʿUmar b. Ṣubḥ al-Khurāsānī and the two Murjiʾites
Aṣram b. Ghiyāth57 and Bukair al-Dāmghānī.58 Ibn Ḥayyān’s own theological
position is difficult to determine. It was probably too early for the Murjiʾa in
Balkh at the time, although he may have shared the general traits of its defini-
tion of faith, as it would go well with a hadith Bukayr transmitted from him.59
However, he probably only agreed with it to the degree that Jahm b. Ṣafwān
did, too, as his political opposition to Jahm did not rule out certain theologi-
cal correspondences. When he says in a prayer formula that was unambigu-
ously traced back to him that in the end only God’s face would remain,60 he
is emphasising a Quranic dictum from which Jahm concluded that paradise
and hell are finite.61 Like Jahm, he was probably a determinist.62 And when
people attribute to him the exegesis that God is close to humans only because
he knows all about them,63 we have come full circle: Muqātil emphasised
God’s transcendence more than his immanence. His younger contemporary
54 Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn III 34, 12ff. Does this reflect an Indian concept? The Ganges was
regarded as a link between heaven and earth; it comes from the moon (H. Stietencron,
Gaṅgā and Yamunā 53).
55 Cf. Spuler, Der Amu Daryā, in: J. Deny Armağanı 232. More general also A. Miquel,
Géographie humaine III 223ff.
56 Fasawī III 275, 3ff. A tradition on Moses: cf. Biḥār XIII 61, 9ff.
59 Ibid.
60 Fażāʾil-i Balkh 75, 3f.
62 Cf. the sun legend mentioned above. Also HT 170ff., where, however, much needs to be
modified with regard to what has been said here.
63 See p. 679 below, referring to sura 58:7.
Iran 581
and namesake Muqātil b. Sulaymān who, as we have seen, was active in Balkh
parallel to him from the second half of the twenties onwards, had rather
different ideas.
3.1.2.1.1.2 Muqātil b. Sulaymān

Abū l-Ḥasan Muqātil b. Sulaymān b. Bishr/Bashīr al-Balkhī, a client of the
Asad,1 was said to have taught at the very chief mosque in Balkh2 the loca-
tion of which he had helped determine.3 His father had been qāḍī in the city.4
He himself, like many others, found himself embroiled in the turbulence of
the late Umayyad era. It was he who advised Naṣr b. Sayyār to choose a pithy
Quranic motto for his final battle against Ḥārith b. Surayj.5 It was noted with in-
terest that soldiers at the time would tie wool to their lances. Muqātil was said
to have worn a woollen cuirass under his shirt;6 he circulated a hadith accord-
ing to which the prophet had died “in wool” and had had eleven patches (raqʿa)
on his clothes some of which had come down to him from Adam.7 Muqātil
certainly did not get on with Jahm b. Ṣafwān; at one point, when he was narrat-
ing edifying stories (qiṣaṣ) in the chief mosque of Marv, the argument between
them was said to have reached such heat that they started publishing written
polemic against each other.8
However, this is probably merely one of those anecdotes which reflect later
opposition between schools back onto the parent generation. While Muqātil
spent a long time in Marv, as he married the mother of the future qāḍī Nūḥ
b. Abī Maryam (d. 173/789–90) there,9 this may have been some years later. He
probably only left Balkh when he – possibly for the same reason as Muqātil
b. Ḥayyān – found it impossible to get along with Naṣr b. Sayyār anymore. Like
Ibn Ḥayyān, he now joined Kirmānī as a kind of paymaster (mudabbir) with
some influence on the leader.10 Later he joined the armies of the united cities
of Khorasan against Abū Muslim.11 When the campaign failed he may have
1 TB XIII 169, 1. Ibn Ḥibbān says Azd instead (Majrūḥīn III 14, –4), but this might be a vari-
ant spelling (cf. EI2 I 811 s. v. Azd).
3 See p. 577 above.
4 Fażāʾil 208, pu.
5 Ḥā-Mīm. Lā yunṣarūn, not unlike “Venceremos” (cf. Ṭabarī II 1921, 6ff.).
6 TB XIII 162, 19f.
7 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 264, –6ff.
8 Thus e.g. Dhahabī, Mīzān no. 8741, and Taʾrīkh VI 303, –5ff.; TT X 280, 10ff.; all probably
after ʿAbbās b. Muṣʿab, Taʾrīkh Marv (cf. Rosenthal, Historiography 477).
9 TT X 280, 9ff.; regarding him see p. 617 below. Cf. also TB XIII 163, 15f.
10 Ṭabarī II 1931, 15f., and 1933, 7.
11 Fażāʾil-i Balkh 86, 3ff.
582 CHAPTER 3
got off more lightly than Ibn Ḥayyān (who had, after all, been commander-in-
chief).12 Even so, his trail becomes difficult to discern. He seems to have joined
the border fighters in Syria temporarily. Visits to Beirut13 and Jerusalem were
mentioned; he appears to have lectured at the southern gate of the Dome of
the Rock (or the temple square).14 He was also believed to have been to Mecca
once, perhaps during the pilgrimage.15 The only comparatively reliably docu-
mented event is that he appeared in Iraq some time during Manṣūr’s caliphate;
it was reported that he recited hadith to the caliph and made an impression
thanks to his knowledge of zoology.16 The crown prince al-Mahdī was said to
have sponsored him for a time.17 Around 150/767, when Abū Ḥanīfa died, thou-
sands were said to have attended his lectures.18 Towards the end of his life he
moved to ʿAbbādān where it appears he died as well.19 The date of his death
is not certain. His pupil Hudhayl b. Ḥabīb mentioned 150/767,20 which agrees
with Ibn Ḥibbān’s vague indication of “after the Hāshimiyya’s uprising” (i.e.
al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s revolt in 145/762).21 The author of the history of the city of
Balkh suggests 158/775.22
The time he spent in Syria would be easier to explain if he had originally

come from there. This has been assumed for the muqātila in general (cf.
Daniel, Khurasan 86), but we have no evidence in his case. Nor do we
learn anything about his social position, much less, certainly, than in the
case of Muqātil b. Ḥayyān. This would change if the designation Dūwaldūz
was in fact directed at him rather than Ibn Ḥayyān, as is assumed in one
passage in Fażāʾil-i Balkh (91, 8f.); Dhahabī believed it, too (Mīzān IV 174,
4ff.), as did Dāwūdī later (Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn II 330f. no. 642). It is,
12 An amān is mentioned (ibid. 86, 6).

13 IAH IV1 355, 1ff.; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 302, pu. ff. Without location TB XIII 163, 10ff., ʿIqd
II 218, 8ff., and IKh V 255, apu. ff. Cf. Yāqūt, Buldān I 525b, 16.
14 Wāsiṭī, Faḍāʾil al-Quds 86f. no. 140; Mujīr al-Dīn, Al-uns al-jalīl I 292, 11ff.
15 The story told regarding Beirut is located in Mecca in TB XIII 166, 10ff. Cf. also ibid. 167,
16ff., where he discusses the Quran with ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd and others and passes on Ḍaḥḥāk
b. Muzāḥim’s exegesis.
16 TB XIII 167, 9f.; TT X 284, apu. ff. (after a falconer’s report). Cf. also the anecdote IKh V 255,
13ff.
17 Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt III 248, 9.
18 Ṣaymarī, Akhbār Abī Ḥanīfa 88, pu. ff. Cf. also the remark made by Sufyān al-Thawrī in
Ḥilya VII 37, –8f.
19 Thus after Fażāʾil-i Balkh 89, 6f.; elsewhere only “Basra” (TB XIII 168, ult. f.).
20 TB 169, 15f.
21 Majrūḥīn III 14, apu.
22 Fażāʾil, ibid.
Iran 583
however, possible that the passage quoted first is in the wrong context, as
Dhahabī earlier said the opposite in the same context (cf. 174, 4ff. and 172,
ult. ff.), and Dāwūdī is anything but original. The laqab al-Kharrāz that
would correspond perfectly with Ibn Dūwaldūz is certainly only linked to
Muqātil b. Ḥayyān (see p. 574 above). – Muqātil’s nephew Faḍl al-Balkhī
is mentioned in Mīzān no. 6763.
It is easier to assess his exegetical works nowadays than it was in the past.
The books for which manuscripts have been found have all been edited: the
“great” Tafsīr,23 the Tafsīr khamsmiʾat āya,24 and the K. wujūh al-Qurʾān.25
Goldziher’s pioneering deliberations26 have been joined by research by
N. Abbott,27 P. Nwyia,28 Ismail Cerrahoğlu,29 J. Wansbrough,30 I. Goldfeld,31
and K. Versteegh.31a Some problems have been delimited even more clearly.
Goldziher emphasised the Tafsīr’s “mythological” character, the preponder-
ance of fantastic and legendary elements. This is a correct observation: like his
namesake, Muqātil b. Sulaymān followed the Khorasanian qāṣṣ tradition; but
it is also a reflection of the rationalist view of the Arabic secondary sources to
which Goldziher referred. Naẓẓām had already listed Muqātil among the ex-
egetes who believed in miracles.32 Jāḥiẓ reported an explanation of Abraham’s
footprint in maqam Ibrāhīm by him,33 or a conversation between Moses and
Khaḍir.34 Ṭabarī considered him, but not Muqātil b. Ḥayyān, to be unreliable.35
In the end this is only one aspect among several: Muqātil did not only want
to tell stories but to explain the Quran as a whole (if not completely). There
23 By ʿAbdallāh Maḥmūd Shiḥāta, vol. I, Cairo 1969 (the remaining volumes Cairo 1980–87,
but difficult to come by), and by M. M. al-Ṣawwāf, Beirut 1977 (which has not been acces-
sible to me so far).
24 Twice as well: by M. M. Al-Sawwaf (al-Ṣawwāf) in his dissertation Muqātil b. Sulaymān,
an early Zaydi Theologian, with special reference to his Tafsīr (PhD Oxford 1969) and by
I. Goldfeld, Bar Ilan University, 1980 (who did not know Al-Sawwaf’s work).
25 Ed. ʿAbdallāh Maḥmūd Shiḥāta entitled K. al-ashbāh wal-naẓāʾir fī l-Qurʾān al-karīm
(Cairo 1975).
26 Richtungen der Koranauslegung 58ff.
27 In: Arabic papyri II 95ff.
28 In: Exégèse coranique et langage mystique (Beirut 1970), 25f.
29 In: Ankara Üniv. Ilah. Fak. Dergisi 21/1976/1ff.; also Tefsir tarihi I 195ff.
30 In : Quranic Studies (Oxford 1977), esp. 122ff.; cf. also Index s. n.
31 In: Arabic and Islamic Studies, Bar Ilan University 2/1978/xiiiff.
31a In: Der Islam 67/1990/206ff.
32 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān I 343, 5ff.; cf. also Ibn Ḥazm’s verdict Uṣūl I 218, 1ff.
33 Ibid. IV 206, 2ff.
34 Ibid. VII 204, 2ff.
35 Yāqūt, Irshād VI 441, 4 and 6f.; cf. Gilliot, Exégèse, langue et théologie 233.
584 CHAPTER 3
was a reason why people were amused by his pride in being able to answer
every question.36 The “horror of the uncertain”37 led him to add interpreta-
tions which later generations would consider untenable. At the same time the
answers he gave and the method he applied often point far beyond the “mytho-
logical” style,38 with the result that he, more than Muqātil b. Ḥayyān, enabled
later generations to build on his results. Consequently his works were not lost,
but if they did survive, it was with additions and emendations by later redac-
tors. It would be advisable to research this separately.
a) The great Tafsīr, extant in several manuscripts,39 was transmitted in
Baghdad as well as in Khorasan, as illustrated by the riwāyāt Thaʿlabī noted in the
foreword to his Kashf wal-bayān.40 Two of them remain in Muqātil’s homeland:
Muqātil
A 1: Abū ʿIṣma B 1: Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm al-Thaʿlabī

A 2: ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn
B 2: Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh
b. Wāqid
B 3: Abū Yāsir ʿAmmār
A 3: Aḥmad b. Jamīl
b. ʿAbd al-Majīd
A 4: Abū Rajāʾ Muḥammad
B 4: Abū l-Qāsim ʿAbdallāh
b. Ḥamdōya
b. al-Maʾmūn
A 5: ʿAbdallāh b. Aḥmad
b. al-Ṣiddīq in Marv
AB 6: Abū l-Qāsim al-Ḥabībī
Thaʿlabī
36 This is the tenor of the anecdote mentioned in n. 13 and 15 above, and this was probably
why it was emphasised that he had predicted the advent of the antichrist for 150 and been
proved wrong (TB XIII 168, 4f., where incorrectly 105 instead of 150; cf. TT X 283, 3f. and
Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 303, 15f.).
37 Blachère in Nwyia, Exégèse 63. Subsequently many examples.
38 Goldfeld discusses his 32 principles of Quran exegesis in: SI 67/1988/23ff.
39 Cf. GAS 1/37.
40 Ed. Goldfeld 39, 2ff.; cf. also Goldfeld, Tafsīr khamsmiʾat āya, Intro. 7, n. 9.
Iran 585
The first chain of transmitters stays in Marv for five generations, starting with
Muqātil’s stepson Abū ʿIṣma Nūḥ b. Abī Maryam who was a qāḍī in the city.
(A 1).41 A 2 was a qāḍī’s son; he died in 211/826 or 212/827.42 A 3, Abū Yūsuf
Aḥmad b. Jamīl al-Marwazī, had attended Ibn al-Mubārak’s lectures in his
youth, and later numbered Ibn Abī Dunyā among his pupils. At the time he
was living in Baghdad, selling fabrics in a distinguished quarter inhabited by
old-established Khorasanian families;43 he died there in 230/845.44 A 4, who
bore the nisbas al-Sanjī and al-Khūraqānī, composed a Taʾrīkh Marv; he died
in 306/918.45 Considering the chronological distance between them it is un-
likely that he did indeed attend A 3’s lectures; maybe he simply brought the
text back to Marv from Baghdad at some point. A 5 was certainly based in
Marv; his full name was Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh b. Aḥmad b. al-Ṣiddīq
b. Muḥammad b. Dāwūd al-Marwazī, and he died, as al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī
heard tell, around 370/980.46
The names of the second riwāya can barely be identified, but we can dis-
cern that it is spread more widely. B 3 kept Kalbī’s exegetic tradition alive in
Khorasan;47 B 2 might be that Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Tamīmī al-Jūybārī from
Herat from whom Ibn Karrām transmitted a hadith praising Abū Ḥanīfa.48 Both
strands converge in AB 6, i.e. Abū l-Qāsim al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad Ibn Ḥabīb
al-Naysābūrī (d. 406/1016), Thaʿlabī’s (d. 427/1036) teacher who was himself
an esteemed exegete and transmitted Kalbī’s Tafsīr to him as well.49 Thaʿlabī’s
text, which has not been edited with the exception of the introduction so far,
may well, with more detailed analysis, allow further inferences regarding the
character of this eastern recension, as the only other extant one was produced

43 In the qaṭīʿat al-Rabīʿ; cf. Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī, Baghdād I1, Index s. v.
44 TB IV 76f. no. 1704; Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān.
45 GAS 1/351.
46 TB IX 390 no. 4984. Goldfeld reconstructed the name based on the majority of the MSS as
Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ṣiddīq, which is why he was unable to identify him (40, 3f.); but
cf. the parallel 54, 3f.
47 Cf. my Ungenützte Texte zur Karrāmiyya 51, no. 17 in the genealogical tree p. 44. He must
be separated from the ʿAmmār b. ʿAbd al-Jabbār mentioned by Thaʿlabī (25, pu. f.), as this
one died in late 211–early 212/March 827 (TB XII 254f. no. 6702).
48 Ibid. 49. The chronology is not, however, entirely without problems.
49 Cf. Goldfeld in: Der Islam 58/1981/131, n. 40, and 133. Regarding him GAS 1/47 with further
references; also Dāwūdī, Ṭab. I 140f. no. 140. Altogether Thaʿlabī was in his debt for 24
books (cf. Kashf, Intro., Index 86 s. n.). Regarding him see also p. 625 below.
586 CHAPTER 3
in Baghdad. The Cairo printed version is based on this one which contains a
riwāya the early links of which are identical with Thaʿlabī’s:
Muqātil
C 1: Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Hudhayl b. Ḥabīb al-Dandānī
C 2: Thābit b. Yaʿqūb al-Tawwazī
C 3: al-qāḍī Abū Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh b. Thābit

b. Yaʿqūb al-Muqriʾ al-Tawwazī
C 4 a: Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-Sammāk C 4 b: Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Khāliq
b. al-Ḥasan Ibn Abī Ruʾba al-Saqaṭī
C 5 a: al-qāḍī Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad C 5 b: Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm

b.ʿAlī b. Zād.l.j (?)50 b. Muḥammad al-Mihrajānī
C 6 a: al-qāḍī Abū Bakr Muḥammad

b. ʿAqīl b. Zayd al-Shahrazūrī Thaʿlabī51
Al-Hudhayl b. Ḥabīb (C 1), a pupil of the Kufan Quran reciter Ḥamza b. Ḥabīb,
transmitted the entire work (min awwalihī ilā ākhirihī) to C 2 in 190/806 in
the Darb al-Sidra in Baghdad; the samāʿ note was recorded by al-Khaṭīb al-
Baghdādī,52 who appears to have added some of his own traditions and inter-
pretations.53 C 2, Thābit b. Yaʿqūb b. Qays b. Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh al-Tawwazī,
50 Tafsīr, ed. Shiḥāta 3, 4ff.; Goldfeld, Tafsīr khamsmiʾat āya, Intro. 6 after MS Ahmet III 74/1–2.
Another transmitted version besides Zād.l.j is Dārīj.
51 Cf. Goldfeld 7, n. 19.
52 TB XIV 78, ult. ff. with an isnād that corresponds to the above one up to no. 4. No. 5 is
occupied by the Khaṭīb’s own source. It is based on a samāʿ note like the one Tafsīr, ed.
Shiḥāta I 79, 6ff. Cf. also Rosenthal, Gambling 29.
53 Mostly marked outside of the text per se, in the foreword (cf. Tafsīr I 4, 7ff., and 6. 3ff.) or
at the end of a sura (214, 11ff.), rarely in the text (e.g. 213, 11ff.). Cf. in more detail Versteegh
in: Der Islam 67/1990/207ff.
Iran 587
lived in Baghdad, too; he died at the age of 85. His son (C 3) heard the Tafsīr
from him in 240/854.54 This ʿAbdallāh b. Thābit (C 3), Quran reciter and gram-
marian (b. late 223/autumn 838, d. 308/920),55 added much new material,
hadith after Muqātil and other sources, even lexical explanation and juristic
opinions (raʾy),56 presumably in the form of explanatory remarks during his
lectures. The transition to the next generation seems to mark the final stan-
dardisation of the text, and this is where the strands of transmission diverge.
One samāʿ note mid-text, presumably at an ancient caesura between two juzʾ,
tells us that a certain Abū ʿAmr studied the text under C 3 in 284/897.57 As we
learn from MS Köprülü 143, this was Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh
al-Daqqāq, called Ibn al-Sammāk, who lived until 344/955;58 he must have been
quite young at the time. The second transmitter, Ibn Abī Ruʾba, a notary or pro-
fessional witness, was younger still; he only died on 14 Rajab 356/25 June 967.59
From him, the text was once again transmitted by two different people, the
second of them (C 5b) a young man, namely the Ashʿarite theologian Abū
Isḥāq al-Isfarāʾīnī (d. 418/1027), who is listed with his second nisba al-Mihrajānī
above. C 6 cannot as yet be traced; he may have been the Shāfiʿite Ibrāhīm
b. Muḥammad b. ʿAqīl al-Shahrazūrī, who died in Damscus in 484/1091.60
In some instances, especially sura 25, the isnād branches out imme-
diately after C 1. Al-Hudhayl b. Ḥabīb transmits to Abū l-Qāsim al-
Ḥusayn b. ʿAwn > Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Hāniʾ (cf. Versteegh in: Der
Islam 67/1990/208). We cannot be certain whether a further isnād with
which Ibn Bābōya transmitted stories of the prophet from Muqātil
(Muqātil > Bāriḥ b. Aḥmad > Sulaymān b. al-Rabīʿ . . .) also refers to
the Tafsīr. The same applies to the chain in Ibn al-Qāṣṣ, Dalāʾil al-qibla
76, 4ff. (in: ZGAIW 4/1987–88): Muqātil > Aḥmad b. Ṣāliḥ > al-ʿAbbās
b. Sahl . . . Jāḥiẓ relied on one of Muqātil’s rāwīs named Abū ʿAqīl al-
Sawwāq (Ḥayawān IV 206, 2f., and VII 204, 2). None of these names can
be identified with certainty yet.
54 TB VII 143 no. 3591, once again corresponding to Tafsīr I 79, 8f.
55 Ibid. IX 426f. no. 5039; Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭab. I 411f. no. 1750; Ibn ʿAsākir, TTD VII 312, 12ff.
56 Thus after the isnād in MS Ahmet III 74/1–2 (cf. Goldfeld 6).
57 Tafsīr 79, 9f.
58 Ibid., Intro. yā, n. 1. Regrding him cf. TB XI 302f. no. 6092; Mīzān no. 5486.
59 TB XI 124 no. 5819; Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab III 19, 5f.
60 Asnawī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya II 94 no. 684.
588 CHAPTER 3
Much remains for future research. As long as we cannot compare the eastern
recension, it will be difficult to penetrate to the original core.61 The informa-
tion on Muqātil’s numerous sources, which appears occasionally, e.g. in Ḥājjī
Khalīfa,62 must be viewed with scepticism. While they do go back as far as C 3,
who noted a list of a total of 30 authorities from Basra, Kufa and Medina in-
cluding 12 tābiʿūn,63 it is unlikely that he would have distinguished between the
oldest names and later additions or retrospective identifications. The isnāds
were probably polished later.64 One might expect that Muqātil made use of
Muqātil b. Ḥayyān’s Tafsīr, and Ḥājjī Khalīfa does indeed link the two works in
one note. However, this also shows that it was not possible to distinguish the
two anymore. If we read that the older of the two admired his younger name-
sake’s knowledge65 or – most improbable – held his stirrup,66 this may indicate
the recollection that his work was superseded by the younger man’s oeuvre.
Muqātil certainly also knew Ḍaḥḥāk b. Muzāḥim’s exegetic tradition; while he
did not personally attend his lectures, he was able to use Ḍaḥḥāk’s notes.67
It is interesting that the extant text’s grammatical terminology – which is
not very developed – adhered to Kufan models. Versteegh believes Ibn ʿAbbās’
Tafsīr, i.e. one of its Kufan recensions, to have been the intermediary.68 This will
need to be confirmed in detail, but a point in favour might be that the Kufan
Kalbī tradition, which itself was based on Ibn ʿAbbās,69 was woven into the ma-
terial transmitted from Muqātil; both strands meet as early as Muqātil’s step-
son Abū ʿIṣma (A 1).70 It would be too optimistic to assume that he separated
them cleanly every time. The same applies to B 3, and there is evidence for this
process elsewhere, too: a certain Mūsā b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Thaqafī al-Ṣanʿānī
was suspected of having collated a “book on Quranic exegesis” using Muqātil’s
and Kalbī’s texts, and then tracing it back via Ibn Jurayj and ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ
61 I am not quite as optimistic as Versteegh in: Der Islam 67/1990/209.

62 Kashf al-ẓunūn 459, 3ff.
63 Tafsīr, ed. Shiḥāta I 3, 7ff.
64 Interestingly another problem was that Sufyān al-Thawrī was mentioned, too, although
he died only in 161/778, i.e. after Muqātil.
65 TB XIII 162, 16ff.
66 Fażāʾil-i Balkh 92, apu. ff.
67 Maqdisī, Badʾ IV 102, 8ff. = Ibn al-Qāṣṣ, Dalāʾil al-qibla (in: ZGAIW 4/1987–8/76, 4ff.). Also
Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn III 15, 1ff., and n. 15 above; further material in Abbott, Papyri II 97f.
68 Der Islam 67/1990/235ff.
70 Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn II 242, 9ff. > Mīzān no. 8891.
Iran 589
to Ibn ʿAbbās.71 This would have been in the late second century, at the very
time when Abū ʿIṣma and Hudhayl b. Ḥabīb were preparing their recensions.
Kalbī and Muqātil would both be criticised later for the same reason: simply
collecting material without ever having heard it in a proper lecture.72
b) In the only extant MS (Brit. Mus. Or. 6333) the Tafsīr khamsmiʾat āya has
the same Baghdad riwāya as the great Tafsīr up to C 4. In the subsequent gener-
ation C 5a corresponds,73 while C 5b does not appear. As the text corresponds
with at least one of the manuscripts of the great Tafsīr74 down to spelling de-
tails, it may be that this second exegetic work of Muqātil’s was excerpted from
the basic text. Goldfeld thought ʿAbdallāh b. Thābit (C 3) was the man respon-
sible, as he considered him to have been the “redactor” in any case. However,
there was at least one further riwāya which, like the eastern recension of the
great Tafsīr, has not come down to us. It passed through Abū Naṣr Manṣūr
b. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Bāwardī/Abīwardī, who was Muqātil’s pupil for thirteen
years.75 Bukayr b. Jaʿfar al-Sālimī, a qāḍī in Jurjān, also transmitted the work
from him, or indeed from Muqātil directly,76 which makes it seem as though
the structure of the text had been devised by Muqātil himself. This does not
rule out that contents as well as form could have been influenced retrospec-
tively by the respective dominant recension of the great Tafsīr.
The structure is what is essential for our considerations at this point, as
the 500 verses selected are ones in which the Quran pronounces on legal and
ritual issues. They are arranged according to subject matter rather than Quranic
sequence; the two works are to one another like a musnad and a muṣannaf, as
it were. We are actually looking at a handbook for lawyers. It is probably no co-
incidence that C 3 and C 5a bear the title of qāḍī in the riwāya; C 4, as we have
seen, was one of the shuhūd. It is no coincidence either that Muqātil decided
on this selection, or that it was possible to make this selection from his work.
The Tafsīr was not purely “mythological”, after all.
71 Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn II 242, 9ff. > Mīzān no. 8891.
72 TB XIII 163, 7ff.; Abbott 104.
73 Cf. also Wansbrough, Quranic Studies 172.
74 Ahmet III 74/1–2, which is a copy of a very old manuscript from which the commentary
on some verses was missing (Goldfeld 7).
75 Cf. Mīzān IV 175, 5, and TB XIII 162, 19. Regarding him cf. also Mīzān no. 8785; Lisān
al-Mīzān VI 97 no. 338. Dhahabī – at least in the printed version – has incorrect Abū
Nuṣayr instead of Abū Naṣr.
76 Sahmī, Taʾrīkh Jurjān 127, 5, and 128, 4f.; regarding him see also Halm, Ausbreitung 125.
590 CHAPTER 3
A mujtahid did not have to know the entire Quran like a ḥāfiẓ, but only
the passages with legal relevance. It remains to be researched since when
the, surely approximate, figure of 500 verses (e.g. Ghazzālī, Mustaṣfā II)
has been the accepted one. This would provide a criterion to help de-
termine whether Muqātil himself arranged his Tafsīr in this way dur-
ing his lectures, or not. It must not be overlooked that Thaʿlabī did not
know the second title. Regarding the subject matter cf. Cerrahoğlu, Tefsir
tarihi 217ff., and Wansbrough 173; an example of the application of the
method may be found in Wansbrough 170ff.
c) A further approach, and one that looked to the future, entered the picture
in the K. wujūh al-Qurʾān (al-sharīf)77 or Wujūh ḥarf al-Qurʾān.78 This text, too,
goes back to Abū Naṣr al-Bāwardī, whom we met above in the context of the
Tafsīr khamsmiʾat āya; he is said to have “arranged” (allafa, i.e. not just trans-
mitted) it, as the foreword tells us.79 This, however, was not the only riwāya;
Thaʿlabī has another one that goes back to C 1,80 and appears to be mainly
Iraqi,81 but has no further similarities with that in the “great” Tafsīr. Thaʿlabī
also tells us that a K. al-wujūh by ʿIkrima was also known;82 he links the two
works closely. This may be a special case. Only one generation after l-Ḥusayn
b. Wāqid (d. 159/776), qāḍī of Marv and father of A 2,83 composed a K. al-wujūh
and a Tafsīr as well.84 He transmitted material from ʿIkrima,85 while his son
transmitted Muqātil’s Tafsīr86 and also composed a K. al-naẓāʾir the contents
of which were probably not dissimilar to the K. al-wujūh.87 Consequently we
77 Thus the original title in MS ʿUmūmī (cf. Abbott II 95).

78 Thus after MS Emanet 2050 (cf. Wansbrough 208).
79 Abbott 96f.; Wansbrough 208.
80 Kashf, Intro. 53, 6ff.
81 Cf. the footnotes in Goldfeld (where, however, the fourth link has been identified wrongly.
He was not Ibn Rāhōya, but Abū Yaʿqūb Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm b. Khalīl from Baghdad who
died in early Shaʿbān 314/mid-October 926; cf. TB VI 392 no. 3425). His predecessor
Muḥammad b. Hāniʾ was the father of Abū Bakr al-Athram who was close to Ibn Ḥanbal
(regarding him GAS 1/509f., and p. 777 below). He also appears in the isnād on p. 587
above.
82 Kashf 52, pu. ff.
83 Regarding him Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt III 306, –8ff.; IS VII2 104, 1f.; TT II 373f. no. 642;
Juynboll, Muslim Tradition 230.
84 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 284, –5f. (incorrectly Ḥasan instead of Ḥusayn; cf. Dāwūdī, Ṭab. I 160
no. 156).
86 And ʿIkrima’s as well.
87 Ibid., cf. p. 624 below.
Iran 591
must expect that during the second half of the second century the Muqātil
tradition was contaminated with the ʿIkrima tradition; in the understanding of
the period, both of them went back to Ibn ʿAbbās anyway.88
On the other hand the genre of wujūh works has its roots only here.
Muqātil’s book soon found its way into Egypt where it is documented in an
early papyrus.89 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī acquired the rights to its transmission.90
Around the same time the Hanafite chief qāḍī Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Dāmghānī
(d. 478/1085) incorporated it nearly completely into his K. iṣlāḥ al-wujūh wal-
naẓāʾir.91 In the second half of the sixth century it was translated into Persian
by Abū l-Faḍl Ḥubaysh b. Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad al-Tiflīsī (d. 588/1192 in
Anatolia), who is known to us mainly as a physician;92 he also added material
from other sources, such as Ibn Qutayba’s K. mushkil al-Qurʾān, Thaʿlabī’s and
Shūrābādī’s commentaries etc.93
Wujūh describes the “aspects” under which one and the same word can ap-
pear in the Qurʾān in different contexts. The books present them in catalogue
form, indicating a philological approach to the text that, unlike the legends
of the quṣṣāṣ, does not take isolated passages as its starting points but looks
at the Quran as a whole, like a rudimentary concordance. It is characteristic
that the method is text-immanent, comparing Quranic vocabulary with itself
and not, as later grammarians would do, with pre-Islamic poetry. The lingua
sacra is felt to be a mode of communication that is elevated above normality.94
It is also characteristic that it is not the lexically comprehensible meanings
that are researched, but rather that which is meant in a certain passage: “after-
life” can mean: 1) resurrection, 2) paradise, 3) hell and 4) grave; and, strikingly,
in different passages “one” (aḥad) means “God”, “the prophet” or “Bilāl”.95 This
is by no means about homonyms, as that concept would only emerge on con-
tact with Aristotelianism. Also, metaphorical and literal meaning are still on
the same level; consequently the problem of anthropomorphism is not much
88 Thaʿlabī appears to have been of this opinion, too.

89 Abbott, Papyri II 101. The editor wished to date the papyrus during Muqātil’s own lifetime;
Wansbrough 208 is more sceptical (probably with justification). Speculations on how the
papyrus reached Egypt (maybe via Shāfiʿī?) in Abbott 102ff.
90 GAS 1/37 after the evidence of the Mashyakha.
91 Ed. Beirut 1970. Regarding the author cf. GAL2 1/416 S 1/637, and Rippin in: Approaches
to the History of the Interpretation of the Qurʾān 169; on the edition see Gilliot in:
MIDEO 19/1989/305.
92 Cf. Ullmann, Medizin im Islam 169f.
93 Ed. M. Muḥaqqiq, Teheran 1340 sh./1961.
94 Cf. Wansbrough 142 and 215.
95 Al-ashbāh wal-naẓāʾir, ed. Shiḥāta 302 no. 157, and 260f. no. 123. Further examples in
Wansbrough 209 and Nwyia, Exégèse 35ff.; cf. also Abū Zayd, Al-ittijāh al-ʿaqlī 97ff.
592 CHAPTER 3
detected.96 The analysis does not cover the entire lexicon of the Quran but
concentrates on central religious terms as well as particles (such as li, siwā, hal
etc.).97 All of which consolidates into the impression that the method, new as
it was, was indeed still in its infancy.
Thus also Wansbrough 212. He also makes the comparison, as Goldziher

did before him, with the panīm of the Tannaitic exegetes (p. 155).
D. Daube believed that Jewish exegesis very early on, before Hillel, used
collections of ἅπαξ λεγόμενα, δὶς λεγόμενα etc. (in: HUCA 22/1949/241,
n. 7). Wansbrough’s dating the extant text to the beginning of the third/
ninth century (p. 209) is probably too late. A comparison with the philo-
logical exegesis, which did not begin until sometime after Muqātil, might
be worthwhile. It seems to me that e.g. lām al-ʿāqiba, later a favourite
with exegetic speculation, was not known to Muqātil (cf. Ashbāh 277,
no. 137). – Regarding the literary genre in general cf. Abdus Sattar in:
Islamic Studies 17/1978/137ff.
At the same time there were attempts at arranging the Quranic lexicon accord-
ing to the opposite criterion, searching for analogies or – to put it anachronis-
tically – synonyms for certain terms. This was called naẓāʾir, “parallels”. This
was how Muqātil’s book acquired the title K. al-wujūh wal-naẓāʾir in retrospect;
Ibn al-Nadīm lists it as such.98 It is true that the word naẓāʾir does occur in the
text,99 but it is not an aspect that is pursued systematically; what we do find are
occasional lexical equations or references to parallel expressions.100
A Muqātil fragment of around ten pages, preserved by Malaṭī101 and brought
to light by Massignon,102 shows a different approach. It collects only lexical
equations, but there are no text-immanent comparisons, but instead a simple
lexical meaning that applies to all passages in which the word is used in the
Quran. In other words, the focus is on constants or permanent interpretations;
the approach is stereotypical, employing the same formula every time: kullu
96 Cf. Ashbāh 325 no. 180 (concerning baṭsh, God’s “grasp”); 229, 4ff. (concerning ḥayy);
303ff. no. 158 (concerning nūr “light” = “Islamic faith”, “faith”, “right guidance” etc.). Cf. also
Nwyia, Exégèse 67.
97 Cf. Wansbrough 210.
98 Cf. Catalogue of Works XIV b, no. 3. Numerous variants of the title have been transmitted
(cf. Wansbrough 208).
99 Cf. Abbott 96.
100 Cf. Wansbrough 211f. The non-canonical hadith Muqātil quoted in the foreword to his
book in support of his method mentions only wujūh (Zarkashī, Burhān I 103, 1f.).
101 Tanbīh 56, 3ff./71, 8ff.
102 Recueil 195ff.; cf. also Cerrahoğlu, Tefsir tarihi I 204ff.
Iran 593
shayʾin fī-l-Qurʾān (x) yaʿnī (y) illā wāḥidan fī . . . or ghayra wāḥid fī . . .103 How
far Muqātil was still from a purely lexicographical objective is illustrated by the
fact that he did not trace the forms used in the Quran back to their lexical root,
and thus occasionally examined closely related forms separately.104 The text
does not come from the K. wujūh al-Qurʾān, and really it would be out of place
there. As Malaṭī lists it under the heading mutashābih,105 we may assume that
we are looking at a fragment from
d) Muqātil’s K. mutashābih al-Qurʾān or his K. al-āyāt wal-mutashābihāt.106
The procedure belongs in his time; Kalbī, too, employed such “minimal explan-
atory units”.107 However, he is not, in fact, looking at mutashābihāt at all, but
rather at the contrary, unambiguous passages (muḥkamāt), which permit the
standardisation described. Malaṭī gives the impression that there was a second
fragment that was part of the work he quoted, in which Muqātil was evening
out those textual and substantive contradictions within the Quran which the
zanādiqa were accustomed to point out.108 It is possible that the verses dis-
cussed there were the ones he considered to be mutashābihāt.109 However,
the fragment raises concerns. Firstly, the reference to zanādiqa: which may
be explained by Muqātil’s spending some time in al-Mahdī’s circle (albeit a
long time before the latter began his persecution of the heretics). Then the fact
that it discusses the verses produced for or against the visio beatifica110 – once
again, not impossible as the issue of ruʾya was not raised only by the Muʿtazila
but was discussed among “Jahmites” and anthropomorphists. Most important-
ly there is the observation that the London MS of the Tafsīr khamsmiʾat āya
includes an appendix which contains a similar text with fewer examples and
lacking the zanādiqa.111 Further research is necessary.112
Muqātil is believed to have commented on the question of abrogation in a
separate text as well, although it is possible that this, too, was a retrospective
collation of passages from his Tafsīr.113 In his Tafsīr khamsmiʾat āya he discussed
103 Massignon pointed out this caesura clearly (Recueil 206ff.). The editions do not note it.
104 E.g. fāliq and falaq in 61, 12/77, 2f.
105 43, 16/54, 10, and again at the end 63, ult./80, 8.
106 Cf. Catalogue of Works XIV b, no. 4–5. Thus already Massignon, loc. cit., and Abbott 96;
Wansbrough 211 (without deciding).
107 Wansbrough 129ff.
108 Tanbīh 44, 4f./55, 3ff.
109 In the Tafsīr the “mysterious letters” are described as mutashābihāt (160, 2f.).
110 Malaṭī 48, 1ff./60, 6ff.
111 Wansbrough 163f.
112 See ch. C 8.2.2.3.3 below.
113 Cf. Catalogue of Works XIV b, no. 6.
594 CHAPTER 3
the phenomenon in the context of changing the qibla.114 It is remarkable that

in verse 2:106, in which the word naskh is found, he read nansahā instead of the
later customary nunsihā, but then diluted its meaning to such an extent that
forgetting could not be interpreted as divine imperfection: “the verses we (i.e.
God) leave as they are and do not abrogate”.115 He was aware of the theological
problem, but clearly did not want to change the vocalisation because of it.
Nansahā is confirmed as the original reading by Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ

changing it to nansaʾhā (GdQ III 113); if it had been nunsihā this would
not have been necessary. Like nansaʾhā, nansahā was sometimes writ-
ten with Alif as mater lectionis; thus apparently in the ancient MS Ahmet
III 74 of Muqātil’s Tafsīr (where the Muslim editor relegates it to the an-
notations; ed. Shiḥāta 59, ult.). The same interpretation is put forward in
Mujāhid’s Tafsīr (I 85, 7). Cf. Abū Zayd, Ittijāh ʿaqlī 152; for general infor-
mation Burton, Collection of the Qurʾān 63f.
3.1.2.1.1.2.1 Muqātil’s Theological Views

Due to the complex nature of the sources it is rather daring to try and infer
Muqātil’s theological conviction from his extant writings. We must take into
account the possibility of later redactors having smoothed the texts; especially
in Baghdad, objectionable Khorasanian elements would have been deleted. On
the other hand they do provide the opportunity, nearly unique in the early
period, of confirming the heresiographers’ claims against the actual texts. It
may be that certain minor details that would not even have excited notice in
Khorasan, were blown up into heresy in Iraq. Let us look at the question point
by point, beginning with Muqātil’s much-cited anthropomorphism.
To the heresiographers, there was no doubt: Muqātil must have imagined
God just like a human, in flesh and blood and with abundant flowing locks, and
solid, which probably meant: not hollow and not permeable.1 While he also
said that God was different from everything earthly, we do not know what this
meant – it might just have referred to his size. The words used are stereotypes;2
leading to the suspicion that they were used as a passepartout by hostile
114 Ed. Goldfeld 36ff.

115 Malaṭī 52, pu. f./66, apu.
1 Text XIV 21; cf. p. 491f. above. Muqātil as a mushabbih: Khayyāṭ, Intiṣār 54, 6; Ibn Ḥibbān,
Majrūḥīn III 14, pu.; Mīzān no. 8741. Bukhārī, Taʾrīkh IV2 14 no. 1976, is dismissive but does
not give any reasons.
2 Cf. the commentary on Text XIV 21–23, and vol. I 406f. above.
Iran 595
Muʿtazilite heresiography. However, criticism appears to be older and originat-

ing in a different corner: with the followers of Hishām b. al-Ḥakam who them-
selves embraced a sublimated anthropomorphism,3 and with the Ḥanafites
who were not necessarily advocating strict tanzīh, believing that Abū Ḥanīfa
considered Muqātil as well as Jahm to have been extremists.4
In fact, circumstances are more complex. We have seen that Muqātil inter-
preted God’s “grasp” (baṭsh) metaphorically in his K. al-wujūh.5 He also regarded
the hand of God as an expression of divine action or generosity;6 and the “face
of God”, as he put it, simply refers to God himself.7 Even so, his stepson Abū
ʿIṣma, who transmitted the Tafsīr in Marv, was certainly an anthropomorphist,8
as demonstrated by the fact that now the metaphorical interpretations of the
hand of God are joined by an unselfconsciously anthropomorphic one in the
context of sura 5:64: when God “spreads his two hands”, this refers to his actual
hands. He furthermore created Adam with the very hand in which he holds
heaven and earth.9 Tiflīsī suppressed this passage, and nothing similar is said
in the “great” Tafsīr, either,10 but it appears original precisely because of the
contradiction with previous passages. This contrast is crucial: the wujūh meth-
od permitted both. God is of human form, especially when one sees him in the
afterlife, but he is able to speak of himself in a figurative way. Interestingly the
passage is found in the one text that is extant in an eastern recension only.
There is a further, even clearer, example. Tiflīsī interpreted istawā ʿalā l-ʿarsh,
God’s sitting on the throne, purely metaphorically as istawlā, referring to the
instance in poetry which the Muʿtazilites adduced as well.11 This is a method
that would not have suited Muqātil who never consulted poetry, least of all
in his K. al-wujūh. However, the list of constant interpretations preserved by
Malaṭī, which seems quite original, includes the same word, but with an entire-
ly different referent: “Wherever we read in the Quran ‘and he sat himself down’
(wa-stawā), this means: he is 32 years old and ‘settling down’ (istaqarra)”.12 The
first feature is the anthropomorphist equation istawā = istaqarra; it is regarded
3 Thus Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 348, 5ff.

4 TB XIII 164, 7ff., and 166, 18ff.; Ibn Ḥibbān III 15, 5ff.; TT X 279ff. no. 501.
5 P. 592 n. 96 above.
6 Ashbāh, ed. Shiḥāta 322, 2ff.; also Tiflīsī 312, 3ff., who adds “omnipotence”.
7 Tafsīr I 63, 9; Tiflīsī 304, 8ff. [Cf., also regarding the following, Gilliot in: JA 179/1991/57ff.].
9 Ashbāh 321, 10ff. The latter is probably a reference to sura 39:67, cited by anthropomor-
phists elsewhere as well (see p. 489f. above).
10 Tafsīr I 328, ult. f. regarding the same Quranic verse.
11 Wujūh 20, 1ff.
12 Tanbīh 60, 12/75, ult. Ordered incorrectly in Massignon, Recueil 203 no. 132.
596 CHAPTER 3
as characteristic of Muqātil elsewhere, too.13 But then there is the astounding

claim that God is 32 years old. What he means is, of course, that he shows him-
self to humans in the ideal form of a man of this age – a young man who has
crossed the threshold to adulthood.14 Muqātil’s understanding of this as the
ideal age – not a youth any more, but not yet greying, either – is confirmed by
his according the heavenly maidens “of the same age” (atrāb) the experience of
“33 years”.15 Muqātil would have known the number from popular beliefs that
informed hadith: the blessed are of the same age as Jesus.16 God’s human form
is probably linked to the concrete concept of paradise that remained alive espe-
cially among the warriors of the faith.17 Muqātil believed in the visio beatifica18 –
more than that, in fact: a hadith transmitted from him states that “on the Day
of Judgment God’s beloved19 will walk past the rows of angels up to the throne,
and God will put him upon the throne beside him, so that he touches his knee”.20
Proving Muqātil’s irjāʾ is easier. The heresiographers presume it, but the texts
make no effort to deny it, either. Among the wujūh of the word īmān “faith” he
lists: mere lip-service, inner agreement (taṣdīq), professing God’s oneness and
faith while in the state of polytheism;21 there is no reference to actions and
good deeds. He determines the substance of faith based on sura 2:177: God,
Day of Judgment, angels, the Quran, the prophets.22 The word irjāʾ is not used
anywhere. The heresiographers, furthermore, focussed on one particular trait
13 Zarkashī, Burhān II 80, apu. f.

14 Adult (kahl) is someone, according to the lexicographers, who has passed 30 years of age
(cf. Lisān al-ʿArab XI 600 s. v.). Cf. vol. I 406 regarding Hishām al-Jawālīqī.
15 Tanbīh 60, 7f./75, –5f.
16 Soubhi El-Saleh, La vie future selon le Coran 38f.
17 One reason for this may be that the only passage where istawā refers not to God but to a
person – namely Moses – uses it to express that he was “fully grown” (sura 28:14; cf. also
Paret’s German translation). Muqātil did indeed have this connection in mind, as imme-
diately before the exegesis quoted he was discussing a phrase from this very verse.
18 Sawwaf, Muqātil 244ff.; Abū Zayd, Al-ittijāh al-ʿaqlī 151.
19 ḥabīb Allāh; cf. the term mutaḥābbūn with which Syrian border fighters described them-
selves (vol. I 88f. and 129).
20 Mīzān IV 174, 10ff. (Having now obtained access to the remaining volumes of the edition I
can now point to a further example: if according to sura 68:42 a “calf is bared” during the
Day of Judgment (yukshafu ʿan sāqin), Muqātil, following ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd, interpreted
this to mean that the light of God’s right (!) calf illuminated the earth. This is followed by
a metaphorical interpretation going back to Ibn ʿAbbās (IV 409, 3ff.; cf. also Shiḥāta, ibid.
V 109, and Versteegh in: Der Islam 67/1990/215).
21 Ashbāh 137f. no. 32.
22 Tafsīr khamsmiʾat āya 12, 10ff.; cf. also Tafsīr I 84, 6ff.; and the quotation in Nwyia, Exégèse
coranique 47; also ch. D 0 below.
Iran 597
that would allow them to present Muqātil as the head of a “sect”, but that is
not obvious from the texts as yet: they claimed that he thought no believer
would ever feel the fires of hell; even if he has transgressed severely, faith still
outweighs this.23 He must, however, make restitution on the Day of Judgment,
presumably in direct confrontation with the person wronged; afterwards he
will be led to paradise.24 This, too, is probably just a reconciliation among
believers, as a heathen (mushrik) does not profit even from his good deeds.25
Once again one has the impression of looking at frontier fighters’ ideology.
The delights of paradise for the believer are as eternal as the torments of
hell for the heathen, as explained in Ashbāh 244, 12ff. Muqātil’s view was
shared by ʿUbayd al-Muktib in Kufa and Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ in Basra
(see p. 426 and vol. I 243 above), but it was also circulated in hadith form
(Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 43, –4ff.). It is probably a product of the early Islamic be-
lief in having been chosen. The sin cancelled out by faith is named as
fisq in Text 24, which may be a term chosen by the heresiographers, but
Muqātil also thought about the wujūh of fisq (Ashbāh 328ff. no. 185).
Muqātil was believed to have written a refutation of the Qadariyya.26 The

name of that sect must be understood in the traditional lexical sense, as al-
Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī had acquired the transmission rights for this text.27 The
texts confirm Muqātil’s attitude: “sealing the hearts” being explained simply as
ṭabaʿa.28 Determinist statements are not, however, generalised theologically,
but only ever linked to the respective situation.29 Unlike Jahm, Muqātil did not
believe in the temporal origin of divine knowledge.30
Ibn al-Nadīm regarded Muqātil as a Zaydite,31 possibly based on traditions
such as the one that he identified the “righteous believers” in sura 66:4, who
are listed immediately after God and Gabriel as helpers to the prophet, as
Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and ʿAlī.32 The Shīʿites noticed this as well, Kashshī listing
23 Text 24, a critical discussion of which is found in Fiqh absaṭ, p. 46, ult. ff.
24 Text 25.
25 Text 26.
26 Cf. Catalogue of Works XIV b, no. 12.
27 Cf. GAS 1/37.
28 Tafsīr I 22, 5.
29 Cf. e.g. ibid. 144, 2ff. regarding sura 2:271.
30 Abū Zayd, Al-ittijāh al-ʿaqlī 152.
31 Fihrist 227, 13.
32 Thus excluding ʿUthmān; cf. TB XIII 160, 15f.
598 CHAPTER 3
him among the Butrites.33 Al-Sayyid al-Ḥimyarī referred to a pro-ʿAlid exege-

sis from Muqātil’s Tafsīr in one of his poems;34 this was why the work was
still occasionally quoted by later Shīʿite authors35 who believed that Muqātil
had his material directly from Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq.36 However, he certainly had
nothing to do with the Imāmiyya; unlike Muqātil b. Ḥayyān he accepted the
masḥ ʿalā l-khuffayn.37
3.1.2.1.2 ʿUmar b. Ṣubḥ and the rafʿ al-yadayn

According to a well-known saying of Ibn Rāhōya (d. 238/853) from Marv,1
the third “innovator” from Khorasan besides Muqātil b. Sulaymān and Jahm
b. Ṣafwān was
Abū Nuʿaym ʿUmar b. Ṣubḥ b. ʿImrān al-ʿAdawī al-Balkhī al-Khurāsānī.2
However, hardly anything is known about him beyond the fact that he trans-
mitted objectionable traditions from Muqātil b. Ḥayyān. In fact he was prob-
ably a muḥaddith rather than an exegete – maybe the first one in the region.
What little material survives is not relevant from a theological point of view.
Besides the exegetic fragments we have already looked at,3 there is a hadith on
nocturnal ejaculation during the ghazwa, clearly a rule of conduct for warriors
of the faith, or another one containing a recipe for strengthening the memory
when learning the Quran by heart: to write a particular prayer into a clean
pot using honey, then to wash the pot with rainwater that never touched the
ground, and then to drink the mixture for three consecutive days.4 Some of the
traditions are paraenetic, targeting a scholar who strives for worldly profit,5 or
33 Misreading Bajalī for Balkhī, showing that the latter name meant nothing to him (cf. 390,
8; also Ardabīlī II 261b).
34 Dīwān 447, no. 190 v. 3.
35 Thus in Ibn Shahrāshūb’s (d. 588/1192) Manāqib; cf. Biḥār VIII 67 no. 8, and 301 no. 56; also
p. 587 above.
36 Thus e.g. Biḥār XI 126f. no. 57, and 225 no. 3; XXIII 57f. no. 1.
37 Tafsīr khamsmiʾat āya 22, 6ff., with reference to ʿAlī; this, too, is “Zaydite”.
1 Cf. e.g. TB XIII 164, 4ff. (naming Ibn Rāhōya with his ism Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm al-Ḥanẓalī);
TT VII 463, –7ff. Regarding him see p. 682f. below.
2 Regarding his kunya see Ṭabarī I 61, 9f. Ṣubḥ is misspelt here, as elsewhere, as Ṣābīḥ/
Ṣubayḥ (e.g. TB, loc. cit.; also Ṭabarī I 973, 13 ?).
3 See p. 579f., n. 51 and 53 above. It would have been noticed that the different variants were
traced back to different prophet’s companions.
4 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 356, 5ff.
5 Ibid. I 207, 9ff.
Iran 599
the poor man who wishes to be rich.6 “The houris’ bride-wealth is a handful of
dates and half a loaf of bread”.7
The accusation of bidʿa may have rested on a single point. ʿUmar b. Ṣubḥ
believed to have heard Muqātil b. Ḥayyān using the phrase “pray unto the lord
and sacrifice” in sura 108:2 as legitimation to raise one’s hands (rafʿ al-yadayn)
as well as one’s head during the takbīr; this was told in Marv, allegedly under
his influence.8 The practice was probably not controversial in Transoxiana in
the first century. The muqātila may have imported it from Syria9 or Basra; but
in Kufa, people held different views. Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī had already promoted
the raising of hands at the beginning of prayer only, during the takbirat al-
iḥrām,10 based on a dictum by Ibn Masʿūd.11 Everything that went beyond was
described as Jewish custom – at least during the official ṣalāt;12 rules were less
strict when it came to the private prayer (duʿāʾ) or the qunūt.13 Abū Ḥanīfa
would even be quoted as saying that someone who raised his hands during the
rukūʿ and the sujūd invalidated his prayer.14 The Hanafites who spread through
Transoxiana adopted this opinion and suppressed the divergent custom wher-
ever they could. This was not easy; we know that e.g. Bukayr al-Sālimī, who
transmitted the Tafsīr khamsmiʾat āya, adhered to it.15 In the long run the
Shāfiʿites, too, would support local tradition, in a bid to distinguish themselves
from Abū Ḥanīfa’s school. This turned the matter into a shibboleth discussed
in eastern Iran – and beyond – until the eighth century.
6 Ibid. II 323, 7ff.

7 Mīzān no. 6147 and TT VII 463 no. 771; also Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn II 88, 6ff.
8 Ibn Ḥibbān I 177, 6ff. > Mīzān no. 817 s. n. Isrāʾīl b. Ḥātim al-Marwazī and Suyūṭī, Laʾālī
II 20, 1ff. Ṭabarī, too, transmitted this interpretation via Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ from this
same traditionist in his commentary, but ʿUmar b. Ṣubḥ does not appear in the isnād
(Tafsīr 2XXX 326, 6ff.).
9 Documented e.g. for Awzāʿī (Ibn Manẓūr, Mukhtaṣar TD VIII 325, –6f.).
10 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 18, pu. ff.
11 Ibn al-Faraḍī, Taʾrīkh al-ʿulamāʾ bil-Andalus I 93, 6ff.; Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid I 134,
1ff.; Fierro in: SI 65/1987/76f.
12 Goldziher, Ges. Schr. II 86ff., and Vajda in: JA 229/1937/84 = Mélanges 178; cf. also Ibn Abī
Shayba, Muṣannaf II 307, 11ff., and 486, 7ff. This is probably pure defamation. Goldziher,
on the other hand, believed it to be based on a pagan magical gesture (in: Festschrift
Nöldeke I 321ff. = Ges. Schr. V 50ff.), but we cannot be entirely sure whether he was imagin-
ing the exact gesture the texts describe. A critical view from Kister in: JSAI 12/1989/371,
n. 51.
13 Thus also during a qāṣṣ’ narration (cf. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr 253, ult.). Cf. also the collection
of instances in Kister, loc. cit. 332, n. 41, and the account in vol. I 175 above.
14 Regarding Abū Ḥanīfa’s opinion cf. Fierro, loc. cit. 77, n. 44.
15 Madelung in: Actas IV Congresso UEAI (Coimbra) 125f., n. 39 with further material.
600 CHAPTER 3
Cf. Madelung, loc. cit.; also my Ungenützte Texte 57. Regarding the juristic
dissension cf. Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid I 133, 12ff.; on its basis in
hadith Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf I 234ff. and 271; Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī,
Shiʿār aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth 87ff.; Wensinck, Handbook 92 b; general informa-
tion Wensinck in: EI1 IV 106a = HW 639 a. Bukhārī wrote a monograph on
the subject (cf. GAS 1/133), as did Subkī later, referring to Bukhārī and judg-
ing the custom positively (in: Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil al-Munīriyya I 253ff.), as
well as Ibn Taymiyya (Al-majmūʿa al-kubrā II, Cairo 1322, p. 346ff. = GAL
S 2/125 no. 127). It is interesting that a Kufan pupil of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s
defended the practice using a prophetic dictum, and thus contradicted
the consensus of his compatriots (see p. 371f. above). In Tāhart it was for-
bidden among the Ibāḍites, while other Muslims still adhered to it (Ibn
Ṣaghīr, Chronik 42, 1ff./transl. 105). Regarding the development in Spain
cf. Fierro’s essay cited above, in: SI 65/1987/69ff. and the summary in: Der
Islam 66/1989/83f.
3.1.2.1.3 Murjiʾites and Ḥanafites

Together with the Ḥanafites the Murjiʾites in Balkh flourished; some people in
Kufa spoke mockingly of Murjiyābād.1 Overall, however, news begin to emerge
comparatively late. The presumably oldest Murjiʾite in the city,
Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Sulaymān al-Zayyāt,
came from Kufa. He transmitted from Sufyān al-Thawrī, and can thus be dated
to the second half of the second century.2 However, as early as 142/759 some-
one close to Abū Ḥanīfa and the Kufan tradition had been appointed qāḍī in
the city, holding that office for over twenty years:
1 Fażāʾil-i Balkh 28, pu. ff.; also Madelung in: Der Islam 59/1982/36. Regarding the spread of
the Ḥanafites in Transoxiana cf. the list of names in Kardarī, Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa I 219ff.,
esp. 237ff.
2 A Murjiʾite according to IS VII2 109, 2. Cf. also Samʿānī, Ansāb VI 355, ult. f.; Mīzān no. 105.
Regarding his Kufan origin cf. Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 196, 5f. Strangely, Fażāʾil-i Balkh does
not mention him at all. Could this be linked to the fat that he emigrated from Kufa to Basra
and brought the wrong prayer book from there? We do know that he attended the lectures of
Bukayr al-Dāmghānī in Nēshāpūr (see p. 679 below).
Iran 601
Abū ʿAlī ʿUmar b. Maymūn b. Baḥr b. Saʿd b. al-Rammāḥ,
d. Ramadan 171/Feb.–Mar. 788.3 He seems to have come from Kabul,4 but as

early as the Abbasid revolution he is named among those dignitaries who
had to go into hiding for a time because of Balkh’s resistance to Abū Muslim.5
Previously he was said to have quarrelled with Jahm b. Ṣafwān over the visio be-
atifica. His argument has come down to us: if God promised humans paradise,
he also promised them that they would see his face.6 This is probably projec-
tion, but it does illustrate where people placed him. It is not far to the assump-
tion that he did not yet distinguish between God’s visibility and his physicality.
It is improbable that he was personally a pupil of Abū Ḥanīfa’s,7 but it does tell
us something that Abū Muṭīʿ al-Balkhī thought highly of him.8
So far, however, the Ḥanafites were not yet firmly established. ʿUmar
b. Maymūn’s successor, a certain Abū Muḥammad al-Aʿmash, came from a dif-
ferent background.9 Abū Muʿādh Khālid b. Sulaymān al-Balkhī, who had stud-
ied under Abū Ḥanīfa,10 accused him of not regarding rukūʿ and sujūd as part
of the prayer. The accusation was phrased in the style of a polemic and is thus
difficult to grasp, but it may well be related to the disagreement over the rafʿ
al-yadayn once again. Aʿmash knew how to get his revenge. He went to ʿAlī
b. ʿĪsā b. Māhān, who had been governor of Khorasan since 180/796,11 and suc-
ceeded in having his opponent punished (presumably for slander) publicly in
the chief mosque to set an example. Abū Muʿādh was exiled from Balkh. When
3 TB XI 183, 20f.
4 Fażāʾil-i Balkh 125, –4.
5 Ibid. 86, 5. He probably went to Nishapur, too (cf. Khalīfa-i Naysābūrī, Talkhīṣ 16, 11f.).
6 Ibid. 125, pu. ff. The summary uses the term naẓar instead of ruʾya, maybe recalling
sura 75:23.
7 Thus Ibn Abī l-Wafāʾ I 399, 14ff.; also Madelung in: Der Islam 59/1982/36. Fażāʾil-i Balkh
tells us that Abū Ḥanīfa thought highly of him (126, 8ff.).
8 Cf. e.g. 125, 6ff.; several traditions go via his son Muḥammad b. Abī Muṭīʿ (ibid. 126, –5ff.,
and 127, apu. ff.).
9 Fażāʾil 145, 1ff, and 208, ult. He is of course not identical with the Kufan traditionist of the
same name, as the editor assumed, as the Kufan died as early as 147/764 or 148/765 (see
vol. I 272f. above).
10 Regarding him cf. IAW I 229 no. 577; Fażāʾil-i Balkh 142, apu. ff. (which has incorrect Ḥārith
instead of Khālid); Radtke in: ZDMG 136/1986/549f.
11 Regarding him cf. Pellat in: EIran I 852a.
602 CHAPTER 3
he found refuge with his school friend ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Khālid12 who was a judge
in Tirmidh, Aʿmash used his influence to have the latter replaced as well and
sent to the heathen in Ferghana together with Abū Muʿādh. However, he did
not enjoy his triumph for long. Early in the eighties he had to flee to Marv13 and
was replaced by the man who would express Ḥanafite–Murjiʾite thought most
clearly in Balkh:
Abū Muṭīʿ al-Ḥakam b. ʿAbdallāh b. Maslama al-Raqāshī (?)14 al-Balkhī.
He held the position for sixteen years until, sometime before his death (on 12
Jumādā I 199/30 Dec. 814), he had to retire due to his failing eyesight; he lived to
be 84.15 His influence in the city was great, his daughters married into the best
families.16 His grave would be well-known for a long time as it was just beside
the Nawbahār Gate in a cemetery that apparently covered part of the ancient
Buddhist monastery district.17 In the pulpit Abū Muṭīʿ could afford to protest
publicly against a letter from the caliph that quoted the Quran in an, in his
view, improper manner.18 He also criticised a book by Abū Yūsuf, who was no
less than the chief qāḍī in Baghdad at the time.19 Kaʿbī, who came from Balkh
as well, was able to refer to one of his traditions.20
12 IAW I 318 no. 848.

14 This nisba is listed only in Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 104, –4 > al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī I 149,
16; the reading is not entirely certain.
15 TB VIII 223, 13ff.; Fażāʾil 192, 6ff. According to Fażāʾil 146, pu. f. he only lived to 74; the
date of his death is also different, but corrupted, the decade being illegible (146, apu.).
It might have agree to what the editor found in Muḥammad b. Ṣāliḥ al-Badakhshī’s
Mazārāt-i Balkh: 174/790–1 (cf. 146, n. 5). In this case, however, there would not be time
for Abū Muṭīʿ’s sixteen years as qāḍī. The report that the respected ascetic Yaʿqūb al-Qāriʾ
was asked to advise on his appointment (ibid. 151, apu. ff.) also turns out to be mere leg-
end when compared to the chronology as he died in 163/780 (ibid. 119, 1). The date of 199
is furthermore protected by ibid. 142, pu. f. Ibn Abī l-Wafāʾ’s “197” (I 266, 4), also in Ibn
Quṭlūbughā, Tāj al-tarājim no. 269 (adopted by Halm, Ausbreitung 74, and Madelung in:
Der Islam 59/1982/37) is a mistake in the tradition.
16 Fażāʾil 152, 7ff.; also Radtke in: ZDMG 136/1986/541. Regarding one of his sons-in-law
cf. 177, –5ff.
17 Cf. Fażāʾil 146, pu. f. and 336, 2. Was it a türbe? The word turba, used repeatedly in the text,
is not unambiguous enough. Regarding the Nawbahār Gate, one of the city gates of Balkh,
cf. Le Strange, Eastern Caliphate 421.
18 Fażāʾil 149, 7ff.; TB VIII 224, 3ff.; Mīzān no. 2181.
19 Fażāʾil 177, pu. ff.
20 Maqālāt 93, 2f.
Iran 603
This tradition informs us that in his youth Abū Muṭīʿ once travelled to
Mecca, presumably visiting Abū Ḥanīfa during the same journey, as he trans-
mitted a number of his dicta that would soon be collected under the title Al-
fiqh al-akbar. It was probably the first theological text based on Murjiʾite ideas
to be circulated in Balkh. Abū Ḥanīfa’s letter to ʿUthmān al-Battī was not yet
known at the time; Abū Muṭīʿ’s pupil Nuṣayr b. Yaḥyā (d. 268/881–2) would
later bring it with him from Kufa.21 The K. al-ʿālim wal-mutaʿallim is at home in
Samarqand; versions which include Abū Muṭīʿ debating with Abū Ḥanīfa are
clearly secondary.22 The K. al-fiqh al-akbar was revised and expanded several
times over time, changing its name in the process and becoming known as Al-
fiqh al-absaṭ.23 One isnād mid-text24 leads us to assume that the last redaction
was the work of a certain Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Fārisī who, similar to
the Risāla to ʿUthmān al-Battī, appears in the riwāya after Nuṣayr b. Yaḥyā and
died in Dhū l-Ḥijja 335/July 947. The text is still awaiting a detailed analysis;
here, only a brief summary of its contents must suffice.25
P. 41, 7–13: Abū Ḥanīfa, “Fiqh akbar I”, art. 1–5; 41, 14–17: “art. 6”.26 41, 18–43;
4: on definition and substance of faith, based on the īmān hadith (42,
9–43, 4: discussion of to what extent incorrect exegesis of Quranic pas-
sages on the issue of qadar can result in people losing their faith).
43, 5–44, 8: on the issue of qadar. (43, 5–7: the same faculty of action
may be used for good or bad actions; 43, 7–ult.: instructions for discussing
with a Qadarite; 44, 2–8: the well-known hadith of predestination in the
mother’s womb, after Ibn Masʿūd).27
44, 8–17: regarding al-amr bil-maʿrūf wal-nahy ʿan al-munkar. 44, 17–45,
16: on the correct attitude towards the Khārijites. One must not call them
unbelievers, but one should fight them like ʿAlī and ʿUmar II did; if they
agree to peace, they should not be held accountable any further as they
were acting in accordance with an incorrect exegesis (bi-taʾwīl).28
45, 16–18: further question on the minimum requirements of faith. 45,
18–46, 11: on doubting the faith (istithnāʾ). 46, 11–ult.: statements in which
21 Cf. the riwāya on Text II 5.

23 More details vol. I 237ff.
24 P. 44, 2.
25 After Kawtharī’s edition, Cairo 1368; I am not using the occasionally quite arbitrary chap-
ter headings.
26 Regarding the analysis in detail cf. my deliberations in: REI 54/1986/327ff.
27 Cf. HT 1ff.
28 Regarding this expression see p. 238 above.
604 CHAPTER 3
someone describes himself or others as candidates for paradise or for the

fires of hell are wrong. Correct is ana muʾmin ḥaqqan. 46, ult.–47, 7: debat-
ing the theory that a believer could not go to the fires of hell. The believer
who sins is a muʾmin fāsiq. 47, 7–48, 1: more questions on the minimum
requirements of faith.
48, 2–ult.: further remarks on the question of how rebels are to be
fought (see 44, 8ff. above, but here with regard to the extreme situation
that the entire community within which one is living, is misguided: in
that case one must emigrate).
49, 1–52, 5: further questions concerning the minimum requirements
of faith. An unbeliever is someone who does not know whether God is
on earth or in heaven, or who does not recognise the punishment of the
grave; if the latter, he is a member of the Jahmiyya, a “doomed” group
(al-Jahmiyya al-hālika). He who believes in a Quranic verse but not in its
correct interpretation is also an unbeliever (52, 5ff., as opposed to 41, ult.
f., and 42, 13f. above).
52, 5–14: renewed polemicising against using the phrase ahl al-janna
(see 46, 11ff. above).
52, 14–16: one may pray behind any Muslim independently of his sins,
even a murderer.
52, 16–53, 5: armed robbers, non-Muslims (Jews according to the had-
ith adduced), and innovators will go to hell.
53, 7–54, ult.: on the relation between God’s commandment (amr),
willing (mashīʾa), and delight (riḍā). 55, 1–7: on the relation between
God’s willing and his acting. 55, 7–13: on the relation between God’s pre-
determining sin and his right to punish humans for it all the same.
55, 15–56, 2: on the state of the sinner (neither kāfir nor munāfiq, but
muʾmin ẓālim). 56, 2–14: on doubting the faith (istithnāʾ).
56, 15–19: refutation of the doctrine that paradise and hell have not yet
been created.
56, 19–57, 6: on bilā kayf in the case of divine attributes. The attributes
have a separate existence.
57, 8–10: on the seat of faith.
57, 10–14: on God’s right (ḥaqq Allāh) vis a vis humans. 57, 14–58, pu.:
on divine predetermination.
An Indian manuscript contains an addition on the question of theod-
icy (58, n. 2).
There is clearly no linear structure here; the text is full of insertions and
doublets. Abū Ḥanīfa’s contribution can be determined with any degree of
Iran 605
certainty at the beginning only. Discussions with the Jahmiyya concerning

the punishment of the grave,29 the theory that paradise and hell do not yet
exist,30 and God’s “non-locatedness”31 have their origins in Balkh. The criti-
cal examination of the view that a believer cannot go to hell32 was probably
aimed at Muqātil b. Sulaymān, as his views are corrected here to the effect that
believers, too, will have to do penance for their sins in hell, and afterwards be
admitted to paradise because of their faith. Even the heathen will abandon
their unbelief, but their conversion will be too late.33 Points of contact with
the Basran Murjiʾa come as a surprise. The term muʾmin fāsiq, occurring once,34
recalls Abū Shamir;35 the istiṭāʿa definition in the refutation of the Qadarites36
is Najjār’s.37 In fact, the Muʿtazilites noted Abū Muṭīʿ’s as well as Najjār’s in-
consistency of believing on the one hand that the faculty of action offered the
alternatives of acting and refraining, but on the other regarding istiṭāʿa and fiʿl
as simultaneous.38 One of the later versions of the text was probably emended
specifically to attack the Muʿtazila; the passage on the divine attributes39 and
the introduction to discussing with a Qadarite could be part of this.40 This may
be how the Muʿtazilites for their parts arrived at the claim – hardly chronologi-
cally tenable – that Abū Muṭīʿ attended ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s lectures.41
Abū Muṭīʿ’s own views are barely discernible in the end. His pupil Nuṣayr
b. Yaḥyā summarises his teachings in the dictum that God protects humans
from sin in different ways.42 This, too, recalls Najjār,43 but the word ʿiṣma also
occurs in Abū Ḥanīfa’s second letter (which may not, however, be genuine) to
29 P. 52, 2ff.

30 56, 15ff. Ibn Ḥanbal attributing this doctrine in particular to Abū Muṭīʿ (TB VIII 225, 6ff.;
ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 256, –4ff. > Mīzān no. 2181 with the correct reading fa-satafnayāni instead
of m.q.s.matān), or Abū Dāwūd’s calling him a Jahmite in his responses to Ājurrī (TB 225,
16ff.), this only illustrates how little was known in Iraq about Transoxiana.
31 49, 1f.; the Jahmiyya is named explicitly at 52, 2. Abū Muṭīʿ was said to have heard from
Abū Ḥanīfa that God sat on the throne (Dhahabī, ʿUlūw 169, 4ff.).
32 46, ult. ff.
33 After sura 40:84f.
34 47, 6; while 55, pu. has only ẓālim. munāfiq is rejected there, too.
36 43, 5ff.
38 Kaʿbī, Maq. 105, 9ff.
39 56, 19ff.
40 43, 7ff.
41 Kaʿbī, Maq. 69, 6, and 91, 1.
42 yatafāḍalūna fī l-ʿiṣma; Kaʿbī, 104, apu. ff.
43 Regarding ʿiṣma in his works cf. ch. C 5.2.1.
606 CHAPTER 3
ʿUthmān al-Battī.44 The philologist Naḍr b. Shumayl from Marv45 claimed to

have heard Abū Muṭīʿ say that while īmān and islām in the Quran were two
different things, he himself could see no difference; Naḍr boasted of having
cut him short on that occasion.46 This was a reference to Abū Muṭīʿ’s equating
faith and creed. Al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī included a tendentious hadith of his
according to which the prophet explicitly denied that faith could increase or
decrease.
Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 250, 3f.; Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 38, 11ff.; Mīzān I 575, 13ff.;
cf. Kern in: ZA 26/1912/170. A similar version was transmitted by ʿUthmān
b. ʿAbdallāh al-Umawī, a Syrian who had visited Khorasan and allegedly
“stole” the hadith from Abū Muṭīʿ (Laʾālī, loc. cit.; Majrūḥīn II 103, 1ff.; see
p. 532f. above). Najjār did not follow this doctrine. IS VII2 already named
Abū Muṭīʿ as a Murjiʾite; also Majrūḥīn I 250, 2; TB VIII 225, 5; Mīzān
no. 2181; Lisān al-Mīzān II 224ff. no. 1369.
With Murjiʾite jurists entering public service, the old tradition of criticising the
authorities was watered down. In fact, the new regime had removed the target
of some accusations, although ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā b. Māhān, whom Hārūn had appoint-
ed governor against the advice of his Barmakid vizier, ensured by means of
harsh taxation that the tide would turn once more during Abū Muṭīʿ’s lifetime.
Resistance took shape in the person of
Abū Muḥammad47 Salm b. Sālim al-Balkhī.
He was an ascetic; slept little, fasted constantly and kept his head bowed so
as not to have to look at anyone.48 He considered it a particular infringement
of God’s commandments to look at “those people”, i.e. representatives of the
authorities. He was believed to have thought about whether it was even per-
mitted to speak to them,49 but he did not realise these scruples. When it came
to amr bil-maʿrūf wal-nahy ʿan al-munkar he did not mince his words, and he
44 Text II, 8, f; cf. also vol. I 234f.

45 Qifṭī, Inbāh III348, 9; regarding him see ch. C 2.2 below.
46 Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 250, 5ff.
47 Thus Khalīfa, Ṭab. 838 no. 3147; IS VII2 106, 5; TB IX 141, 20. The kunya Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
is also documented (TB IX 140, 10).
48 TB IX 141, 1ff.
49 Fażāʾil-i Balkh 157, –5f.
Iran 607
was probably not alone; Ibn Saʿd said in this context that people in Khorasan
listened to him (lahū riyāsa), meaning, presumably, that he had followers.50
ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā gave the caliph a hint in the end, calling Salm insubordinate
and accusing him of not recognising his officials (ʿummāl) as witnesses, nor
the signature on official government documents.51 The reason seems to have
been Salm’s travelling to Baghdad where he was able to move about freely
at first; he was friendly with the Murjiʾite Abū Muʿāwiya who was close to
Hārūn.52 He probably transmitted hadith at the same time; he transmitted
from Khorasanian Murjiʾites such as Bukayr al-Dāmghānī, Ibrāhīm b. Ṭahmān,
and Nūḥ b. Abī Maryam, but also from Hijazi authorities.53 However, when he
did not hold back with his opinion in the capital and said openly that the ca-
liph deserved a beating,54 he was imprisoned around 190/806, and remained in
prison for three years – in Raqqa, not in Baghdad itself.55 Abū Muʿāwiya was
said to have championed his cause, but, if this is true at all, he only succeeded
in ensuring him some privileges while in prison.56 As always in these cases,
events are overgrown with legend. What does seem clear is that Salm was freed
only after the caliph’s death; it is irrelevant whether it was on Zubayda’s or
Amīn’s initiative. Ibn Saʿd believed that he visited Baghdad once again and
then returned to Khorasan, where he died.57 More edifying versions have him
go on the pilgrimage and die in Mecca.58 In fact, the only concrete dates for
his death we do have are linked to Mecca, but they do not correspond: Dhū
l-Qaʿda 194/August 81059 or 7 Dhū l-Ḥijja 194/11 September 810.60 It is also pos-
sible that they were calculated based on the accounts.
When it came to an activist of this calibre, the experts of jarḥ wa-taʿdīl did
not employ the reticence they would normally show in the case of Murjiʾites.
50 IS VII2 106, 5f. He stood by Abū Muṭīʿ al-Balkhī when the latter criticised the caliph’s letter
(TB VIII 224, 12f. and p. 602 above). Cf. also Madelung, Religious Trends 21.
51 Fażāʾil 156, –6ff.
52 TB IX 143, 1f.; regarding Abū Muʿāwiya see vol. I 248ff. above.
53 Ibid. 140, 11f.; also TC X 259, 10. Regarding the persons listed see p. 679, 637ff. and 617f.
below.
54 TB IX 142, 16f.
55 Fażāʾil 157, pu.
56 TB IX 142, 11ff., in an autobiographical account by Abū Muʿāwiya; according to 142, 7f., on
the other hand, he succeeded in effecting his release.
57 IS VII2 106, 8f. > TB IX 141, 19ff.
58 Fażāʾil 157, pu. ff.; TB IX 141, 14ff.
59 TB 145, 2f.
60 Fażāʾil 156, n. 7, after Badakhshī’s Mazārāt-i Balkh. Fażāʾil has “174”, which is presumably a
transmitter’s error for “194”.
608 CHAPTER 3
He was said to have “canvassed” for the irjāʾ;61 his hadith is rejected every-
where, usually with reference to Abū Zurʿa al-Rāzī’s (d. 264/878) opinion.62
Unfortunately we do not have any examples, nor do we know whether he but-
tressed his asceticism with relevant hadith. It is possible that he expressed it
through his disenchantment with the authorities rather than his appearance;
he is reported to have worn fine clothing and ridden a donkey in Mecca shortly
before his death.63 – A man who did dress like an ascetic was
Abū Saʿīd Khalaf b. Ayyūb al-ʿĀmirī,
who had shared a house with Ibrāhīm b. Adham for a time.64 When Maʾmūn
summoned him and two other well-respected pious men from Balkh to Marv,
the doorkeeper was said not to have allowed him in because he was wearing
a torn fur coat and donkey drivers’ boots.65 Like many other accounts of him,
this one contains elements of legend. He was compared to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī,66
and was said never to have raised his head to the heavens for sheer humility.67
On the other hand he was a jurist, having studied with Abū Yūsuf and Shaybānī
as well as Zufar b. al-Hudhayl.68 Abū Muṭīʿ would have liked him for his succes-
sor, but Khalaf left, allegedly to go to Baghdad.69 In 203/818–19 he also came to
Nishapur.70 According to the most reliable date he died in early Ramadan 205/
mid-Feb. 821 at the age of 69.71 His grave and that of his son were situated to
the right of the Nawbahār Gate, near which Abū Muṭīʿ had also been buried.72
His being listed among the Murjiʾites is due to Ibn Ḥibbān, whose image of
61 Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 344, 6ff.; TB IX 142, 4f., and 143, 7ff.
62 IAH II1 266f. no. 1149; Mīzān no. 3371. Further reports cf. IS VII2 106, 5; Kaʿbī, Qabūl 216,
9; Ibn al-Madīnī in TB IX 144, 10f.; Abū Dāwūd to Ājurrī ibid. 144, 15f.; also ibid. 141,
1f.; Lisān al-Mīzān III 63f. no. 235. Also Brentjes, Imamatslehren 48, and Radtke in:
ZDMG 136/1986/541.
63 TB 145, 1f.
64 IAW I 232, 7f.
65 Fażāʾil 162, 7ff. This took place after Abū Muṭīʿ’s death, around 200/815.
66 Ibid. 184, apu. ff.
67 Ibid. 178, 4ff.
68 Ibid. 179, ult. ff., and 180, 6ff.; IAW I 231f. no. 588.
69 Fażāʾil 192, 6ff. He is not listed in Taʾrīkh Baghdād.
70 IAW I 232, 10.
71 Fażāʾil 179, 1f. According to Taʾrīkh Naysābūr he died in 215, according to Ibn al-Jawzī’s
Muntaẓam not until 220 (IAW I 232, 5f.; also TT III 147f. no. 283).
72 Fażāʾil 179, 3 and n. 3. His son Saʿīd became qāḍī in Bukhara (ibid. 185, 2; Halm,
Ausbreitung 105).
Iran 609
him was quite different: he noted his fanaticism (taʿaṣṣub) and his hatred of
everything “Sunnite”, i.e. non-Murjiʾite.73 He may have deduced this from the
hadiths in circulation with Khalaf’s name; he was said to have known 42,000
hadiths by heart.74
Abū Muṭīʿ’s successor would be someone else, a pupil of Zufar’s75 who ap-
peared to have kept his distance from Abū Muṭīʿ:76
Abū ʿUthmān Shaddād b. Ḥakīm,77
d. late 213 or (early) 214/early 829 at the age of 89.78 Thus he cannot have been
a young man when he was appointed to the position, and he did not hold it for
long, “fleeing” from the city after only six months.79 It is not quite clear why;
but it is entirely clear that he was incapable of coming to terms with reality.
He was said to have been afraid of his office, muttered indistinctly and been
unable to sleep at night.80 He only accepted the office under duress, and then
did not pronounce any judgment for six months.81 Other sources heroised him
more, claiming that he supported the rights of the common man against the
governor.82 What these stories have in common is his dislike of the authorities;
being an exceedingly scrupulous83 man he probably saw them as a hotbed of
injustice.84 Like Khalaf b. Ayyūb he devoted himself to pious devotion; he was
emaciated and spent many nights in prayer.85 He does not, however, seem to
have dressed like a donkey driver, as he believed that piety should go
73 Mīzān no. 2534, and TT, loc. cit.; cf. also ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 24, 13.
74 Fażāʾil 180, –4.
75 Fażāʾil 190, pu. f., and 192, pu. ff.; also 186, n. 3. He preserved Zufar’s notes (nuskha) (Ḥākim
al-Naysābūrī, Maʿrifa 164, 7; Azmi, Studies 182).
77 Madelung reads Ḥukaym (in: Der Islam 53/1982/37, n. 22), but Ḥakīm is the more common
form of the name (cf. Dhahabī, Mushtabih 243, 4ff., with additions in Ibn Ḥajar, Tabṣīr al-
muntabih 446, –4ff. where bearers of the name Ḥukaym are listed individually).
78 Thus according to Fażāʾil 185, ult. ff.; IAW I 256, 8, has “late 210” instead.
79 Fażāʾil 185, pu. f.
80 Ibid. 188, 3ff.
81 Ibid. 191, 5ff.
82 Ibid. 189, 3ff.; cf. also 190, –6ff.
83 Ibid. 190, 7f.
84 His brother ʿUmar described the police as the “hounds of the denizens of hell” in a hadith
(Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 185, –7).
85 Fażāʾil 187, 7ff. and 12ff.
610 CHAPTER 3
unremarked if possible.86 It is interesting that he challenged the heathen to

trial by ordeal (mubāhala);87 he appears to have engaged in missionary activ-
ity. Maybe this was the basis for Ibn Ḥibbān’s accusing him of being a fanatic
Murjiʾite.88
We may safely assume that being a Ḥanafite, he was indeed a Murjiʾite, all
the more since by that time the Ḥanafites were at the helm in Balkh and a
certain universal consensus would have been established.89 Not only was
Shaddād b. Ḥakīm’s successor ʿAbdallāh, the son of the abovementioned ʿUmar
b. Maymūn al-Rammāḥ, a Ḥanafite, but there were a number of jurists besides
the judges in Balkh who had studied in Abū Ḥanīfa’s school,90 among them the
only one whom the biographical sources call, maybe by chance, a Murjiʾite:
Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Yūsuf b. Maymūn b. Razīn al-Bāhilī al-Mākyānī.
He belonged to a large family; his brothers ʿIṣām and Muḥammad also made
a name for themselves,91 and his nephew ʿUbayd b. ʿIṣām even was governor
of Balkh for a time.92 He died in Jumādā I 239/mid-Oct. 853, apparently at a
very high age as he was referred to as a centenarian.93 He was very rich and
spent great sums of money on supporting the poor and the ribāṭs in the bor-
der regions.94 He knew a hadith confirming the value of generosity: it is better
86 Ibid. 188, apu. ff.

87 Ibid. 185, pu.
88 Lisān al-Mīzān III 140 no. 491. It was expressed similarly by Khalaf b. Ayyūb. This is not in
itself surprising, but it is possible that one of them was taken for the other, as happened
elsewhere, too (cf. IAW I 256, 1ff.). – It might also be that Ibn Ḥibbān was referring to cer-
tain tendentious hadiths; Shaddād knew many hadiths by heart, but the samples we are
granted only show that some of them were edifying and may not have possessed proper
isnāds as yet (Fażāʾil 193, 11ff.). Ibn Abī Ḥātim described him only as ṣāḥib raʾy (II1 331f.
no. 1455).
89 I do not wish to deny that in questions of legal niceties there would still have been ten-
sions between the followers of the individual “heirs” of Abū Ḥanīfa, Abū Yūsuf and
Shaybānī on the one hand and those of Zufar b. al-Hudhayl on the others.
90 Cf. Madelung in: Der Islam 59/1982/37.
91 IAW I 347f. no. 961, and II 148 no. 454; Fażāʾil 196, 2ff.
92 Fażāʾil 196, 4f.; also Radtke in: ZDMG 136/1986/543. Regarding his sons cf. IAW I 51, –5ff.
93 This was how 139 was inferred as the year of his birth (Fażāʾil 214, 6ff.). It cannot have
been quite so extreme as his son Naṣr b. Ibrāhīm died as late as 303, surviving him for
more than 60 years (ibid. 217, 6f.). The month is found in IAW I 52, –5. The year 241 is also
reported (Ibn Ḥibbān > Samʿānī, Ansāb XII 44, 4f., and IAW I 52, –6).
94 Fażāʾil 214, pu. f., and 215, 6ff.; also Radtke 544.
Iran 611
to have one’s livelihood than to swim in money.95 He had travelled much: an

educational visit to Basra was mentioned;96 he also met Abū Yūsuf, presum-
ably in Kufa rather than in Baghdad.97 When he went to visit Mālik b. Anas
in Medina, a young compatriot of his had given away that he was a Murjiʾite.
Mālik showed him the door immediately, Ibrāhīm being able to transmit one
single hadith from him only.98 In fact, he was not as bad as all that: Ibn Ḥibbān,
who was usually very quick to spot a Murjiʾite, said, he was a Sunnite in his
heart;99 maybe because during the miḥna he spoke out vehemently against the
khalq al-Qurʾān100 which had not been customary in his circles.101 On the other
hand, he did not criticise the “Qadarite” formula that faith consisted in profess-
ing it and in one’s actions, either.102
There was still a Jahmite presence in Balkh, as illustrated by one Jahmite

who came from there circulating hadith in Kabul (cf. Samʿānī, Ansāb XI 1,
6ff. s. n. Abū l-Ḥusayn Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Kābulī, although the
dates remain hypothetical).
3.1.2.1.4 The Beginnings of Eastern Iranian Mysticism

As in Syria, so in eastern Iran it was the border regions that became the birth-
place of mystical tendencies. They emerged out of “asceticism in the world”
once it did not engage in outward protest any more, and were nourished by the
exaggerated visions of paradise linked to fighting for the faith. Nwyia was able
to demonstrate that Muqātil’s vocabulary carried the seed of later mystical
95 Ibid. 216, 8ff.

96 Ibid. 235, 2ff.
97 Ibid. 215, 3ff.; not listed in Taʾrīkh Baghdād.
98 IAW I 52, 2ff.; TH 454, 5ff. The guilty party, Qutayba b. Saʿīd, a mawlā of the Thaqīf, was
soon made to feel his revenge. He had to leave Balkh and went to Baghdad where he
became famous. The chronology becomes clearer by his arriving there in 172/788–89 at
the age of 23 (TB XII 467, 10f.).
99 Mīzān no. 259; Ṣafadī, Wāfī VI 172 no. 2628; TT I 184ff. no. 335. Cf. also IAH I1 148 no. 488.
100 IAW I 52, 9ff.
101 See p. 622 and 625f. below. It sounds rather different in the parallel in Fażāʾil 215, 1f.: he
only protests against the expectant position (waqf) of the “Jahmites” but does not tell us
what he himself thinks. Regarding this attitude see ch. c 6.3.2 below.
102 IAW I 52, 11ff.
612 CHAPTER 3
thought.1 The Abbasid revolution appears to have changed circumstances

to such a degree that those who aspired to this ideal sought its realisation in
distant lands, in Syria – maybe even Muqātil himself, but certainly his younger
contemporary Ibrāhīm b. Adham, who died in the Byzantine border area.2 He
was of pure Arab descent.3 Legend, however, turned him into a prince who had
his awakening when out hunting – i.e. during a pastime of the nobility – and
since then wore only wool.4 A detailed prayer transmitted from him tells us,
whether it is genuine or not, that it would not have been uttered by a Jahmite,
as it confirms the punishment of the grave, the intercession of the prophet, the
cistern where he meets his faithful, and the reality of paradise and hell.5 Still,
he has not yet completed the transition to taṣawwuf, at least not in spiritual
terms.6 This step would be taken during the following generation in the east, by
a man who was allegedly his pupil, although this was probably a retrospective
fiction thought up by local tradition:
Abū ʿAlī Shaqīq b. Ibrāhīm al-Azdī al-Balkhī.
He died during a campaign in Khuttalān on the upper reaches of the Oxus.7

According to an account by his grandson he came from a family of rich mer-
chants who traded with the Turks; he was said to have owned 300 villages. At
some point he left the business; a conversation in an idol’s temple with a priest
who had shorn his hair and beard, and wore a red garment, i.e. presumably
a Buddhist, was said to have “awakened” him to the true life.8 In his civilian
existence he had shown some interest in legal matters, as was the custom. He
was said to have been Abū Ḥanīfa’s assistant at one time.9 It seems more likely
1 Exégèse coranique 35ff.

3 Radtke in: ZDMG 136/1986/539.
4 More material in Hallauer, Die Vita des Ibrahim b. Edhem 17ff., and Gramlich, Wunder der
Freunde Gottes 404f.; regarding the further development of the legend in the Malay language
area cf. Russell Jones, Hikayat Sultan Ibrahim ibn Adham (New York/London 1985).
5 Ghazzālī, Iḥyāʾ I 325, apu. ff./transl. Nakamura, Ghazālī on Prayer 97f.
6 Cf. the article by R. Jones in: EI2 III 985f. s. n.; also Mujtabāʾī in: GIE II 403ff.
7 Fażāʾil 129, ult. f. The date of 174 found there is probably misread. Regarding 194 cf. Kutubī,
Fawāt al-Wafayāt II 105, –4; Mīzān no. 3741; IAW I 258, 8f. The year 153 preserved by Ibn
Khallikān after Ibn al-Jawzī, Shudhūr al-ʿuqūd (II 476, 7f.) is certainly wrong; Shaqīq’s pupil
Ḥātim al-Aṣamm did not die until 237/851. Cf. also Radtke, loc. cit. 540.
8 Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya VIII 59, 4ff. > Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifa IV 133, 5ff.; Qushayrī, Risāla 13, 13ff.;
Fażāʾil 132, –5ff. The same sources also record other conversion stories.
9 Fażāʾil 131, 4; Anṣārī, Sharḥ al-risāla al-Qushayriyya I 101, 2f.
Iran 613
that he studied under Abū Yūsuf together with Abū Muṭīʿ al-Balkhī, reading his
K. al-ṣalāt.10 Presumably these interests came to an end after his conversion.
Now he wore a blue woollen garment11 and thought about the soul’s ascent
to God.
As was the custom in early mysticism his thoughts were transmitted in
isolated logia, as well as in a brief text, extant in two versions entitled Ādāb
al-ʿibādāt.12 It concerns the “ranks” (manāzil) of the “people of truthfulness”
(ahl al-ṣidq), i.e. the degrees of closeness to God the pious may achieve.
Asceticism is at the very bottom; it employs the means of systematically starv-
ing oneself and is linked to the fear of God and hell.13 The desire (shawq) for
paradise is more perfect; craving the delights of paradise as described in the
Quran is of great spiritual worth in Shaqīq’s eyes.14 Ultimately one will achieve
the serenity of heart which grows out of God’s peace and mercy; humans who
have achieved this will always smile and radiate amiability, as they have en-
tered into the love of God. This is the earliest draft of a hierarchy of maqāmāt
that we know. Middle-class piety renouncing the world and warriors of the
faith longing after paradise are both superseded by the serenity in God.15
Shaqīq was an innovator in another way as well, introducing the “era of
tawakkul”, as B. Reinert called it. This, too, was a step beyond old-fashioned
asceticism; under Shaqīq’s influence, trust in God became a central concept
which attracted many postulates of zuhd.16 Shaqīq’s declaring tawakkul to be
one of the believer’s duties is new; he was thought to have interpreted sura 3:159
“God loves those who trust in him” to mean that someone who did not trust
in God had left his faith behind.17 He arrived at this conclusion via a new un-
derstanding of tawḥīd; there being no God but the God also means that nothing
10 Fażāʾil 138, 7f., and 131, 5ff.; IAW I 257, 3ff.
11 Fażāʾil 130, ult., and 131, 7. The Murjiʾite ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Abī Rawwād (regarding him see
p. 740f. below) was said to have pointed out the meaningless nature of this “uniform”
(Ḥilya 59, –8ff.).
12 Ed. P. Nwyia in: Trois oeuvres inédites de mystiques musulmans (Beirut 1973), p. 15ff.
Analysed by id. in: Exégèse coranique et langage mystique 213ff. Cf. also F. Meier, Abū
Saʿīd 146f.
13 Shaqīq was of course familiar with the zuhd traditions; he had received the K. al-zuhd
from ʿAbbād b. Kathīr (see p. 733 below).
14 Cf. Nwyia, Exégèse 224f.
15 I have not yet been able to study the “Eight Questions” Ḥātim al-Aṣamm transmitted from
his teacher (cf. GAS 1/639).
16 Reinert, Lehre vom tawakkul 85.
17 Ibid. 14. It is interesting in this context that some branches of the Murjiʾa did indeed adopt
the tawakkul to become part of their definition of faith (see p. 199 above).
614 CHAPTER 3
except God will profit or harm anyone.18 This consequence must first and fore-
most be applied to one’s livelihood (rizq): it is assured, for God guarantees it.19
There had not been such a close link between rizq and tawakkul before,20 and
it transformed the everyday behaviour of the pious entirely. It was said that
Shaqīq would lie down to sleep amidst a heated battle:21 he who trusts in God
knows no danger. While this story is probably only a myth, it shows the dy-
namic emanating from the new ideal.
Shaqīq’s rejecting all gainful employment, and thus denying his own past,
had even more consequences. He was not the first; his older contemporary
ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak (d. 181/797), also from Marv, had objected to this type
of extremism.22 Similar trends were known in Kufa at that time;23 but it was
Shaqīq who provided a new theoretical framework: trade and craft are corrupt;
the morals of the present day are bad. Nowhere can one be safe from fraud,
consequently all gainful employment is “doubtful” (shubha), doubtful, that is,
with regard to the purity of the things with which one comes in touch. Humans
are allowed to get involved only in an emergency.24 Or, indeed, more severely
and possibly exaggerated: gainful employment is sin, as it is the expression of
humans’ doubting God’s guarantee.25 One must thank God when he provides,
and be patient when he holds back; this is the true futuwwa, nobility.26 Shaqīq
was said to live with fityān;27 his theology, on the other hand, provided the
justification for mendicants.
Further developments would go beyond the remit of this study. We would

have to discuss Shaqīq’s pupil Ḥātim al-Aṣamm, and his pupil Aḥmad
b. Ḥiḍrōya, both of whose biographies are included in the Fażāʾil-i Balkh
(cf. Radtke 542 and 544). – The scope of intellectual life in Balkh may
also be deduced from the personality of the astrologer Abū Maʿshar al-
Balkhī who was born on 20 Ṣafar 171/10 August 787 in the city, according
to his horoscope. However, his case is problematic in that he received his
training in hadith there only, becoming devoted to astrology later when,
18 Ibid. 23f.

19 Ibid. 35 and 71. Cf. Text XIV 27, b.
20 Ibid. 40.
21 Ibid. 163f.
22 Ibid. 220 and 170f.; cf. also 178. Further criticism along these lines also in Khallāl, Al-ḥathth
ʿalā l-tijāra 24, 5ff., and 28, 2ff.; see also ch. C 1.4.3.2 below.
24 Text XIV 28.
25 Text XIV 27, after Muḥāsibī; cf. Reinert 172.
26 Reinert 175.
27 TTD VI 328, 1.
Iran 615
aged 47, he engaged in a disputation with the philosopher al-Kindī in

Baghdad. Horoscopes in his K. al-mudhākarāt show that he must have
had some understanding of astrology even before this; it is possible after
all that he brought some of his expertise with him from his homeland.
This was probably also where he acquired the knowledge of Indian
and Chinese religions which Nawbakhtī learnt from him – possibly in
his K. al-milal wal-duwal (Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mughnī V 155, 3ff./transl.
Monnot, Islam et religions 232f.; cf. also ibid. 226). His productive phase
definitely took place during the time he spent in Iraq. He was said to have
lived to over a hundred, dying on 29 Ramadan 272/9 March 886 in Wāsiṭ.
Regarding him cf. Ullmann, Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften 316ff., and
D. Pingree in DSB I 32ff. and EIran I 337ff.
3.1.2.2 Marv
Marv was situated to the west of Balkh, in an oasis. The city’s main income was
from trade, as it controlled one of the roads to China.1 The Nestorian mission-
aries went this way; there had been a Nestorian metropolitan residing in Marv
since the early sixth century. Bishops were reported even earlier.2 During the
Islamic period Īshōedād of Marv, bishop of Ḥedattā (ca. 850), became particu-
larly well-known.3 A Jewish community had been documented for a long time,
too;4 and as in Balkh, Buddhists had settled here, too.5 When the Arabs arrived
they were only an additional section of the population; local Iranian princes
and landowners, who had been more or less independent under the Sasanids,
retained their power even after the conquest. The new rulers lived in villages,
their settlement pattern decentralised wherever possible.6 Most of them were
very wealthy; they frequently financed the raids from this region onto heathen
territory themselves.7 Abū Muslim found the greatest number of followers
1 For general information on the history of Marv cf. Barthold, Historical Geography 41ff., and
Yakubovskii in EI2 VI 618ff.
2 Fiey, Communautés syriaques (Variorum Reprints) VI 75ff.; also Spuler, Iran in frühis-
lamischer Zeit 213; Gaube, Arabosasanidische Numismatik 12; Bosworth in: Cahiers de
Tunisie 35/1987/35f. Regarding the legend surrounding the first bishop of the city cf. EIran
III 823 s. v. Baršabbā.
3 Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur 234, LThK V 783.
4 Cf. Fischel in: Historica Judaica 7/1945/35ff.; regarding the Jews in eastern Iran in general see
Zand in EIran IV 539ff.
5 Masson, Land der tausend Städte 162.
6 Lapidus in: Islamic Middle East, ed. Udovitch 200f. Regarding the style of their palaces cf.
Grabar, Die Alhambra 80ff.
7 Cf. Masson in: Arabica 14/1967/191ff.; esp. 204. Regarding the Arab population in general also
Massignon, Opera Minora III 79.
616 CHAPTER 3
in this area; why this should have been so has been the subject of much study
and research, but has not been resolved conclusively.8 The chiliastic move-
ments of pious Iranians also found open ears; around 137/754 a certain Isḥāq,
who was canvassing for followers among the Transoxianian Turks, also visited
Marv.9 Twenty years later the Muqannaʿ set forth from a nearby village. In his
preaching – which was, however, directed at rural areas rather than the city
itself – gnostic thought became virulent.10
Abū Muslim did not meet with unanimous approval. In Marv the Murjiʾites
in particular made trouble for him, having themselves gathered under Ḥārith
b. Surayj’s black banners. Once he had established himself more firmly he had
two of them, who upheld the ideals of the past with particular force, beheaded
in 131/749. The first one was Saʿīd al-Naḥwī’s11 brother Yazīd who, being a mawlā
of the Quraysh, seemed even more suspicious to him;12 the second one a man
named Ibrāhīm b. Maymūn al-Ṣāʾigh,13 a goldsmith perhaps, who, like Yazīd,
had been employed as go-between by Naṣr b. Sayyār and Ḥārith b. Surayj, and
had also occupied an administrative position for some time.14 He came from
Kufa where he had been connected to Samura b. Jundab’s family as a client.15
Abū Ḥanīfa was believed to have thought highly of him.16 He referred to a let-
ter from ʿUmar II enjoining on ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Nuʿaym, the new governor of
Sīstān who had replaced the tyrannical Jarrāḥ b. ʿAbdallāh in 100/722,17 to treat
his subjects honourably.18 At that time the Murjiʾites had prevailed; we recall
that Yazīd al-Naḥwī’s brother Saʿīd was believed to have been the one com-
plaining about Jarrāḥ to ʿUmar. Now, however, amr bil-maʿrūf had come to the
8 Cf. e.g. Shaban, Abbasid Revolution 20f. and 96ff.; Kennedy, Early Abbasid Caliphate 36ff.;
Shacklady, with reassessment of the sources, in: Occasional Papers of the School of
Abbasid Studies 1/1986/98ff. Ahmad El-Shaubari, Early Islamic History of Merv, Capital of
Khorasan (PhD, Columbia University, New York) may provide some new insights.
9 Cf. Sadighi, Mouvements religieux iraniens 150ff.; Spuler, Iran 197; Daniel, Khurasan 132.
10 Sadighi 163ff.; Spuler 52 and 198f.; Daniel 137ff.; Składanek, Doktryny 197ff.
12 TT XI 332 no. 633; also Ṭabarī II 1353, ult., and Samʿānī, Ansāb XIII 53, 3ff.
13 IAW I 50f. no. 54. The date of his death is also given as 130 (e.g. Fasawī III 350, 7f., as an
alternative). Cf. also IS VII2 130, 6ff.; Mīzān no. 232; Azmi, Studies 135.
14 Ṭabarī II 1919, 1; regarding Yazīd cf. ibid. II 1928, 10f.
15 Fasawī III 237, 1f. The Isfahanians also claimed him (Abū l-Shaykh, Ṭabaqāt al-muḥaddithīn
bi-Iṣbahān I 449; Abū Nuʿaym, Dhikr akhbār Iṣbahān I 171, ult. ff.).
16 IAW, loc. cit.
Iran 617
wrong man. Abū Muslim had Ibrāhīm b. Maymūn’s body thrown into a well.19
His severity seems to have closed the Murjiʾites’ mouths for a while, but they
did retain some influence, as Muqātil b. Sulaymān’s stepson, who had stud-
ied under Abū Ḥanīfa, was appointed to the position of judge during Manṣūr’s
caliphate:
Abū ʿIṣma Nūḥ b. Abī Maryam Yazīd b. Jaʿwana (?),
d. 173/789–90 at an advanced age. Abū Ḥanīfa was said to have sent him a
paraenetic letter on his appointment,20 but there seems to be some doubt
whether to call him a Ḥanafite, as he combined Abū Ḥanīfa’s tradition with
Ibn Abī Laylā’s, with whom the former did not always agree.21 For this reason
he was given the sobriquet al-Jāmiʿ, the “combiner”. Later Ḥanafite tradition
omitted this fact,22 as the name would have been seen as a compliment on his
universalism: he was an expert in Quranic exegesis according to Muqātil’s and
to Kalbī’s works, and knew the prophet’s biography according to Ibn Isḥāq.23
He possessed an astounding number of written collections (nusakh) of hadith,
which made him unique in Iran; many of them had not survived among the
“Arabs” either.24 He was not trusted entirely; he himself was quoted as having
described his traditions on the faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān as “pious falsification”.25 The
praise of the Khorasanian cities, Marv above all, which he had ʿAlī proclaim,
was probably taken with a pinch of salt outside of Iran.26 He must have trav-
elled widely, in Iraq as well as in the Hijaz. In Marv he was remarkable for
lecturing on four subjects: the law according to Abū Ḥanīfa,27 tradition (athar),
grammar, and poetry.28 Even more remarkable is the report that his father had
been a heathen, a Zoroastrian (majūsī) from the Hurmuz region29 – possibly
19 IS VII2 130, 15; for general information Madelung in: Der Islam 59/1982/35f.
20 Mīzān no. 9143.
21 Samʿānī, Ansāb III 175, 2ff. Regarding Ibn Abī Laylā see vol. I 226 above. An anti-Ḥanafite
tradition was traced back to him as well (see vol. I 220, n. 5 above).
22 Thus IAW II 258, 6; dependent on this also GAL S 1/287.
24 Al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, Maʿrifa 164, –4ff.; after him Azmi, Studies (cf. Index s. n.).
25 Zarkashī, Al-burhān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān I 432, 10ff.; Gruber, Verdienst und Rang 88.
26 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 467, 3ff.
27 aqāwīl Abī Ḥanīfa; going by what we have seen so far this referred to Kufan tradition in
general.
28 Samʿānī III 175, 4f.
29 Mīzān, loc. cit., and TT X 486ff. no. 876.
618 CHAPTER 3
only local slander, especially if one considers the grandfather’s Arab name.30
Ibn Abī Maryam had an open heart for new converts, transmitting the hadith
that even someone who read the Quran without iʿrāb would be rewarded.31
Pazdawī’s claiming that based on Abū Ḥanīfa he had denied the createdness
of the Quran32 loses even more probability in connection with that hadith; on
the other hand we do know that he made no allowances for the Jahmites. He
may have been the first to refute them with the tradition that a female slave
was freed at the prophet’s request because she proved her faith by imagin-
ing God as dwelling in heaven.33 He also argued his young secretary Nuʿaym
b. Ḥammād, who would later go to Egypt,34 out of his Jahmite ideas,35 doing
the latter’s posthumous image no favours, as he would sometimes be listed as
a hard-boiled anthropomorphist, usually together with Muqātil b. Sulaymān.36
In Nūḥ b. Abī Maryam’s view, the anthropomorphist image of God was linked
to seeing God in paradise; like Ḥammād b. Sulaymān he interpreted sura 10:26
to mean that the pious can expect this as part of the “bounty” that will be the
share of the righteous.37 – Ibrāhīm al-Ṣāʾigh’s pupil
Muḥammad b. Maymūn, known as Abū Ḥamza al-Sukkarī,
d. 167/784 or 168/785, also commanded great respect at that time.38 He prob-

ably traded in sugar39 and was so rich that the qāḍī Ḥusayn b. Wāqid treated
him as his equal.40 He visited Baghdad while on the pilgrimage, and Kufa on
the way back.41 He attended a number of hadith scholars’ lectures there, as
30 Jaʿwana according to Samʿānī III 176, 2, and IAW II 258, 9. Dhahabī, Mīzān, loc. cit., has
ʿAbdallāh. Early sources like Khalīfa, Ṭab. 836 no. 3136 or IS VII2 104, 5f. only have Nūḥ
b. Abī Maryam. Concerning the question cf. also Lisān al-Mīzān VI 172f. no. 609.
31 Mīzān, loc. cit.; parallels in Kahle in: Goldziher Memorial Volume 16, and JNES 8/1949/68.
32 Uṣūl al-dīn 155, 8ff.
33 Dhahabī, ʿUlūw 187, 2ff.; cf. Text XXXIII 23, l–n with commentary.
35 IAH IV1 484 no. 2210; Mīzān and TT, loc. cit.; also Aguadé, Messianismus 12ff.
37 TB IX 140, 16ff.; Ibn Manda, Radd ʿalā l-Jahmiyya 96, 1ff.; also Lālakāʾī, Sharḥ uṣūl iʿtiqād ahl
al-sunna 456 no. 779 (p. 454ff. with further material concerning this exegesis). Regarding
Ḥammād b. Sulaymān see p. 431 above.
38 TB III 269, 19ff.
39 While people claimed to have heard Ibn Maʿīn say that he acquired his nisba with his
“sweet speech”, this is probably a retrospective reinterpretation (ibid. 269. 8).
40 Ibid. 267, 11ff.; Ḥusayn b. Wāqid, too, was only a mawlā (cf. Juynboll, Tradition 230).
Regarding his exegetical works see p. 590 above.
41 Ibid. 266, 14f.
Iran 619
well as Abū Ḥanīfa’s;42 he possessed a nuskha by the Kufan Raqaba b. Maṣqala

al-ʿAbdī,43 and appears to have collated a K. al-ṣalāt.44 He gave some thought
to how one could arrange the corpus of traditions, developing his own method:
if a tradition with a valid isnād goes back to the prophet, it must be included;
if it comes from a prophet’s companion, one can choose but not emend it; but
one is allowed to “compete” with the tābiʿūn.45 His Murjiʾite views were rarely
recorded.46 He may have based them on the hadith he transmitted in which
the prophet said the prayer over an adulteress who had died in childbirth,47
thus stating clearly that he still considered her to be a believer. He transmit-
ted from Yazīd al-Naḥwī and Ibrāhīm al-Ṣāʾigh.48 – Another of Abū Ḥanīfa’s
followers was
al-Naḍr b. Muḥammad al-Qurashī,
a mawlā of the Banū ʿĀmir of the Quraysh, who died in 183/799.49 However, all
we know about him is that he was friendly with
Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak b. Wāḍiḥ al-Ḥanẓalī
(108/716–181/797),50 who found words of effusive praise for Abū Ḥanīfa as well
as his Kufan contemporary Misʿar b. Kidām.51 At the same time he observed
a certain distance, and viewed Abū Ḥanīfa’s traditions critically.52 He did not
think much of Nūḥ b. Abī Maryam either.53 He was more traditionist than
42 Ibid. 266, 5ff.; regarding Abū Ḥanīfa IAW II 249, pu.
43 al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, Maʿrifa 164, 9f.; Azmi, Studies 99. Regarding the latter see p. 419f.
above.
44 al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Kifāya 234, 11ff.; Azmi, Studies 154.
45 IAW II 249, pu. ff.
46 TB VI 108, 18. Nothing in the biographies TB III 266ff. no. 1359; Bukhārī I1 234 no. 737; IAH
IV1 81 no. 338; Ibn Rajab, Sharḥ ʿilal al-Tirmidhī 412, 1ff.; TH 230 no. 214; Mīzān no. 8245.
47 TB III 266, 19ff.
48 IAH IV1 81, 4.
49 Cf. e.g. Khalīfa, Ṭab. 836 no. 3139; IAH IV1 478 no. 2192; IAW II 200f. no. 624 (with n. 2).
Different forms of the kunya were transmitted.
50 IS VII2 105, 7f. Named as a Murjiʾite in Kaʿbī, Qabūl 216, –7, and TT X 444f. no. 809. Nothing
in Mīzān no. 9082.
51 Cf. the verses in RIMA 27/1983/40 no. 1, and 468 no. 18 as well as 62 no. 39; cf. also Ibn
Māza, Sharḥ adab al-qāḍī I 191, ult. ff.; Kardarī, Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa I 41f.; Ibn Abī l-Wafāʾ
counts him among the Ḥanafites (I 281f. no. 748). Regarding Misʿar b. Kidām see vol. I 208f.
above.
53 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ IV 304f. no. 1905.
620 CHAPTER 3
lawyer; noticeable by his store of knowledge and his precision among the slap-
dash and carefree approach to hadith at the time. His vast library was a help
in this; he was said to have possessed ca. 20,000 “books”, i.e. separate hadith
notes bound into booklets.54 Of course this meant that he could not rely on
his memory, but then he had no need to: people remembered hearing him say
that he had never learnt a hadith by heart but instead looked in his books and
selected one.55 Presumably hadith to him also had the function of limiting the
free finding of the law (raʾy); his extant book on the subject of jihad does not
contain a single independent consideration but only the words of earlier au-
thorities and the prophet.56 It is worth noting that Ibn Ḥanbal considered his
books particularly suited for the study of fiqh.57
Jihad was very close to Ibn al-Mubārak’s heart and he took part himself;
not, however, in the Turkish borderlands but in Syria against the Byzantines.58
Indolent Sufis whom he met in the street in Baghdad did not impress him;
he was of the opinion that an ascetic had to do something for the sake of his
ideal.59 He may well have provided financial help as well, supporting other war-
riors for the faith.60 This was what he did, too, for needy pilgrims: he paid for
their journey to Mecca and even bought presents for their wives there, while
at home in Marv he had had their houses painted and decorated with the im-
ages of the subject customary to this day.61 There were many stories about his
generosity,62 although there was occasional criticism at his showing it more
when he was travelling than at home.63 This is proof not only of his piety, but
also of his being able to afford it. He was a wealthy merchant who certainly
went travelling – to Iraq and Syria as well as Egypt and even Yemen64 – because
of his business interests just as much as for the sake of his ṭalab al-ʿilm.65 His
54 TB X 164, 11f.

55 Ibid., 165, 16ff.; followed by accounts attempting to blur this impression.
56 Ed. Nazīh Ḥammād, Beirut 1971. The book was also used by Ibn Ḥajar (cf. Khoury in:
SI 42/1975/127ff.).
57 Ibn Abī Yaʿlā, Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila I 77, 8f.; also Ibn Ḥanbal, Waraʿ 63, apu. ff.
58 TB X 167, 6ff. Interestingly all three to whom we owe the K. al-jihād were at home in
Mopsuestia (p. 16). Ibn al-Mubārak frequently visited there.
59 Cf. the poem in RIMA 27/1983/45 no. 10.
60 Cf. the story TB 157, 17ff.
61 Ibid. 158, 5ff.
62 Also ibid. 158, ult. ff., and 159, 7ff.
63 Ibid. 160, 9ff.
64 IS VII2 105, 2f. Samʿānī, Adab al-imlāʾ 22, 17ff., mentions him as visiting Raqqa.
65 Idrīsī even claimed that he even displayed a tourist’s interests (cf. Haarmann in: Zum Bild
Ägyptens 37).
Iran 621
father, a Turk, had allegedly been the slave of an Arab merchant in Hamadan
who was a member of the Banū Ḥanẓala.66 Other sources speak of a mawlā
relation,67 but in any case Ibn al-Mubārak was only 23 when he first visited
Iraq in 141/758.68
He was one of the few scholars who transmitted hadith for the love of God
(yuḥaddithu lillāh) and did not ask for payment. His activities were recorded
in several books of which a K. al-zuhd wal-raqāʾiq is extant besides the above-
mentioned K. al-jihād. The former, an extensive work, survives in two recen-
sions, a shorter one by Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥasan b. Ḥarb al-Marwazī (d. 246/860),
who taught Tirmidhī and Ibn Māja and settled in Mecca; and a longer one,
emended with numerous additions, by Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād.69 They probably
contain the traditions Ibn al-Mubārak dictated his two pupils from his wealth
of material; the work does not even include a preface. The only personal touch
are the headings, and we do not know whether they were his work.70 It shows
us clearly how Shaqīq al-Balkhī, his younger contemporary and neighbour,
would have imagined the lowest degree of his mystical path. We read of the
fear of God, of sadness and weeping, also of the kind of behaviour indicative of
renunciation of the world, and of great examples who achieved it during their
lives: Uways al-Qaranī, ʿĀmir b. ʿAbd al-Qays,71 ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. Nuʿaym
b. Ḥammād also included two chapters on the pleasures of paradise and the
horrors of hell.72 These are the “admonitions that touch the heart” (raqāʾiq)
mentioned in the title.73
The first collection of 40 hadiths that would still be known later was the
work of Ibn al-Mubārak as well. It was probably intended as a handbook. As
is well-known, the genre he thus established had a great future ahead of it.74
66 TB X 153, 11ff.

67 Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭab. I 446 no. 1858.
68 TB X 168, 4f.
69 Ed. Ḥabīb al-Raḥmān al-Aʿẓamī (Maligaun 1966; reprint Beirut n. d.). The editor simply
appended Nuʿaym’s additional material at the end of the book. There were probably
further versions; the quotations found in Ibn Ḥajar’s Iṣāba are not all instanced in the
printed version (cf. Khoury in: SI 42/1975/119ff.). Regarding the quotations in Abū Nuʿaym,
Ḥilya cf. Khoury in: SI 46/1977/84ff.
70 It is interesting that they contain the phrase dhikr khafī (p. 45).
72 Cf. the appendix of the edition, p. 66ff.
73 Regarding the meaning cf. Nwyia in EIran I 185a. The title page of the Berlin reprint makes
it appear, wrongly, as though there were a separate text entitled K. al-raqāʾiq.
74 Cf. Nawawī, Arbaʿūn, ed. Pouzet 11, –6f.; also Intro. 43.
622 CHAPTER 3
The other texts listed by Ibn al-Nadīm75 were probably also traditionist ones: a
K. al-sunan, a K. al-birr wal-ṣila. It is possible that in his Tafsīr Ibn al-Mubārak
drew on traditions from ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī whose lectures on Quranic
exegesis he had attended.76 The Taʾrīkh he composed presumably contained
dates of the deaths of tradition scholars. He also expressed his ideas in sim-
ple verses which the sources quote occasionally, and which appear to have
been quite popular.77 By using poetry in this way he positioned himself close
to Muḥārib b. Dithār and Thābit Quṭna,78 but also a Muʿtazilite such as Bishr
b. al-Muʿtamir.79
One short text is very characteristic of his religious convictions. In it he trac-
es the 72 sects mentioned in the well-known prophetic dictum back to four
basic heresies: Qadariyya, Murjiʾa, Shīʿa, and the Khārijites.80 By subsequently
explaining briefly how it would be possible to avoid these mistaken develop-
ments, he implicitly defined his understanding of orthodoxy. Of course we do
not know to what degree the text is authentic; it is particularly surprising that
the Jahmiyya is not mentioned. There can be no doubt, however, that like the
traditionist pupils of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s, some of whose lectures he attended,81
and like Sufyān al-Thawrī to whom he was close,82 he was regarded as a repre-
sentative of Sunnism. The text even uses the term ṣāḥib sunna.83 He was even
less likely to profess Jahmite doctrine than that of Christians or Jews; he point-
ed out to the Jahmiyya that God was not on earth but in heaven, on his throne.84
Still, he is not entirely suited to the role of “precursor”, as he did not wish to
75 Fihrist 284, apu. ff. Cf. also GAS 1/95.

76 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 70, 3. Cf. also Dāwūdī, Ṭab. I 243f. no. 232.
77 Cf. the collection by Mujāhid Muṣṭafā Bahjat in: RIMA 27/1983/9ff. and 455ff., also
addenda ibid. 28/1984/311ff. Whether these are genuine will have to be determined for the
individual cases.
80 Text XIV 29.
81 Thus Sulaymān al-Taymī (TH 275, 4), maybe also ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn (cf. Ibn ʿAdī, Kāmil 166,
10; where, however, the editor has emended the name differently).
82 Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya VII 28, 10ff.; Ibn al-Faqīh, Buldān 320, 15ff.; cf. also Raddatz, Sufyān ath-
Thawrī 41f. He also criticised him (ibid. 42, n. 1).
83 Text 29, d. The poem RIMA 27/1983/65f. no. 4 is composed in the same style. Warning of
getting involved with “innovators”: cf. Lālakāʾī, Sharḥ 139f. no. 274f., and 141 no. 283f.
84 Ṭabarī III 2520, 19ff. = Dhayl al-mudhayyal 660, apu. ff. More explicitly, maybe too
much so, the statements in Ibn Taymiyya, Fatwā Ḥamawiyya 34, 13ff. Cf. also the poem
RIMA 27/1983/61 no. 38, where he ironically derives Jahm from Jahannam.
Iran 623
speak of the Quran’s non-createdness.85 His “orthodoxy” was limited to exclu-

sions; he had probably come across too many variations of Islam on his travels.
The Murjiʾites of Marv did not suffer under him. Their line was continued by
Abū Bakr Ibrāhīm b. Rustam86 al-Faqīh,
although he already belonged to a later generation. He came from Kerman and

had attended the lectures of numerous teachers some of whom are known to
have been Murjiʾites: Abū Ḥamza al-Sukkarī and Nūḥ b. Abī Maryam in Marv,
Khārija b. Muṣʿab (d. 168/785) in Sarakhs.87 When his traditions were not well
received, he turned to law instead and studied with Shaybānī (d. 189/805).
While Maʾmūn was residing in Marv he took Ibrāhīm into his confidence, but
the latter did not abandon his acquaintance with the fullers in whose street he
lived. He may well have been in the same trade, although we know that he was
very wealthy: when Maʾmūn offered him the position of judge, he declined the
appointment and paid a penalty of 10,000 dirhams in alms to the poor.88 We
do not know why he did this, but the position was probably a hot seat; the phi-
lologist Naḍr b. Shumayl, another confidant of Maʾmūn’s, used his influence to
oust the Ḥanafites as much as possible from official positions in favour of the
aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth.89 When Ibrāhīm went on the pilgrimage in 210/825, his illness
forced him to stop in Sarakhs, and he died on 20 Jumādā II 211/27 Sept. 826 in
Nishapur. He was so well-respected that the governor himself, a Ṭāhirid, said
the prayer for the dead over him.90 – His contemporary
85 Pazdawī, Uṣūl al-dīn 54, 3ff., where he is compared to Hishām b. al-Ḥakam (!); regarding
whose ideas see vol. I 441 above. On the development in general ch. C 3.3 and 3.6 below.
Negative verdicts on Ibn al-Mubārak may be found in Kaʿbī, Qabūl 122, –6ff.
86 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 839 no. 3157. IS VII2 108, 3f. has incorrect Rusaym.
87 TB VI 73, 3f. and 14f. Regarding Khārija b. Muṣʿab and his Murjiʾite creed cf. Fażāʾil-i
Balkh 186, pu. ff.; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 625, 4; Mīzān no. 2397; TT III 76 no. 147 etc.; also
p. 162 above.
88 TB VI 73, 15ff.; IAW I 38, 9f. According to IAH I1 99, 16ff. it was Ṭāhir b. Ḥusayn who made
the offer; events are presented in a different way, too.
89 Kardarī, Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa II 107, 5ff.
90 TB 74, 5ff. Also Khalīfa-i Naysābūrī, Talkhīṣ 15, 10f. IAH I1 99f. has him as a Murjiʾite, as does
Mīzān no. 87 (after Abū Ḥātim).
624 CHAPTER 3
ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn b. Wāqid,
d. 211/826 or 212/827, the son of the judge in Marv with whom Abū Ḥamza
al-Sukkarī had been acquainted, was a Murjiʾite.91 He seems to have taught
mainly exegesis; Thaʿlabī mentions him in the riwāya of both ʿIkrima’s and
Muqātil b. Sulaymān’s works.92 He had heard Muqātil’s Tafsīr from the lat-
ter’s stepson Abū ʿIṣma; ʿIkrima’s texts he received from Yazīd al-Naḥwī. In the
second instance Thaʿlabī’s isnād appears to be incomplete, as elsewhere ʿAlī’s
father bridges a long chronological gap.93 As we have seen, this observation
shines a particular light on his K. al-naẓāʾir which Thaʿlabī knew.94 It is pos-
sible that parts of ʿIkrima’s tradition were incorporated in this, via his father’s
K. al-wujūh. We do not know what the connection was between this work and
Muqātil’s K. al-wujūh. – A mere name to us is
Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Isḥāq b. ʿĪsā al-Ṭālaqānī al-Bunānī,
a mawlā of the Bunān who died in 215/830 in Marv. As he once visited Baghdad,
he does appear in Taʾrīkh Baghdād, but besides telling us that he was a Murjiʾite,
the article does not contain any relevant material.95 –
Bishr b. Muḥammad al-Sakhtiyānī al-Marwazī
(d. 224/839) remains elusive as well.96 – We have a better picture, however, of
Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan b. Shaqīq al-ʿAbdī al-Shaqīqī97
(d. Shaʿbān 215/Oct. 830 in Marv).98 This is due to the fact that he enjoyed Ibn
al-Mubārak’s trust and transmitted all his books; Abū Dāwūd believed he had
91 Mīzān no. 5824 and TT VII 308 no. 522. Cf. also Bukhārī III2 267 no, 2365; IAH III1 179
no. 978.
92 Kashf, Intro. 23, 2f. and 40, 6; cf. p. 584f. above.
93 Ibn Taymiyya, Sharḥ ḥadīth al-nuzūl 95, 13ff.
94 Kashf 54, 2ff.
95 TB VI 24f. no. 3056; esp. 25, 3. Also TT I 103f. no. 178. Nothing in Bukhārī I1 273 no. 878.
96 A Murjiʾite according to TT I 457 no. 841. Cf. also Bukhārī I2 84 no. 1772; IAH I1 364 no. 1402.
Regarding the nisba al-Sakhtiyānī see p. 391 above.
97 This nisba in Fasawī only (III 100, apu.). For his complete name cf. TB XI 370 no. 6222.
98 TB XI 372, 12 after Ṭabarī; no month ibid. 372, 9f. and Fasawī I 199, apu. 214 was also trans-
mitted (TB XI 371, ult. f.). Further information in TT VII 298f. no. 510.
Iran 625
heard them fourteen times.99 This was why Fasawī quoted him100 – directly as
well as through an intermediary – as did Ṭabarī.101 When he arrived in Baghdad
he was preceded by the written warning that he was a Murjiʾite. He did not
deny it, saying that he could not absolve anyone of their responsibility102 – for
attending the lectures of such a dubious character, that is. However, he was
found to be indispensable, and he seems to have been reticent; Ibn Ḥanbal
would later claim that he renounced his views.103 He also transmitted from
other Murjiʾites: Ibrāhīm b. Ṭahmān, Khārija b. Muṣʿab and Abū Ḥamza al-
Sukkarī;104 he possessed the rights to the K. al-ṣalāt composed by the latter.105
At first he had found it amusing to argue with Jews and Christians, even copy-
ing both the Old and New Testaments for his own use.106 In his old age he grew
frail and only ever dictated two or three hadiths to his visitors.107 After all, as
he himself said, he had been born shortly before Abū Muslim’s murder;108 he
must have been in his late seventies when he died.
Until the late fifth century, all the judges in the city whose names have been
transmitted were Ḥanafites.109 Muqātil’s Tafsīr, however, was not accepted by
the Ḥanafites despite Nūḥ b. Abī Maryam; appealing more to anthropomor-
phic circles such as the Karrāmites. Abū l-Qāsim al-Ḥabībī, who concludes
the riwāya, was a Karrāmite; when he settled in Nishapur he converted to the
Shāfiʿites.110 We usually know him as Ibn Ḥabīb al-Naysābūrī, the author of
ʿUqalāʾ al-majānīn (d. 406/1015). Even a “Jahmite” settled among the Ḥanafites
of Marv, a pupil of Bishr al-Marīsī’s named Bishr b. Yaḥyā.111
99 TB XI 371, 11 and 20f.; also IS VII2 107, 4.

100 Cf. Al-maʿrifa wal-taʾrīkh, Index s. n.
101 I 19, 15ff. via an intermediary; I 1765, 16ff. via his son Muḥammad.
102 TB XI 371, 10.
103 Ibid. 371, 16f. Kaʿbī, Qabūl 216, –9, also names him as a Murjiʾite.
104 Ibid. 370, 14ff.; also Ṭabarī I 310, ult. ff. He also knew of Abū Ḥamza indirectly through his
father (ibid. I 115, 1ff., and 1765, 16f.).
105 Azmi, Studies 154; cf. p. 618 above.
106 TB XI 372, 6ff.; the statement remains slightly obscure.
107 Ibid.
108 Fasawī I 199, apu.; TB XI 372, 11f.
109 Halm, Ausbreitung 83 and 88f.
110 GAS 1/47; cf. p. 585 above.
111 Khallāl, Musnad 433, 13f.; TB VII 64, 14f. Regarding him see IAW I 167f. no. 375.
626 CHAPTER 3
3.1.2.3 Tirmidh
Tirmidh, situated on a crossing of the Oxus, was the natural centre of northern
Bactria during the Kushan era and the following centuries.1 There were nu-
merous Buddhist monuments in the surrounding area.2 Jahm b. Ṣafwān spent
more than a little time here as the majority of the population were still follow-
ing his doctrine by the end of the fourth century.3 While we do not have any
detailed reports, it is characteristic that a Jahmite became qāḍī in the city in
the first half of the third century:
Ṣāliḥ b. Muḥammad al-Tirmidhī.
It may be similarly characteristic that the Ḥanafite biographers pay him no

notice at all; he was a Murjiʾite, but not one of the customary kind. As was only
right and proper for a Jahmite he believed in the createdness of the Quran. Ibn
Ḥibbān, who found even normal Ḥanafites a sore trial, had nothing good to say
about him: Ṣāliḥ, he said, had taken people who followed a different definition
of faith to court, and had even had one of them led through town with a rope
round his neck. The qāḍī was over seventy at the time; a slanderous poem from
which Ibn Ḥibbān quoted a few verses compared him to his disadvantage with
his namesake Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbdallāh al-Tirmidhī, the date of whose death (239/853)
we still know.4 He also, we read on, acquired his position through bribes, and
even sold wine and declared consuming it to be permitted,5 but this may be an
exaggeration. Ṣāliḥ probably conformed to the Kufan tradition of legal prac-
tice and consequently turned a blind eye where nabīdh of any kind was con-
cerned. The mystic al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī had no qualms to transmit a number
of hadiths from him.6 Even Ibn Ḥibbān admitted that Ṣāliḥ’s hadith was widely
accepted among the ahl al-raʾy. In his home region he also played a signifi-
cant part in transmitting exegetic material from Kalbī’s commentary that was
traced back to ʿAbbās;7 adding 4,000 hadiths to the original Tafsīr.8 And if he
1 Masson, Land der tausend Städte 79ff.

2 Ibid. 90f. B. Staviskij’s excavations in Kara Tepe near Tirmidh provide a representative exam-
ple (Staviskij, Mittelasien – Kunst der Kuschan, Leipzig 1979, p. 141ff.; also in: From Hecataeus
to al-Ḫuwārizmī, ed. Harmatta 95ff.); cf. also Fussmann in: JA 275/1987/347ff.
3 Aḥsan al-taqāsim 323, –6.
4 TB IX 316, 10f.
5 Majrūḥīn I 370, 3ff. > Mīzān no. 3825, and Lisān al-Mīzān III 176 no. 708; cf. my Ungenützte
Texte zur Karrāmīya 48. Ibn Ḥibbān’s text has tisʿīn instead of sabʿīn; presumably an error.
6 Cf. B. Radtke, Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmiḏī 27 no. 142.
7 Cf. Ungenützte Texte 46ff.; also Goldfeld in: Der Islam 58/1981/134.
8 ḤKh 401, pu. f.
Iran 627
is the same as the Abū Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ b. Muḥammad b. Naṣr al-Tirmidhī

whom al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī listed,9 he made an excellent impression when
staying in the capital while on the hajj.
It is understandable that Ibn Ḥibbān wished to separate the two per-

sons (Mīzān II 300, –4f.). Ibn Abī Ḥātim had done the same (IAN II1 412
no. 1812). The Ṣāliḥ whom al-Khaṭīb mentioned did indeed transmit from
a certain al-Qāsim b. ʿAbbād al-Tirmidhī who is usually named as a pupil
of the other Ṣāliḥ (cf. Ungenützte Texte 44; regarding him cf. Goldfeld in:
Der Islam 58/1981/134). This does not mean it is impossible for them to
have been one and the same person; the change in generations would not
have been noted in Baghdad. If there was another Ṣāliḥ b. Muḥammad
al-Tirmidhī, he may well have lived considerably earlier (cf. the isnād in
Vajda, RSO 55/1981/21).
A second teacher of Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī’s was a Murjiʾite as well:
Abū Dāwūd al-Jārūd b. Muʿādh al-Sulamī al-Tirmidhī.
However, we know virtually nothing about him. He died in 244/858.10 Of

another Murjiʾite who lived around the same time,
Abū ʿImrān Mūsā b. Ḥizām al-Tirmidhī
(d. 251/865), it was said that he was one of the abdāl; he, too, may have had
connections to mystic circles. He was also an expert Quran reciter in the Kufan
tradition of Kisāʾī, having studied under Yaḥyā b. Ādam (d. 203/818).11
The mystic al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī falls outside the chronological boundaries
of this study. Furthermore, tradition is too complex for him to be discussed in
few words.12 We have already pointed out elsewhere that for the sake of his the-
ory of khatm al-wilāya he interpreted the Quranic phrase khātam al-nabiyyīn
in a peculiar way.13 In the present context it is interesting that he found argu-
ments why it was possible to see God in a dream.14 However, when he himself
9 TB IX 330 no. 4866.

10 TT II 53 no. 80; Radtke 22 no. 60.
11 Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭab. II 318 no. 3677; TT X 340f. no. 599.
12 For recent literature on him cf. Radtke in: ZDMG 136/1986/552f.
13 Vol. I 35 above.
14 Radtke, Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmiḏī 67.
628 CHAPTER 3
dreamt of an audience with the king of heaven, all he saw was an empty tent
with a curtain.15
Northeast of Tirmidh was the valley of Chaghān-Rud that only fell into Arab
hands towards the end of the first century and was Islamised only gradually.16
This was the home of
Abū Saʿd17 Muḥammad b. Abī Zakariyyāʾ Muyassar al-Juʿfī al-Ṣaghānī
who was active during the second half of the second century. Culturally the
region was part of the Balkh “catchment area”,18 but he seems to have had con-
nections to Marv as well, as in one source he bears the nisba al-Sīnānī, after the
village of Sīnān near that city.19 He travelled widely. He had attended Misʿar
b. Kidām’s and Abū Ḥanīfa’s lectures in Kufa, and Ibrāhīm b. Ṭahmān’s, among
others, in Khorasan.20 He was also in close contact with ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Abī
Rawwād, possibly still in Nishapur and not in Mecca.21 He was not widely
liked, being regarded not only as a Murjiʾite – which might have been just
about acceptable22 – but also a Jahmite.23 This was probably once again based
on his image of God. In an exegesis of sura 112 he appears to have interpret-
ed ṣamad to mean “immortal”, and thus deviated from the anthropomorphic
interpretation.24
3.1.2.4 Samarqand
The earliest times of Muslims settling in Samarqand, the central location in
Sogdiana, are shrouded in darkness. Some city histories have been lost, others
15 Budūw shaʾn Abī ʿAbdallāh 17, 1ff.

16 Cf. Bosworth in: Iran 19/1981/1ff.
17 Abū Saʿīd in IS VII2 108, 18, is isolated. Cf. already Khalīfa, Ṭab. 837 no. 3142.
18 Cf. EI2 II 1f. s. v. Čag̲ h̲āniyān; also I 455a s. v. Āmū Daryā. Ṣaghānī also bears the nisba
al-Balkhī in Dhahabī, Mīzān no. 8241.
19 TB III 282, 13; cf. Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān s. v. Sīnān. Ṣaghānī may also be derived from a
village near Marv (Yāqūt s. v. Ṣaghān), but the connection with Chaghāniyān seems suf-
ficiently explained by Fażāʾil-i Balkh 120, 6.
20 TB III 281, 9ff., besides many other names; also Mīzān, loc. cit.
21 Ibid. 282, 4, where he is described as Ibn Abī Rawwād’s ṣāḥib. Regarding the latter see
p. 740f. below.
22 Ibn Ḥanbal transmitted from him all the same (ibid. 282, 12ff.). Cf. also ibid. 282, 20f., and
Kaʿbī, Qabūl 217, 1.
23 Ibid. 282, 5 and 10; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ IV 140, pu.
24 TB III 281, 15ff.; abridged in ʿUqaylī IV 141, 3ff. > Mīzān, loc. cit.
Iran 629
have not yet been edited.1 After the conquest the indigenous population staged
an uprising in 93/712 with the result that the walls were razed to the ground
and the greatest Sogdian temple converted into a mosque. The ancient cen-
tre, known as Afrāsiyāb, fell to ruin, the Muslims settling on the outskirts.2
In the countryside, however, several princely residences survived unscathed;
Panjikent with its magnificent frescoes being around 60 km to the east of
the city.3 Part of the past the Muslims adopted was a numerous Manichaean
community that had settled here, at a safe distance from the Sasanid central
government.4 The members called themselves Ṣābians when communicating
with the Muslims;5 the author of the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam, writing in 372/982–3, still
mentions a khānqāh in which they assembled.6 We have seen that Muqātil
b. Sulaymān was believed to have been qāḍī in Samarqand for a time – appar-
ently still during the first century.7 One source refers to his pupil ʿUmar b. Ṣubḥ8
with the nisba al-Samarqandī.9 One generation later we come across someone
who transmitted from Muqātil, but had probably not known him personally:
Abū Muqātil Ḥafṣ b. Salm10 al-Fazārī al-Samarqandī.
He had his roots in the city and introduced Abū Ḥanīfa’s ideas to Samarqand.
He edited conversations with Abū Ḥanīfa on the Murjiʾa’s fundamental dog-
matic position, extant under the title K. al-ʿālim wal-mutaʿallim.11 The dialogue
form is probably mostly literary; as Abū Muqātil died in 208/823, it is question-
able whether he even met Abū Ḥanīfa.12 However, there are reports that he
1 See Weinberger in: Arabica 33/1986/369ff.; also Rosenthal, Historiography 470 and 458.
2 Cf. EIran I 576f. s. v. Afrāsīāb.
3 The complex dates to around 700; cf. G. Azarpay in: EIran II 599f.
4 See vol. I 494 above; also Lieu, Manichaeism 186ff.
5 Bīrūnī, Āthār 209, 2/transl. 191. Was this the same mimicry as in Ḥarrān, or does this hide
attempts at infiltration?
6 Transl. Minorsky 113; cf. also Meier, Abū Saʿīd 312. For general information Utas in:
Festschrift Boyce 655ff.
7 See p. 575 above.
9 IAH III1 116f. no. 629.
10 Presumably not an incorrect spelling of Sālim (despite Khalīfa-i Naysābūrī, Talkhīṣ Taʾrīkh
Naysābūr 15.
11 Cf. Schacht in: Oriens 17/1964/97ff.; also R. al-Sayyid in: Al-fikr al-tarbawī al-islāmī 9ff.
12 The information that he lived to a very old age may merely reflect the desire to link him
to Abū Ḥanīfa. The date of his death was recorded by Tirmidhī. Cf. Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn
630 CHAPTER 3
also attended ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn’s (d. 151/768) lectures;13 indeed, he even trans-
mitted from ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd (d. 144/761), as well as other Qadarites such as Saʿīd
b. Abī ʿArūba.14 Of course, this was not necessarily based on direct personal
contact,15 but he does appear to have travelled widely in his youth. His mother
died in Mecca while he, too was in that city;16 at that time he heard hadith from
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Abī Rawwād.17 A visit to Nishapur is also documented.18 If we
are to believe a remark of Suyūṭī’s, he was a qāḍī;19 he certainly issued fatwās,
presumably in accordance with Abū Ḥanīfa’s teachings.20 His ascetic demean-
our (taqashshuf) was also noted.21
This interest in asceticism was noticeable in the K. al-ʿālim wal-mutaʿallim,
too. While all Murjiʾite texts speculate widely concerning faith,22 central con-
cepts of pietism and mysticism such as fear and hope were also examined in
their relation to God and humans.23 The rejection of the expression that a
sinner “obeys Satan”24 may be directed against the Bakriyya whose theology
also addressed ascetics.25 Unlike the Fiqh al-absaṭ this treatise is not linked
to hadith. Traditions are not used as arguments; some, in fact, are described
as abrogated.26 The style is rather elementary; the aim of the text being to ex-
plain its theological standpoint by means of popular comparisons and sim-
ple psychological observations.27 It appears rather more old-fashioned than
I 256, 9ff.; Ibn Rajab, Sharḥ ʿilal al-Tirmidhī 117, 10ff.; Mīzān no. 2120; Lisān al-Mīzān II 322ff.
no. 1322; TT II 397ff. no. 695; very briefly also IAH I2 174 no. 748.
13 TT, loc. cit.
14 Kardarī, Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa II 240, ult. f.; also Ibn Rajab 119, 6ff.
15 It is suspicious that he even transmitted from Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī (d. 131/749), whom he
simply could not have met (Ibn Rajab, Sharḥ 117, 12). Muqātil b. Ḥayyān, too, died in 135
(see p. 574 above).
16 Ibn Ḥibbān I 257, 1ff.
17 Lisān al-Mīzān II 322, pu. ff.; TT II 397, ult. ff.
18 Talkhīṣ Taʾrīkh Naysābūr, loc. cit.
19 Laʾālī I 99, 8, in the context of a hadith concerning the screaming of toddlers and its
deeper meaning.
20 Ibn Rajab 117, –6.
21 It is not very probable that Ibn Ṭahmān or, according to others, Ibn al-Mubārak spoke out
in praise of his asceticism (cf. Ibn Rajab 117, apu., and Ibn Ḥibbān I 256, 11f.). After all Ibn
al-Mubārak died 27 and Ibn Ṭahmān a whole 45 years before him.
22 Cf. vol. I 232ff.
23 P. 114, apu. ff.; also Schacht in: Oriens 17/1964/113f. no. 37f.
24 112, pu. ff. = Schacht 113 no. 35.
26 44, 1ff.; also Schacht 105f. and 101.
27 Schacht 101.
Iran 631
Fiqh al-absaṭ in more than one respect. There is no indication of Muʿtazilism,

but the opposition to the Ibāḍiyya, previously documented by Thābit Quṭna,
is tangible. The term kufr niʿma, characteristic of the Ibāḍites, is deliberately
interpreted differently;28 while loyalty and renunciation, which the Khārijites
always separated so cleanly, may apply to one and the same person.29 There is
no reason not to attribute it to Abū Muqātil.
The strange description of the Zoroastrian image of God as a trinity of

father, son, and female companion is remarkable (Schacht 115 no. 41). –
Abū Muṭīʿ al-Balkhī’s appearing instead of Abū Muqātil as Abū Ḥanīfa’s
interlocutor in some manuscripts (cf. the Aleppo edition, p. 29, n. 3) is
probably a later mistake. MS Brill 1144 no. 1, where this happens, names a
certain Majd al-Dīn Ibn Abī Jarāda (from Aleppo, where the family had
its home? cf. GIE I 544ff.) as the redactor. The Fiqh al-absaṭ, on the other
hand, is traced back from Nuṣayr b. Yaḥyā (see p. 603 above) to Abū Ḥanīfa
via Abū Muqātil instead of Abū Muṭīʿ in one Medinan manuscript, but
includes two intermediate stages there! (cf. Kawtharī, Taʾnīb 109, 10ff.).
This is probably the right place to add a theologian about whose personal life
we know nothing:
Abū l-Ṣabbāḥ b. Maʿmar al-Samarqandī.
He does not appear to have been a Ḥanafite; the relevant biographical works
definitely do not mention him. It is not certain whether he belonged in
Samarqand, either; we are going by the nisba. Ibn Ḥazm listed him together
with Abū Ḥāḍir from Nisibis, which looks, however, like a makeshift solution,
as it is in the appendix with all those theologians who could not be connected
to one particular sect.30 What linked the two was the belief in the eternal na-
ture of creation, although Abū l-Ṣabbāḥ had quite a specific idea: God sees
creation before him for all eternity like a dream vision.31 At that point it is
not yet reality; God holds only the creator’s word, the divine imperative, like
a logos. This is a counter-concept to Jahm’s idea that God was entirely isolated
in the beginning; he was never “idle” (fārigh; also: free of others).32 “Friend and
28 131, 7ff. = Schacht 115f. no. 45.

29 130, 1ff. = Schacht 115 no. 44.
30 Fiṣal IV 226, pu. ff.; cf. p. 531 above.
31 Text XIV 30, b, and 21.
32 Text 30, c.
632 CHAPTER 3
foe” were with him “from the very beginning”. This corresponds to Abū Ḥāḍir
and means, presumably, that he determined the salvation of the good and
the evil from the very beginning; Abū l-Ṣabbāḥ is unanimously designated a
predestinarian.33 However, it is said explicitly only with reference to Iblīs, who
was by no means a being of light who willed his own downfall, but was Satan
from the very first.34
Unlike Abū Ḥāḍir’s text, this one also contains legal niceties and political
theory. One must not marry women of the ahl al-kitāb and not eat meat slaugh-
tered by them.35 The combination of the two shows that this was based on a
discussion of sura 5:5. The verse had always been controversial, especially with
regard to the passage concerning the “fare” of the people of the book which was
permitted to Muslims; after all, according to sura 6:121 the basmala must be
recited during the slaughter. Abū l-Ṣabbāḥ presumably considered 5:5 to have
been abrogated.36 He does not seem to have minded that mixed marriages be-
came impossible; maybe his emphasis, like Muqātil b. Sulaymān’s, was on the
choice by faith. Power, too, appears to have been due to divine choosing; conse-
quently one must not rise up against someone who has been given dominion.37
This by no means implies that there could only ever be one person in power:
ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya, or Muʿāwiya and Ḥasan ruled together.38 ʿUthmān, how-
ever, was rightly murdered, and ʿAlī, too, should not have disputed Muʿāwiya’s
(co-)rule. Consequently ʿAlī’s confidant ʿAmmār b. Yāsir dying at Ṣiffīn was
not, as the Shīʿites said, a crime (baghy) committed in insurgency;39 according
to Abū l-Ṣabbāḥ Muʿāwiya may have acted in honest self-defence. Abū Bakr’s
merely enslaving the rebels of the ridda must also be criticised, together with
all those who agreed with it at the time. He should have had them executed, for
apostasy, fornication and murder as these – and only these, as emphasised by a
well-known hadith – are crimes punishable by death.
33 Thus Maqdisī in the heading of Text 31 (where the name is corrupted to al-Ṣabbāḥ
b. al-Samarqandī), Khwārizmī (Mafātīḥ 20, 4f.) and al-Ḥākim al-Jushamī in Text 30, a.
The idea is documented early on among the Khārijites in eastern Iran (see p. 651 and 664
below).
34 Text 30, c.
35 Ibid., d.
36 Regarding the problem cf. Jabrī, Al-naskh fī l-sharī ʿa ʿ al-islāmiyya 191f. Regarding the usual
solution cf. Ṭabarī, Tafsīr 3IX 572, –5ff.; Ṭūsī, Tibyān II 162, 11ff.; Zayd b. ʿAlī, Musnad 141,
10ff./99, –4ff.
37 Text 30, h.
38 Text 32. Cf. also p. 462ff. above regarding Aṣamm.
39 Text 30, f–g.
Iran 633
Text 30, e–f with commentary. – Like the preceding one, this interpreta-
tion is hypothetical to a degree. Ibn Ḥazm did not agree; he wrote that
Abū Bakr ought not to have fought against the ahl al-ridda (qitāl instead
of saby) and that those ṣaḥāba who did not follow him, acted correctly.
This, however, is only Ibn Ḥazm’s own interpretation; he appears to have
used the same source as Ḥākim al-Jushamī, whose account is more com-
prehensive. Consequently it is possible that qitāl is secondary as well.
An interesting passage in Tabṣirat al-adilla by Abū Muʿīn al-Nasafī informs us

of Ḥanafite theology in Samarqand,40 beginning in the middle of the third cen-
tury with
Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Isḥāq b. Ṣabīḥ al-Jūzjānī,
a second-generation pupil of Shaybānī’s who wrote a K. al-tawba.41 The Murjiʾa

had taken root42 in the Jūzjān region between the Murghāb and the Oxus on
the way to Samarqand;43 Aḥmad’s teacher Mūsā b. Sulaymān had also come
from there.44 His pupil Abū Naṣr Aḥmad b. al-ʿAbbās al-ʿIyāḍī, a descendant of
the prophet’s companion Saʿd b. ʿUbāda al-Anṣārī, became qāḍī of Samarqand
and was executed by the Turks after he joined a campaign under the Samanid
Naṣr b. Aḥmad (r. 261/874–279/892) and was taken prisoner; he had studied
the doctrine of the attributes of both the Muʿtazila and the Najjāriyya.45 At
the same time Muḥammad b. al-Yamān al-Samarqandī (d. 268/882) was po-
lemicising against the emerging Karrāmiyya; he also composed some other
kalām works.46 Abū Naṣr al-ʿIyāḍī’s son Naṣr b. Aḥmad, who was an important
jurist as well,47 had a pupil named Abū Salama Muḥammad b. Muḥammad
40 Critical edition by Muḥammad b. Tāvīt al-Ṭanjī in: İlah. Fak. Dergisi 4/1955, issue 1/3ff.
41 Ibid. 3, 3ff.; IAW I 60 no. 77, and II 246 no. 45.
42 Khallāl, Musnad 303, –8ff.
43 Cf. EI2 II 608f. s. v. D̲ j̲ūzd̲ jā̲ n.
44 Regarding him IAW II 186f. no. 580.
45 Abū l-Muʿīn 4, 5ff.; IAW I 70f. no. 117. In the transition between 4, 10 and 5, 1 a few words
appear to have been lost, going by the missing connection to the bibliography; the sen-
tence has been changed to mean the opposite.
46 Ibid. 7, 4ff.; because of one of them he was criticised by the physician al-Rāzī (see
ch. C 4.2.4.3 after Fihrist 358, –7, where the name must be corrected in accordance with
the Flügel edition 301, 8; cf. Flügel’s commentary, p. 146). His K. maʿālim al-dīn (GAS 1/600),
which survives in Mashhad, belongs in the field of fiqh, as I was able to determine. Cf. also
EIran I 264 s. v. Abū Bakr al-Samarqandī.
47 Regarding him IAW II 192f. no. 599.
634 CHAPTER 3
al-Samarqandī al-Bukhārī, whose K. jumal uṣūl al-dīn is extant.48 He was a con-

temporary of Māturīdī’s (d. 339/944?) who built on this development; the lat-
ter was also believed to have studied under Abū Naṣr al-ʿIyāḍī.49
This takes us beyond the period we intend to present here, but there are two
authors of the fourth century who must be named as they demonstrate that
even with and after Māturīdī the populist Murjiʾite theology of the past by no
means retreated into the shadows in Samarqand. The first one,
al-Ḥakīm al-Samarqandī,
(d. 342/953), had studied under Abū Naṣr al-ʿIyāḍī and composed his K. al-
sawād al-aʿẓam as a young man at the request of the Samanid Ismāʿīl b. Aḥmad
(279/892–295/907). The book, a Ḥanafite catechism written in a popular style,
survives in the original Arabic as well as a Persian translation dating to the time
of Nūḥ b. Manṣūr (366/976–387/997);50 however, all the extant versions were
redacted and emended subsequently. The Jahmites are still being attacked,
while Māturīdī did not devote much attention to them. They are joined by a
more immediate opponent, the Karrāmiyya; the Ḥakīm, although himself a
mystic according to his honorific, criticises their rigorous rejection of trade
and gainful employment.51 There have been attempts of turning him into a
pupil of Māturīdī’s, but there are not really many similarities. He was simply
a Murjiʾite; in his Risāla fī l-īmān juzʾ min al-ʿamal am lā? wa-murakkab am-lā?
he affirmed against the Muʿtazilites and the Khārijites that faith has nothing
to do with one’s actions and consequently cannot increase or decrease.52 This
48 Cf. GAS 1/607. Sezgin dates the author slightly too late. The relationship is confirmed by
the colophon of the MS Şehit Ali 1648, fol. 16b.
49 Cf. Madelung in EI2 VI 846 s. v. al-Māturīdī. Regarding the development of his school
cf. id., The Spread of Māturīdism and the Turks, in: Actas Coimbra 109ff.
50 Regarding the Arabic version cf. GAS 1/606. The Persian translation was edited by ʿAbd
al-Ḥayy Ḥabībī (Teheran 1348 SH/1969), but the text is also found in Maj. Dān. Adab.
Ṭahrān 6/1338 (1959)/57ff., and Yaghmā 16/1342/193ff. Cf. Tritton in JRAS 1966, p. 96ff.
(identifying the author incorrectly) and the dissertation by Farouq ʿOmar ʿAbdallāh
al-ʿOmar, The Doctrines of the Māturīdite School with special reference to as-Sawād al-aʿẓam
(Edinburgh 1974), discussing (p. 56ff.) the text in more detail including a translation into
English.
51 Cf. Madelung in EIran I 358f. with further references. Regarding the title al-Ḥakīm
cf. Radtke in: AS 42/1988/156ff. Being a member of the upper classes, a ḥakīm was not the
same as a ṣūfī.
52 Cf. Madelung in EIran 359a.
Iran 635
corresponds to Abū Ḥanīfa’s position.53 After all, he was no mutakallim, but the
aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth were not without influence in Samarqand. Around the middle
of the third century al-Dārimī, the author of Sunan, had been qāḍī in the city
for a brief time, although he retired immediately after his first official act.54 –
Ḥakīm al-Samarqandī’s popular style was continued in the next generation by
another Ḥanafite,
Abū l-Layth Naṣr b. Muḥammad al-Samarqandī,
(d. 373/893). His Tanbīh al-ghāfilīn, available to this day throughout the East in
cheap editions, even lived on in an Aljamiado version. His ʿAqīdat al-uṣūl was
very popular among Indonesian and Malay Muslims.55 It, too, spread Murjiʾite
ideas: faith is not “combined” as it is active as a light in the human heart and
brain, in the soul (rūḥ) and the body. It is uncreated when it is God’s guidance,
but created when it is human action, in agreement (taṣdīq) and profession of
faith (iqrār).56 Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī’s Tafsīr, a most extensive work, sur-
vives in the Chester Beatty Library.57
The position of qāḍī in the city remained the domain of the Ḥanafites until
the sixth century. Only once did a Shāfiʿite, the well-known Ibn Ḥibbān al-
Bustī (d. 354/965), break through their ranks;58 in his K. maʿrifat al-majrūḥīn
he showed quite plainly how much he loathed Murjiʾite–Ḥanafite thought.
He probably owed his career to the Samanids; Ismāʿīl b. Aḥmad (279/892–
295/907) had paid a Shāfiʿite from Nishapur, Muḥammad b. Naṣr al-Marwazī
(d. 294/906) an allowance,59 whereupon the latter composed a K. rafʿ al-ya-
dayn60 which presumably made quite clear to his opponents that they did not
even know how to pray properly.
53 See vol. I 223 and 231 above.

54 Cf. GAS 1/114; EI2 II 159 s. n.
55 Cf. my article in EIran I 332f.
56 Cf. A. W. T. Juynboll’s edition in: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van
Nederlandsch Indië, Ser. IV, vol. 5/1881, p. 273, pu. ff. According to ʿAbdallāh al-ʿOmar
the brief responsum Hal al-īmān makhlūq aw ghayr makhlūq? included under his name
in the MS British Museum, Add. 9509, fol. 162a–b, is in fact taken from the commentary
on Abū l-Layth’s Muqaddima fī l-ṣalāt composed by Muṣṭafā b. Zakariyyāʾ al-Qaramānī
(d. 809/1406); a translation is included in the abovementioned dissertation p. 219ff.
57 Catalogue Arberry I 3180, III 3668 and 3688. It has been edited by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Aḥmad
al-Ziqqa (1–3, Baghdad 1985).
58 Halm, Ausbreitung 108ff.
59 Ibid. 108; regarding him cf. GAS 1/494.
60 ʿAbbādī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya 49, 14f.
636 CHAPTER 3
Despite Ḥanafite dominance the religious landscape of Muslim Samarqand

must not be imagined as too monotonous. There was at least one important
Shīʿite author in the city around the turn of the fourth century:
Abū l-Naḍr Muḥammad b. Masʿūd b. Muḥammad al-Sulamī al-ʿAyyāshī,
Kashshī’s teacher. He was reported to be an Arab, a member of the Tamīm, and

had been a Sunnite early in his life until, as Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī put it, “his eyes
were opened”.61 It would be interesting to know how such a conversion could
have come about. Maybe his view of history was rearranged in Kufa, Baghdad
and Qom, where he seems to have travelled;62 in his Sunni period he had pub-
lished material on the biographies of the first four caliphs as well as Muʿāwiya.63
His son made sure that his books were not forgotten;64 Ibn al-Nadīm had ac-
cess to a long list of publications.65 He dedicated himself to legal subjects in
particular. The first half of his Tafsīr is extant; Ṭabrisī consulted it,66 but it has
not yet been studied.67
ʿAlī b. Yazīd al-Samarqandī, a scholar of the late third century, appears to

have been another original character. Ibn Manda transmitted interest-
ing ideas concerning the soul from him (Ibn Taymiyya, Sharḥ ḥadīth al-
nuzūl 92, 4ff.). However, he is not documented further.
3.1.2.5 Herat
Afghanistan was not a self-contained region in the early Islamic period. While
the conquering armies reached Kabul early on, this eastern part was only sub-
jected fully under the Ṣaffārids. The west under Herat was different. It was
overrun by the wave of invasion that went through Sijistān across the territory
of the Sasanid empire; the city became part of the province of Khorasan. One
of its inhabitants in the second quarter of the second century was
61 Fihrist 317, 4.

62 Ibid. 317, 5f.
63 Ibid. 320, 6ff.; while it is true that he wrote these books “drawing on Sunni sources” as
Poonawala says in EIran III 164a, it is based on an incorrect interpretation of the source
and misses the point.
64 Ibid. 320, 9f.
65 Fihrist 244, –6ff.; Ṭūsī transmitted from him (317, 8ff.).
66 Karīmān, Ṭabrisī wa Majmaʿ ul-bayān II 58f.
67 GAS 1/42. The work has been edited by Hāshim al-Rasūlī al-Maḥallātī, Qom n. d.; only
the first half, sura 1–18, is extant. Regarding the author cf. Lewis in EI2 I 794f., Poonawala
in EIran III 163f. and Madelung, Religious Trends 84f., as well as R. Ustādhī in: Risālat
al-Qurʾān 3/1411/43ff.
Iran 637
Abū Saʿīd Ibrāhīm b. Ṭahmān b. Saʿīd,1
known for the generosity with which he welcomed colleagues passing through,
providing them with food and accommodation.2 His house was located in the
village of Bāshān near the city: maybe he was a wealthy landowner. He had
travelled much, receiving his first education in Nishapur, but probably went
to Kufa early on, if we are to believe that he attended lectures by the jurist
Ḥakam b. ʿUtayba, who died in 115/733 at the very latest.3 He would also have to
have visited Basra quite early if he did indeed meet Qatāda (d. 117/735) in per-
son. It is not, however, necessary to presume this, as he may well have received
material from them second-hand but did not think it necessary to mention
the fact in his home in Khorasan; the biographical sources would be based
on the isnāds.4 It is certain that he sat at the feet of Mālik b. Anas – who was
probably slightly younger – in the Hijaz, as he dictated the material he had
learnt from him to Abū Ḥanīfa in Kufa on his way home.5 Later he decided to
travel the same road once again in order to complete the pilgrimage, breaking
his journey in Nishapur, because that was where the “Jahmites” had settled
and he wanted to debate with them.6 From there he moved on to Baghdad
where he delivered some lectures on hadith. This sojourn may have been be-
tween 158 and 160/774–76; at that time the caliph al-Mahdī doubled the salary
Ibn Ṭahmān received (for what position?).7 He arrived in Mecca in 160/776–77.
He would not leave the city again, and died there in 163/779.
Ibn al-Nadīm preserved four titles of books by him.8 His collections were
most valuable in Khorasan, where people were living rather at the back of
1 The last name occurs in Khalīfa-i Naysābūrī, Talkhīṣ 15, 8f. The form Shuʿba in TT I 129 no. 231
(> GAS 1/92) is probably misread from this; after all, Saʿīd is also part of the kunya. Ibn Ḥibbān,
Mashāhīr al-ʿulamāʾ 199 no. 1602, on the other hand, only has entirely isolated Abū ʿAmr.
2 TB VI 106, 11ff. Regarding this and further details cf. M. Tahir Mallick’s study Life and Works of
Ibrahim b. Tahman, in: Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 24/1976/1ff. Regarding the
sources cf. also GAS 1/92f.
3 Regarding him cf. vol. I 278ff.
4 Cf. the list of his “teachers”, Mallick 6ff.
5 IAH, Taqdima 3, –5ff. Regarding the hadiths he heard from Mālik cf. also Mallick 14ff.; they are
not all in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, and the isnāds differ.
6 TB VI 107, 15ff. (after Abū Dāwūd). He may also have married his daughter to someone in the
city; she was a distant ancestress of al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, who bore the nisba al-Ṭahmānī
for that reason (cf. Ṣarīfīnī, Al-muntakhab min Siyāq Taʾrīkh Naisābūr 5, ult.).
7 Crone and Hinds claimed that Manṣūr “admitted [Ibn Ṭahmān] into his majlis” (God’s
Caliph 84), although the sources they cite on the issue do not actually state this. It is simply
quoted after Nagel, Rechtleitung 100, which does not provide a source either.
8 Fihrist 284, –6.
638 CHAPTER 3
beyond; no-one had collected more material there than he.9 However, all this
was probably rather less amazing than it sounds, as the one extant manuscript
of his collection, which is in fact one of the oldest hadith collections anywhere,
in the Ẓāhiriyya library contains a total of 208 hadiths. Its title Mashyakha
was added later and is probably incorrect. Mallick tried to identify it as the
K. al-sunan in a most outlandish misspelling,10 while Azmi presumed that
the text contained the notes of his pupil Ḥafṣ b. ʿAbdallāh b. Rāshid al-Sulamī
al-Naysābūrī (d. 209/824)11 as transmitted12 by his son Aḥmad (d. 258/871).13
This is more probable as both names appear in the riwāya accompanying the
Damascus MS.14
Particularly interesting to us is the fact that Ibn Ṭahmān debated with the
Jahmites in Nishapur, apparently converting them to irjāʾ. His being a Murjiʾite
was recorded several times;15 he even believed that Noah had been a Murjiʾite,
too.16 It makes us wonder whether he found anything to convert in the Jahmites
in this respect. After all, according to their own concept of faith they, too, were
Murjiʾites. It is unlikely that their determinism was a problem for him, either,
as he does not seem to have held a strict view in the matter. He was not afraid
of transmitting from Qadarites,17 but the Damascus MS contains a number of
predestinarian hadiths.18 He probably argued with them concerning the ex-
istence of the divine throne and God’s location in heaven. The manuscript
contains some hadiths that demonstrate his rather realistic thoughts on these
issues;19 Abū Dāwūd adopted two of them with direct reference to Ibn Ṭahmān
into his collection of traditions, the Bāb fī l-Jahmiyya of the K. al-sunna.20 It
9 Azmi, Studies 138. Regarding the individual nusakh cf. ibid., Index s. n.; also Mallick 9ff.
10 Mallick 29 and earlier. He edited the text in RIMA 23/1977/241ff., using the text quoted
above largely unchanged as an introduction.
11 TT II 403 no. 703.
12 Studies 138.
13 TT I 24f. no. 33.
14 Cf. RIMA 23/1977/245. I do not know on what Mallick bases his claim that Ibn Ṭahmān
dictated his book in Nishapur in 158 (ibid. 242).
15 Kaʿbī, Qabūl 217, 2; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 56 no. 47; Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, Maʿrifa 136, 4ff.;
TB VI 106, 21; 107, 10 and 13; 108, 8f. and 12 etc.; Mīzān no. 116; TT I 129ff. no. 231. The story in
TB XIII 423, 11ff. also presumes this; when the news of Abū Ḥanīfa’s death reached Mecca,
Sufyān al-Thawrī is believed to have passed it on to Ibn Ṭahmān gleefully.
16 TB VI 107, 2ff.; ʿUqaylī I 56, –6ff.
17 Thus from e.g. Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī or Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba (Mallick 12; cf. also 13f. and 19).
18 Mallick 28.
19 E.g. no. 18, 21, and 140 in the edition.
20 Sunan II 276, 5ff., and 277, 5ff.
Iran 639
seems that Ibn Ṭahmān had indeed a rather favourable view of Jahm;21 indeed,
it is possible that he met him personally. – Another inhabitant of Herat, pre-
sumably younger,
Abū Bisṭām (?)22 al-Hayyāj b. Bisṭām b. al-Hayyāj b. ʿImrān al-Tamīmī

al-Ḥanẓalī
(d. 177/793), also spent a considerable amount of time in Nishapur and

Baghdad; like with Ibn Ṭahmān, his travels provide us with some idea of his
character.23 Al-Khaṭīb does not, however, mention his being a Murjiʾite; this
information went from Ibn Ḥibbān to Ibn Ḥajar.24 He was a jurist25 and
muḥaddith; the notebooks (nusakh) from Sufyān al-Thawrī and other “teach-
ers of the Arabs” (mashāyikh al-ʿArab) he possessed had scarcity value.26 He
had a great following in Baghdad, mainly, it was said, due to his eloquence.27
Another reason may have been that he welcomed and entertained scholars
and everyone interested in hadith most generously.28 He was a man with a
taste for life, sensual pleasures were important to him in this world as well as in
paradise.29 He was presumably wealthy; being a member of an Arab family he
probably owned land. He reported of his grandfather ʿImrān b. al-Fuḍayl that
he had been a member of a delegation to the prophet and died in the latter’s
presence.30 Still, we look for him in vain among the ṣaḥāba; he probably did
not become a Muslim.
The experts in Baghdad would later look at his hadith with some scepticism,
although they do not seem to have noticed his Murjiʾite views. In Herat they do
not appear to have been noteworthy at all, as Murjiʾism was a matter of course
there. His views were recorded only because a notorious Murjiʾite got his hands
on his material via his son Khālid, whose scholarly reputation was not of the
best:31 Ṣāliḥ b. Muḥammad, the qāḍī of Tirmidh and thus an influential man.
21 Abū Dāwūd, Masāʾil Aḥmad 269, 11ff.

22 Other kunyas were transmitted as well.
23 Khalīfa-i Naysābūrī, Talkhīṣ 17, 3f.; TB XIV 80ff. no. 7435.
24 Majrūḥīn III 96, 7 > TT XI 88, 9f.
25 TB XIV 82, 16f.
26 Al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, Maʿrifa 165, 5.
27 TB XIV 82, 8ff.
28 Ibid. 82, 17ff.
29 Ibid. 84, 15ff.
30 Ibid. 81, 19ff.; regarding the genealogy cf. 81, 15ff.
31 Cf. Mīzān no. 9287.
640 CHAPTER 3
Scandalous things (manākīr) were transmitted along this isnād.32 Sadly, no de-
tails survive. – In the case of
Mālik b. Sulaymān al-Saʿdī (?) al-Harawī
and his son ʿAbdallāh, who were both Murjiʾites according to Dāraquṭnī, cir-
cumstances were reversed.33 We know hardly anything about the persons, but
the text of one “scandalous” hadith is extant. I have discussed it elsewhere,34
but missed the point at that time. It is in the form of a heresiographical state-
ment: the prophet predicted that his intercession would not apply to two sects
at the Last Judgment: the Qadariyya and the Murjiʾa. As his audience did not,
of course, understand who these were, he had to define both more closely,
describing the Murjiʾites as “people who appear at the end of time and who,
when asked about faith, will reply ‘we believe, God willing’.” The point is that
these Murjiʾites were not true Murjiʾites but believers in istithnāʾ like those
found in Sufyān al-Thawrī’s circle,35 which means that the hadith had been
reversed at some point. In the older versions it was clearly the Murjiʾa itself
which was attacked – either without a definition36 or with a definition that
left no doubt of its identity;37 while here the thrust was turned against the
opponents.38 This could only have been done by Murjiʾites, and Mālik and his
son ʿAbdallāh were Murjiʾites, as the local scholars pointed out.39 So, in fact,
was the next link in the isnād, Maʾmūn b. Aḥmad al-Sulamī, a follower of Ibn
Karrām, whose Murjiʾite views are recorded elsewhere, too.40 We may assume
that they all enjoyed great esteem at home; it is very probable indeed in the
case of Maʾmūn b. Aḥmad.41 Mālik b. Sulaymān had, after all, been a judge in
32 TB XIV 83, ult. ff. Regarding him see p. 626f. above.
33 Lisān al-Mīzān III 330 no. 1370. The nisba al-Saʿdī is always linked to the son. Ibn Ḥibbān,
Majrūḥīn I 337, 9, has al-Masʿūdī.
34 HT 130f.
36 Thus Suyūṭī, Al-jāmiʿ al-ṣaghīr II 46, 11f.; cf. als HT 130.
37 Thus Faḍl b. Shādhān, Īḍāḥ 45, 1ff.
38 F. Kern already noted this in: ZA 26/1912/172, n. 3.
39 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 41, 6ff.; Shawkānī, Al-fawāʾid al-majmūʿa 452 no. 3.
40 Cf. my Ungenützte Texte 48ff. Ibn Ḥibbān I 337, 9f. does not go back to Mālik via ʿAbdallāh;
maybe the son was the true culprit (cf. also ibid. III 45, 10ff.). Another hadith of his is
found in Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 137, 11ff.
41 Ungenützte Texte, ibid.
Iran 641
his home city.42 He possessed hadith notes (one nuskha) by the Basran Shuʿba
b. al-Ḥajjāj (d. 160/776) to which nobody else in eastern Iran had access;43 we
can consequently date him to the second half of the second century.
Kināna b. Jabala b. al-Muʿallā al-Sulamī al-Harawī
lived around the same time. He was a true Arab and a pupil of Ibrāhīm b.
Ṭahmān’s of whom Ibn Ḥibbān tells us in passing that he was a Murjiʾite.44
He came from Pūshang near Herat.45 We learn from Ibn Abī Ḥātim that he
also wrote poetry,46 but Dhahabī would find hardly any information about
him later.47
These Murjiʾites did not necessarily have anything in common beyond their
concept of faith. After all, Abū Saʿīd al-Dārimī, who would fight the Jahmites
with such dedication, settled in Herat around the middle of the third/ninth
century. He was not battling with a phantom; their “boss” (zāʾim), whom he
had met in person,48 probably also lived in the city. They were possessed of a
healthy self-confidence, as they made it clear to him that the Jahmite doctrine
was not heresy but stayed within the boundaries of the acceptable doctrinal
divergence. On the other hand they seem to have accepted his two polemic
publications, Al-radd ʿalā l-Jahmiyya and Al-radd ʿalā l-Marīsī al-ʿanīd,49 with-
out trouble, and when he had to leave the city for a time it was not the Jahmites
but in fact the Karrāmites who had caused him trouble.50 They were prob-
ably more offended by the fact that he was not a Ḥanafite. He died in Dhū
l-Ḥijja 280/Feb. 894 in the city.51
42 Mīzān no. 7021; Lisān al-Mīzān V 4 no. 12. Brentjes is not quite sure of the father-son rela-
tionship (Imamatslehren 49), but thanks to the isnād there cannot be any doubt.
43 Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, Maʿrifa 165, 1.
44 Majrūḥīn II 229, 6ff.
45 Khalīfa-i Naysābūrī, Talkhīṣ 16, –6, the name entirely corrupt.
46 IAH III2 169 no. 966.
47 Mīzān no. 6979. Some additional information in Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān IV 490 no. 1559.
48 Radd ʿalā l-Jahmiyya 9, 12.
49 More information on this text in ch. C 2.4.1 and 6.3.2 below.
50 Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya II 304, 2.
51 For further details cf. EIran V s. v. Dārimī, Abū Saʿīd.
642 CHAPTER 3
In Al-radd ʿalā l-Jahmiyya Dārimī is the first to refer to the text discussed
briefly in vol. I 155f. which claims to be a letter from ʿUmar II against the
Qadarites (cf. Anfänge 132, also 153f. and 159). F. Zimmermann pointed
out to me that these parallels do not seem to attribute the text to ʿUmar.
If indeed the text was apocryphal, it would have acquired its final form
after the middle of the third century. More insights will be found in
F. Zimmermann’s article on the subject.
3.1.3 Sīstān
As opposed to the regions discussed so far, Sīstān, which bordered Afghanistan
to the southwest, had been part of the inner Iranian empire. Zoroastrianism
was firmly rooted here, and there were numerous fire temples.1 However, even
before the Arabs took possession of the region, the “Iranian Huns” had invaded
it.2 It was a country apart, whose settlement area had been wrested from the
desert and was dependent on canals and irrigation, and had shrunk temporar-
ily during the early Islamic period.3 Swamps had developed in many places;
the contract into which the Arabs entered with the inhabitants included the
condition that hedgehogs should not be hunted or killed as there were so
many snakes.4 To this day there are giant reedbeds in the endorheic lakes of
the Helmand-Rud and other rivers, in which fowlers and fishermen earn their
living.5 Nomads were not able to spread here; landed property was limited.
There were few larger towns, the main ones being Zarang which had been the
governor’s residence during the Umayyad era,6 and Bust.7

A number of Khārijites had settled outside the administrative centres; they
were divided into many small groups jealously guarding their respective id-
iosyncrasies. They did not live in the desert like their predecessors on the
Arabian peninsula, but in small towns where they pursued their trades. The
town of Kurink was entirely populated by them, and every one of them was a
1 Cf, Schippmann, Feuerheiligtümer 35ff.; regarding pre-Islamic history in general Gnoli,

Ricerche storiche sul Sistan antico (Rome 1967).
2 Göbl, Dokumente II 2.
3 Rahimi-Laridjani, Entwicklung der Bewässerungslandwirtschaft in Iran 373; cf. also 350ff.
4 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān IV 168, 5f.
5 Cf. the dissertation by G. Stöber, Die Ṣayād-Fischer (sic!) in Sīstān. Marburg 1981; general
information in Barthold, Historical Geography 66ff.
6 See p. 47 above; general information in Gnoli, 41ff.
7 Regarding this place see K. Fischer in: EIran IV 383ff. s. v. Bost.
Iran 643
weaver.1 In Farah there was a Khārijite and a Sunni quarter;2 in Juwayn their
numbers were so great that there was no pulpit in the chief mosque because
of them.3 They were influential in the country, too; Abū Yūsuf reports that they,
departing from the practice established under the first caliphs, treated Arab
and Iranian villages equally when it came to taxation.4 We should probably
imagine them as having been smallholders, too. The geographers and travellers
simply noticed them more in the cities. They were also recognisable by their
clothing.5
Farah and Juwayn were located in present-day Afghanistan, on the road to
Herat. The Khārijites did indeed advance as far as this; Ṭāhir b. Ḥusayn had
to take action against them near Pūshang early during his rule at the begin-
ning of the third century.6 At that time they had just gone through a rebellious
phase under Ḥamza b. Ādharak.7 Over long periods, on the other hand, they
kept quiet, and had been left alone as well. In Alabān, two days’ journey from
Ghazna on the road to Kabul, they controlled long-distance traffic across the
Hindu Kush; their princes bore an Arabic as well as an Indian name.8 Only fa-
natics like Ibn Ḥanbal called for a trade embargo.9 They had been in the country
since the first century. When Abū Fudayk had murdered Najda b. ʿĀmir in the
Yamāma in 70/690,10 one of the latter’s fellow tribesmen, ʿAṭiyya b. al-Aswad
al-Ḥanafī,11 who had worked with him,12 had fallen out with Abū Fudayk and
gone to Iran. He had a free hand there for some years; the second civil war
had tied up most of the forces, and later the Azraqites under Qaṭarī b. al-Fujāʾa
drew all the attention. He seems to have travelled widely; coins he had struck
1 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān IV 457b, –7. Karkōya, too, was purely Khārijite (ibid. III 190b,
–9f.).
2 Muqaddasī, Aḥsan al-taqāsīm 306, 2ff.
3 Ibid.; also Spuler, Iran 169, n. 7, and Rahimi-Laridjani, Bewässerungslandwirtschaft 376f.
Regarding the absence of a pulpit see p. 246f. above.
4 K. al-kharāj 172 § 81.
5 Yāqūt III 190b, –10. Cf. also Madelung, Religious Trends 69f.
6 Ṭayfūr, K. Baghdād 119, 3f./65, 7f.; also Al-ʿuyūn wal-ḥadāʾiq in: Fragmenta I 108, pu. ff.
8 Yāqūt I 244a, 4ff.
9 Khallāl, Musnad 34, 1ff.
10 Regarding the date cf. Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 338, 2f.; general information in Wellhausen,
Oppositionsparteien 32.
11 Ṭabarī gives him the nisba al-Yashkurī instead (II 517, 10). Both tribes belonged to the fed-
eration of the Bakr b. Wāʾil.
12 Ashʿarī pointed out occasional differences (Maq. 91, 10ff.); he did not introduce a new
doctrine (ibid. 92, 15ff.).
644 CHAPTER 3
in his name survive from Kerman.13 Ashʿarī said he went to Sijistān,14 while
Shahrastānī, possibly after Yamān b. Riʾāb, located his followers in Khorasan
and Qūhistan as well;15 according to Maqrīzī he was even active in Marv.16
Muhallab’s troops killed him as he fled to Sind.17
The next one to appear was
ʿAbd al-Karīm b. ʿAjrad.18
It was not quite clear where he came from, but he does not seem to have been
a refugee, but rather from an Arab family settled in Iraq.19 Baghdādī calls him
a follower of ʿAṭiyya’s;20 this may be his interpretation of Ashʿarī’s systematic
arrangement.21 However, two pages on, Ashʿarī points out that he was also
linked with Abū Bayhas who was executed in Medina in 94/713. He also ex-
plains the concrete cause of the rift: Ibn ʿAjrad did not share Abū Bayhas’ view
on the issue, much debated among the Khārijites, of whether it was permit-
ted to sell a female slave to “unbelievers”, i.e. those who were not Khārijites.22
This may well merely be an etiological legend to explain some later opposition
between schools of which we know nothing further as far as the ʿAjārida were
concerned. There were Bayhasites in Iran.23 That the two could be linked dem-
onstrates at least that the abovementioned similarities between ʿAṭiyya and
Ibn ʿAjrad may not have gone any deeper than both being active in the same
region one after the other; there may not have been any doctrinal agreement.
13 Walker, Arab–Sassanian Coins lxf. and 111f.; Gaube, Arabosasanidische Numismatik 42
and 66.
14 Maq. 93, 2.
15 Milal 92, ult. f./217, 4f.; but cf. the remark by Gimaret, Livre des Religions 385, n. 32.
16 Khiṭaṭ II 354, 26f.
17 Balādhurī, Ansāb in Ahlwardt, Anonyme Chronik 135, –5f. Cf. also Baghdādī, Farq 67,
4ff./88, 1f.; Nashwān, Ḥūr 170, apu. ff.; Ābī, Nathr al-durr V 231, 4.; Wellhausen 30f.;
Bosworth, Sīstān 87f.; Składanek, Doktryny 146; Madelung, Religious Trends 57f.
18 Regarding the reading of the name cf. Gimaret, Livre 394, n. 2.
19 It was debated whether he or Maymūn – whom we will discuss below – grew up in Balkh
(Nashwān, Ḥūr 171, 3f.; Ashʿarī, Maq. 95, 9f. is corrupt and should probably be corrected
accordingly).
20 Farq 72, pu. f./93, ult. f.; similar Ābī, Nathr al-durr V 231, 5.
21 Maq. 93, 3.
22 Ibid. 95, 10ff.; cf. 113, 5ff., and p. 248 above. Also Shahrastānī (Text VIII 8, b), but without
mentioning the point at issue.
Iran 645
We have no foundation for this in any case as the “ʿAṭawiyya” remained

an unknown quantity for the heresiographers,24 while there was some infor-
mation on Ibn ʿAjrad and his followers, especially in Shahrastānī, once again
maybe after Yamān b. Riʾāb. They were true puritans, but not quite as fanatical
as their predecessors. They did not hold it against those among their fellow-be-
lievers who refrained from actively participating in the uprising, as long as they
did not criticise the religious motivation for it. They understood that someone
living with non-Khārijites could not simply break with them; the exodus (hijra)
is not an absolute commandment, but merely a commendable act (faḍīla). Of
the earlier uncompromising attitude they retained the severity against them-
selves; anyone committing a mortal sin became an unbeliever. They seem to
have been very prudish; it was said that they did not wish to see “love stories”
such as the sura of Josef in the Quran.25 Ashʿarī was barely able to imagine that
people could ever have been so strict; he emphasised that he had not checked
the report.26 However, the rigorous attitudes were probably characteristic of
this early time and the peripheral location; the style of the quṣṣāṣ blurred the
differences between original text and exegesis. Furthermore, due to its cohe-
sive narrative structure the sura of Josef was quite distinct from other Quranic
texts. Muqātil b. Sulaymān showed how far it could be elaborated. And there
were quṣṣāṣ who went even further than he: Ibn al-Jawzī noted in mesmerised
outrage that one of them claimed that Josef undid his trousers in front of
Potiphar’s wife.27
The inward turn, away from the exclusive self-assurance of the early days,
reveals itself especially in connection with the fundamental Khārijite problem
of how to classify children, and how to treat them. Until now this had been a
matter for martial law; people had been murdered in large groups, and been
condemned collectively.28 The ʿAjārida rethought this attitude, and, character-
istically, first of all by looking at themselves, rather than at the “unbelievers”.
People must profess “Islam”, i.e. Khārijism, consciously in order to be “believers”.
Consequently a child cannot simply grow into the community but, on reach-
ing majority, will have to be called to “Islam” and must then “describe” it by
professing the faith. The ʿAjārida preached a kind of adult baptism, but before
24 Maqrīzī was the only one who discussed their teachings (Khiṭaṭ II 354, 27ff.); but he sim-
ply quoted what Baghdādī said of Najda b. ʿĀmir (Farq 68, 5ff./89, 4ff.).
25 Text VIII 8, f–i.
26 Maq. 96, 1f.
27 Al-quṣṣāṣ wal-mudhakkirīn 10, 13f.; thus e.g. Muqātil b. Sulaymān (cf. Gilliot in:
JA 179/1991/70). In Faḍl b. Shādhān’s view, this was simply a hadith (Īḍāḥ 22, 1; cf. ibid. n. 1).
646 CHAPTER 3
this could take place, one must “renounce” the children as they are not yet
Muslims, let alone believers. The problem was this “before”. It probably re-
ferred to the time between reaching intellectual capacity and professing the
faith; it is possible that, as with the confirmation practised by some Christian
denominations, they waited for a certain point in time, such as reaching ma-
jority. However, the heresiographers do not always make this entirely clear, fre-
quently making it sound as though parents should renounce their children at
birth. That this was unlikely is shown by a remark of Shahrastānī’s: the children
of idolaters (mushrikūn) are in the fires of hell together with their parents. The
collective view had not been abolished, and we may safely infer that the chil-
dren of Khārijites would enter paradise with (or like) their parents – as long as
they died as children. Only once they had crossed the threshold to adulthood
would the “collective” cease to be sufficient justification.29
All the same: those who made salvation dependent on a conscious act, the
response to a “calling”, could hardly evade the postulate of individual respon-
sibility. Everything had been so simple under martial law. In a battle, matters
were usually settled quickly; at the end, everyone was dead, children as well
as parents. If survival was considered, the children were the most likely. With
the view on the status of salvation shifting, the problem was reversed; now the
case under consideration was that children might die while their parents lived
on. The parents still had the opportunity to convert, but not so the children.
What, people wondered, would happen if the parents did convert after one
of their children had died? The child had been an unbeliever before it died;
would it now post mortem be included into beatitude with its parents – after
all, the Last Judgment was still in the future – or would it remain damned?30
This, they realised, was an extreme case that could be generalised. One did not
need to presume that the child died; the problem arose as soon as someone
joined the community with his family. A follower of Ibn ʿAjrad’s would have
to demand of them as he demanded of himself: that the neophytes’ children
must profess their “Islam” themselves. They would not “have” Islam until they
were called and had accepted; otherwise they would be “unbelievers”.
This view was enough for the heresiographers to postulate a separate “sect”.
While we may feel inclined to put this down to their overly developed sense of
tidiness, they did have a concrete reason. If children were not Muslims at any
point, there would be legal consequences: one could not say the prayer for the
dead over them, and they could not be married before reaching majority – or
29 Cf. Text VIII 8, c–d, with commentary on c. Ibn Ḥazm gave the correct interpretation,
supported by the way in which Malaṭī formulated the Thaʿāliba’s opposing position (Text
VIII 10). Regarding the following cf. also, briefly, Watt in: Der Islam 36/1961/228f.
30 Text VIII 9, b–f.
Iran 647
rather, before professing the faith.31 The ʿAjārida shrank from this. While the
generalisation had been prepared by Ibn ʿAjrad, the details were probably
thought out later by his followers. The man who helped the “sect” mentioned
above to acquire its name was presumably
ʿUthmān b. Abī l-Ṣalt,
as Ashʿarī and, Maqrīzī and Ābī after him, recorded. Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī
and Shahrastānī also named his brother Ṣalt b. Abī l-Ṣalt as an alternative.
Baghdādī uses the, probably contaminated, form Ṣalt b. ʿUthmān.32 Our deci-
sion is based on the probability that ʿUthmān was a brother of ʿUmar b. Abī
l-Ṣalt b. Kannārā, who was sub-governor in Rayy after 80/700, and who after
the collapse of Ibn al-Ashʿath’s uprising took command of the remnants of the
fleeing army to face Qutayba b. Muslim. According to Ṭabarī he then fled to
Sīstān,33 while Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ reports that he was already killed by Qutayba
in 82, together with his father Abū l-Ṣalt and his brother Ṣalt b. Abī l-Ṣalt.34 He
came from the class of the dihqāns; consequently while formally a mawlā, he
was presumably very powerful.35 His brother ʿUthmān was probably the only
one who escaped; he would have formulated his doctrine rather later.36 – The
opposing position was represented by
Thaʿlaba,
who may have been called Thaʿlaba b. Mushkān, as Baghdādī said,37 or

Thaʿlaba b. ʿĀmir, as recorded by Shahrastānī.38 He considered it to be absurd
and unnatural that parents should “renounce” their children. Malaṭī presented
31 Thus only Ḥanafī, Firaq muftariqa 27, –4ff.; but Malaṭī 136, ult./179, 14.
32 Ashʿarī, Maq. 97, 3ff.; Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 355, 12f.; Ābī, Nathr al-durr V 232, pu. f.; Ḥanafī, loc.
cit.; Nashwān, Ḥūr 171, pu. ff.; Shahrastānī 96a, 1ff.; 227, 1ff.; Baghdādī, Farq 76, 11ff./97, apu.
ff.; Ibn al-Dāʿī, Tabṣira 40, –5ff.; Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Munya 32, 12ff. All these are based on one
and the same source. In brief also Maqdisī, Badʾ V 138, ult. f.; only Ṣalt.
33 II 1119, 3ff.; cf. also Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 368, 5ff.
34 Taʾrīkh 374, 3ff.; Khalīfa has ʿAmr instead of ʿUmar every time.
35 Ṭabarī II 1019, ult. f.
36 If Ḥanafī (Firaq muftariqa 27, apu.) were correct in saying ʿUthmān b. al-Ṣalt b. Abī l-Ṣalt,
we would be looking at a nephew; however, it is probably only another contamination.
A different view: Składanek, Doktryny 139.
37 Farq 80, 4/100, 13 > Isfarāʾīnī, Tabṣīr 55, 9/57, 3; also Ḥanafī, Firaq 21, 6f.
38 Milal 98, 1/235, 3; also Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 355, 14. Madelung believes these to be one and
the same person with Mushkān adopting the name ʿĀmir after his conversion (Religious
Trends 59, n. 24).
648 CHAPTER 3
it beautifully, clad in a rhetorical question. How can one treat young lads as
unbelievers if they have taken part in the communal prayer for a long time;
who even attend religious debates and who may show that they have reached
puberty – only because they have not officially professed Islam?39 Children are
part (baʿḍ) of their parents, they are an element (rukn) of them; consequently
they cannot be separated in the afterlife.40 This was the old-established point
of view – with a small but significant reservation: if the adolescents openly
denied the truth or agreed to an injustice, loyalty must come to an end.41 Thus
in theory at least, they determined their own behaviour.
The contrast would later be explained through an anecdote. A certain ʿAbd
al-Jabbār asked for Thaʿlaba’s daughter’s hand in marriage, demanding a dowry
of 4000 dirhams. This was no small sum, and consequently he entrusted the
bride viewer – whose name was also still known – with the message that the
sum was negotiable in case the girl was of age and had professed Islam, i.e.:
he would be willing to pay good money for a true Khārijite. The mother was
outraged: her daughter had never been anything but a true Muslim; the fa-
ther tried to calm matters. At this point Ibn ʿAjrad intervened; in his view, ʿAbd
al-Jabbār was, of course, right; Thaʿlaba withdrew his allegiance: “We insist
on being loyal to her (i.e. having the same faith status as the daughter), even
though she has not yet been called or become acquainted with Islam”.42
There were still followers of Thaʿlaba’s in the area around Nishapur in the
second half of the second century.43 They did not necessarily adhere to his
rather old-fashioned ideas, as the heresiographers are not entirely certain
whether they should maybe attribute a different doctrine to him that followed
39 Text VIII 10. The wording presumes that reaching puberty by means of the dream of
maturity does not imply being admitted into the community; this required a celebration
of profession.
40 Nashwān, Ḥūr 172, 4f.; Ashʿarī, Maq. 100, 14f., both after the same source, possibly Kaʿbī.
Ashʿarī appends the passage at the end, having previously defined the Thaʿlabiyya’s point
of view differently (97, 7ff.; see below). Rukn, of course, also means “close relations”
(cf. Lane, Lexicon 1149a), but the meaning “element, essential component” seems to be
more appropriate here. It is mainly found in alchemy (see ch. C 3.2.2.2.1.3.1).
41 Baghdādī, Farq 80, –6/101, 4f.; Shahrastānī 98, 2f./235, 6f. Cf. also Ashʿarī, Maq. 116, 1f.
42 Ashʿarī, Maq. 112, 7ff.; abridged and less clear in Baghdādī, Farq 80, 7ff,/100, apu. ff. The
translated sentence should in my opinion be emended in accordance with MS q: nathbutu
ʿalā walāyatihā wa-in lam tudʿa wa-lam taʿrif al-islām. Ritter’s reading results in the oppo-
site meaning and does not fit the framework. The suitor is probably the person named
previously with the extended name ʿAbd al-Jabbār b. Sulaymān, in which case he, too,
would have formed a party: he did not permit marrying into non-Khārijite families.
43 Baghdādī, Farq 79, 2/99, –6f.; see p. 657 and 664 below.
Iran 649
the trend or was, in fact, progressive: children are fundamentally neutral, what-
ever their parents believe, until they themselves profess the faith.44 This may
have been the view of his later followers; others merely regarded it as that of
another sect of the ʿAjārida, whose founder was unknown.45
The reason why the front started moving within the Thaʿlabiyya was that it
made allowances in a related issue, too: the question of predestination. God
wills the actions of humans, they said, but he does not create them, or prede-
termine them.46 Unfortunately the sources do not provide elucidation, but we
are at least able to follow the developing discussion. The more independence
children were allowed, the more one wondered whether they would then shape
their own fortunes vis-à-vis God. The traditional position was represented by a
contemporary of Ibn ʿAjrad’s, a certain
Shuʿayb b. Muḥammad,
a determinist who did, however, as Shahrastānī assures us, emphasise human

responsibility. God creates his servants’ actions, but they also will them. The
willing of individual acts is human (irāda), but above it is God’s will (mashīʾa),
without which nothing happens.47 He was contradicted by
Maymūn b. Khālid,48
who may have come from Balkh and whose followers would be found in Sīstān
and Khorasan for some time to come.49 He believed in free will with all the
consequences this might have for the image of God: God only wills the good;
44 Thus Ashʿarī, Maq. 97, 7ff (despite 100, 14f.); Abū Muṭīʿ, Radd 70, apu.; as an alternative in
Shahrastānī 98, 3ff./235, 6ff.
45 Thus Nashwān, Ḥūr 172, 2f.; Baghdādī, Farq 76, –5ff./98, 1ff.; Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 191, 6f.
Shahrastānī 96, 5ff./227, 4ff., names it as having been taught by some followers of ʿUthmān
b. Abī l-Ṣalt.
46 Tahdkirat al-madhāhib 126, pu. f.; Abū Muṭīʿ, Radd 70, –4 (correspondingly, read yaqḍī
rather than y.n.q.ṣ); abridged also Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs Iblīs 19, 7.
47 Thus Milal 97 a, 10ff./232, 7ff., which is the only source of the entire name. In less detail
Ashʿarī, Maq. 94, 6ff.; Baghdādī makes a link with the Khāzimiyya which probably needs
to be inverted chronologically (Farq 74, 7ff./94, 7ff.).
48 Thus according to Shahrastānī 96b, 1/228, 2; Maqrīzī has Maymūn b. ʿImrān (II 354, apu.).
This Maymūn is not identical with the other one who was so excited by his colleague
Ibrāhīm selling a female slave (thus explicitly Baghdādī, Farq 87, 6f./107, –4r.; cf. p. 248
above). Differently: Watt, Free Will 34 and 40.
49 Nashwān, Ḥūr 171, 3f. and 8f.; also Ashʿarī, Maq. 95, 9f.
650 CHAPTER 3
the mashīʾa invoked by Shuʿayb does not encompass sin. The child of an “idola-
ter” will go to paradise if it dies before reaching its majority; it would not have
been able to sin consciously.50 Tradition traced the argument back to an event
reported in anecdotal relief: Shuʿayb, the determinist, owed Maymūn money.
When the latter asked for it, he said he would give it to him “God willing”. In
Maymūn’s ears, this sounded like an empty promise, and he pointed out that
God only ever wills what he commanded and, we must add, he commanded
that people must pay their debts. As they were unable to agree, they called
Ibn ʿAjrad to mediate, although he was not easy to reach, having been put into
prison by Khālid al-Qasrī. This gives us a date for the event: it must have taken
place before 120/738.51 Ibn ʿAjrad responded in writing – and slightly evasively:
“We have taught: whatever God wills, will happen, and whatever he does not
will, will not happen. We do not ascribe any evil to God”. Unfortunately it was
not possible to ask him to elucidate as he had died, presumably in prison, by
the time the letter arrived. Both parties felt confirmed in their view.52
What this meant was probably: the polarisation was new. Ibn ʿAjrad was far
from the scene of events and did not have a view of the development as a
whole. His writings were not specific. It seems furthermore that – unlike the
heresiographers – none of those involved thought of predestination: God’s will
is not eternal but it accompanies human action. At this point Shuʿayb’s “God
willing” acquires its full meaning. He defends himself with the sentence: if God
had willed me to repay the money, I could not have done otherwise.53 From the
lips of a predestinarian this argument would have sounded like sophistry; only
if God wills actions at the moment they are initiated is it logical to say that he
has not willed them in the past, as they have not taken place, but that he may
will them in the future.54 Of course we cannot rule out that the whole story was
50 Shahrastānī 96b, 2ff./228, 4ff.; more generally put and presumably in reflection of
Shuʿayb: Ashʿarī (cf. Text VIII 11, a–e and commentary; also Text VIII 9, i). If Tadhkirat
al-madhāhib 128, 1, says that in the eyes of the Maymūniyya faith without actions was
worthless, this is a consequence of the Qadarite approach, but may well be a retrospective
inference.
51 If we assume that he was not taken to Iraq but imprisoned somewhere in Khorasan
or maybe in Marv, we are able to delimit further: Khālid al-Qasrī ruled the province
of Khorasan twice through his brother, between 105 and 108, and later just before 120
(cf. Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 537, 1ff.). The source says “Khālid b. ʿAbdallāh al-Bajalī’; Khālid al-Qasrī
was a member of the Bajīla.
52 Text VIII 11, i–p. Cf. also the interpretations in Watt, Free Will 32ff., and E. Salem, Political
Theory 41f.; also Madelung, Religious Trends 62f., and Składanek, Doktryny 139f.
53 Text VIII 11, l.
54 The Thaʿlabite doctrine mentioned earlier is also best understood like this.
Iran 651
simply a clever fiction. – The step to the doctrine of predestination was taken
by someone else, by
Khāzim b. ʿAlī.
God, he said, has loved his “friends” (awliyāʾ) since the beginning of time; he
predestined them for the faith, even if they should spend most of their lives
in unbelief. His enemies, on the other hand, he has hated from the beginning;
they will ultimately lapse into unbelief, however long they were believers.
God’s friendship (walāya) and his enmity are attributes of essence (ṣifāt al-
dhāt) and thus did not originate within time.55 The choice of these two at-
tributes is most characteristic; they correspond to the two words in which the
Khārijites comprised their relationship with their fellow-humans: walāya (or
tawallī) and barāʾa. Khāzim does not presume a general doctrine of the attri-
butes; in the wake of the shift of emphasis described he simply transferred
something that had been discussed on the human level, onto God.
Later theologians, e.g. Abū l-Ṣabbāḥ al-Samarqandī, took this idea further.56
At the time, however, it was original and forward-looking; by including the idea
of eternity in past and future in his “system”, Khāzim proposed the best alter-
native to Maymūn’s extreme and rather simplistic Qadarite standpoint within
the framework of the theological development overall. Consequently it is no
coincidence that these two groups were the ones who lived on, and that other
teachings of theirs have been transmitted to us. Baghdādī informs us that the
Khāzimiyya made up the majority of the ʿAjārida in Sīstān.57 They did not ex-
press their views on ʿAlī,58 presumably for political reasons as Abū Muslim was
not far, maybe also because they did not know whether ʿAlī, in spite of all his
“unbelief”, had not been chosen by God after all. Political prudence (taqiyya)
was not usually their strong point; they prohibited the hajj because it meant
55 Ashʿarī, Maq. 96, ff. (correction on p. 689); Baghdādī, Farq 73, 10ff./94, 12ff.; Shahrastānī 97b,
10ff./233, 9ff.; Ābī, Nathr al-durr V 232, 7f.; Samʿānī, Ansāb V 13, 1ff.; Nashwān, Ḥūr 171, 13f.
(read ijbār instead of aḥbār). The complete name is once again only listed in Shahrastānī.
The reading ultimately remains unconfirmed. The Cureton edition has Khārim, while
Ashʿarī, Baghdādī Nashwān, Samʿānī, Ābī and Abū Muṭīʿ (Radd 71, 11f.). Maqdisī has Ḥāzim
instead (Badʾ V 134, ult.), thus also Badrān in his edition of Shahrastānī, Pseudo-Nāshiʾ
(Uṣūl 69, where I read Khāzimiyya three times against the MS), Maqrīzī (Khiṭaṭ II 355, 7),
Ibn al-Jawzī (Talbīs 19, 8), and Tadhkirat al-madhāhib (127, 1). Khwārizmī uses the form
Shuʿayb b. Khāzim, which is probably contaminated (Mafātīḥ 19, 9).
57 Farq 73, 6/94, 8.
58 Shahrastānī 97b, apu. ff./234, 6ff.
652 CHAPTER 3
dissembling in the company of other Muslims – after all, one would be obliged
to pray behind someone whom one did not recognise as a Muslim at all. Jaʿfar
b. Ḥarb (?), who reported this, counted the Khāzimiyya among the Azraqites,
maybe because they did not accept stoning as punishment for fornication,
either;59 they followed only the Quran. As a consequence they also relaxed the
rules of marriage: while it was not allowed to marry two sisters, it was allowed
to marry a woman and her aunt either on the mother’s or the father’s side.60
Conveniently, aunts were not mentioned in the verse sura 4:23 on which this
was based.
Predestination in connection with the idea that the status of salvation

may be unknowable until the end is also found in the group around a cer-
tain Abū Mukram (after Ashʿarī, Maq. 100, 7ff.; Nashwān, Ḥūr 172, ult. ff.;
Baghdādī, Farq 82, 9ff./103, 1ff. > Isfarāʾīnī, Tabṣīr 56, 8/58, 6, and Ābī, Nathr
al-durr V 233, pu. f.), or Mukram b. ʿAbdallāh al-ʿIjlī (thus Shahrastānī 99,
12ff./241, 2ff.), also with Shaybān b. Salama (regarding him see p. 662ff.
below). The latter provides us with a terminus ante quem. More informa-
tion p. 543 above and ch. C 4.1.1.1 below.
The same Quranic verse also gave the Maymūniyya food for thought. They
concluded that while, as it says quite clearly, one must not marry one’s daugh-
ter or niece, a granddaughter or great-niece would be permissible.61 This may
be due to Iranian influence;62 after all, it was around this time – 150/767 –
that Ustādhsīs appeared with his syncretistic ideas. He had originally been a
Khārijite himself, and during his uprising he allied himself with the Khārijites
59 See vol. I 42 above. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī reported a Khārijite argument in this question
(Maḥṣūl II1 482, 4ff.); as it is directed against jurists who worked with hadiths, it may well
have been formulated by the Khāzimiyya.
60 Pseudo-Nāshiʾ, Uṣūl 69 § 120. After the MS l. 10, qāma must be altered here in aqāma, and
l. 12 nikāḥ in inkāḥ. Cf. also Madelung, Religious Trends 63f., and Składanek, Doktryny 140f.
61 This is based on a remark by Karābīsī repeated everywhere (Nashwān, Ḥūr 171, 5ff.;
Baghdādī, Farq 75, 4f./96, 7f.; Shahrastānī 96b, 7ff./228, 10ff.; Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 190, 11ff.;
presumably also Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 355, 1f. and Ḥanafī, Firaq muftariqa 24, 9f.). Ashʿarī
referred it, presumably erroneously, also to the ʿAjārida (Maq. 95, 12ff.). Maqdisī pro-
vided a justification: after all, the next verse says explicitly that God permits everything
not listed before (Badʾ V 138, 5ff.). However, it was possible to argue over the connection
between sura 4:23 and 4:24. From the Khārijite point of view the argument was unneces-
sary in any case. Regarding Karābīsī see ch. C 6.3 below.
62 Thus Watt in: Der Islam 36/1961/229. Prepared by Baghdādī, Farq 264f./280f., who would
like to excommunicate the Maymūniyya because of this affinity.
Iran 653
again.63 However, it could be explained primarily on an inner-Islamic level. It

is interesting that being faithful to scripture did not prevent the ʿAjārida from
rejecting entire suras. The Maymūniyya was believed to have rejected sura 42,64
presumably because it contained too many determinist statements.65 The re-
definition of their relationship with non-Khārijites may have been due to the
same reason: they had to be fought, but not those who only served the au-
thorities against their will. Only collaborators are true enemies: spies, scouts
or ideologists, and critics of Khārijism.66 Becoming an enemy requires a con-
scious decision. On the other hand the Maymūniyya appears to have been
prepared to follow the head of the entire Muslim communion under certain
conditions: the caliph had to recognise Abū Bakr and reject ʿAlī. He could even
be a Quraysh; the circle of eligible persons was widened by Khārijite political
theory – but he had to be elected by people who enjoyed the full confidence
of the Khārijites (ahl maḥabbatinā).67 And thus the suggestion was shown to
be utopian.
Of course there was also the realisation that it was not possible to be always
waging war. The trend to moderation probably spread when the authorities
grew stronger once more after the Abbasids had assumed power. The reasons
given were secondary. In the view of the Khāzimiyya, too, an enemy was some-
one who said “No” deliberately, as all humans are “excused” as long as they have
not been “called”. To them this was the corollary of a sweeping concept of faith:
“religion” consists of duties (waẓāʾif) and norms (sharāʾiʿ), but these are not
known in advance and have to be conveyed. Later ears heard “converting the
heathen”, and the doxographers expressed it like that, too;68 but it was prob-
63 It is uncertain whether Ustādhsīs was able to make guarantees to the Zoroastrians under
these conditions. Daniel regarded his movement as a peasants’ revolt with mainly worldly
motives (Khurasan 133ff.; but cf. Spuler, Iran 197, and Scarcia-Amoretti in: CHI IV 497ff.).
64 After Maqdisī 138, 7f. together with the sura of Josef (cf. further information in the com-
mentary on Text VIII 8, i).
65 E.g. verse 8 and especially verse 44ff.
66 Shahrastānī 96b, –7ff./229, 3ff. (regarding the text cf. the remarks by Gimaret, Livre 393);
Nashwān, Ḥūr 171, 4f.; Baghdādī 75, 5ff./96, 8ff.; Ashʿarī cites the passage in a different con-
text by accident (Maq. 94, 1–3).
67 Ḥanafī, Firaq muftariqa 24, 10ff.; less clear also Abū Muṭīʿ, Radd 78, 4f., and Ibn al-Jawzī,
Talbīs 19, pu. f.
68 Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs 19, 8; Tadhkirat al-madhāhib 127, 1f. Following these, Abū Muṭīʿ,
Radd 71, 12ff. can be corrected in places. In particular read waẓāʾif instead of waṣāʾif (!).
Regarding waẓīfat al-dīn see p. 668 below; regarding sharāʾiʿ cf. Schacht in EI1 IV 344f. and
ch. D 0 below.
654 CHAPTER 3
ably meant to refer to the “call” to Khārijism. After all, the Khāzimiyya had its
own opinion when it came to the law. – The followers of a certain
Akhnas b. Qays
reached a similar conclusion. While we do not learn anything about their ar-
gumentation, we are once again told that it is only permitted to fight someone
after one has ‘called him to Islam. Only someone known to be an unbeliever
may be fought. This condition is not usually met when dealing with Muslims,
where ἐποχή must be observed. We are looking at a group that believed itself
to be an endangered minority and defined its environment as dār al-taqiyya.
They avoided any kind of terrorism, assassinations as well as night-time raids.
Interestingly they permitted marriage with non-Khārijite women.69 Another
circle that grew up around a certain
Ghālib b. Shādhak
from Sīstān considered the people on the margin (aṣḥāb al-aṭrāf), presum-
ably: people in the countryside who had not been reached by the mission, to
be excused if they did not apply the law due to ignorance. This appeared to
imply that there are commandments that can be understood rationally, a kind
of natural law; an idea that encountered objection as it did not agree with what
the Khāzimiyya taught. Ghālib’s antagonist was a certain ʿAbdallāh al-Sadīwarī
who, going by the nisba, came from the Marv region.70 The controversy is late.
Shahrastānī linked this group to Ḥamza b. Ādharak, taking us to the end of the
second century at the earliest.
The group is mentioned only by Shahrastānī (96b, ult. ff./231, 5ff.) under
the name Aṭrāfiyya. The names of the two protagonists are quite illeg-
ible in the manuscripts (cf. Gimaret, Livre 399, who does not find a so-
lution). Ghālib b. Shādhak is named as one of the eminent persons of
the province in Tārīkh-i Sīstān (p. 20, 3). In any case, Shādak/Shādhak is
69 The most detailed account is in Shahrastānī 98, 7ff./236, 4ff. Cf. also Ashʿarī, Maq. 97,
11ff.; Nashwān, Ḥūr 172, 6ff.; Ābī, Nathr al-durr V 233, 3f. (with copyist’s error); Baghdādī,
Farq 81, 5ff./101, 14ff. > Isfarāʾīnī, Tabṣīr 55, ult. ff./57, –6ff.; Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 355, 16ff.;
Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Munya 32, –5f., all following the same source. Samʿānī, Ansāb I 138, 13ff.
restricts the ἐποχή commandment to children in an illegal fashion. Maqdisī, Badʾ V 139, 1,
has only the name. Night-time raids were contrary to the Bedouin code of honour (see
p. 375 above).
70 Cf. Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān s. v. Sadīwar.
Iran 655
a suitable solution, being a diminutive of shādhmān “the small cheer-

ful one” (cf. Nöldeke in: SB Wiener Ak. 116/1888/417; also 404 regarding
Shādōya). I agree with Gimaret as to the interpretation of aṣḥāb al-aṭrāf.
The aṭrāf al-sharīʿa, on the other hand, were the main tenets of the law;
an interpretation that would also be possible here. Goldziher derived the
name from ṭarafay al-nahār and believed them to be those who prayed
only twice a day (ZDMG 53/1899/385f.; regarding this group see p. 695ff.
below), but the passage in Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (Shifāʾ II 1074, 3f.) to which he refers
does not yield this interpretation. Cf. also Madelung, Religious Trends 68.
Before turning to Ḥamza b. Ādharak, arguably the most famous Khārijite from
Sīstān, we must look at a final controversial issue of legal rather than theo-
logical import that was probably debated in this region. The Thaʿlabiyya, it was
said, took zakāt from their slaves, if they were rich, and shared it with them if
they were poor. This practice was quietly done away with. A certain
Maʿbad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān,
however, retained it as it had not been officially abolished, and found follow-
ers because of it,71 which may sound quisquilian, but it was in fact a funda-
mental issue. It seems to have been a kind of pension fund for slaves to which
they could contribute themselves; under Islamic law, slaves had limited legal
competence. However, their master could claim the money, and that seems to
be what happened; Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī remarked that Maʿbad retained the
institution independently of whether the respective master (mawlā) agreed or
not.72 Elsewhere it is emphasised that the master should not receive any part
of his slaves’ legacy.73 The lack of interest shown by the majority would be an
interesting confirmation that the dissolution of the old-fashioned communi-
tarian standpoint and the emergence of individualism ultimately destroyed
the ideal of equality of which the Khārijites had been so proud.
Maʿbad appears to have been in touch with Akhnas b. Qays’ followers

as well.74 They shared the opinion that every human was only able to
look after his own salvation himself. Nobody can “pay good works into
71 Ashʿarī, Maq. 98, 4ff.; Farq 81, 1ff./101, 10ff. > Isfarāʾīnī, Tabṣīr 55, –4ff./57, 12ff.; Shahrastānī 98,
5f. and 13ff./236, 2f. and 237, 8ff.; Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 355, 18f.; Ābī, Nathr al-durr V 233, 5f.
(with copyist’s error). Maqdisī, Badʾ V 135, 1, has only the name.
72 Ḥūr 172, 10ff.
73 Malaṭī 136, 13/179, 5.
74 Shahrastānī 98, 13f./238, 1.
656 CHAPTER 3
someone else’s account” by going on the pilgrimage in his stead, or pray-

ing for him etc. On Judgment Day only one’s own achievements count.75
Could this be a reason why a slave, too, had to take responsibility?
3.1.3.1.1 Ḥamza b. Ādharak’s Uprising

Within a short time the emerging individualism had brought a whole bunch
of new theological ideas to the surface: the freedom of human action, the
perpetuity of divine determination, the difference between rational and re-
vealed religious truths. It is not surprising that we have no clearer image of the
theologians mentioned. Sīstān was located in a blind spot, and our informa-
tion goes back to three sources at most, two of which are very closely linked
and based on a common root.1 All of which makes it look as if there had been
small conventicles that affirmed their identity with minor details. While this
may have been true of some groups, it is probably not applicable to the bigger
picture; Sīstān was not Kufa. It is true that the region was not densely popu-
lated, and that the Khārijites frequently lived together with other Muslims;2
but their strength and their number were sufficient to keep the Abbasids in
check for thirty years at the end of the second century. This was the time of the
uprising of
Abū Khuzayma3 Ḥamza b. Ādharak,
the son of a convert from the gentry.4 He had joined a group of Khārijites in Oq
near Zarang in the very heart of Sīstān.5 It had been a holy place even in the
75 Ḥanafī, Firaq muftariqa 21, 5ff.; only as the Akhnasiyya’s doctrine in Ibn al-Jawzī (Talbīs 19,
–4), Abū Muṭīʿ (Radd 76, 1ff.) and Tadhkirat al-madhāhib 128, 3f. (where the name must
be corrected). However, the phrasing is unclear in the latter, and possibly deliberately
skewed.
1 See p. 647 n. 34 above, and p. 672 below.

2 See p. 641f. above; also p. 654 regarding the Akhnasiyya. Maʿbad permitted Khārijites who
lived in the dār al-taqiyya together with other Muslims to pay taxes with them as well
(Shahrastānī 98, –5/238, 5f.).
3 Regarding his kunya cf. Jāḥiẓ, Bayān IV 25, 3f.; it was mainly used by army commanders.
4 Bosworth, Sīstān 91f.; consequently ʿAbdallāh was sometimes transmitted instead of
Ādharak. The form Ādharak, already recorded by Gardēzī, was misspelt in every possible
way in Arabic sources: Adrak, Awrak, Akrak, Adrad, etc. (cf. Gimaret, Livre des Religions 397,
n. 30), but an Iranian etymology (ādharak = “little fire”) goes best with the rebel’s origin.
For this reason Oghuz atrek “fox-red man” (cf. Togan, Ibn Faḍlān’s Reisebericht 142) seems
less likely.
5 Bosworth 92 and 85; general information in Madelung, Religious Trends 66ff.
Iran 657
pre-Islamic period; Scarcia expressed the assumption that a degree of crusad-

ing spirit was part of the local tradition.6 Ḥamza appears to have contributed a
dash of Machiavellism, resulting in an explosive and exceedingly efficient mix.
Around 180/796 he was able to put himself at the head of a revolt incited by
another Khārijite, a man named Khalaf, who fought for strict determinism and
still believed that the children of “idolaters” would go to hell.7 Ḥamza could not
oust him altogether and therefore had to formulate the theory that there could
be two or more imams at one and the same time,8 adding, however, one impor-
tant clause: in times of war there should be only one supreme command – thus
making his claim clear.
Baghdādī collected the stages of his wide-ranging campaigns in Sīstān,
Khorasan, Makrān, Qūhistān and Kerman with diligence, but without chronol-
ogy. He probably found his information in Nishapur where he spent most of
his life;9 its inhabitants were proud of finally having laid the most dangerous
terrorist by the heels around 188/804.10 This was not true at all; Bosworth’s de-
tailed study, which especially examines the information from Tārīkh-i Sīstān,
shows that Ḥamza did not die until 25 years later in 213/28.11 Baghdādī selected
the facts carefully, clearly trying to prove that during his campaigns Ḥamza
not only fought the armies of the Abbasids and their governors in the east,
but also cleaned up among his Khārijite friends. The first to suffer was the
Bayhasiyya, then the Khāzimites in Qūhistān to the west of Pūshang, and fi-
nally the Thaʿāliba in the Nishapur region.12 The followers of Khalaf, to whom
Ḥamza owed his rise, had long had enough of him. Khalaf had probably died,
but a certain Masʿūd b. Qays succeeded him and made a stand against Ḥamza
in Kerman. He had an accident crossing a river and drowned. His people re-
fused to believe in his death, hoping instead that he would return 120 years
after the day of his birth.13
6 In: AIUON 15/1965/304.

7 Ashʿarī, Maq. 93, 12f.; Nashwān, Ḥūr 171, 10f.; Baghdādī, Farq 75, pu. f./96, pu. f.;
Shahrastānī 96a, ult. ff./230, 7ff. Tārīkh-i Sīstān also mentions Khalaf once (156, 6).
8 Nashwān, 171, 13f.; Shahrastānī 96a, –4ff./230, 5f.
9 Cf. EIran III 409.
10 Farq 76, ult. ff./98, 4ff.; 79, apu. ff./100, 7ff.
11 Sīstān 91ff., esp. 103. Sadeghi follows Baghdādī’s date in his brief description of events
(Mouvements 54ff.). Regarding the chronology cf. Składanek in FO 22/1981–4/81ff., and
RO 44/1985, issue 2/89ff.; in general id., Doktryny 142ff.
12 Bosworth 93.
13 Baghdādī 78, –4ff./99, 13ff.; Nashwān referred this mahdī idea to Khalaf (Ḥūr 171, 10ff.),
Maqdisī quite absurdly to Ḥamza (Badʾ V 138, 10f., and VI 102, apu. ff.). Regarding the num-
ber 120 cf. ch. C 3.2.2 below.
658 CHAPTER 3
This motif, more common in the Shīʿa, shows the extent of people’s despera-
tion. Khalaf’s community must have fought to the last; they were said to believe
that no-one must evade jihad, not even a woman. If one of them was mortally
wounded in battle he would point to the people around him – presumably his
opponents – with his weapon (bi-ḥadīdihī) and spoke one last lā ḥukma illā
lillāh.14 But now they thought that without an imam they could not fight any
more;15 even beaten, they did not join forces with Ḥamza. Later they would still
be found in Kerman and Makrān.16 Where dogma was concerned, Ḥamza had
left them, too; he now believed in free will, which may have won him the sup-
port of the Maymūniyya. This change of direction was perhaps a retrospective
one for political reasons, as demonstrated by his continuing to believe, like the
Khalafiyya, that the children of non-Khārijites were condemned to hell.17 It
probably made waging war rather easier.
The image painted by Baghdādī should not be seen as too absolute. The
Khārijites had always been a bogeyman; once again we now read that they
cut down trees and blocked qanāts.18 Ḥamza had a particular predilection for
murdering Abbasid tax collectors.19 There can be no doubt that the movement
had aspects of social revolution; B. Składanek’s remarkable article made this
very clear.20 Ḥamza had support in villages and market towns;21 it seems that
the indigenous peasant population was with him, although the majority of his
fighters were Arabs.22 Even Baghdādī pointed out that he did not subject the
“quietists” to reprisals;23 like others before him he did not attack those who
14 Abū Muṭīʿ, Radd 72, 9ff. (the MS has bi-ḥadīdihī, not bi-jasadihī as the editor read); also Ibn
al-Jawzī, Talbīs 19, 8f. and Tadhkirat al-madhāhib 127, 3. Regarding Khārijite women tak-
ing part in the jihad cf. Salem, Political Theory 86f. for the early period. Ḥanafī added that
Khalaf’s followers excommunicated all those prophet’s companions who had held back
in the Ridda wars, i.e. refused to take part in the jihad (Firaq 18, 1ff.).
15 Baghdādī 75, –4f./96, apu. f. (where one sentence appears to be missing); Nashwān 171, 11f.
16 Shahrastānī 97a, 1/230, 9.
17 Baghdādī emphasised the contradiction (Farq 77, 2ff./98, 6ff.); cf. also Ashʿarī, Maq. 93, ult.
ff., and Shahrastānī 96a, 10ff./229, 10f.
18 Bosworth 94f.
19 Ibid. 95.
20 In: Przegląd Orientalistyczny 1/1960/25ff.
21 Bosworth 90f.
22 Tārīkh-i Sīstān 168, 10. Barthold considered Khārijism in Sīstān to have been a pop-
ular movement (Turkestan down to the Mongol Invasion 213); Scarcia critical in:
AIUON 14/1964/625, n. 16.
23 Farq 77, 5/98, 9.
Iran 659
did not show hostility towards him. He disapproved of assassinations and se-
cret robberies; in this, he agreed with the Akhnasiyya.24 When Hārūn al-Rashīd
and his great army appeared in Khorasan in 193/808, Ḥamza started a corre-
spondence with him that is remarkable for its challenging language, despite
the fact that his position had already been weakened. He referred to himself
as amīr al-muʾminīn, as earlier Khārijites had done, too – but in the caliph’s
ears this must have sounded rather more provocative than it may have been
intended: Ḥamza’s muʾminūn were the Khārijites only. He predicted that Islam
would remain flawed until Judgment Day, he himself being the only one who
followed the Quran and the prophet’s sunna.25 He was lucky; Hārūn died in a
village near Ṭūs before they could join battle. Ḥamza saw this as divine inter-
vention, similar to the time when the prophet caused the Meccans to fail by
digging a ditch: “God spared the believers of fighting”.26 However, he learnt
from the episode to concentrate his energies on the heathen from then on. He
went on campaigns to Ghūr and Sind; he is said to have (re-)founded the city
of Gardez in Afghanistan.27 His heroic feats would later be praised in an epic
poem which, once his name drowned in the well of things past, was transferred
onto Ḥamza, the prophet’s uncle.28
Of course the Khārijites did not die out with him. Masʿūdī named Sīstān as
one of their bastions at the time he wrote (ca. 332/944), together with Kerman,
Azerbaijan etc.29 Muqaddasī, too, found them there half a century later,30 by
which time they had become peaceful; Yaʿqūb b. Layth, himself a man of the
24 Ashʿarī, Maq. 94, 3ff., after Zurqān. Of course the latter may have confused the two sects.
Might Ḥamza’s general Ḥayyōya b. Maʿbad (cf. Baghdādī 77, –7/98, –5) have been a son of
Maʿbad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s?
25 The text is extant in Tārīkh-i Sīstān; cf. G. Scarcia’s translation in: AIUON 14/1964/623ff.;
Bosworth’s summary (p. 98) is slightly misleading. Składanek presumed (FO/22/1981–
4/87f.), and rightly, that due to patriotic motives the Tārīkh-i Sīstān presented the caliph’s
intentions with a bias; Hārūn had meant to take a hand in Transoxiana where Rāfiʿ
b. Layth’s revolt was still ongoing (cf. Daniel, Khurasan 172ff.).
26 Sura 33:25; cf. Bosworth 100.
27 Bosworth 102 and 104; also MacLean, Religion and Society in Arab Sind 119. Cf. also Bivar in
EI2 II 978 s. v. Gardīz.
28 Cf. Meredith-Owens in: EI2 III 153f. s. v. Ḥamza b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib with an exhaustive bib-
liography; also Ṣafā in: Irānnāma 1/1982/13f. (about a version dating to the Ṣafavid era,
known as Ṣāḥibqirānnāma).
29 Murūj V 231, 4ff./III 302, 10ff.
660 CHAPTER 3
people, had robbed them of their vigour.31 Now even city-dwellers saw their
positive sides. An Iraqi Muʿtazilite of the fourth century admired their abso-
lute honesty; only foreigners were thieves, and had not only a hand cut off in
punishment, but the lower arm up to the elbow.32 It was possible to leave items
unattended in public places. Many houses did not have doors but only a grille
against dogs and wild animals; certainly, houses were not locked.33 There was
no bargaining in the markets.34
3.1.3.2 Non-Khārijite Groups

In the first half of the second century those who defied the Khārijites in the
city were mainly Murjiʾites. While we have few sources, light is shed on the
situation the moment a third player joins in the power struggle, a Shīʿite from
Kufa named
Abū Muḥammad Ḥarīz b. ʿAbdallāh,
a client of the Azd who was a wholesaler in fats and oil during Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq’s
lifetime, and who travelled to Sijistān on business from time to time. He
was a scholar and pupil of Zurāra b. Aʿyan; Ṭūsī noted several juristic works
of his.1 He was used to the stricter attitudes of his home and incited the
few Shīʿites in Sijistān – presumably in Zarang – to take action against the
Khārijites as the latter showed no respect for ʿAlī. This resulted in terrorist ac-
tivities during which some Khārijites were assassinated. At first they suspected
the “Murjiʾites”, as they were the opponents whose numbers would have al-
lowed such actions. When they finally discovered the true culprits, they locked
Ḥarīz and his men up in their mosque and caused the building to collapse on
top of them.2
31 As was well-known, he had been a coppersmith and had worked his way up from the
Sunnite ʿayyārūn in Bust. Regarding the power struggle cf. Bosworth 113ff. and Madelung,
Religious Trends 69; also Yaʿqūbī, Taʾrīkh II 605, 1ff.
32 Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 189, 15, described this as an Azraqite custom.
33 Tanūkhī, Nishwār al-muḥāḍara III 88, 3ff.; adopted by Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān IV 341b,
–4ff.
34 Yāqūt III 190b, 14ff.
1 Fihrist 84, ult. ff. A fragment of one of them, maybe his K. al-ṣalāt, survives in Muḥammad
b. Idrīs al-ʿIjlī, Sarāʾir 479, –4ff.; transmitted mainly after Zurāra, too.
2 Mufīd, Ikhtiṣāṣ 203, 6ff.; adopted by Majlisī, Biḥār XLVII 394f. no. 119. Regarding him also
Kashshī 383ff. no. 717–19; Najāshī 105, 4ff.; Ardabīlī, Jāmiʿ I 182ff.
Iran 661
We find the same man under the name Ḥarīz b. Abī Ḥarīz in a Sunni source,3
as qāḍī of Sijistān. It appears to have been possible for a merchant with con-
tacts in the centres of scholarship – and of the administration – to have been
appointed judge by the authorities. He was not unknown as his father,
Abū Ḥarīz ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥusayn al-Azdī
had already been qāḍī in Sijistān. He came from Basra, the original home of
the Azd, but he, too, had been suspected of Shīʿite tendencies; he was believed
to have claimed that the rajʿa was predicted in 72 Quranic verses.4 Imāmite
biographers did not pay him any attention. He may have been a Kaysānite;
his death must have occurred during the first third of the second century. His
transmitting a hadith from ʿIkrima according to which the prophet prohibited
marrying a woman after marrying her aunt5 makes us take notice; after all, the
Khārijites around Ḥāzim b. ʿAlī had permitted this very union based on the
Quran.6 ʿIkrima had probably been selected with care as the authority as he
had been a Khārijite, too.7
Marriage customs would continue to seem rather degenerate to orthodox
foreigners for a long time. When the Shāfiʿite Abū Saʿīd al-Iṣṭakhrī (d. 328/940),
who had been active in Qom and Baghdad previously, was appointed qāḍī in
Sīstān by al-Muqtadir (r. 295/908), he was shocked to find that most marriages
had been contracted without involving a guardian, i.e. the women spoke for
themselves. He is believed to have put an end to this outrage.8 In reality he
probably merely attempted to abolish a procedure that would have been toler-
ated according to Ḥanafite law.9 The Ḥanafites, who had flourished for a long
time on the ground prepared by the Murjiʾites, had already been threatened by
the Shāfiʿites in their safe position under the Ṣaffārids, presumably for political
reasons. Shortly before Abū Saʿīd al-Iṣṭakhrī arrived in the region, an originally
marginal legal issue – concerning the offspring of a half-witted man, which
made it likely that this was also a question of inheritance – had brought the
3 Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān II 186f.

4 Mīzān no. 4267. Regarding him cf. also ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 240f. no. 793; Bukhārī III1 72 no. 187;
Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 168, 13f. and 384 no. 2561; Fasawī III 73, 1, and 212, –4; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh V 265,
1ff.; TT V 187f. no. 323.
5 Mīzān II 407, –6ff.
6 See p. 652 above.
7 See p. 734 below.
8 IKh II 75, 1ff.
9 Cf. Schacht in HW 587a s. v. Nikāḥ.
662 CHAPTER 3
rivalry out into the open, soon to erupt into a full-blown family or tribal war.10
In the end the Shāfiʿites do not seem to have prevailed.
3.1.4 The Western Part of the Province of Khorasan

Where the development of Khārijite thought was concerned, Sijistān was only
one example. We have seen that when they became stronger the movements
felt by no means bound by the borders of that region; when they remained
quiescent, however, they are often difficult to locate at all. The heresiographers
had barely any interest in topography, while the historians only noted those
names that were linked to a particular uprising. Furthermore Sijistān or Mā
warāʾ al-nahr are only topographical designations; politically the entire east-
ern Iranian region was part of Khorasan. This explains why all we know of a
peaceable group like the Ibāḍiyya is that it did have some followers in the re-
gions, while the Khārijite rebels who stepped into the limelight of history did
so mainly in Transoxiana during the day of Abū Muslim, when the lights were
trained on that part of the world. Their very military activities suggest that they
did not always stay there, and possibly did not come from there. The following
description is once again restricted to those of whose teachings we are aware.
3.1.4.1 Khorasanian Khārijites

One of the first to intervene in politics in Khorasan during the declining years
of the Umayyad era was a certain
Shaybān b. Salama,
a member of the Sadūs1 who had fought in Ḍaḥḥāk b. Qays’ army and then
went to seek his fortune under ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya in Fars.2 When the lat-
ter’s enterprise failed,3 he fled via Kerman and Sīstān to Khorasan where he
settled, obviously calculating that he would have a future in the beginning
10 In more detail Halm, Ausbreitung 120f.

2 Cf. Daniel, Khurasan 78f.; also Shaban, Abbasid Revolution 159ff.; Veccia-Vaglieri in:
RSO 24/1949/31, n. 4; Moscati in Rendiconti Acc. Lincei, VIII 4. ser./1949/485f.; Gimaret,
Livre des Religions 403, n. 83; Madelung, Religious Trends 60. Ḥanafī links him to Shabīb
b. Yazīd (Firaq muftariqa 29, 6ff.), but presumably mainly due to a heresiographical desire
for order.
Iran 663
chaos. His base appears to have been in Sarakhs, where he had some support
from the population;4 but he also ruled over Ṭūs and the Abarshahr region.5
He had around 30,000 warriors including contingents from Basra and from the
Bakr b. Wāʾil,6 but in the end he went too far. His followers regarded him as the
caliph,7 and he refused to be subordinate to anyone. He despised Naṣr b. Sayyār
as a representative of the unjust authorities;8 he disliked Abū Muslim because
he supported ʿAlid interests. When he finally agreed to alliances, first with the
son of Judayʿ b. ʿAlī al-Kirmānī who brought him the defeated army after his
father’s death in 129/747,9 and then with Abū Muslim,10 a part of his Khārijite
elite troops deserted because he had not been true to his principles.11 The re-
sult was that Abū Muslim gained the ascendancy, challenging him to battle
by Sarakhs in Shaʿbān 130/April 748.12 When Shaybān was defeated and fell in
battle, his followers had no choice but to join Naṣr b. Sayyār’s forces.13
Those who did not leave him tried to save his honour by claiming that he
repented his error before his death – unsurprisingly, as Abū Muslim was after
his hide. His critics, however, did not accept this excuse, as his manoeuvres had
led to Khārijites dying or being materially harmed, presumably when he took
action against past followers. He ought to have made amends for these crimes
in person; as he did not do this, his repentance was worthless.14 Shahrastānī
mentioned a certain ʿAṭiyya al-Jūzjānī as one of his followers, but we have no
further information on him.15 It was thanks to him that Shaybān’s following
4 Akhbār al-ʿAbbās wa-wuldih 298, 9f.

5 Khalīfa 587, 19ff. Nishapur was the centre of the Abarshahr region (cf. EIran I 67 s. v.).
6 Khalīfa, ibid.; Ṭabarī II 1996, 11f. The Ḥanīfa, one of whom mourned him in an elegy, were
also members of the Bakr b. Wāʾil (Akhbār al-ʿAbbās 322, –5ff.).
7 Probably in the sense of a “commander of the faithful”, i.e. the true Muslims – the
Khārijites (Ṭabarī II 1993, 3; cf. also Akhbār al-ʿAbbās 308, 6f.).
8 Ṭabarī II 1995, ult. f.
9 Khalīfa 587, 15ff. Regarding Kirmānī see p. 577f. above.
10 Ṭabarī II 1992, 1990ff., and 1996, 8ff.
11 Khalīfa 587, 20ff.
12 Akhbār al-ʿAbbās 310, 3f., and 322, 2ff. Regarding the date cf. Daniel 78 and 95, n. 49.
13 Ṭabarī II 2000, 13f.; regarding Naṣr’s policies vis-à-vis him cf. Akhbār al-ʿAbbās 294ff. For
general information see Al-ʿuyūn wal-ḥadāʾiq in: Fragmenta 165, pu. ff.
14 Ashʿarī, Maq. 98, 9ff.; Nashwān, Ḥūr 172, 7ff.; Baghdādī, Farq 81, –7ff./102, 1ff.; Shahrastānī 99,
2ff./239, 9ff.; Samʿānī, Ansāb VII 436, apu. ff. All accounts are based on the same source.
15 It would be nice if he were identical with the ʿAṭiyya al-Thaʿlabī who played a part in Iraq
during Ḍaḥḥāk al-Qays’ time (Ṭabarī II 1899, 16, and 1938, 12), and whom both Ṭabarī and
Khalīfa misspelt as ʿAṭiyya al-Taghlibī (Taʾrīkh 579, 10); Shaybān b. Salama was also consid-
ered to be a member of the Thaʿlabiyya sect. But this ʿAṭiyya was on the wrong side, having
664 CHAPTER 3
did not disperse but may even have spread and survived for generations; they
would later be found in Nasā, the ancient Parthian metropolis in Turkestan
near present-day Ashkabad, in Abīvard on the road between Sarakhs and Nasā,
in Pūchkān/Būzjān, later Jām, between Mashhad and Herat, and in ʿAṭiyya’s
home Jūzjān.16 The leader of the critics was
Abū Khālid17 Ziyād b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān,
who was probably Ziyād b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Qushayrī, a respected northern

Arab from Iraq, whom Naṣr b. Sayyār appointed governor of Abarshahr – pre-
sumably to play him off against Shaybān.18 He had a long history as a rebel,
having joined Yazīd b. al-Muhallab against Yazīd II as early as 102. When he was
brought before Maslama b. ʿAbd al-Malik after the uprising, he was pardoned
due to an intervention.19 He had no intention of working together with Naṣr.20
While he was opposed to Abū Muslim, he had no interest in the Umayyads ei-
ther, instead focussing on regional independence by joining Muqātil b. Ḥayyān
who was gathering the armies of the towns and cities.21 Although he was
younger than Shaybān, there is no evidence of him living much longer; his trail
goes cold after the Abbasid revolution.
Behind this primarily political struggle there were also dogmatic differenc-
es. Ziyād was a legal scholar and appears to have been the authority to whom
to appeal in controversial issues in the Thaʿlabiyya, of whom Shaybān was
also a member.22 Ziyād believed in free will, as he taught that God only knows
of events as they take place. He knows by creating knowledge for himself.23
been an ally of Marwān II’s. The man from Jūzjān is not linked to ʿAṭiyya b. al-Aswad
al-Ḥanafī (see p. 643 above), either.
16 Baghdādī, Milal 74, 14f.; in Shahrastānī 99, 10/240, 10f. the names are illegible (cf.
Madelung 60, n. 32).
17 Regarding the kunya cf. Shahrastānī 99, 7/240, 6.
18 Ṭabarī II 1664, 15f. It is also in favour of their being identical that Khalīfa lists the Khārijite
dissident under the name of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ziyād, mawlā of the Quraysh (Taʾrīkh 588,
2f.). While this is incorrect on several counts, Quraysh might have been misread from the
nisba al-Qushayrī.
19 Ibid. II 1409, 3ff.
20 Ibid. II 1662, 14ff.
21 Ibid. II 1997, 7ff.; cf. also p. 577 above. Regarding some details cf. Daniel 86f.; also Shaban,
Abbasid Revolution 162, who regards him as a man of Naṣr b. Sayyār’s “old school”.
23 Shahrastānī 99, 7ff./240, 6ff.
Iran 665
Shaybān, on the other hand, believed in the choice by divine grace, convinced
that God’s delight and hostility, according to which he divides humans and
their state of salvation from the very beginning, are inherent to him from the
very first and for all eternity.24 He probably adopted this from Khāzim b. ʿAlī,
who had developed the same idea in Sīstān and was probably a little older.
In the debates in Sīstān the argument is used in the appropriate context.25 He
was also an anthropomorphist, which was seen as an innovation in Khārijite
circles.26 Ziyād, on the other hand, probably adhered to the transcendental
image of God as proposed by Jahm b. Ṣafwān. Shaybān might have acquired
learning in the circle around ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya, but then there were nu-
merous anthropomorphists in Iran, too. – One of the fatwās issued by Ziyād
had led to a quarrel. Led by a certain
Rushayd al-Ṭūsī,
people from Ṭūs, possibly the entire Khārijite community of that city, had dis-
covered a gap in his expertise and refused to abide by his decision. It was quite
an important matter concerning taxes. In the past, only half the tithe had been
paid on artificially irrigated land, and the full sum only on fields tilled with
rainwater. This had been decreed by the prophet,27 and was a just decision,
considering the additional capital required and the greater work involved. But
the state – presumably the Khārijite commanders – needed money and Ziyād
said one should not distinguish between the two anymore. However, he did
not want to condemn earlier practice, either; after all, he expected more of
his people than other men of law.28 This was a mistake, for now Rushayd went
back to the original practice. In fact, it seems that this had already been aban-
doned, and that the problem was not so much the higher demand but rather
24 Ashʿarī, Maq. 99, 11f.; Ashʿarī’s applying the distinction between ṣifāt al-dhāt and ṣifāt al-fiʿl
was probably not only linked to Shaybān.
26 Ibid. 99, 7. The passage can also be interpreted to mean that his pupils (in Jūzjān or
Turkestan) accepted this point of view first, but Baghdādī subsequently holds Shaybān
responsible (Farq 81, –5f/102, 4). The passage in Ashʿarī becomes difficult as it names the
Shaybāniyya twice in succession, the first time referring to the pupils, but the second
time, to the sect in general. The last sentence (beginning with thumma) is probably sepa-
rate from the preceding section.
27 Cf. Grohmann in EI1 IV 1137a.
28 Yaḥyā b. Ādam, K. al-kharāj 78, 18ff, and 80, 12ff. Juynboll.
666 CHAPTER 3
the refusal to establish clear limits and declare the old custom wrong and sin-
ful. The heresiographers turned this into a sect as well.29
3.1.4.1.1 The Bayhasiyya

We only learn in passing that besides the Thaʿlabiyya, who has been our
main focus so far, there were also groups of Bayhasites in Khorasan: Ḥamza
b. Ādharak descended on them after 180/796.1 They were not a purely Iranian
phenomenon; there was a community in Kufa, too.2 One of its sub-groups was
explicitly located in Khorasan: the so-called ʿAwfiyya,3 but we may safely as-
sume that many of the debates which Ashʿarī and others related to the sect in
general in fact took place on Iranian soil.4 It had been in existence for a long
time; Ibn ʿAjrad was said to have renounced it.5 We do not know, however, how
it came to be there; not least because we do not know the sphere of activity
of its “founder”, Abū Bayhas al-Hayṣam b. Jābir al-Ḍubāʿī. The only informa-
tion we have is a note by Madāʾinī on his death: he had fled to Medina before
al-Ḥajjāj and found acceptance in the governor’s evening conversation circle,
but Ḥajjāj was able to use his influence with the caliph to have him arrested,
and he was executed like a common criminal in 94/713.6 Al-Ḥajjāj’s persecu-
tion of him shows that he had committed his misdeeds in his part of the coun-
try; consequently it is not impossible that he was indeed active in Iran, maybe
protected by or in the wake of Ibn al-Ashʿath’s uprising.7
29 Ashʿarī, Maq. 99, ult. ff., presents circumstances most clearly. However, all accounts go
back to one and the same source (possibly Yamān b. Riʾāb); cf. Baghdādī, Farq 82, 4ff./102,
–4ff.; Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 190, 15ff.; Shahrastānī 98, –4ff./238, 7ff.; Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 355,
–14f.; Samʿānī, Ansāb VI 133 no. 1788; briefly Nashwān, Ḥūr 172, apu. f. (read ʿuyūn for
fuyūl); Ābī, Nathr al-durr V 233, –4f. Regarding a similar disagreement in Sīstān cf. p. 655
above.
1 See p. 657 above.

3 Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 190, 18. Like Shahrastānī (94, ult./221, 10) and Ābī (Nathr al-durr V 235,
–5) he has ʿAwniyya instead. The reading ʿAwfiyya is found in Ashʿarī, Baghdādī, and
Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī. Nothing is known about the eponymous hero.
4 In Oman it was remembered that Abū Bayhas considered marriage with a Zoroastrian
woman to be permitted (Al-siyar wal-jawābāt 209, 1f.).
5 See p. 644 above.
6 Extant in Nashwān, Ḥūr 177, 1ff.; also quoted anonymously in Shahrastānī 93, 11ff./219, 2ff.
Noted briefly in Ṭabarī II 1258, 14; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 622, 10f.; Maqdisī, Badʿ V 138, 3ff.
Also EI2 I 113, and Gimaret, Livre des Religions 387, n. 2.
7 In the same context Ṭabarī reports the extradition of further Iraqi fugitives who were
undoubtedly involved in the uprising (see p. 718 below). – Abū Bayhas is not identical with
Iran 667
Abū Bayhas had certainly not shown much consideration. Mubarrad notes
that he regarded the enemy territory where the other Muslims lived as dār kufr.
Consequently he considered istiʿrāḍ to be permitted; if children were killed,
he did not care.8 Similar accusations were raised against his followers, such
as the ʿAwfiyya, later;9 they had no qualms about assassinations and robbery.10
However, the climate probably changed soon. There was no agreement in the
ʿAwfiyya on whether someone who left the camp and retired was still entitled
to solidarity or not;11 this seems to have been a genuine question, and the hard-
liners were probably in the minority in the long run. Not even Abū Bayhas had
been as severe as the Azraqites. He thought that enemies should be regarded
like Muḥammad’s enemies in Mecca. The prophet had lived with them then;
consequently one could spend time with them now, marry into their families
and inherit from them.12 He also permitted that a female slave could be sold
to “unbelievers”, at least if no other buyer could be found, in the dār al-taqiyya
where the Khārijites were living amid strangers.13
This much-discussed issue demonstrated that he was a man with principles.
Whoever did not take a stand in the matter, especially the “experts” (ahl al-
thabat) who evaded a decision or who had not considered it important enough,
was an unbeliever in his eyes. He saw this as a universal principle: as soon as a
problem has been raised, one must form an opinion; ἐποχή only applies as long
as the question is dormant. One must not be dependent on personalities on
any account; he probably meant to imply that there had been too much politi-
cal consideration in the matter.14
At the same time it betrays a degree of intellectualism; a crystal clear deci-
sion is always possible, as his attitude to faith confirmed. In the eastern her-
esiographical tradition he is listed among the Murjiʾites: faith, they say, was
knowledge in the eyes of his school; those who could not distinguish between
the Ḥanẓala b. Bayhas whom Ṭabarī mentions (II 517, 6) together with other Khārijite sect
leaders; this may be an attempt at a different derivation of the name of the Bayhasiyya
(thus already Wellhausen, Oppositionsparteien 28, also p. 215 above). Regarding him see
also Składanek, Doktryny 136.
8 Kāmil 1041, 10f.
9 Ashʿarī, Maq. 116, 9f., and 126, 12f.; Maqdisī, Badʿ V 138, 3; regarding the ʿAwfiyya cf.
Nashwān, Ḥūr 176, pu. f.
10 Nashwān 176, –4.
11 Ashʿarī 115, 3ff.; Baghdādī 88, –5ff.; Shahrastānī 94, 7ff./221, 11ff.
12 Mubarrad, Kāmil 615, 4ff./1040, 4ff.; similar Balādhurī in Ahlwardt, Anonyme Chronik 83,
10ff. This is once again heresiography dressed as anecdote.
13 Text VIII 12 a.
14 Ibid., a–b. Cf. also Watt, Free Will 36. Regarding the controversy see p. 248 above.
668 CHAPTER 3
true and false and prohibited and permitted, were unbelievers.15 This is sec-
ondary, and incorrect in the attribution; but it is true that the radius of faith
was discussed among his followers. However, the point was not the definition,
which it was for the Murjiʾites, but rather the profession of faith. Apparently
everyone joining the community or born into it had to profess Islam, like the
ʿAjārida. This led to the question of what the formula used on this occasion had
to include. It was a matter of course that the shahāda would be part of it, but
a promise to be faithful to the community and renounce all other Muslims –
and, possibly, Khārijites of different groups – was also necessary; and one had
to demonstrate some knowledge of the law – if not in detail, at least in sum-
mary. In this way, they said, they were “giving faith its due” (waẓīfat al-dīn).16
In the case of the last-named condition, things became critical. It seems
that there had been people from the very first who saw actions as the deter-
mining factor. Consequently someone with rudimentary knowledge of the
law who made a wrong decision and fell into guilt would have lapsed from
the faith.17 Abū Bayhas – or more probably his school – thought this cynical.
When it came to the law one should know at least everything where infringe-
ments would lead to punishment in hell, and, like all the fundamental dog-
mas, not simply by itself, but including the relevant exegesis. This probably
referred to those Quranic verses which listed capital crimes; they would have
been “tested” when people joined the community. If one is not entirely sure in
a given situation later, one would have to refrain from acting altogether.18 This
was certainly not a practicable solution; Shabīb al-Najrānī19 soon demanded
that people should consult an expert in such a situation. This suggestion was
adopted by others as well, but met with opposition in the Bayhasiyya.20
15 Abū Muṭīʿ, Radd 117, 9ff.; Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs 21, 8f.; Tadhkirat al-madhāhib 135, 8f. Cf. also
Shahrastānī 94, 2ff./221, 1ff., where the distinctions are sharper.
16 Ashʿarī, Maq. 114, 9. Regarding waẓīfa in this context cf. also p. 653 above.
17 Ibid. 114, 9ff.
18 Text VIII 12, c–g. The expression was probably influenced by the representation of
Murjiʾite doctrine (cf. e.g. Text II 6, a, especially with reference to the word jumlatan).
19 Regarding him cf. Anfänge 129.
20 Ashʿarī 115, 9ff.; Shahrastānī 94, 11ff./222, 5ff. (where the relevant passage from Ashʿarī
appears to have been contaminated with the preceding one Maq. 114, 9ff.). Also Watt, Free
Will 38.
Iran 669
The presupposition was that humans in all these cases acted voluntarily;
Shahrastānī described it using the same model as for the Maymūniyya in
Sīstān.21 However, this was not the primary concern; the existential danger
being the threat of lapsing into sin unwittingly at any time. There was some
consolation in the thought that God would pardon those crimes over which
he had not spoken a severe judgment (ḥukman mughallaẓan); after all, he could
not punish without having made his intention quite clear. This restricted the
sins which would result in “unbelief” or “idolatry” to those transgressions that
entailed a ḥadd punishment. At the same time the question arose of the rela-
tion between punishment on earth and salvation in the afterlife. There was
agreement that the two could not be separated. Someone who is punished is
also an “unbeliever”; repentance at the moment of punishment is to no avail.22
On the other hand, some people believed that there should not be condemna-
tion in advance, either; as long as someone has not been put on trial, he must
not be called an “unbeliever”, even if the matter was as obvious as fornication.23
As usual, strict adherence to the words of the Quran was paramount; there
was no qiyās. This led to the ruling, which was a surprise to some puritans, that
inebriation due to permitted drinks – the Iraqis would have said: nabīdh – does
not count, even if one omits a prayer or blasphemes as a consequence. Not
even these consequences would count, as the drink was permitted.24 On the
other hand even the smallest amount of wine, even mixed with water, would
immediately lead to unbelief.25 The ʿAwfiyya modified this: inebriation is un-
belief, but a person can only be determined as an unbeliever if he commits a
transgression while inebriated, as this transgression would show for sure that
he was inebriated.26 The food taboo was also by some restricted only to those
things that were named explicitly in the Quran: pork and carrion.27
21 94, –5ff./222, 12ff.; cf. p. 649f. above. This is probably a commonplace; Ashʿarī draws a com-
parison with the Muʿtazila instead (Maq. 116, 2f.).
22 Maq. 116, 11ff.; briefly also Ābī, Nathr al-durr V 235, 10f.
23 Ibid. 116, 4ff., and 119, 3ff.; also Baghdādī, Farq 88, 7ff./109, 4f.; Shahrastānī 94, apu. f./223,
4f.; Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 190, 14f.
24 Maq. 117, 3ff.; Farq 88, 10ff./109, 6ff.; Shahrastānī 94, pu. f./223, 6f.; Nashwān 176, 9ff.; also
Malaṭī, Tanbīh 137, 16f./180, 10f.
25 Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 190, –5ff.; Malaṭī 137, 12f./180, 6f.
26 Maq. 118, 3f.; Farq 88, 12ff.; Shahrastānī 94, ult. ff./223, 8ff.
27 Shahrastānī 94, 5f./221, 7ff.
670 CHAPTER 3
Whether the “unbelief” determined by applying a ḥadd punishment

should also lead to the sinner being executed after the initial punishment,
as Ibn Ḥazm claimed of “a very few” Khārijites (Fiṣal III 240, –9f.), will
have to remain unanswered. In many cases the ḥadd punishment would
be execution anyway. Not much thought was devoted to theft, as it was
probably extremely rare in the small and self-contained communities we
are dealing with (see p. 660 above). The most important exception was
probably genuinely the consumption of wine, but in this matter the ex-
acerbation of the punishment instituted by ʿUmar had been rejected on
the Arabian peninsula as being “caliph’s law” (Ashʿarī, Maq. 91, ult.). I do
not believe that the Bayhasiyya considered the consumption of wine to
be altogether permissible, as Gimaret assumed; nor can I agree with the
divergent readings of the texts – including assuming a misunderstand-
ing in Shahrastānī – he adduces (Livre des Religions 389, n. 15, and 391,
n. 32).
Thinking was still collectivistic despite this consciousness of sin and despite
the tendency towards free will, as demonstrated by the ʿAwfiyya: they thought
that if the imam, the leader of the community, lapsed into unbelief, the en-
tire community would also follow.28 This was probably aimed at opponents;
if the head of a competing Khārijite group supported a heresy – as he would,
of course, do by virtue of his office – they would all be free game. The ʿAwfiyya
probably based this on Abū Bayhas himself; he had apparently demanded of
an imam in Kufa that because of his personal “unbelief” he should call all the
members of his community to repent.29 This would fit in with his archaic view
of children.
The other groups we have looked at in the chapter on Sijistān also delib-
erated on the profession of faith. While this would seem to suggest itself,
it may have been initiated by contacts with the other sects of Khorasan
as well. The Khāzimiyya identified religion with the individual laws and
consequently believed it to be impossible to recognise through rational
28 Maq. 115, 6f., and 116, 7; Farq 88, 9f. and pu. f./109, 6 and –6f.; Shahrastānī 94, 9f./222, 1f.;
Nashwān 176, apu. f.; Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 190, 17ff.; Ābī, Nathr al-durr V 235, –5.
29 Malaṭī 137, 7ff./180, 1ff. Of course, this could be applied to every caliph or governor.
Iran 671
thought.30 The group around Abū Mukram (?)31 radically embraced

the opposite standpoint: a grave sin is not primarily an infraction of a
commandment, but an expression of a lack of knowledge of God (jahl
billāh).32 The Khāzimiyya, too, would soon ask the question of how
much knowledge one must have of God; and whether it was necessary to
know all his “names”, i.e. attributes, or whether less might be sufficient.33
Unfortunately the sources do not tell us what “less” might have consisted
in. It is tempting to assume that it was that understanding of God with
which reason provides every human, the fiṭra in the usage of the time.34
In that case we would be looking at the insight that the image of God in
the Quran is richer than can be grasped rationally, leading us to a piece
of rather isolated information Ḥanafī reported of the followers of Ḥamza
b. Ādharak: that the profession of the oneness of God was an experience
(khibra) not granted to anyone automatically, and that one could only
truly believe once one knew all the names of God.35 In other words: the
only way to faith is through revelation; even tawḥīd cannot be grasped
through rational insight. Conversely, it was in Ḥamza’s circle that the
claim was made (for the first time?) that the law, too, contains items that
may be perceived naturally.36
3.1.4.1.1.1 Yamān b. Riʾāb

In the Bayhasiyya we come across a man of letters for the first time, the theo-
logian and heresiographer Yamān b. Riʾāb; proof that this was not a group
made up out of small warring conventicles only. It also shows that it had
not lost any of its vigour by the second half of the second century, as Yamān
was the brother of the Shīʿite theologian ʿAlī b. Riʾāb who is documented at

31 Regarding them see p. 652 above.
32 Cf. the sources listed loc. cit.; also Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 191, 12ff., and Madelung, Religious
Trends 62.
33 Ashʿarī, Maq. 96, 7ff.; Nashwān, Ḥūr 171, –6ff.; Baghdādī 76, 2ff./97, 2ff.; Shahrastānī 100,
5ff./242, 11ff.; Ābī, Nathr al-durr V 232, –5ff.; explained as two complementary “sects”
whose determinist models allegedly differed. Only one of them is listed in Maqdisī, Badʿ
V 138, apu. f., and Baghdādī, Uṣūl 269, –5ff.
34 We find it as a typically Khārijite axiom in an anti-Khārijite dream reported by Ibn
Qutayba (cf. Kister in: IOS 4/1974/76).
35 Firaq muftariqa 16, 4ff.
36 Regarding the so-called Aṭrāfiyya see p. 654 above.
672 CHAPTER 3
this time.1 On the contrary, it still possessed a degree of attraction, as Yamān

had originally been a Thaʿlabite and converted to the Bayhasiyya.2 However,
this may have been due to moving to another place, as he travelled back and
forth between Kufa, where his brother lived, and Khorasan. It was said that
he met his brother on three days each year, and then only to argue;3 but how-
ever picturesque this may sound, they actually worked together in the family
firm. Ḥusayn b. Riʾāb may also have been there, named by Barqī as a follower
of Mūsā al-Kāẓim.4 In that case the doubt concerning the reading of the name
would be eliminated: while the Shīʿite sources mainly have Riʾāb, Yamān him-
self is frequently named Rabāb.5
Yamān was detached enough to describe the Khārijite denominations in
detail and apparently objectively in his K. al-maqālāt.6 Kaʿbī, himself from
Khorasan, referred to him,7 and in turn became the authority for Ashʿarī,8
Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī, and Shahrastānī.9 Most of what we have described so
far was probably seen through his eyes. His interest was also directed at the
Murjiʾa;10 he seems to have intended to present the Khorasanian panorama
in its entirety. In a separate text, however, he attacked the Murjiʾa,11 as well
as Abū Ḥanīfa’s son Ḥammād (d. Dhū l-Qaʿda 176/Feb.–March 793).12 He was
a determinist; he composed a K. al-makhlūq and criticised the Muʿtazilites
1 Regarding him see vol. I 448f. above.

2 Ashʿarī, Maq. 120, 8f.; Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 233, 10; Shahrastānī 102, ult. f./252, 7; following
him Watt, Formative Period 17; Cook, Dogma 88f.; Madelung in: Isl. Philos. Theology 127.
3 Masʿūdī, Murūj V 442, 7ff./IV 28, 3ff.; cf. also Mīzān no. 9847, and Lisān al-Mīzān VI 316
no. 1134.
4 Rijāl 51, 3f.
5 Was the Khārijite Rabāb al-Sijistānī (named by Ashʿarī, Maq. 120, 15) their father?
6 Listed together with his other works by Ibn al-Nadīm 233, 9ff.
7 Thus also in the quotations in Ḥajūrī, Rawḍat al-akhbār (cf. e.g. p. 558 n. 19 above). Also
probably Pseudo-Nāshiʾ, i.e. Jaʿfar b. Ḥarb.
8 Direct quotations from Yamān b. Riʾāb are found Maq. 103, 7f. (= Text VIII 5, f). and 119,
3–120, 4.
9 Direct p. 95, 8f./224, 8f., and 104, –4ff./262, 7ff. The correspondence between Milal 95, 8f.
and Maq. 123, 5 suggests that Ashʿarī is also quoting Yamān’s work in this passage. I do
not believe it is imperative that Shahrastānī quoted Yamān directly as Gimaret assumes
(Livre 38). A general overview by Ritter in: Der Islam 18/1929/35. Ashʿarī, Maq. 120, 8,
Masʿūdī, Tanbīh 395, 15, and Shahrastānī 102, ult. f./252, 7, mention Yamān as a Khārijite
mutakallim.
10 Cf. the passage concerning Abū l-Ṣaydāʾ p. 558 above, or ʿUbayd al-Muktib vol. I 244.
11 Al-radd ʿalā l-Murjiʾa (Ibn al-Nadīm 233, 12).
12 Regarding the date cf. IKh II 205, pu.
Iran 673
in the qadar question. His influence was so great that even Faḍl b. Shādhān
(d. 260/874) in Nishapur felt impelled to respond to his views in a refutation.13
The reason for this may have been that Yamān had composed a K. ithbāt
imāmat Abī Bakr, not necessarily a Khārijite subject, and thus maybe sug-
gested by his experiences with the Rāfiḍites in Kufa. At the same time it al-
lows us to come to a conclusion in the matter – discussed above in the context
of Yamān’s Rāfiḍite brother ʿAlī: whether certain extremist doctrines which
Maqdisī linked to him with the label Yamāniyya had not better attributed to
his brother.14 They include the idea that the Quranic passages which prohibit
the consumption of wine and carrion are in fact condemnation of the first
three caliphs – but someone who defended Abū Bakr as a legitimate caliph
could not have believed that. The remaining extremist views are merely an ac-
cusation of anthropomorphism repeated by Maqdisī a few lines further along,
although in that passage the name is misspelt – or misread by the editor –
as Yamān b. Ziyād.15 Yamān did write a K. al-tawḥīd.16 His anthropomorphism
came with a Jahmite twist: at the end of time all that will be left of God is his
face – presumably because even paradise will cease to exist, and God will not
be seen any more.
Yamān would have shared this anthropomorphism with his Rāfiḍite

brother. This may be the reason for Maqdisī’s confusion. The same
sentence being found twice in his text need not surprise us; the first
time it occurs in the chapter on Shīʿite sects, where only his brother
would be found, and the second time in the chapter on the mushab-
biha. The abovementioned “Jahmite” addition recalls Bayān b. Samʿān
(see vol. I 449 above). We must thus wonder whether the confusion
in Maqdisī should not be resolved differently: as Bayāniyya may have
been read as Yamāniyya, with Yamān b. Riʾāb inferred retrospectively
in both instances. However, the context of the other teachings appears
to preclude this (cf. also p. 139, –4). Only a critical edition of the K. al-
badʾ wal-taʾrīkh will bring complete clarity.
13 Ṭūsī, Fihrist 254, –4.

14 Badʾ V 132, 5ff.; cf. also vol. I 449 above. This would presume that Maqdisī, or his source,
derived the name Yamāniyya retrospectively.
15 Badʾ V 140, apu. f. It could of course be that this is the correct form, but no theologian or
traditionist of that name is documented.
16 Ibn al-Nadīm, loc. cit.
674 CHAPTER 3
3.1.4.1.2 The Ibāḍiyya

The Ibāḍite community in Khorasan would in due course vanish together with
the other Khārijites in Iran; consequently even Ibāḍite sources know only little
about it.1 One author from the Maghreb described Khwārazm as a “village in
the east”, Iran clearly being terra incognita to him.2 It is only by coincidence
that we hear of quarrels in Herat,3 but the earlier significance of the region
still shines through. Ṣuḥār al-ʿAbdī, a contemporary of Jābir b. Zayd, came
from there.4 Sālim b. Dhakwān may have composed his Sīra there,5 and there
may well have been some Ibāḍites among the Azdites who followed Yazīd
b. Muhallab to Iran. At the time of Abū ʿUbayda al-Tamīmī a generation later the
contacts with Basra are clearly visible.6 The link was a certain Hilāl b. ʿAṭiyya al-
Khurāsānī, one of the ḥamalat al-ʿilm.7 The third point of reference in this net-
work was Oman where Hilāl fell in a battle against the Abbasid general Khāzim
b. Khuzayma when the latter (who also came from Khorasan) put an end to the
rule of the “imam” Julandā b. Masʿūd in 134/752.8 Fragments of his Sīra were
quoted in texts composed in that region.9 His brother Shabīb b. ʿAṭiyya bore
the nisba al-ʿUmānī10 as he was actively involved in local politics.11
When Abū l-Muʾarrij fell out with Abū ʿUbayda during the latter’s later years,
he seems to have moved to Persia.12 The same thing happened when the jurists’
quarrel intensified under Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb; Ḥātim b. Manṣūr, one of his opponents,
bore the nisba al-Khurāsānī.13 However, Rabīʿ also had followers in Khorasan:
1 Concerning the following cf. also Madelung, Religious Trends 74ff.

2 Kitāb Ibn Sallām 114, 11.
3 Apparently concerning the issue of qadar (cf. Schwartz, Anfänge der Ibāḍiten 52), but it
will be necessary to establish whether this did not in fact refer to the town of Harāt in
Fars (cf. Krawulsky, Iran 180). In this place, on the border with Kerman, Malaṭī located
a Khārijite community apparently made up out of Ibāḍites who turned to the Muʿtazila
during his lifetime, at the beginning of the second half of the fourth century (Tanbīh 43,
6ff./53, ult. ff.; transl. in Madelung 76).
4 Khamīs b. Saʿīd, Manhaj al-ṭālibīn I 627, apu. f.
5 See vol. I 199 above. The text contains a heresiographical overview in which the Azraqites,
who were well-known in Iran at the time, play an important part (Cook, Dogma 89ff.).
6 Shammākhī, Siyar 87, –5ff.; 116, 13ff.
7 Ibid. 119, 10. This does not necessarily imply that he was the first missionary in Iraq, as
Lewicki states in EI2 III 653a.
8 Kashf al-ghumma, ed. ʿUbaydilī 250, 5ff. and earlier.
9 Nazwānī, Ihtidāʾ 51, –5ff.
10 Khamīs b. Saʿīd 620, 13.
11 Kashf al-ghumma 249, n. 2; cf. vol. I 476 above.
13 Regarding him cf. Ibn Khalfūn, Ajwiba 111; Rebstock, Ibāḍiten im Maġrib 179 and 181.
Iran 675
a certain Hāshim b. ʿAbdallāh came to Basra in order to study under him, and
was consequently praised for his piousness.14 Abū Yazīd al-Khwārizmī’s name
shows how far Ibāḍite scholarship had spread by that time. He, too, was a jurist,
an expert in homicide (dimāʾ), and is named in the same breath as ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān b. Rustam, who ruled in the Maghreb between 160/777 and 168/784.15
The fact that the dynasty of Tāhart came from Persia explains why even after
the death of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s successor ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (168/784–208/823) a
certain Abū ʿĪsā Ibrāhīm b. Ismāʿīl al-Khurāsānī commanded sufficient author-
ity to compose a letter voicing an opinion on the schism of Khalaf b. al-Samḥ
and the Rustamid hegemony in Jabal Nafūsa and Tripolitania.16
At this time, after the decline of the Basran community, Khorasan was prob-
ably the intellectual centre of the Ibāḍiyya. Abū ʿĪsā maintained the connec-
tion to Oman and Abū Sufyān Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl.17 Other jurists such as Abū
Saʿīd ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz18 or Abū Ghassān Makhlad b. al-ʿAmarrad also
appear in the sources.19 Most importantly, it was in Khorasan that a collection
of legal scholarship was composed in which a synthesis of the competing opin-
ions of all these authorities was achieved,
Abū Ghānim Bishr b. Ghānim al-Khurāsānī’s
Mudawwana. Sadly, after this climax, the curtain closes. The work survived
only because the author went travelling in the Maghreb and left his book
behind there. Precisely how it was transmitted remains to be examined. The
Maghrebin Ibāḍiyya had no tradition of legal scholarship of its own, which
is why the work is studied there to this day. On the other hand, people had
to resign themselves to the fact that there were some “dissidents” among
the authorities quoted by Abū Ghānim; people who were seen as belong-
ing among the Nukkār: Abū l-Muʾarrij for instance, or ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-
ʿAzīz.20 Later it would be said that Abū Ghānim presented his work to the
14 Kitāb Ibn Sallām 115, 3f.; also ZDMG 126/1976/35, n. 26, and Madelung, Religious Trends 74.
15 Ibid. 114, 8ff.; Darjīnī, Ṭab. II 258, 10ff.; regarding him also Ennami in: Ibn Khalfūn,
Ajwiba 112, and Schwartz, Anfänge der Ibāḍiten 169, n. 2.
16 The text is included in Kitāb Ibn Sallām (p. 135ff.); cf. also Schwartz 262, n. 2. Regarding
the situation cf. Rebstock 239ff. and Schwartz 267f.; regarding Khalaf b. al-Samḥ see p. 230
above.
17 Kitāb Ibn Sallām 138, 8f.; regarding him see p. 232 above.
18 Regarding him cf. Madelung 74, n. 99, and p. 239 above.
19 Thus in Kitāb Ibn Sallām 115, 4; incorrect in Schwartz 60 and my article ZDMG 126/1976/41.
Cf. also the names in Khamīs b. Saʿīd, Manhaj I 620, 13f.
20 Regarding them see p. 239ff. above.
676 CHAPTER 3
imam ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and that it was preserved in the library in Tāhart. This
is surprising in that ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was the one who had been forced to deal
with the dissidents around Ibn Fandīn.21 Furthermore our earliest source,
the Kitāb Ibn Sallām, does not name the work or the author, despite quot-
ing at length Abū ʿĪsā’s letter which arrived in Tāhart after ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s
death.
It was known in any case that the extant manuscripts were not based on
the archetype in Tāhart but on a copy in the possession of ʿAmrūs b. Fatḥ, a
scholar from Jabal Nafūsa. The copy in the imam’s library, it was said, was de-
stroyed by fire when Tāhart was captured by Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Shīʿī in 296/908.
ʿAmrūs, however, had been permitted to copy the book when Abū Ghānim was
his guest on his way to the imam. This story presents chronological difficulties
as ʿAmrūs died in 283/896 at the battle of Mānū against the Aghlabids, 75 years
after the imam’s death.22 It is clearly an attempt at keeping the ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
tradition alive while retaining the direct ijāza to ʿAmrūs.23 In an inconspicuous
place, in the commentary on Wisyānī’s Siyar,24 the web of legend was indeed
torn: Abū Ghānim had not been in Jabal Nafūsa for some time when ʿAmrūs
obtained the MS. Where, though, could he have found it if Abū Ghānim was
indeed travelling on to visit the imam? It is more probable that Abū Ghānim
did not come to the Maghreb until much later, around the middle of the third
century, and met ʿAmrūs, who was qāḍī at the time and a much-respected man
in Jabal Nafūsa. In that case it would not have been remarkable for him to
quote the Ḥanafite jurist and Jahmite Bishr al-Marīsī, who died in 218/833, in
his book.
The Mudawwana is in circulation in two versions nowadays, a Mudawwana
al-kubrā and a Mudawwana al-ṣughrā. Both texts were printed in Oman
in 1984;25 the more extensive version being available in a manuscript facsimile
as well.26 A detailed study of the subject matter and the connections between
the texts is still outstanding. The Mudawwana al-kubrā was given its present
form by Yūsuf Aṭfiyāsh (d. 1332/1914); it is the result of a tartīb. Even so, the
arrangement of the two versions is essentially the same; their length, too, is

22 Rebstock, Ibāḍiten 181.
23 Lewicki also assumes this ijāza (EI2 I 120b. s. n. Abū G̲ h̲ānim).
24 MS Smogorzewski, Cracow no. 227, p. 3.
25 At the request of the Wizārat al-turāth al-qawmī wal-thaqāfī; 1404/1984 in two volumes
each.
26 Beirut 1974.
Iran 677
more similar than one might expect. The Mudawwana al-ṣughrā seems more
genuine; local scholars were the first to assume that it represents the mate-
rial before its rearrangement by Shaykh Aṭfiyāsh.27 Later additions cannot blur
the impression that Bishr b. Ghānim relied mainly on Abū l-Muʾarrij, and also
seems to have interviewed Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb in person. Additions by the redactor
are marked with qāla l-murattib in the Mudawwana al-kubrā. The uneven dis-
tribution of the author’s interest in the various topics is noticeable: the chapter
on prayer is very long,28 there is less information on the zakāt, and only ten
lines are devoted to the hajj.29 It may be that the name of the work does not go
back to Bishr at all; Wisyānī mentions a Dīwān known as Ghānimiyyāt.30
Considering its varied history, it is not necessarily the case that the text faith-
fully reflects Iranian circumstances of the time. We can assume that the com-
munity in Khorasan differed from its Basran and Maghrebin brothers in several
ways. In Khorasan and Ḥaḍramawt the Ibāḍites considered nabīdh to be per-
mitted, but not in Oman. Taken together with Jābir b. Zayd’s abovementioned
view that inebriation alone was prohibited, we are approaching the issue as re-
constructed in the context of the Bayhasiyya above.31 While Ḥanafī should not
be believed when he says that the Ibāḍites permitted marrying one’s mother or
one’s sister,32 we have already seen that the Khārijites devoted much thought
to the Quranic verse that listed the prohibited degrees of kinship.
27 Thus the Omani scholar Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Sālimī (cf. Schacht in: Revue
Africaine 100/1956/381) as quoted in the foreword on the Beirut facsimile. Of course it is
possible that not all the manuscripts of Mudawwana al-ṣughrā contain identical text; the
printed version does not disclose the manuscript background.
28 In the Mudawwana al-kubrā, together with deliberations on ṭahāra pp. 7–241, the legal
material being supplemented by an extensive paraenetic section (p. 217ff.).
29 Vol. I 346.
30 P. 2, 9f. We should also consider the Berber version (cf. Schacht, loc. cit., n. 8, esp. Actes
XVI. Congrès International Alger 1905, 4e section, p. 68ff.). For a more detailed overview cf.
my deliberations in: ZDMG 126/1976/38ff., and Wilkinson in: Der Islam 62/1985/248ff.; also
Ennami, Studies in Ibāḍism 155ff.; and GAS 1/586.
31 Cf. Wilkinson, Imamate Tradition 203.
32 Firaq muftariqa 15, 2.
678 CHAPTER 3
3.1.4.2 Nishapur
Nishapur’s importance compared to the border cities Marv and Balkh in-
creased only under the Ṭāhirids; it became the seat of the government.
Previously, the sources simply spoke of the Abarshahr region.1 While Abū
Muslim had a Friday mosque and a dār al-imāra built there, the public build-
ings that would continue to play a part later were built by the Ṣaffārid ʿAmr
b. Layth (265/879–299/901).2 Consequently it is not surprising that we know
little about intellectual circumstances in the city until the beginning of the
third century. Once again the sources about the Abbasid revolution provide
the oldest reports. There were numerous Shīʿites among the Tamīm who had
settled in the city, having thrown their lot in with Muḥammad al-Bāqir after
Abū Hāshim’s death. One of them was apparently Khidāsh who had acted in
Khorasan on behalf of the Banū Hāshim since around 111/729 and thus got in
the way of the Abbasid daʿwa. Political circumstances led to a temporary rap-
prochement, but then Abū Muslim made a clean sweep in the last few years
before the revolution; he ran the leader of the Nishapur group, a certain Abū
Khālid al-Jawālīqī, out of town and later, when he caught him again, boiled him
to death in a cauldron.3
Of course he had not eliminated the Shīʿites per se. Those who were
known as the Khālidiyya, after Abū Khālid, during his time, reappeared as the
Fāṭimiyya shortly afterwards under al-Manṣūr. They still did not believe that
someone who was not descended from Fāṭima, like the Abbasids, had a right
to become caliph. They also continued to adhere to the rather wild ideas that
had been characteristic of Muḥammad al-Bāqir’s time. They claimed that the
prophet had been omniscient, and that the imams following him were granted
a revelation as well. Faḍl b. Shādhān (d. 260/874) was the first to counter this
with a more rationalist theology in the region.4 Now it seems as though the
same people, seen from a different perspective, fitted into the general consen-
sus once more, for the group named Khālidiyya by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī was
in fact Murjiʾite.5 They believed in what we have encountered previously as
Murjiʾite ideas, described by Abū l-Ṣalt al-Harawī, ʿAlī al-Riḍā’s confidant who
1 See p. 663 above; cf. Barthold, Historical Geography 95ff.

2 Cf. Bosworth, Ghaznavids 147 and 157f.; also Lapidus in: Islamic Middle East, ed. Udovitch,
p. 199f.
3 Akhbār al-ʿAbbās 204, 10ff., and 403, 8ff.; also Sharon, Black Banners 148, 158, 162f., 169ff.,
and 183, n. 89, as well as EI2 V 1ff. s. v. K̲ h̲idās̲h̲.
4 Kashshī 539, ult. ff.; Hishām b. al-Ḥakam’s pupil Yūnus b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who was greatly
respected in Nishapur (see vol. I 455 above), probably still agreed with them on most points.
5 Iʿtiqādāt firaq al-muslimīn 71, 2ff.
Iran 679
lived in Nishapur,6 as follows: “Their (i.e. the Khorasanians’) irjā’ is not the hei-
nous doctrine that faith is only a profession without action, and that faith will
not be harmed if one does not act, but their irjā’ consists in hoping for forgive-
ness for grave sinners; unlike the Khārijites and others who declare humans
unbelievers because of (their) sins.”7 Abū l-Ṣalt, although a Shīʿite, appears to
have been a Murjiʾite in this respect.8 The ʿAlids living in the city do not seem
to have excited any notice. Some of them moved to the Bayhaq district and
the city of Sabzawār in due course, where the Shīʿite dynasty of the Sarbadārs
would rely on them later.9
Of course the Nishapur Murjiʾites had their own views in other matters.
Most of them were Ḥanafites; Faḍl b. Shādhān discussed them in great detail
in his K. al-īḍāḥ. In the second century, however, it becomes difficult to draw
a clear boundary between them and the Shīʿa as well as the Jahmiyya. The ex-
istence of Jahmites in Nishapur is confirmed by Ibrāhīm b. Ṭahmān debating
with them there. Still, while the “heinous doctrine” mentioned by Abū l-Ṣalt
would have been theirs, it was not their concept of faith that provoked Ibn
Ṭahmān to contradict them, but their image of God.10 Once again we are faced
with the danger of falling for a label that could be exchanged at will. Ibrāhīm
b. Ṭahmān came from out of town, from Herat. It is possible that the attack was
in fact directed at
Abū Muʿādh Bukayr b. Maʿrūf al-Dāmghānī al-Asadī
who died in 163/779, the same year as Ibrāhīm b. Ṭahmān, and whose name
appears in the sources as the first qāḍī of the city. He was a Murjiʾite,11 had
met Ibrāhīm al-Ṣāʾigh,12 and transmitted a hadith according to which the
“strongest ties of faith” were the solidarity in God (al-walāya fī llāh), the love
in God and the hatred in God (against non-Muslims?).13 He had heard this
6 Regarding him see ch. C 2.2 below.

7 TB VI 109, 3ff.
8 Regarding another case of this kind see p. 713 below.
9 Cf. Krawulsky in: Festschrift ʿAbbās 293ff.
11 Thus according to Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 194, 11ff. s. n. Bukayr al-Dāmghānī; also TT II 404,
–5. Ibn Ḥibbān found it difficult to identify the name, suggesting Bukayr b. Mismār, but as
the only one to do so (cf. Mīzān no. 1310–11). Regarding Bukayr b. Maʿrūf cf. Bukhārī I2 117
no. 1886; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 152f. no. 192; Khalīfa-i Naysābūrī, Talkhīṣ 15, 15; Samʿānī, Ansāb
V 291, pu. ff.; Ṣafadī, Wāfī X 272 no. 4769; Halm, Ausbreitung 67; Juynboll, Tradition 231.
12 TD X 259, 15; regarding him see p. 616 above.
13 TD X 260, 6f.; also Mīzān no. 1311.
680 CHAPTER 3
from Muqātil b. Ḥayyān, together with his Tafsīr,14 and as he seems to have
adopted his position most faithfully, he would later become the scapegoat for
his teacher’s extravagant ideas.15 His transcendentalism may have been part
of this, as it was well-known that he transmitted an exegesis of sura 58:7 from
Ḍaḥḥāk b. Muzāḥim via Muqātil, according to which God is only close to hu-
mans because he knows everything about them. Afterwards, however, he is
described as sitting on the throne: with this, Ibn Ṭahmān would have agreed.16
We know that Bukayr did not keep the position until the end of his life as he
died in Damascus, where the Murjiʾite Marwān b. Muʿāwiya al-Ṭāṭārī studied
under him.
Samʿānī V 291 ult.; regarding the latter see vol. I 160f. above. Regarding
Bukayr’s Syrian period cf. the biography in TD X 259ff. Later authors like
Dāwūdī regarding him as a Quranic commentator (Ṭab. I 120 no. 114) prob-
ably meant no more than that he passed on Muqātil’s material (including
juristic exegeses like the one in Shāfiʿī, Umm VI 7, 20ff.). As the nisba sug-
gests, he presumably came from Dāmghān, which is why Kardarī called
him the imam of the Qūmis region. His son would be a judge there, too
(Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa, 2Beirut 1401/1981, p. 510, 11).
The tradition of Muqātil b. Ḥayyān was also continued by
Abū Ghiyāth Aṣram b. Ghiyāth al-Naysābūrī.
The mosque where he taught in Nishapur was shown to visitors to the city,17
but he, too, did not stay in the city all his life, as we mainly know of him in
Baghdad where he offered for sale the hadiths he had heard from Muqātil.18
There may well have been a genuine crisis, but even then the influence of Balkh
continued. Towards the end of the century ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar b. Maymūn al-
Rammāḥ, whose father we discussed with the Murjiʾites of Balkh,19 succeeded
to the position of judge. He died in Nishapur, probably in 197/813.20 The qāḍī
14 Thaʿlabī, Kashf, Intro. 38, 6f.

16 Abū Dāwūd, Masāʾil al-Imām Aḥmad 263, 1ff.; Ibn Taymiyya, Sharḥ ḥadīth al-nuzūl 122, 9ff.
17 Khalīfa-i Naysābūrī, Talkhīṣ 15, 13f.
18 TB VII 32f. no. 3496; Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 242 no. 1530; Bukhārī I2 no. 1670; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 118
no. 141; Mīzān no. 1018. Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 183, 9ff., called him a Murjiʾite.
19 See p. 610f. above. Regarding the son cf. Halm 67.
20 Fażāʾil-i Balkh 162, 4ff., where the date of his death must be corrected in accordance
with the note. The chronology remains a problem with regard to the subsequent story
(162, 7ff.).
Iran 681
Abū ʿUmar21 Ḥafṣ b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿUmar b. Farrūkh al-Balkhī,
d. Dhū l-Qaʿda 199/June–July 815,22 appears to have been from a Balkh family
as well, although his father had already been a judge in Nishapur.23 They were
both Ḥanafites, the school having settled in Nishapur in the time since Bukayr
b. Maʿrūf had left.24 To begin with, the links to Kufa that developed as a con-
sequence were mainly private ones. In his youth Ḥafṣ had been Abū Ḥanīfa’s
business partner (sharīk),25 which tells us that he, and probably his father be-
fore him, was a cloth merchant. After some time he retired from the position
as judge and devoted himself to spiritual exercises.26 After all, Nishapur was an
outpost for a qāḍī in those days. With the city’s rise under the Ṭāhirids, circum-
stances changed, and it went from being a mere offshoot of Balkh to becoming
a much-desired and rewarding post. It was not until a few generations later,
in 316/928, that a Shāfiʿite would be able to assert himself against the Ḥanafite
ascendancy.27
The “Sunnite” reaction, on the other hand, which ultimately profited the
Shāfiʿite emphasis on hadith, began considerably earlier. ʿAbdallāh b. Ṭāhir
(r. 213/828–230/845) had taken the first steps, although the development did
not procced quite as he had imagined it. He called
Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn al-Faḍl b. ʿUmayr b. Qāsim b. Kaysān al-Bajalī,
a renowned Quranic commentator, to his court.28 He came from Kufa; ʿAbdallāh

b. Ṭāhir had probably met him in Iraq. He arrived in Nishapur with his sponsor
in 217/832 and died there in 282/895, allegedly at the age of 104. Despite this
long, active life he left no lasting impression. Baghdādī, who was familiar with
21 IS VII2 104, 10, has Abū ʿAmr, but considering that the grandfather’s name was ʿUmar, this
is probably a mistake.
22 Date found only in Ibn Ḥajar, TT II 404, 12.
23 IAW I 221 no. 553.
24 Cf. the qāḍī list in Bulliet, Patricians 256ff., and Halm, Ausbreitung 67ff.
26 Mīzān no. 2126. TT II 404, –4 confirms him as a Murjiʾite (after Ibn Ḥibbān); also 405, 3ff.
27 Halm, Ausbreitung 46.
28 Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān II 307f. no. 1265 (in part after Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī); Baghdādī,
Uṣūl al-dīn 309, 10ff.; Arazi in: Festschrift Baneth 208ff.; also Dhahabī, Siyar XIII 414ff.;
Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn I 156 no. 152 = Suyūṭī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn 12 no. 33;
Samʿānī, Ansāb II 92, 2f.; Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab II 178, –8ff. Talkhīṣ Taʾrīkh
Naysābūr only mentions the name in passing, misspelling it (151, 5f.).
682 CHAPTER 3
Nishapur,29 mentioned him a few times,30 but apart from this, his teachings
were ignored. He was a mutakallim as well, and although he was on the side
of the ahl al-ḥadīth like his contemporary Ibn Kullāb,31 he was too early to be
appreciated in Khorasan. Greater success was the reward of a traditionist who,
while he was most welcome at court as well, had a closer connection to the
people at the same time:
Abū Yūsuf Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm al-Tamīmī al-Ḥanẓalī, known as Ibn Rāhōya,
161/778–238/853, Bukhārī’s teacher.32 He came from Marv, and was probably

more popular among the people because he spoke Persian. While he was
presumably an Arab like al-Bajalī, he was not imported. He had acquired his
knowledge on extensive travels; in his youth he had attended the lectures of
ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak. His work in Nishapur was in the latter’s tradition.33
While Bajalī had not got involved in legal matters,34 Ibn Rāhōya used prophetic
tradition as a weapon against the Ḥanafites.35 However, people did not believe
in the ḥadīth al-nuzūl he transmitted; one of Ibn Ṭāhir’s generals could simply
not imagine that God would go to the effort of stepping down to the lowest of
the heavens every day, and the prince himself thought that sura 89:22, which
Ibn Rāhōya adduced in support, really only referred to the Last Judgment.36
One generation later Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj wrote his Ṣaḥīḥ in the city;37 Ibn
Rāhōya had been the one to advise Bukhārī to do the same.

30 Uṣūl al-dīn 166, 5f.; 249, 1; 193, 11f.; 195, 8; 306, 10f.
31 Cf. also Baghdādī, Uṣūl 254, 16ff.; Oriens 18–19/1965–66/101. He had studied under ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz al-Kinānī who was believed to have conducted a famous debate with Bishr
al-Marīsī (cf. Baghdādī, Uṣūl 309, 10f.; Mīzān no. 5139; Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya II 144, 9);
regarding him see ch. 3.3.6 below.
32 Regarding him cf. Schacht in EI2 III 902 s. v. Ibn Rāhwayh; GAS 1/109f. His Musnad was the
subject of a Cambridge dissertation.
34 Legal Ṭabaqāt works do not mention him at all.
35 TB VI 353, 13ff.
36 Ibn Taymiyya, Sharḥ ḥadīth al-nuzūl 42, –4ff., and 43, apu. ff. (after Ibn Baṭṭa); Dhahabī,
ʿUlūw 225, 7ff.; variants in Bayhaqī, Al-asmāʾ wal-ṣifāt 567, –8ff. Regarding the wording and
the distribution of the hadith cf. Graham, Divine Word 177f.
37 Regarding him see GAS 1/136ff.
Iran 683
Ibn Rāhōya’s descendants worked in an office in Nishapur together with

Abū Dāwūd’s son.38 The latter was rather young at the time, but had already
been Muḥammad b. Aslam al-Ṭūsī’s (d. 242/856), a traditionist and ascetic who
had written against the Murjiʾa,39 clerk before the age of ten.40 Polemic did
not pay any attention to the distinction made quite recently by Abū l-Ṣalt al-
Harawī; Muḥammad b. Aslam tied Murjiʾites and Jahmites to the same yoke.41
We can tell that Ibn Rāhōya trained with Ibn al-Mubārak; the ṭalab al-ʿilm had
opened his eyes, as well as those of the others mentioned earlier, to the fact
that ideas that found broad approval in Khorasan could still appear provincial
and sectarian when seen from the outside. The only native trend that grew
within these circles was anthropomorphism. All of Ibn Rāhōya’s followers were
said to have been agreed on this.42 The best confirmation is Ibn Khuzayma’s
(223/838–311/924) K. al-tawḥīd wa-ithbāt ṣifāt al-Rabb, where the arguments
are primarily based not on the Quran but on hadith. Ibn Khuzayma had met
Ibn Rāhōya in his youth.43
The old connection between anthropomorphism and the Murjiʾite con-
cept of faith lived on among the Sufis. Aḥmad b. Ḥarb (d. 234/848–49) was a
Murjiʾite;44 he was believed to have moved to Nishapur from Marv.45 His pupil
Muḥammad b. Karrām (d. 255/86946) gave a new dynamic to this idea. Draped
in a garment of unsewn sheep’s leather he wandered through the rural districts
of Khorasan and the regions of Ghūr and Gharchistān that had so far been only
faintly touched by Islam. He was not interested in the traditionist movement
that mainly relied on merchants; he preached to the common people. When he
returned to Nishapur he did not take off his penitent’s robes; wearing a white
qalansuwa on his head he sat in a brick stall (dukkān) on an animal skin like
a Sufi, giving people spiritual advice.47 Unsurprisingly the authorities arrested
38 ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, d. 316/929; regarding him see GAS 1/174f.
39 Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya IX 245, 17ff., and 248, 10.
40 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān III 192a, 7ff.
41 Ibid. 247, ult. ff.; cf. also Dhahabī, ʿUlūw 240, pu. ff. Regarding him cf. in general the
detailed biography in Dhahabī, Siyar XII 195ff., and Reinert, Tawakkul 314.
42 Ibn al-Dāʿī, Tabṣira 107, 8f.
43 Regarding him see GAS 1/601.
44 TB IV 119, 11; Mīzān no. 329.
45 TB IV 118, 9.
46 Regarding the dependency see my Ungenützte Texte 32; also Mīzān loc. cit.
47 Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya II 304, –6ff. after Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī’s Taʾrīkh Naysābūr.
684 CHAPTER 3
him; Ibn Khuzayma is said to have visited him in prison occasionally.48 When
he was freed after around eight years in 251/865, he went to Jerusalem, where
he died later.49 The first Sunni refutation was composed by his younger con-
temporary Muḥammad b. al-Yamān from Samarqand;50 criticism in Nishapur,
possibly while he was still alive, came from the Imamite Faḍl b. Shādhān.51 He
imagined God as a body of light of “one essence and one substance”, sitting on
the throne which is his boundary, and weighing it down with his weight.52 He
probably wrote on this in his K. al-tawḥīd; unlike Ibn Khuzayma’s work of the
same name, this contained not so much hadith as theology and Quranic exege-
sis, like the Shīʿite texts before it.53 Ibn Karrām restricted the act of faith solely
to the profession of faith;54 all humans are believers by virtue of the original
covenant they have made with God.55 His intention may have been to deflate
the argument of the rich and learned people of Nishapur that his plebeian fol-
lowers were not true Muslims.
Interestingly, criticism also came from the common people among the
urban population. A certain Abū l-Ḥasan Sālim b. Ḥasan al-Bārūsī disliked the
Karrāmites’ ostentatious piousness and the ragged clothes and found many
like-minded people among the craftsmen. They probably regarded the Sufis
as mere idlers; Ibn Karrām having permitted paid employment only as an ex-
ception and in special cases (rukhṣa).56 As a result the ideal of hiding one’s
piousness and pretending to be as normal as possible emerged. Bārūsī’s pupil
Ḥamdūn al-Qaṣṣār (d. 271/884–5), a fuller by trade, spread it successfully, turn-
ing it into a new ascetic trend. This would later become the Malāmatiyya.
48 Ibid. II 304, –4f. This may be part of a later, harmonising legend.
49 Ibid. 304, 13ff., which tells us that according to another tradition his body was taken there
from Palestine. It is difficult to suppress the association that Karaites, too, had gath-
ered in Jerusalem in large numbers in order to repent and await the Messiah (Goitein,
Mediterranean Society V 461f.). Regarding the biography cf. Bosworth in: EI2 IV 667 s. v.
Karrāmiyya; also Ungenützte Texte 20f.
51 Ungenützte Texte 75.
52 Ibid. 21 and 26. The heresiographical account by Ḥākim al-Jushamī translated there is
now also accessible in his Risālat Iblīs 132, 8ff. Also Zysow in: JAOS 108/1988/577ff.
53 Ibid. 12; cf. also vol. I 408f., 425 and 452 above. Ibn Taymiyya emphasised that the
Karrāmites – like their opponents – used sura 112 as an argument (Tafsīr sūrat al-ikhlāṣ 56,
–7ff.).
54 Ashʿarī, Maq. 141, 5ff.; Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal III 188, –9ff., and IV 204, 13ff.
55 Baghdādī, Farq 211, –4ff./223, 11ff.; cf. also Madelung, Religious Trends 40. Consequently
actions do not require a specific intention (Zysow, loc. cit. 581).
56 Ibn Samāʿa, Iktisāb 24, ult. ff.; also Madelung 43.
Iran 685
Cf. the article Malāmatiyya in EI2 VI 223ff. Regarding the situation in

Nishapur in general cf. Massignon, Passion 2I 214ff./I 170ff. and, for the
later period, Bulliet, Patricians 29ff. Regarding the local Muʿtazila see ch.
C 7.5 below. On the theological development of the Karrāmiyya see my
Ungenützte Texte 30f. and 66ff. Interestingly, even a century and a half
later some people believed to have spotted Karrāmites even in Tunisia
among the common people; in his K. al-minād Muḥammad b. Muslim
al-Māzarī (d. 530/1135) mentioned a water-carrier in Qayrawān who
asked the muftī if God was in his water vessel (cf. Idris in: Cahiers de
Tunisie 1/1953/155ff.; regarding the author see Pellat in: EI2 VI 943). Of
course, this may simply be a scholarly identification.
686 CHAPTER 3
3.2 Central and Southern Iran
In the east the Umayyads had replaced the Sasanids as the guardians against
central Asia; while in the Iranian heartlands they took over the government
only. Here, the Muslims did not do any militant missionary work: there was no
reason for it with the Nestorian Christians and the Jews, many of whom lived
in Khuzestan and Fars;1 and except for rare persecutions, the Zoroastrians were
largely left in peace, too.2 Fars, homeland of the Achaemenids as well as the
Sasanids, would have a large Zoroastrian population for a long time to come;
and it was not until the mid-third century that the Zaydites began to convert
the Caspian regions Daylam and Ṭabaristān to Islam.3 Cities like Isfahan and
Rayy did not step into the limelight before Nishapur; even centres of scholar-
ship like Gondēshāpūr, where the Arabs learnt much, were barely mentioned
by the historians.4 The administrative centre of the region was in Iraq, where
the capital had been during the Sasanid period, with independent governors
only in the east or in Armenia. Southern and central Iran became a refuge for
the internal Islamic opposition, a power-political vacuum attracting many of
those who had failed in Iraq. The country’s mountainous topography and the
great desert in the middle supported this development, resulting in the im-
pression – surely too generalised – that until the middle of the second century
one rebellious movement followed anther, and that there was no sign of a lin-
ear growth of an Islamic identity.
1 Regarding the Jews in the Parthian and Sasanid eras cf. Neusner in CHI III 909ff. (but with
emphasis on Babylonia); regarding the Christians Asmussen ibid. 924ff. For the Jewish pop-
ulation in the Islamic era cf. EI2 IV 308ff. s. v. Judaeo-Persian. Centres were Hamadan and
Isfahan; regarding local dialects cf. R. Abrahamian, Dialectes des Israélites de Hamadan et
d’Ispahan et dialecte de Baba Tahir (Paris 1936).
2 Cf. EI2 V 1110ff. s. v. Mad̲ j̲ūs.
3 Cf. the collection of sources in Madelung, Arabic Texts concerning the History of the Zaydī
Imāms of Ṭabaristān, Daylamān and Gīlān (Beirut 1987).
4 Regarding Gondēshāpūr cf. A Sayılı in EI2 III 1119f. s. v., and Krawulsky, Iran 340f. (includ-
ing the older sources); also Schwaigert in: Vorträge XX. DOT Erlangen 185ff. Heinz Herbert
Schöffler’s study Die Akademie von Gondischapur (Stuttgart 1979) is based exclusively on sec-
ondary sources and discusses the subject in a rather haphazard fashion. M. W. Dols’ sceptical
approach The Origins of the Islamic Hospital, Myth and Reality in: Bull. Hist. Med. 61/1987/367ff.
may provide more relevant information.
Iran 687
Regarding the geopolitical situation in Iran in the pre-Islamic and Islamic

periods cf. E. Ehlers, Iran 128ff. Regarding cultural and intellectual history
cf. Spuler, Iran in frühislamischer Zeit 133ff.; concerning the early period
also Sadighi, Mouvements religieux 16ff. and passim. The Ismailiyya was
governed from Ahwāz during its early phase after the mid-third century
(Madelung in ER XIII 248).
3.2.1 The Khārijites

The first ones to make use of these advantages were the Khārijites. They
looked for support from the indigenous population and were not scrupulous
when choosing. One of the earliest muḥakkima, al-Khirrīt b. Rāshid, who ap-
peared in Fars in 38/658, convinced local Christians – who had converted
to Islam and then renounced it again during the civil war – to fight against
ʿAlī.1 In the mountains around Rāmhurmuz he gathered Kurds around him,
socially disadvantaged people who were already disappointed in the new
government.2 Later the Azraqites followed similar lines. Qaṭarī b. al-Fujāʾa,
whom they appointed their “caliph”, appears to have been called by the popu-
lation to help during an attack on Rayy;3 we are told of converted Zoroastrians
joining him.4
His Arab elite troops had fled to the Iranian uplands after being defeated in
Iraq in 68/687; once appointed their leader he rearmed them in the inacces-
sible regions of Kerman and then spread fear among the Muslim settlers and
the armies sent against him. His poems were admired,5 but the istiʿrāḍ, the
test of faith, caused dismay; a Muslim who did not profess Khārijism would be
treated like an unbeliever. The consequences affected families as well: women
and children were killed or sold into slavery. This was what was reported in
Iraq;6 reality was rather more complex. Qaṭarī wrote a poem assuring a former
Khārijite who had got involved with Ḥajjāj that he regarded him as a sinner,
and asking him to repent and re-join his forces until he was granted a mar-
tyr’s death.7 Non-Muslims were spared altogether; while Jews, Christians and
1 Ṭabarī I 3434, 7ff.; also Morony, Iraq 443, and Djaït, La grande discorde 329ff.
2 Morony 265.
3 Wellhausen, Oppositionsparteien 36, n. 2.
4 Mubarrad, Kāmil 1108, 10. General information in Morony, Iraq 474f.
5 Regarding poetry cf. Gabrieli in: REI 41/1973/40ff.; regarding the fragments cf. Gabrieli’s col-
lection in RSO 20/1943/352ff. as well as I. ʿAbbās, Shiʿr al-Khawārij, no. 80ff.
6 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 264, 4f. etc.; general information in EI2 IV 269 s. v. Istiʿrāḍ. Regarding the
arguments for it see vol. I 9 and 21 above.
7 Shiʿr al-Khawārij, no. 90 v. 9; cf. Gabrieli’s translation in: REI 41/1973/46f.
688 CHAPTER 3
Zoroastrians were, of course, unbelievers, they did not know better.8 It seems
that the Iranian mawālī formed their own unit under him. When they left him
around 77/696, the reason combined personal injury and religious motivation
in characteristic fashion: Qaṭarī was said to have told them that until recently
they had been merely unbelievers, and then refused to take back the insult, or
“to repent”, as they put it.9 The schism accelerated their downfall. Two years
later they were dispersed completely; Qaṭarī having fallen earlier.
Regarding him cf. EI2 IV 752f. Basic information in Wellhausen,

Oppositionsparteien 36ff. and earlier; concerning events leading up to
these Rotter, Zweiter Bürgerkrieg 80ff. Also EI2 IV 1075b. s. v. K̲ h̲ārijites,
and V 157 s. v. Kirmān; Bosworth, Sīstān, Index s. v. Azraqites; Dixon,
Caliphate 176ff.; Składanek, Doktryny 130ff. The caliph’s title amīr al-
muʾminīn was struck onto his coins (Walker, Arabo-Sassanian Coins lxi
and 112ff.). The locations which became particularly important in the
Khārijite wars are listed in P. Schwarz’s work on Iran (cf. the Index s. v.
Ḫāriǧiten). Military success may have been due not only to support from
the population but also to the fact that the Azraqites were the first to use
iron stirrups (Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 23, 6f.); an invention that was probably an
Iranian achievement (cf. Lynn White, jr., Medieval Technology and Social
Change 14ff. and 142; Cahen in: V. J. Parry/M. E. Yapp, War Technology and
Society in the Middle East 114).
3.2.1.1 Yazīd b. Unaysa and the uprising of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī

The Iranian Khārijites probably understood even then that the Azraqites’ radi-
calism had led them to their doom. One of their number, a certain
Yazīd b. Unaysa,
who had lived in Basra and later settled in Gūr, the future Fīrūzābād in Fars,
advised prudence. While he proposed solidarity with the early muḥakkima, he
rejected “those who came after”, i.e. Nāfiʿ b. Azraq and his followers; he saw
them as “innovators”. He may have supported them initially, for he believed
that once the community had been dispersed one should not continue to fight
individually. Consequently he was counted among the Ibāḍites later; maybe
8 Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal IV 189, –6f. Cf. Ṭabarī I 3423, 9f., and Mubarrad, Kāmil 946, 1ff.; also Tritton,
Muslim Theology 37f.; Salem, Political Theory 66; Morony, Iraq 473.
9 Ashʿarī, Maq. 87, 12ff.; slightly different in Mubarrad, Kāmil 1150, 10ff.; cf. Bosworth, Sīstān 39.
Iran 689
he grew up among the Azd in Basra. It is not likely, however, that he would
have had much to do with them elsewhere; most of them regarded his teach-
ings with scepticism and rejection.1 His name does not appear in any Ibāḍite
source.2
Of course there was some cause for scepticism and rejection, as he believed
that God would send a further prophet after Muḥammad, one who would ap-
pear among the Persians and reveal a new scripture, a heavenly book like the
Quran which would be revealed not in pieces but as a whole, in one go. The re-
ligion to come into the world in this way would be that of the Ṣābians, of whom
the Quran spoke. These Ṣābians did not yet exist; the extant text emphasises
that they have nothing in common with the people usually designated by that
name. The new revelation would require witnesses; two, in fact, like every con-
troversial fact. Yazīd was one of these; but he did not seem to know whether
the other one had already appeared.3
I discussed the correlations in my essay in: Festschrift Gabrieli 301ff. in

more detail, giving a number of sources also covering the following chap-
ters. The only thing I left out was the form of the name, which is not the
same in all the sources. Dahkhudā (Lughatnāma s. v.), Levi Della Vida
(in EI1 II 973a > EI2 IV 1076b) and Lewicki (in EI2 III 660a) read Anīsa
instead of Unaysa; Levi Della Vida adding Abī as well. This addition is
indeed found in Khwārizmī (Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm 19, 12), Ibn Ḥazm (Fiṣal
IV 188, –4), Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī (Ḥūr 175, 5) and Baghdādī (Farq 263,
4/279, –5). In his Uṣūl al-dīn, on the other hand, Baghdādī has Yazīd
b. Unaysa, as does Ṣāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād in his Kashf ʿan manāhij aṣnāf al-
Khawārij (cf. Nashriyya-i Dānishkada-i Adabiyyāt Tabrīz 20/1347/147, 5f.),
Ābī (Nathr al-durr V 234, 5) and Shahrastānī (101, pu./248, 4). Ashʿarī cop-
ied this form from his source on Yamān b. Riʾāb (Text VIII 5, f.); maybe we
should suspect a contamination as Ibn Ḥazm warned (Fiṣal IV 188, –4) of
confusing him with the well-known traditionist Abū Usāma Zayd b. Abī
Unaysa al-Ruhāwī, who died in the Jazira in 124/742 or 125/743 (regarding
him see Dhahabī, TH 139f. no. 131, and Mīzān no. 2990). Ibn Ḥazm had
good reason, as Yazīd has been corrupted to Zayd in his version, with the
result that the two names are identical. However, Saksakī adopted the
warning, too, although he restored Zayd to read Yazīd (Burhān 15, 10ff.).
1 Text VIII 5, a–i and o–p with commentary.

2 The term Yazīdiyya always refers to ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd al-Fazārī’s followers (see vol. I 477ff.).
3 Text VIII 5, k–m and q with commentary.
690 CHAPTER 3
The association seems to have suggested itself and may have been the
reason why Abī was somehow added to the Ibāḍite’s name as well. In
Ṣafadī’s text, Yazīd was even corrupted to Burayd (Wāfī X 123, 10, which
also calls the sect Buraydiyya instead of Yazīdiyya); it is possible that he
found it like this in his source as he arranged the names alphabetically. –
The reading Anīsa instead of Unaysa might be supported by the fact
that the word also exists as an ordinary lexeme, meaning “fire” (cf. Lane,
Lexicon 115a). In the early Islamic period Unaysa is documented several
times as a woman’s name (cf. Ibn Ḥabīb, Muḥabbar, Index 574 s. n.; but
only ever in the editor’s vocalisation, e.g. 418, ult.; 419, 6 and pu.; 420, 3).
The Khārijite was clearly named after his mother, an indication of his low
social origin.
The last instance reported above is unusual, and probably very early, as hardly
anyone would have dared expect a new prophet after the end of the Umayyad
era.4 By that time the unease felt at the lack of redaction in the text of the
Quran had also abated. While the people of Ḥarrān still did not refer to them-
selves as ṣābiʾa, the exegetes and jurists knew precisely whom this term denot-
ed.5 All of this suggests that Yazīd b. Unaysa should probably be dated to the
first century, during the time after Qaṭarī b. Fujāʾa’s downfall and death, i.e.
probably the eighties.
This is supported by more evidence. Yazīd b. Unaysa considered all those
ahl al-kitāb to be believers who recognised Muḥammad as a prophet.6 This
must be read through Khārijite eyes: someone who is a believer (muʾmin) is
not necessarily muslim; only the Khārijites themselves are muslimūn.7 Even so,
the term was a great distinction. A Muslim who was not a Khārijite could never
lay claim to it; he would always remain kāfir niʿma,8 for the reason that he de-
liberately denied the truth. The “people of the book” did not do this unless
they had been initiated into Islam. The Khārijites had to think of conceptual
distinctions early on in this field. Ḥafṣ b. Abī l-Miqdām, to whom Yazīd was
4 See vol. I 34 and 157f. above. Abū Manṣūr al-ʿIjlī believed in the revelatio continua as late as
the 220s (Ashʿarī, Maq. 9, pu. f.), as did Mughīra b. Saʿīd (cf. Ibn al-Ṣaffār, Baṣāʾir al-darajāt 517f.
no. 50).
6 Text VIII 5, n.
7 See p. 260 above.
Iran 691
close according to the heresiographers,9 believed that the ahl al-kitāb should
be like grave sinners among the Muslims; as long as they believed in a mono-
theistic concept of God, they were muwaḥḥidūn, “professing God’s oneness”,
too.10 Yazīd b. Unaysa did not want to admit this; he also demanded that they
must recognise Muḥammad. Then they would be not only muwaḥḥidūn – he
does not seem to have employed the term here at all – but even muʾminūn. But
how could he even expect such a thing?
We can probably presume that Yazīd, if indeed he lived as early as this, re-
garded Muḥammad simply as the prophet who had been sent to the Arabs.
This was something adherents of other revealed religions could easily admit;
we do know that the Jews referred to this idea.11 They appear to be the ones
referred to by Ḥafṣ b. Abī l-Miqdām as muwaḥḥidūn in this context; Christians,
at least those of post-Nicene denominations, were always suspected of shirk.
Consequently in the abovementioned study I proposed the hypothesis that
Yazīd b. Unaysa had some kind of link with Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī who, it seems,
instigated an uprising during the first half of ʿAbd al-Malik’s caliphate, before
the latter’s victory over Muṣʿab b. al-Zubayr in 72/691, in southern and central
Iran. Abū ʿĪsā was probably a Judaeo-Christian, or had at least shown some
interest in Christianity, otherwise it is unlikely that he would have adopted
the kunya he bore together with a Hebrew name.12 Thus the Christians fol-
lowing him would have regarded Jesus as a prophet, but not as God; they were
not “polytheists”, Abū ʿĪsā tried to impress the Muslims with the same model:
Muḥammad, being a prophet, was the messenger of the Messiah who would
come after him; he was one of five messengers, together with Jesus as well as
Abū ʿĪsā himself, who introduced the Parousia.
9 Cf. Text VIII 5, e; regarding him see p. 265 above. Interestingly Ibn al-Dāʿī names both of
them as ʿAjradites, i.e. renegade Azraqites (Tabṣira 41, 9ff.).
10 Text VIII 4, a–c and g; cf. p. 260 and 265 above.
11 See vol. I 36 above. A group of Jews in Tustar believed accordingly that the Torah had been
revealed for the Jews only (Qirqisānī, Anwār 287, 1ff.); the Yemeni philosopher Nathanael
Ibn al-Fayyūmī held similar beliefs in the sixth/twelfth century (cf. Sirat, History of Jewish
Philosophy 92). There were discussions among Muslims of whether the first half of the
shahāda, without the profession of Muḥammad’s prophethood, could make someone a
Muslim (cf. Kister in: JSAI 5/1984/41ff.).
12 Pines has pointed out the Judeo-Christian character of Abū ʿĪsā’s movement and its suc-
cessors, i.e. everything Islamic heresiographers called ʿĪsāwiyya, in: JSAI 6/1985/145ff.,
and 148, n. 26; also ibid. 9/1987/274ff.). An important piece of evidence is found in
Maqdisī who lists the Yūdghāniyya, the followers of a pupil or follower of Abū ʿĪsā’s
named Yūdghān, among Christian heretics (Badʾ IV 42, 2, and 46, 7; in both instances mis-
spelt as B.rdhaʿāniyya).
692 CHAPTER 3
The Muslims would always remember that the ʿĪsāwiyya believed

Muḥammad was sent to the Arabs only (cf. e.g. Mutawallī, Mughnī 52,
14; Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Shifāʾ II 1070, 7f.). The kinship between their system and
Yazīd b. Unaysa’s was emphasised by Baghdādī (Farq 263, –4f./280, 3ff.)
and Ibn Ḥazm (Fiṣal IV 188, pu. f.). Regarding Abū ʿĪsā’s teachings in
general cf. Pines in EI2 IV 96; also Lassner in EIran I 324f., and Avnery in
EJud2 II 183, each with further reading. G. Monnot, Islam et religions 107,
pointed out another source that contains some new detail (Abū l-Maʿālī,
Bayān ul-adyān 57, 8ff.). The interesting information Maimonides provid-
ed in his letter to the Yemeni Jews may comfortably be read in J. Hulster,
Maimonide, Epîtres 110f. A more detailed examination is expected in St.
Wasserstrom’s book.
Abū ʿĪsā’s uprising failed; once ʿAbd al-Malik had retaken Iran, he prevailed.
Still, people were afraid: this seems to have been the time when a hadith took
hold in Damascus claiming that the antichrist would come with 70,000 Jews
as his followers, all from Isfahan and wearing a ṭaylasān.13 The Khārijites in
Iran probably suffered the first onslaught of the rebels, as they were the only
ones who had preserved their Muslim power structure intact during the
second civil war. By speaking of an expected Messiah who was the prophet
from among the Persians, Yazīd b. Unaysa may have been trying to provide
ideological balance. Later, when he faced the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik, the idea
was not entirely without risk, but it might still serve to gather Abū ʿĪsā’s dis-
persed followers onto the Khārijite side.14 It was not advisable any more, how-
ever, to rebel against the authorities. This was why Yazīd b. Unaysa left the
Azraqites.
13 Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, Fitan 124 (= p. 2266): on Awzāʿī; Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya VI 77, 15f., after the
Persian-born Syrian Qadarite Ḥassān b. ʿAṭiyya al-Muḥāribī. The Jews seem to have
already worn the ṭaylasān in the prophet’s day (Suyūṭī, Al-aḥādīth al-ḥisān 47 no. 141,
and 50ff. no. 155ff.). Maʿarrī says that the mahdī would come from among the Jews of
Isfahan (Al-ṣāhil wal-shāhij 320, ult. f). There were ʿĪsawites there even in Ibn Ḥazm’s
time, at the beginning of the fifth/eleventh century; he met some of them (Al-uṣūl wal-
furūʿ I 197, 11f.). Scholars with the nisba al-ʿĪsawī are mentioned in Nuʿmānī, Ghayba 265,
7f. (with a commentary on information provided by a Jew from Arrajān) and Samʿānī,
Adab al-imlāʾ wal-istimlāʾ 79, 8.
14 Kirmānī, the opponent of Naṣr b. Sayyār and Abū Muslim, was accused of collaborating
with Jews and Christians for the sake of power (Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil V 230, 10f./V 304, 5f.).
Iran 693
In my essay I considered (p. 312) that the “second witness” he referred

to might have been Abū ʿĪsā, but I do not think any more that this is
probable. Goldziher assumed that he preached racial equality (Muh.
Stud. I 138ff.); while Lewicki thought he was emphasising the Persians’
faḍāʾil, like the Maghrebin Ibāḍites emphasised the Berbers’ faḍāʾil (in:
SI 9/1958/81, and EI2 III 660a). This, too, probably reads too much into
the sources. – Furthermore, the chronology I presumed is by no means
assured. We have no information on Yazīd b. Unaysa beyond the here-
siographers, and in the case of Abū ʿĪsā there are two widely differing
chronological approaches. On the other hand it is not easy to see how
the extant sources could lead us onto firmer ground. Morony expressed
his support of an early date for Abū ʿĪsā (Iraq 328), while M. I. Mochiri’s
study Arab-Sasanian Civil War Coinage dates Yazīd b. Unaysa to the time
around 50/670: the author tries to link him to a number of coins dating
from before ʿAbd al-Malik’s reforms. However, insofar as I am able to judge
this complex issue, it is not probable in even one instance. The study is
chasing a chimaera, seeing Yazīd b. Unaysa’s Yazīdiyya as the origin of
those Yazīdīs now living in Kurdistan, and hoping to uncover Mazdaite
or Mazdakite influence everywhere. Coin inscriptions and countermarks,
which are difficult to interpret, are defined “subversively” by the author
who presumes that Yazīd or the Yazīdiyya re-struck the coins of Umayyad
governors or other Khārijite leaders. Following Dahkhudā, he regards
Yazīd b. Unaysa himself as a follower of ʿAlī’s who fought at Nahrawān
in 38/658.
3.2.1.2 Later Khārijites

Yazīd b. Unaysa was probably a sedentary Khārijite. However, the Azraqites
did not remain the permanent revolutionaries as whom the sources describe
them. The Khārijites really only wanted to be among themselves; kharaja “to
move out” meant only this. In the early period this may occasionally have been
linked to their claim of being the sole true Muslims, but the particularism in
their own ranks soon demonstrated to one and all that this was not realistic.
Later, and similar to eastern Iran, no-one would be attacked as long as the
Khārijites were left in peace. After ʿUrwa b. Udayya, the brother of Mirdās, had
fallen in Iraq fighting against ʿUbaydallāh b. Ziyād,1 his followers fled by boat to
the Persian Gulf coast and spread out gradually from there; later they would be
found as landed proprietors in the region around Iṣṭakhr.2 The Azraqites, too,

2 Athamina in: JSAI 8/1986/190 after Iṣṭakhrī, Masālik 142, 1ff.
694 CHAPTER 3
suffered only a military defeat at Muhallab’s hands and were not exterminated,
although they were rather more difficult to discover in the sources afterwards.
Only coincidence – together with a small amount of hypothesis – can help us.
Ibn Ḥazm, for instance, mentioned a theologian whose name was probably
Abū Ismāʿīl al-Biṭṭīkhī.3
He called him an Azraqite, but as he debated with Abū l-Hudhayl,4 he must

have lived during the second half of the second century. He was probably the
older of the two, as Muʿtazilite sources describe him as a pupil (ghulām, ṣāḥib)
of Jahm b. Ṣafwān’s.5 He was probably a merchant of water melons (biṭṭīkh),
by no means a small-scale business at the time. The Muslims had come across
the fruit in India; then it was cultivated in Iran.6 Melons from Khwārazm were
famous for their sweetness; Maʾmūn, who had grown fond of them in Marv,
had them sent to Baghdād by post.7
Ibn Ḥazm, on the other hand, has the nisba al-Baṭīḥī in the passages men-
tioned, in which case it would be derived from the Baṭīḥa, the marshland
in the delta between the Tigris and the Euphrates (cf. EI2 I 1093ff.). Samʿānī
did not use this form at all. Biṭṭīkhī is found in Khwārizmī, Mafātīḥ al-
ʿulūm 20, 2f./transl. Bosworth in: BEO 29/1977/89, and Muwaffaq, Iḥāṭa,
fol. 175b, pu.; the name, however, is Ismāʿīl rather than Abū Ismāʿīl. Ḥākim
al-Jushamī merely says al-Biṭṭīkhī in the passage cited, while Ashʿarī
knows of a Biṭṭīkhiyya (Maq. 470, 3f.). Samʿānī, s. v., has two people
named Abū Ismāʿīl, one of whom would fit chronologically; however, he
was a Baghdad traditionist originally from Wāsiṭ who probably had no
connection with the man we are interested in (Ansāb II 260, 13ff.; also
TB V 355f., no. 2878). Saksakī, Burhān 15, 2ff., is dependent on Ibn Ḥazm;
the nisba is misspelt further to read al-Maṭīḥī. The Istanbul MS of the
text (Nuru Osmaniye 4919) vocalises confidently, but not convincingly, to
read al-Muṭīkhī.
3 Fiṣal IV 189, 8ff., and II 112, 11.

4 Ḥākim al-Jushamī, Risālat Iblīs 69, 2ff.
5 Ibid., also Abū Rashīd, ‘Fī l-tawḥīd’ 269, 12f., and Ibn Mattōya, Muḥīṭ I 117, 2 ʿAzmī/I 109, ult.
Houben.
6 Watson, Agricultural Innovation 59.
7 Ahsan, Social Life 110.
Iran 695
This makes it look as though the Azraqiyya had adopted Jahmite ideas over
time. Biṭṭīkhī did indeed believe, like Jahm, that paradise and hell were not
of eternal duration;8 he was a determinist or at the very least predestinarian,9
although the conclusion he drew was most unusual. If, he thought, one were
condemned to hell through no fault of one’s own, then it would not admissible
for there to be suffering. Consequently the condemned feel like the “vinegar
worms” (the caterpillars of the grape berry moth) in vinegar: they do not know
any different.10 Things get even more bizarre when we look at the special legal
opinions Ibn Ḥazm mentions in addition. Biṭṭīkhī believed that two prayers
per day were sufficient: one rakʿa in the morning and one in the evening. He
thought that one might go on the hajj every month. He prohibited the con-
sumption of raw fish. He was against levying the poll tax on Zoroastrians, and
he considered the preaching of sermons during the two most important holi-
days to be “unbelief”.11
These were not really “innovations” but usages of a community that had
been separated from the “mother church” early on. There is no clearer dem-
onstration of how firmly the Azraqites adhered to the Quran only. The sermon
was probably introduced under Marwān,12 and in administrative centres it was
frequently an instrument of political indoctrination, to which the Khārijites
would of course have objected. As we have seen, Khārijite mosques lacked
the minbar in Sijistān;13 the Sunnites did not have one on the muṣallā, where
public worship had originally taken place during the holidays.14 As for the
pilgrimage, sura 2:197 says merely that it takes place “during the well-known
months”; it was not until later that a distinction would be made between hajj
and ʿumra. Most idiosyncratic is the absence of five prayers. Once again one
could refer to the Quran, to sura 11:114: “Perform the prayer at both ends of the
day (ṭarafay al-nahār) and at the early hour of night”. This had indeed been
the practice of the first community where for a long time only a morning and
an evening prayer had been known, with the exception of supererogatory noc-
turnal spiritual exercises.15 In due course, still during the prophet’s lifetime,
8 Abū Rashīd and Ibn Mattōya, loc. cit.

9 Khwārizmī, loc. cit.
10 Muwaffaq and Ḥākim al-Jushamī, loc. cit.
11 Fiṣal IV 189, 9ff.; Ashʿarī, Maq. 470, 3f.
12 Wensinck in HW 322f.; abridged in EI2 V 75a.
14 Cf. Becker, Islamstudien I 473ff.; also Mielck in: Der Islam 13/1923/109ff.
15 Cf. sura 17:79.
696 CHAPTER 3
these had been joined by a “middle” prayer.16 The argument over the increase
took place in hadiths. Ḥudhayfa b. al-Yamān was said to have predicted hellfire
for those who only prayed twice;17 on the other hand the prophet was quoted
as having accepted everyone who prayed only twice, as a Muslim.18 It has not
been sufficiently researched how the number five was reached in the end, but
if Goldziher’s theory that the Muslims drew on Zoroastrianism in this instance
is correct,19 the Khārijites around al-Biṭṭīkhī, who refused to take the poll tax
from Zoroastrians, would have had even more justification for seeing them-
selves as preserving the true faith.
We do not, however, know why this was their attitude to the Zoroastrians,
but it probably did not stem from tolerance. It is more likely that they did
not regard them as ahl al-dhimma, but as heathen who could not redeem
themselves by means of a poll tax. – It is a different matter that people
with a particular sense of mission queried the figure of five prayers in
other cases as well. Bihāfrīd, who proclaimed himself prophet in Khwāf
near Nishapur in 129/747, prescribed seven prayers, the gnostic ʿAbdallāh
b. Ḥarb from Madāʾin even seventeen consisting of fifteen rakʿas each
(cf. Wasserstrom in : Festschrift Wickens 278, where the name ʿAbdallāh
b. Ḥarb has been misread and the person attributed incorrectly). This
was a symbolic reorientation rather than a return to orthodoxy; as also in
the case of the Berber prophet Ḥā-Mīm in the early fourth/tenth century,
even though the latter went back to the number two; he composed an
independent, Berber Quran (cf. EI2 III 134 s. n.). Al-Biṭṭīkhī, on the other
hand, was no prophet, but a theologian and a jurist. – Regarding Bihāfrīd
cf. Składanek, Doktryny 180ff., and Yusofi in: EIran IV 88ff.
16 Cf. Houtsma’s overview in: Theologisch Tijdschrift 24/1890/127ff.; Wensinck in EI1
IV 104f. s. v. Ṣalāt; Ahrens, Muhammed als Religionsstifter 117f.; Paret, Grenzen der
Koranforschung 31ff. and Der Koran. Kommentar 245 on sura 11:114f. and 50f. on sura 2:238;
Goitein in: Studies in Islamic History 84ff.; Katsh, Judaism in Islam 5ff. with further
reading; S. Bashīr, Al-taʾrīkh al-ākhar 441ff.; Rubin in JSAI 10/1987/40ff.; Choumet in:
REI 54/1986/79ff.
17 Abū ʿUbayd, Īmān 81, 4ff.; Khallāl, Musnad 361, apu. ff. and 363, 5ff.; Ājurrī, Sharīʿa 143, –9ff.
18 Kister in: JSAI 5/184/45 after Ibn Ḥanbal.
19 In: ZDMG 53/1899/386 and RHR 43/1901/15; also Ges. Schr. IV 246. Katsh on the other hand
supports the theory that the five daily prayers were adopted from the Jews in Arabia
(Judaism in Islam 8ff.).
Iran 697
We would arrive at conclusive proof only if we were able to distinguish a

Khārijite environment like the one described in al-Biṭṭīkhī’s case. It is, indeed,
possible. The heresiographers noted the twofold prayer together with the other
legal idiosyncrasies as characteristic of a group they called Bidʿiyya “innova-
tors”, and whom some of them counted among the Azraqites.20 This was al-
ready mentioned by Sālim b. Dhakwān,21 and thus probably belonged in the
first century. It is consequently not surprising when its leader is not named as
al-Biṭṭīkhī but rather
Yaḥyā b. Aṣram.
We know nothing about him; not even the reading of his name is certain.22
He probably lived earlier than al-Biṭṭīkhī as he demonstrates that his scur-
rilous predestinarianism was rooted in a certainty of salvation with clearly
early Khārijite traits. The sect believed to be certain of paradise; any doubt of
their own orthodoxy appeared reprehensible.23 However, unlike the Murjiʾa
it required its followers to be absolutely free from sin; even a venial sin would
lead to unbelief. The prophets, too, they thought, had at times been “idolaters”,
but then wisely converted. Those who do not repent and stand before God
with an unforgiven sin, however minuscule, are certain of punishment in hell.
They deduced this from Quranic passages such as sura 4:14 or 92:15f., ashqā
20 The most detailed account is by Ḥākim al-Jushamī, Sharḥ ʿuyūn al-masāʾil I, fol. 47 a;
after him al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī I 136, 15ff. and Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Munya 120, 8ff. However,
he mistakenly speaks of a threefold prayer; which al-Manṣūr billāh copied while Ibn
al-Murtaḍā corrected it after Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī (120, 7f.). The oldest source is Pseudo-
Nāshiʾ, Uṣūl al-niḥal 69, 14ff.; where the twofold prayer and the partial fish taboo are
mentioned. Pseudo-Nāshiʾ and Ashʿarī (Maq. 126, 14f.) also determined the link with the
Azraqiyya, Pseudo-Nāshiʾ’s adding the Khāzimiyya as intermediary is probably only a
learned construct. Ḥākim al-Jushamī listed another juristic idiosyncrasy in the rule that
a woman had to fast during menstruation. Ibn al-Murtaḍā adopted this, adding that a
thief’s arm would be cut off at the shoulder (see p. 660 above). Nashwān, Ḥūr 178, 4f., and
Maqdisī, Badʿ V 138, 8f. only mention the prayer; cf. Salem, Political Theory 39.
21 Cook, Dogma 92.
22 Aṣram in Khwārizmī, Mafātīḥ 19, 7 > Abū l-Maʿālī, Bayān ul-adyān 48, 3 stands against
Aṣdam in a Shahrastānī manuscript (Gimaret, Livre des Religions 406, n. 102); Maqrīzī has
Aṣwam, presumably a further corruption (Khiṭaṭ II 355, 4).
23 Thus Shahrastānī, loc. cit.; Nashwān, Ḥūr 178, 6f. (after the same source); Khwārizmī >
Abū l-Maʿālī, loc. cit.; Ābī, Nathr al-durr V 236, 4; anonymously also Ashʿarī, Maq. 119, 8ff.
Mentioning istithnāʾ (cf. vol. I 259) only provides a terminus post quem for the heresio-
graphical phrase, not for the sect itself.
698 CHAPTER 3
in 92:15 – “those condemned to misery” – possibly confirming them in their

belief in predestination.24 We are probably looking at the doctrine of a small
and isolated community; even the other Azraqites were so severe only when
it came to mortal sins.25 Al-Biṭṭīkhī’s reference to the “vinegar worms” tried to
find a way out of this puritanism.
We are unable to locate this group. Their deliberations on the consumption
of fish seems to suggest that they lived near a body of water, but this does not
permit any further conclusions.26 We are in similar straits with regard to the
followers of a certain
ʿAbdallāh b. Shimrākh.
A not very reliable source27 tells us that they called themselves Ḥubbiyya, a
name found in other contexts as well. Muqaddasī reported duping a group of
kindly and slightly naïve Sufis in Susa and referred to them as Ḥubbiyya.28 This
does not mean that our Khārijites lived on in Susa in particular; Abū Muṭīʿ
made quite clear that they were only a branch of the Ḥubbiyya.29 Ḥubbiyya is
a generic term, and a vague one at that. It described people who felt so much
enveloped by God’s love that external appearances lost all relevance for them.30
The most relevant characteristic in the case of the Shimrākhiyya is simply that
they believed to be free to take more than four wives, and without formal mar-
riage contract. Women, they were thought to have said, are like basil: everyone
may smell them.31 This may well be slander; after all, they were not talking
about promiscuity.32 Their reasoning was entirely different anyway, based once
24 Pseudo-Nāshiʾ, Uṣūl al-niḥal 69, ult. ff. Regarding the semantic development of shaqī cf.
HT 25ff.
25 Ashʿarī, Maq. 87, 5ff.
26 Regarding this exclusively as a creation of the heresiographers, as considered by Madelung
(Religious Trends 64), is exaggerated in my view. Nomads usually abhorred the consump-
tion of fish, pariah tribes did not. Cf. Henninger, Arabica Varia 100 and 224; also Index s. v.
Fisch).
27 Ḥanafī, Firaq muftariqa 20, 8.
28 Aḥsan al-taqāsīm 415, 4ff.; cf. also Schwartz, Iran 362 and 413, n. 5.
29 Radd 75, 7.
30 Cf. e.g. Pazdawī, Uṣūl al-dīn 253, 11ff.; also ibid. 78, 10ff. Thus also Abū Muṭīʿ 102, 6ff.; less
provocatively Khwārizmī, Mafātīḥ 20, 12f., who distinguished between Ḥubbiyya and
Shimrākhiyya (19, 14).
31 Abū Muṭīʿ 75, 6ff.; Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs 19, –5f.; Tadhkirat al-madhāhib 128, 5.
32 In that context the comparison is a topos; as such they were attributed to e.g. the dandies
of Baghdad, the so-called ẓurafāʾ (Washshāʾ, Muwashshā 175, 9ff.).
Iran 699
again on sura 4:24, the verse that had given rise to Khārijite idiosyncrasies in
Sīstān as well. The passage mentioned, among other things, that all those who
are not covered by the prohibited degrees of kinship, are permitted to be taken
in marriage.33 This is mainly a juristic or exegetic conclusion; the love of God
does not enter into it. It may be that these Khārijites, more than others, saw
themselves as awliyāʾ Allāh and were consequently later absorbed into Sufi
movements, but it is just as possible that Ḥanafī and Abū Muṭīʿ were simply
free-associating.34 There are other sources that tell us that Khārijites did not
require witnesses to concluding a marriage contract;35 in Sīstān, as we have
seen, the women managed without a guardian.36
The other heresiographers’ information on this “sect” fits into the usual pic-
ture: they believed a prayer to be valid if it was performed behind someone un-
known, as long as he turned towards the qibla – even, as Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī
added, a Christian or a Jew.37 This is presumably trying to say that one did not
have to inquire whether the imam was really a Khārijite. And: one must not kill
one’s parents, not even if they do not follow the true doctrine. In fact, blood
may only be spilled in public, not in secret assassination.38
Eastern heresiographical tradition preserved more curiosities of this kind,
which were probably observed in Iran as well. However, there is no proof, and
no names linked to them. There were communities which decided not to pay
zakāt because it did not benefit the right people as there were no true believ-
ers deserving of it. Their solution was to bury the money underground for it to
come into more deserving hands later.39 The desperate elitist consciousness
expressed here found its outlet in exaggerated purity laws elsewhere. One must
not touch anyone if one does not know whether he is pure or impure. One
must always do penance and perform an ablution after sharing a table with
33 Abū Muṭīʿ, loc. cit.; cf. p. 652 above.

34 Ḥanafī presenting them as pure antinomians, as one would imagine in the case of the
Ḥubbiyya, argues in favour of this (20, 7ff., and 69, 1ff.); sura 4:24 was, of course, not
sufficient.
35 Malaṭī 137, 18f./180, 12f. However, just previously (124, 9f./163, 10f.) Khushaysh claims the
exact same thing of the Rāfiḍites, and with nearly identical reasoning.
36 See p. 661 above. In general cf. Spuler, Iran 377ff.
37 Ḥūr 177, apu. f.; without the addition Ashʿarī, Maq. 126, 11.
38 Maq. 120, 1ff. after Yamān b. Riʾāb; ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, Ghunya I 86, –9.
39 Most clearly Ḥanafī, Firaq 19, –5ff.; also Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs 19, 11f.; briefly Tadhkirat
al-madhāhib 127, 5. The passage in Abū Muṭīʿ, Radd 74, 6ff., is corrupt (read Kanziyya and
yaknizu instead of Kathriyya and yakthuru). Usually Khārijite communities followed early
Islamic practice and kept the zakāt in “God’s chest” in the mosque. Iṣṭakhrī observed this
in Bam in Kerman (cf. Schwartz, Iran 237; also vol. I 22 above).
700 CHAPTER 3
someone. The men who formed part of this strict circle wore penis sheaths in
order to prevent any contact with their clothes; they did not pray while wear-
ing trousers.40 Above all they did not dare to relieve themselves on the ground
as the prophet had said that “earth was made to a place for prostration (masjid)
and a means of purity (ṭahūr)” for him and consequently any place might be
used for prayer. Thus they urinated into jugs (kūz) or into rivers.41 It is interest-
ing that these Khārijites referred to a hadith,42 as this is rather rare. The issue
is once again an ancient one dating from the time when people were praying
in simple squares, not in mosques. The fact that the opposing side’s views were
also expressed in a hadith demonstrates how little influence the Quran had on
the eventual development.43
3.2.2 ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya

Some of the revolutionaries who fled from Iraq into the Iranian uplands were
Shīʿites, such as Yaḥyā, the son of Zayd b. ʿAlī1 and shortly afterwards, his dis-
tant cousin ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya. During the few years that separated the
two the political situation had changed significantly. Under Hishām, Zayd
b. ʿAlī had been faced with a strong caliphate; his son had to flee to distant
Jūzjān where he was cornered by Umayyad troops. ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya, on
the other hand, rebelled in 127/744 against Yazīd III’s governor, whose legiti-
mation was doubtful;2 when the uprising in Kufa failed he was able to hold
the provinces of Ahwāz, Jibāl, Fars and Kerman for two years, until an army
sent by Marwān II drove him to Khorasan.3 He had sura 42:23 struck on his
40 Cf. p. 247 above.

41 Ḥanafī 18, –5ff.; Abū Muṭīʿ 73, 8ff. must be corrected in accordance with this; also
Tadhkirat al-madhāhib 127, 4. Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs 19, 9f. presents this as the doctrine of
the Mukramiyya (regarding which see p. 652 and 671 above); but Mukramiyya is probably
misread out of Kūziyya, the usual name of the sect in this tradition.
42 Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad II 222, 4ff./2XII 25f. no. 7068.
43 Ṭayālisī, Musnad no. 407. The Kūziyya may ultimately have been based on Zoroastrian
ideas (cf. Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān III 370, 1f.).

2 Balādhurī, Ansāb II 63, 13ff. Maḥmūdī. Regarding him see p. 277f. above.
3 Concerning these events cf. Zetterstéen in EI2 I 48f. s. n.; W. F. Tucker in SI 51/1980/39ff.;
Halm in: Der Islam 58/1981/17ff., and Gnosis 64ff.; Daniel, Khurasan 42f.; Bosworth,
Sistan 76f.; Rekaya in: SI 60/1984/20ff. Regarding the person cf. the monograph by ʿAbd
al-Jabbār Muṭṭalibī, Al-adīb al-mughāmir (Baghdad 1978). His poems were collected by
ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Rāḍī (Beirut 1976); cf. also GAS 2/349f.
Iran 701
coins, which spoke of mawadda fī l-qurbā.4 While he was only distant kin to
the prophet – he was descended from ʿAlī’s brother Jaʿfar – this was sufficient
to provide a counterweight against the Umayyads, especially at a time when
the empire was sinking ever deeper into anarchy; he was already a member
of the Banū Hāshim.5 The most diverse people gathered under his banner in
Iran: “Zaydites” from Kufa and gnostics from Madāʾin, but also a number of
dispersed Khārijites.6 Zaydites and Khārijites had, after all, always had some
similarities in their doctrine.7
It is hardly possible to say with any certainty what his own opinion was.
Later, he would be regarded as a zindīq who surrounded himself with other
zanādiqa8 – by the Shīʿa, too; Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq read in the muṣḥaf Fāṭima that the
“heretics” would appear in 128.9 The doctrines the gnostics around him em-
braced and the measures they attributed to him would soon have only curiosity
value. He was said to have permitted the consumption of pork, and considered
ritual slaughter unnecessary; he also seems to have “abolished” circumcision.10
Both these rules would seem to be based on Iranian ideas. Loosening the laws
on food and slaughter was said to have looked to the Quran: “There is no fault
in those who believe and do deeds of righteousness what they may eat, if they
are godfearing, and believe, and do deeds of righteousness”.11 A rational ar-
gument was provided for abolishing the circumcision: one must not damage
God’s creation. Critics seem to have pointed out that after all one also cut hair
and nails; but he responded that hair and nails were not live, and that one must
part from what is dead. Still, the fact that circumcision is not mentioned in the
Quran – indeed, in Turkish it is called sünnet to this day – may well have played
a part as well. ʿUmar II appears to have decided along the same lines when Abū
l-Ṣaydāʾ complained that Jarrāḥ b. ʿAbd al-Ḥakam demanded it of new converts:
4 Carl Wurtzel, The Coinage of the Revolutionaries in the Late Umayyad Period, in: Amer.
Num. Soc. Mus. Notes 23/1978/169f. after a coin from Jayy.
5 Cf. Kumayt’s verse quoted in Nagel, Untersuchungen 79f.; also in general Madelung in:
SI 70/1989/10ff.
6 Regarding the latter cf. Ṭabarī II 1977, 10f.; in general Daniel 42 and vol. I 289 above.
7 Thus e.g. the term kufr niʿma (see p. 303 above). Regarding possible influence on the
Khārijite Shaybān b. Salama cf. p. 665 above.
9 Biḥār XLVII 65 no. 7; also vol. I 325f. above.
10 Qummī, Maqālāt 41, 13ff.; Nashwān, Ḥūr 161, 13f.
11 Sura 5:93. Elsewhere this verse was regarded as abrogated (Qummī 41, apu. f.).
702 CHAPTER 3
“God sent Muḥammad to call people (to Islam), not to perform circumcisions”.12
Even the Afshīn was suspected of not having been circumcised.13
Fanatics from Iraq defended ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya’s imamate by linking
him to Abū Hāshim in accordance with their Kaysānite ideas.14 This was of
course genealogically impossible, but they turned to the migration of souls:
the prophet’s spirit had passed through Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya and Abū Hāshim, and
finally found him.15 They believed themselves to be the reincarnation of the
companions of the prophet (probably only particular ones) and even assumed
their names.16 This did not end with his death, either: he dwells, some of them
said, on the mountain of Isfahan and will return as the mahdī in order to help a
Hāshimid to victory.17 Antinomism appears to have spread in their circle; they
were alleged to have permitted promiscuity and homosexuality.18 They allotted
eternal duration to humanity; the good go to heaven and the evil stay on earth
where they will live like Jonah in the “belly of the fish”, who was ejected once
he converted.
Cf. sura 37:139ff.; this is probably what baṭn al-ḥūt in Qummī’s account
(41, –7ff.) refers to. Ibn Ḥazm summarised and simplified this report
(Fiṣal IV 180, 8ff., transl. Friedländer in: JAOS 28/1907/45). A brief refer-
ence also in Ashʿarī, Maq. 6, 7f.; further sources in Daniel, Khurasan 96,
no. 58. In general see EI2 II 441 s. v. D̲̲ j̲anāḥiyya.
3.2.3 The Cities

The information we have concerning theological and juristic trends in the cit-
ies generally refers to a later period. It clearly documents the beginnings of a
move towards either Sunni or Shīʿite “orthodoxy”. We do not have a coherent
picture of the early period, not even in cases where we can refer to a city his-
tory, as these texts, too, bear witness to the same trend.
12 Ṭabarī II 1354, 9ff. The passage is not without problems (cf. Hawting, First Dynasty 80 with
n. 14). Regarding Abū l-Ṣaydāʾ cf. p. 554 above.
13 See ch. C 3.3.5 below. Regarding the symbolic value of circumcision in the later Umayyad
era cf. the Christian text in Crone/Cook, Hagarism 12f. We must bear in mind that the Bar-
Kokhba revolt broke out because Hadrian had penalised circumcision (cf. M. Hengel in:
The journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 16–17/1984–5/172ff.).
14 Nawbakhtī 29, 3ff. > Qummī 39 § 80.
15 Qummī 42f. § 86, transl. by Halm in: Der Islam 58/1981/19. The background of the link
with the Kaysāniyya is reported ibid. 40, apu. ff. (transl. in Halm, Gnosis 66f.); also Ashʿarī,
Maq. 24ff., and Nashwān 160, –6ff.
16 Nawbakhtī 35, 11f.
17 Ibid. 31, 11ff. > Qummī 44 § 91.
18 Qummī 43, 1; cf. also Muṭṭalibī, Al-adīb al-mughāmir 200ff.
Iran 703
3.2.3.1 Isfahan
Isfahan was the place where ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya’s brothers lived with their
descendants.1 They probably never got involved with the eccentrics who were
awaiting his return. However, Abū Nuʿaym, the author of Dhikr akhbār Iṣfahān,
did not mention them, as he was collecting traditionists, and included only lit-
tle information regarding the second century.2 Shīʿites – if indeed that is what
they were – did not appeal to him anyway. Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad al-Thaqafī
(d. 283/896), the Imamite author of K. al-ghārāt, is dismissed in two lines,3 al-
though he had been able to circulate another book of his, K. al-maʿrifa which
embraced radical Shīʿite tendencies, freely only in Isfahan.4
So far we are unable to say whether al-Thaqafī was able to rely on a Shīʿite
community. It is possible that he was protected by the authorities, as the city
was part of the Dulafid sphere of influence at the time; they were pro-Shīʿite.5
Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn Dindān was a secretary at their court. He was claimed by
the early history of the Ismailiyya6 and was said to have evolved a philosophi-
cal system that, like Rāzī’s later, was based on five fundamental principles.7
The population probably looked askance at these endeavours, for Muqaddasī
reported – albeit not until the end of the fourth century – strong support for
Muʿāwiya.8 He stayed overnight in Isfahan with a pious man who considered
Muʿāwiya as well as the four righteous caliphs to have been prophets (mursal),
and even proved this based on the Quran.9 Around the middle of the third
century, during the time of the Dulafids, a characteristic incident took place.
ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad al-Kinānī, a hadith scholar of some renown in the city
and pupil of the Kufan Abū Muʿāwiya,10 had “publicly expressed agreement
with the Rawāfiḍ and deplored Abū Bakr’s having become caliph”. The gover-
nor called him before an inquisition court and, when he would not recant, con-
demned him to forty lashes. From then on he was ruined as a scholar; people
1 Ibn Ṭabāṭabā, Muntaqilat al-Ṭālibiyyīn 29, 8ff.

2 Of the ca. 1930 biographies in his book only 35 refer to the second century.
3 Dhikr I 187, 20f.; regarding him cf. GAS 1/321, and ʿA. Rafīʿī in GIE II 453ff.
4 Cf. Kohlberg in: JSAI 5/1984/152, n. 53.
5 EI2 II 623; Massignon, Passion 2I 211/I 166.
6 Cf. B. Lewis in: EI2 II 301 s. v. Dindān; also Stern, Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism 312 and 314f.,
according to which he would have been the dāʿī in Jibāl and in Iraq.
7 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 239, ult. ff.; for Rāzī cf. Pines, Atomenlehre 39ff. Regarding the Shīʿite
environment cf. also Miquel, Géographie Humaine I 194f., n. 7.
8 Aḥsan al-taqāsīm 389, n. a, l. 13.
9 Ibid. 399, 6ff.; cf. Pellat in: SI 6/1956/57f. Was the pro-Muʿāwiya hadith in Suyūṭī, Laʾālī also
transmitted in Isfahan? (cf. the isnād). A further prophetic dictum of the kind is found in
Ibn al-Dāʿī, Tabṣirat al-ʿawāmm 251, 4ff.; it originated in a Shāfiʿite source.
704 CHAPTER 3
avoided his lectures.11 The chairman of the tribunal was so anti-Shīʿite that he
denied the Rāfiḍites the pre-emptive right based on one particular hadith.12
Another traditionist from a Kufan family, who had studied in his native city
with Ismāʿīl b. Abān al-Ghanawī, a controversial pupil of Sufyān al-Thawrī’s,
was unable to gain a foothold in Isfahan because he “exaggerated when it
came to rafḍ”,13 while his brother, who was more willing to conform, met with
goodwill.14
While Sufyān al-Thawrī’s madhhab had found favour in Isfahan in particular,15
the Murjiʾite counter-offensive would soon start. We learn of a dispute be-
tween a Thawrite, al-Nuʿmān b. ʿAbd al-Salām (d. 183/799),16 a pious and most
class-conscious Arab whose father had settled in the city in the governor’s
service,17 and a certain Abū Rāfiʿ b. ʿImrān. The latter had originally been his
pupil, but then “inclined towards irjāʾ”.18 Around the turn of the third century
Abū Yūsuf’s pupils ensured that the Ḥanafites also got their opportunity.19 At
the same time the Muʿtazila, also having come from Kufa, gained a foothold
in the person of Abū Ghayth al-Iṣfahānī, a pupil of Ḍirār b. ʿAmr’s.20 Gradually
the tide began to turn. Around the middle of the third century Ṣāliḥ, the son
of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, became qāḍī in the city.21 His successor was a Ẓāhirite:
Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. ʿAmr b. Abī ʿĀṣim al-Shaybānī (206/822–287/900), a grand-
son of the Basran traditionist and exegete Abū ʿĀṣim al-Nabīl (d. 212/828);
he held the position from 269/883 to 282/895.22 Dāwūd b. ʿAlī, the founder
of the Ẓāhiriyya (d. 270/884) came from a family whose home was a village
near Isfahan, although he himself had been born in Kufa and made a name
11 Abū Nuʿaym, Dhikr II 49, 8ff. One of the judges died in 265/879 (ibid. II 200, 13ff.).
12 Ibid. I 320, 7ff.
13 Ibid. III 187, 20f.; regarding his teacher cf. Mīzān no. 824.
14 Ibid. II 7, 5ff.; he died in 282/895. Two years later Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, who appears to
have come from a Zaydite family, was born in the city (cf. Abu Deeb in: EIran I 282f.).
15 Schwarz, Iran 617f.
16 Regarding the date cf. IAW II 201 no. 629; Abū Nuʿaym’s “133” (Dhikr II 329, 9) is probably a
transmitter’s error. Regarding the school affiliation ibid. 329, 1f. He had also attended Abū
Ḥanīfa’s lectures.
17 Regarding him Abū Nuʿaym II 134, ult. ff.
18 Ibid. I 344, 5ff.; Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān III 144 no. 511, mistakenly calls him Shuʿba
b. Ẓāfir.
19 Halm, Ausbreitung 146.
20 See ch. C 7.5 below for further details.
21 Abū Nuʿaym I 348, 18ff.; more information GAS 1/510 and ch. C 3.3 below; also Miquel,
Géographie humaine I 196f.
22 Regarding him GAS 1/522; regarding his grandfather cf. EI2 Suppl. 17f.
Iran 705
for himself in Baghdad.23 His influence spread most widely in Fars.24 In the
long run the Shāfiʿites would be more successful in Isfahan;25 Dāwūd b. ʿAlī had
originally come from that school, too.
Abū Bakr al-Shaybānī inclined to asceticism; he had ties with Abū Turāb al-
Nakhshabī (d. 245/859), a pupil of Ḥātim al-Aṣamm’s and representative of the
Khorasan school of tawakkul.26 A collection of hadiths survives from among
his works, which deals with the praise of silence and criticism of the world; it
has been published under the title K. al-zuhd.27 After his death the importance
of traditionism grew significantly in the city, as illustrated by authors such as
Abū l-Shaykh (274/887–369/979), the author of K. al-ʿaẓama,28 or Muḥammad
b. Isḥāq Ibn Manda (310/922–395/1005) and his son ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (381/991–
470/1078) both of whom wrote a Radd ʿalā l-Jahmiyya.29 The latter had met
someone who believed that unless one was a member of the Muʿtazila, one
could not be a true Muslim.30 However, Ḥākim al-Jushamī, who died a gen-
eration after him and was himself a Muʿtazilite, received the impression as an
outsider that it was the “determinists” who had the upper hand in Isfahan.31
Of course they were by no means always in agreement. Abū Nuʿaym
(d. 430/1038) was unable to teach at the great mosque for a long time because
Ibn Manda, who was a generation older, thought him a dissenter although he
had studied under Abū l-Shaykh and the famous Palestinian traditionist al-
Ṭabarānī, who had settled in Isfahan and died there in 360/971.32 His oppo-
nents were Ḥanbalites, while he was closer to the Shāfiʿites and not entirely
23 Cf. Schacht in EI2 II 182f.; also ch. C 6.3.2 below.

24 Muqaddasī 439, 11f., and 441, n. a, l. 2f.
25 Cf. Halm 146ff.
26 Regarding him Qushayrī, Risāla 17, 17ff./transl. Gramlich 61f.; regarding Ḥātim al-Aṣamm
see p. 612 and 614 above.
27 Ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd; Bombay 1403/1983. Regarding the biography cf. the intro-
duction. A K. al-awāʾil by the same author has also been published (ed. Muḥammad Nāṣir
al-ʿAjamī, Kuwait, n. d.).
28 Regarding him GAS 1/200f.; also Heinen, Cosmology 37ff.
29 Regarding this family of scholars from Isfahan who traced their genealogy back to a
Sasanid official cf. Rosenthal in: EI2 III 863f.
30 Mīzān no. 4583.
31 Risālat Iblīs 137, 10.
32 Regarding Ṭabarānī cf. GAS 1/195ff. Abū Nuʿaym probably adopted the idea of writing a
history of the city’s scholarship from Abū l-Shaykh. The latter’s Ṭabaqāt al-muḥaddithīn
bi-Iṣfahān were edited by ʿAbd al-Ghafūr ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Ḥusayn al-Balūshī, Beirut 1407/1987;
Abū Nuʿaym used this work.
706 CHAPTER 3
against the Ashʿarite kalām. The Ḥanbalites’ anthropomorphism was anathema

to him.33
How closely they were all linked in the end is illustrated by the fact that his
great-grandfather Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Bannāʾ (d. 286/899) was apparently
the man who paved the way for Ibn Ḥanbal’s influence in Isfahan.34 He also
displayed that reverence for taṣawwuf that would be so clearly expressed in
Ḥilya. The most determined supporter of mysticism in Isfahan in Abū Nuʿaym’s
day, however, belonged in Ibn Manda’s camp: Abū Manṣūr Maʿmar b. Aḥmad
al-Iṣfahānī (d. 418/1027), another pupil of Abū l-Shaykh and Ṭabarānī who re-
garded al-Bannāʾ as well as Junayd and Kharrāz as his examples. He looked
towards Baghdad rather than Khorasan. In his K. nahj al-khāṣṣ he briefly de-
scribed the individual stages of the mystic path and, being a critical moral-
ist, pointed out the specific danger of misuse for each of them.35 ʿAbdallāh
al-Anṣārī, the famous Ḥanbalite Sufi from Herat, learnt much from his Manāzil
al-sāʾirīn.36
Regarding the early history of Isfahan cf. also Lambton in EI2 IV 99f.;
Lapidus in: Islamic Middle East 192 and 194f., and Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī in:
MMʿIʿI 34/1983, issue 2/39f. Māfarrūkhī’s city history, extant in Ḥusayn
b. Muḥammad-i Āwī’s Persian translation (ed. A. Iqbāl, Teheran 1328/
1949), includes lists of scholars, but only for a later period (p. 115ff.).
33 Cf. Madelung in EIran I 354f.; also ch. D 1.2.4 below. The anthropomorphist fuqahāʾ of
the city were mentioned by Ibn al-Dāʿī, Tabṣira 79, –7f., who regarded them as mainly
Shāfiʿites.
34 Cf. F. Meier in: Oriens 20/1967/71. Was al-Bannāʾ an architect or a foreman? And does
this allow us to conclude that the acceptance of Ibn Ḥanbal expressed in the appoint-
ment of his son as qāḍī of the city, started with the craftsmen? One might imagine that
Ṣāliḥ b. Aḥmad presented his account of his father’s persecution (see ch. C 3.3 below) in
Isfahan; however, the riwāya of the text is Khorasanian.
35 Ed. S. de. Beaurecueil in: Festschrift Ṭāhā Ḥusayn, Arab. section, p. 45ff.
36 Cf. the introduction by Beaurecueil, loc. cit.; more information in Meier 68ff. (p. 75ff. con-
cerns a treatise which quotes Ḥallāj under an alias). A waṣiyya in which Abū Manṣūr
supports the unity of ahl al-ḥadīth and ahl al-taṣawwuf, was quoted in agreement by Ibn
Taymiyya (K. al-istiqāma I 168, 1ff.). N. Pūrjawādī considered the anonymous K. adab
al-mulūk discussed by Meier p. 82ff. to be a work by Abū Manṣūr. He edited the section
concerning samāʾ; the introduction is translated in: Spektrum Iran 3/1990, issue 2, p. 37ff,
and issue 3, p. 36ff.
Iran 707
3.2.3.2 Qom
Qom, halfway between Rayy and Isfahan, became a Shīʿite stronghold early
on, and remains so to this day. Members of Southern Arabian tribes who had
fled to Iran as followers of Ibn al-Ashʿath had settled there. A certain Mūsā
b. ʿAbdallāh b. Saʿd b. Mālik al-Ashʿarī was said to have introduced the Shīʿite
creed in the first half of the second century;1 his – younger? – brother ʿĪsā
b. ʿAbdallāh appears to have had ties to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq and Mūsā al-Kāẓim and
later even transmitted some queries he had had ʿAlī al-Riḍā answer.2 A Kufan
family, they were not entirely Shīʿite at that time; another brother, named
Yaʿqūb (d. 174/790), enjoyed a degree of prestige in Sunni hadith.3 They were
probably Shīʿite moderates in any case. We do know that a generation earlier
Ibrāhīm, one of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya’s sons, whose descendants would
later live in Kufa, had tried to fuel anticipation of the mahdī who would come
from ʿAlī’s family.4 The two brothers Mūsā and ʿĪsā may consequently merely
have furthered the trend towards the Imāmiyya, providing a starting point for
the later Shīʿite orthodox understanding of history.
The great families were deeply attached to their independence and, for a
whole fifty years during the early Abbasid period, until 188/800, did not pay
any taxes. Hārūn al-Rashīd finally forced them to, but at the same time granted
them independence from the administration in Isfahan.5 They rebelled once
again in 210/825 under al-Maʾmūn because they found the tax load too heavy.
Things went badly for them: the city walls were slighted and they had to pay
the triple amount.6 A certain Jaʿfar b. Dāwūd whom Maʾmūn had exiled to
Egypt made himself the leader of the uprising, but he was captured in 217/825
and executed.7 As we have seen, the city became relevant on the field of theol-
ogy only in the course of the third century,8 a shift due in part to the decline
of Kufa, but mainly to the fact that the sister of the eighth imam, Fāṭima al-
Maʿṣūma, was buried in Qom in 201/817, and the city became a pilgrimage site.
1 Cf. Schwarz, Iran 559ff.; briefly also Spuler, Iran 179, and Calmard in EI2 V 370 (referring to
Tārīkh-i Qum, which mentions only other sources concerning the early period; cf. p.23ff.).
2 Najāshī 210, 11ff.; Ardabīlī, Jāmiʿ I 652f.
3 IS VII2 111, 1; Mīzān no. 9815; TT XI 390f. no. 752. Note the “prophetic” names, which were not
a matter of course in an aristocratic family with a long history in Arabia.
4 Abū Nuʿaym, Dhikr I 170, 4ff., and Abū l-Shaykh, Ṭabaqāt al-muḥaddithīn 378ff.; regarding
him Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 66, 4 and 9f.
5 Lapidus in: Islamic Middle East 193f. and 196f.; EI2 IV 99b.
6 Ṭabarī III 1092, 12ff./transl. Bosworth 166f. and Uhrig 209ff.
7 Ibid. 1102, 6f.; 1106, 8, and 1111, 9; cf. transl. Uhrig 229, n. 1099.
8 See vol. I 455f. and 459f. above; also Halm, Die Schia 52.
708 CHAPTER 3
From 255/879 onwards Shīʿites with extremist views had no home in the city
any more.9
Cf. also Massignon, Passion 2I 212/I 167f.; Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī in: MMʿIʿI 34/1983,
issue 2/49; Barthold, Historical Geography 178ff.; in some detail Madelung,
Religious Trends 78ff. – Nearby Kāshān was mainly Imāmite, too. The city
was believed to have been founded or newly settled by Hārūn al-Rashīd’s
wife Zubayda (cf. Calmard in: EI2 IV 694f. s. v. Kās̲h̲ān; also Ḥākim al-
Jushamī, Risālat Iblīs 137, 11).
3.2.3.3 Hamadan
During the Umayyad era Hamadan was mainly an administrative centre; hard-
ly any of the conquering Arabs settled in the city. Under the early Abbasids a
number of syncretistic movements found followers there: first Sinpādh, later
Bābak and the Khurrāmiyya.1 The nearby town of Dargachīn/Darkazīn as well
as its surroundings were inhabited by Mazdakites.2 Towards the end of the sec-
ond century a Murjiʾte was qāḍī in Hamadan:
Abū Hishām Aṣram b. Ḥawshab al-Kindī,
a Southern Arab who was greatly taken with Muʿāwiya.3 He died after
202/817–8.4 When he transmitted hadith on a visit to Basra, he found numer-
ous listeners at first, until people noticed that he could not be trusted; only
few remained with him afterwards.5 ʿAmr b. ʿAlī al-Fallās (d. 249/863) claimed,
probably in his K. taḍʿīf al-rijāl, that he was a Murjiʾite.6 We are not able to
9 Momen, Introduction to Shiʿi Islam 78. Information on the sanctuary in Qom, albeit mainly
from a more recent time, may be found in Ḥusayn Mudarrisī Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Turbat-i pākān, 1–2;
Qom 2535/1976–7.
1 In more detail B. Fragner, Geschichte der Stadt Hamadān 18ff. and 35ff.; regarding
Sinpādh/Sunbādh also Czegledy in: X. Int. Kongreß für Rel. Gesch. (Marburg) 147f., Daniel,
Khurasan 126ff., and Składanek, Doktryny 164f.; regarding Bābak see ch. C 3.3.5 below; regard-
ing the Khurrāmiyya ch. C 3.2.2.2.7.3.
2 Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān II 451 b s. v.
3 Cf. the hadith cited by Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 416, 1ff.
4 People were still attending his hadith lectures in this year (TB VII 32, 7f; also Mīzān no. 1017).
5 TB VII 31, 3ff. He also visited Nishapur once (cf. Khalīfa-i Naysābūrī, Talkhīṣ 15, 13).
6 Ibid. 31, 19ff.; also Mīzān, loc. cit., and Lisān al-Mīzān I 461 no. 1424. Regarding al-Fallās and
his book cf. my Trad. Polemik 49.
Iran 709
confirm this,7 but as far as we know them, during the third century the qāḍīs in
the city were Ḥanafites. After the Būyids came to power in 320/932, Shāfiʿites,
too, were able to gain ground.8 At the end of the fourth century Muqaddasī
found the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth in the ascendancy.9 This probably explains why
Hamadan was later seen as a stronghold of the anthropomorphists;10 Shāfiʿites
were counted among them, too.11
3.2.3.4 Rayy
ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya had had coins struck in Rayy as early as 127 (!).1 This city
appears to have been under strong Kufan influence, which took a variety of
forms. When a certain Muḥammad b. Abān came to the city and began lec-
turing on hadith, his audience wished to hear about raʾy; he then collated a
booklet of irjāʾ traditions for them.2 Unfortunately we cannot date him with
complete certainty. We would assume that he was a Kufan, in which case he
was probably Muḥammad b. Abān al-Qurashī who died 175/791.3 His visit to
the city would then have been at the time when al-Mahdī, as crown prince,
rebuilt and expanded it under the name of Muḥammadiyya.4 Dhahabī tried
to separate the two namesakes;5 he considered Rāzī to have been a pupil of
Hishām b. ʿUbaydallāh al-Rāzī’s (d. 221/836)6 and of another Muḥammad
b. Abān, this one from Balkh, who died in 244/858.7 In that case he would have
lived around two generations later.
Shaybānī, Abū Ḥanīfa’s famous pupil, transmitted much hadith from the
Kufan Muḥammad b. Abān al-Qurashī. He died in 189/805 in Rayy, although he
did not really belong in that city, being a member of Hārūn al-Rashīd’s retinue
7 Bukhārī I2 56 no. 1671; IAH I1 336 no. 1273; nothing comparable in ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 118
no. 142 and Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 181, 10ff.
8 Halm, Ausbreitung 140ff. Regarding the second century cf. Juynboll, Tradition 226.
9 Aḥsan al-taqāsīm 395, 7.
10 ʿAbd al-Jalīl Qazwīnī, Naqḍ 404, 3.
11 Thus also those in Isfahan and other Iranian cities (Ibn al-Dāʿī, Tabṣira 98, 11f.).
1 Miles, Numismatic History of Rayy 15f.

2 Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān V 33 no. 115.
4 After 141/758. Cf. the summary of a history of the city in Schwarz, Iran 745ff. (p. 752f.), and
Wiet, Soieries persanes 165ff. (p. 168); also Miles, Numismatic History, passim.
5 Mīzān no. 7131 (contradicting no. 7128).
6 Mīzān no. 9230; regarding him see also p. 713 below.
7 Mīzān no. 7132; TB II 78ff. no. 458; Fażāʾil-i Balkh 244, ult. ff. The passage in Dhahabī which
mentions this teacher–pupil connection (III 454. –8f.) is not transmitted entirely reliably.
710 CHAPTER 3
when the latter visited the city for four months.8 The office of judge appears
to have been the domain of the Shīʿites at the time. We know three of them.
The first,
Abū ʿUthmān ʿAmr b. Jumayʿ al-Azdī,
was a pupil of Aʿmash’s and apparently a moderate; as the kunya shows, he

named his eldest son ʿUthmān.9 He appears to have been from Basra; Kashshī
believed him to be a Butrite.10 He had also been qāḍī in Ḥulwān in the Jibāl
province.11 The Imāmites listed him among the followers of Muḥammad al-
Bāqir and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq and preserved a nuskha of his containing traditions.12 –
The two others have in common that they were both pupils of Ibn Isḥāq’s and
supported their pro-ʿAlid convictions with material drawn from his works. The
older of the two,
Abū Mujāhid ʿAlī b. Mujāhid b. Muslim al-Rāzī,
also known as Ibn al-Kābulī, d. 182/798, was not very successful: according to
Sunni opinion his K. al-maghāzī teemed with falsified isnāds.13 He also wrote a
K. manāqib amīr al-muʾminīn wa-mathālib al-munāfiqīn, a title that gave away
his opinion: he probably included Abū Bakr and ʿUmar in the munāfiqūn.14
8 Ṭabarī III 701, 20ff.; Ṣaymarī, Akhbār Abī Ḥanīfa 120, 11f. Consequently it is misleading to
list him as qāḍī of Rayy, as Halm does (Ausbreitung 131 and 136); it also remains to be con-
firmed that shortly before his death Hārūn appointed him “qāḍī of Khorasan” as EI1 IV 291
claims based on a late Ḥanafite source. The date of his death given in Halm (187/803) is
impossible due to the constellation mentioned. Shaybānī allegedly died on the same day
as Kisāʾī (Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Ḥasanī, Maṣābīḥ in Madelung, Arabic Texts 63, 9f.). Regarding
Shaybānī’s biography cf. M. Khadduri, Islamic Law of Nations 26ff.; for general informa-
tion cf. Muḥammad al-Dasūqī’s monograph Al-imām Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī
wa-atharuhū fī l-fiqh al-islāmī (Qatar 1407/1987); also p. 534 above.
9 Regarding the teacher–pupil connection cf. TB XII 191, 16f.; regarding the office of qāḍī
Najāshī 205, 4ff.
10 Rijāl 390, 7.
11 Fasawī III 39, 11; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 264 no. 1270; Mīzān no. 6345.
12 Najāshī, loc. cit.; Ṭūsī, Fihrist 243 no. 529 with ʿAlam al-Hudā’s commentary.
13 TB XII 107, 11f. Fück, Muḥammad Ibn Isḥāq 44 discusses him as a pupil of Ibn Isḥāq’s; cf.
also Mīzān no. 5919. General information on him in GAS 1/312.
14 Cf. Kohlberg in: JSAI 1984/152. This might be the origin of the tradition found in ʿUqaylī,
Ḍuʿafāʾ III 252 no. 1254, that the prophet once preached a feast-day sermon sitting on his
white mule, with ʿAlī sitting behind him.
Iran 711
However, we do not know how long he lived in Rayy, as he becomes more tan-
gible in Baghdad especially.15 – The other one,
Salama b. al-Faḍl al-Abrash,
d. 191/807, was more successful; he is the author of the recensions of both Ibn
Isḥāq’s K. al-mubtadaʾ and Maghāzī that are most widely used in the east.16
People were not sure what to make of him; the more the Sīra gained a foothold,
the higher his reputation rose. He had probably also been a Qadarite, as he also
heard Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s Tafsīr in ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s recension from Ibn Isḥāq.17 –
The extent to which the Shīʿites had gained ground in the city becomes clear in
the hadiths of another of Aʿmash’s pupils,
Dāhir b. Yaḥyā b. Dāhir al-Rāzī,
who cited his teacher as the authority for this prophetic dictum: “ʿAlī is flesh
of my flesh. He is to me as Aaron is to Moses, except that there will be no
prophet after me”.18 He also circulated a variant of the hadith that proposes
the Scripture and the holy family as guarantors of salvation,19 in the form of
a saying by Ibn ʿAbbās: “There will be civil war (fitna). Those who experience
it should look to two criteria ( fa-ʿalayhi bi-khaṣlatayn): the Scripture and ʿAlī
b. Abī Ṭālib. For I heard the prophet say, taking ʿAlī’s hand: this is the first one to
have believed in me, and the first one who will shake my hand on the day of the
resurrection. He is the touchstone ( fārūq) of this community, who separates
true from false. He is the queen bee (yaʿsūb) of this community; but money
is the queen bee of tyrants. He is the greatest of the righteous (al-ṣiddīq al-
akbar). He is my successor after my death”.20 The critics were right in seeing
Rāfiḍite ideas at work here. The honorifics of the two first caliphs, ṣiddīq and
fārūq, were appropriated for ʿAlī, and their caliphate declared invalid. ʿAlī is
15 TB XII 106f. no. 6546. His qāḍī position is noted without a location, and only in TT VII 377f.
no. 612 (after which Juynboll, Muslim Tradition 233). Regarding him cf. also Bukhārī III2
297 no. 2457 and IAH III2 205 no. 1123.
16 IAH II1 168ff. no. 739; ʿUqaylī II 150 no. 650; Mīzān no. 3410; TT IV 153f. no. 265. Also GAS 1/79;
Fück, Ibn Isḥāq 44; Azmi, Studies 206; Khoury in: La vie du Prophète 20f.; Al-Samuk, Ibn
Isḥāq, passim (esp. the table p. 154ff.); Newby, The Making of the Last Prophet 8.
17 GAS 1/30; cf. p. 339f. above.
20 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 46f. no. 477 > Mīzān no. 2587; also Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 324, 12ff.
712 CHAPTER 3
the “king bee” (yaʿsūb) as which the ghulāt named him; indeed, he is the only
member of the community suited to rule.
Regarding the meaning of yaʿsūb cf. Ullmann in: WO 9/1977/111. At the

time it was not known that the “king bee” is in fact a queen bee; yaʿsūb
meaning “drone” is modern. The ghulāt always used the term amīr al-
naḥl, e.g. the Khaṭṭābites (cf. Halm, Gnosis 207f.) and especially the
Nuṣayrians (ibid. 341ff.). This is because the bees (naḥl) appear in the
Quran where they are the recipients of a revelation (sura 16:68; cf. ch.
C 3.2.2.2.7.3 below); they are, as it were, the prototype of the imams. One
of al-Mahdī’s mawālī believed them to be the Banū Hāshim in general
(Agh. III 158, 11ff.). Cf. Goldziher, Ges. Schr. V 213f. – Calling ʿAlī al-ṣiddīq
al-akbar probably meant to emphasise that he rather than Abū Bakr was
the first to believe in Muḥammad (thus Kister in: BSOAS 31/1969/225, n.).
The same idea is expressed in the hadith quoted above. Regarding ʿAlī
as fārūq al-akbar cf. the traditions in Ibn al-Ṣāffār, Baṣāʾir al-darajāt 415f.
no. 3ff.
Abū Sulaymān ʿAbdallāh b. Dāhir al-Aḥmarī,
the son of the previous one, continued this thread. He obtained the hadīth al-
thaqalayn in a version his father had not known.21 We also learn that the latter
had had further traditions up his sleeve which he had not made quite so public.
He thought that the prophets had existed as spirits before the creation,22 and
in a vaticinatio ex eventu nourished the hope that the Banū Hāshim would fi-
nally come to power under a mahdī. They were persecuted until the black ban-
ners came from the east. Twice they had been offered the rule, and twice they
rejected it. The mahdī, however, must be followed “even if one had to crawl
(to him) across the snow”.23 It is difficult to determine when in his view the
ahl al-bayt rejected the rule for the second time. Maybe when Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq
kept his distance from al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s uprising; ʿAbdallāh b. Dāhir certainly
had some of his notes.24 It is dubious that he could have met him in person,
as his father was already transmitting from Aʿmash, who was the same age;
21 ʿUqaylī II 250. 9ff.

22 Biḥār XV 14 no. 17: after Mufaḍḍal.
23 Mīzān no. 4295; regarding the phrase cf. Madelung in EI2 V 1233a.
24 Ardabīlī, Jāmiʿ I 483b. The first time, of course, was during the revolution itself; Abū
Sulaymān may have been thinking of the letter Abū Salama wrote to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq from
Kufa (see vol. I 370, n. 6 above).
Iran 713
he probably lived during the last quarter of the second century.25 Later he
went to Baghdad where, to Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn’s annoyance, he found a number of
followers.26
While Hārūn al-Rashīd may not have interrupted this Shīʿite tradition by ap-
pointing Shaybānī, he did once appoint a Ḥanafite qāḍī in Rayy, Faḍl b. Ghānim
al-Khuzāʿī (d. Jumādā II 236/Dec. 850), a man from Marv who had studied
under Abū Yūsuf.27 He probably did not stay long as he went to Egypt in 198/813
in order to assume the position of judge there,28 but he had time enough to
note that there were people in the city who believed the Quran to have been
created. He reported this to the caliph who told him to punish them severely.29
After his time, but still during the second century, Hishām b. ʿUbaydallāh al-
Rāzī (d. 221/836) had someone thrown into prison for tajahhum,30 which sug-
gests that he, too, was qāḍī in the city; Shaybānī had died in his house and he
had studied under him as well as Abū Yūsuf.31 Clearly the Ḥanafites in Rayy
were particularly “orthodox”, at least as long as they knew the caliph was on
their side. After all, another man linked to them was Shuʿayb b. Sahl b. Kathīr,
named Shaʿbōya (d. 246/860), who made himself most unpopular with his in-
transigent support of the official dogma;32 he had studied in Rayy and became
qāḍī in the Baghdad suburb of Ruṣāfa under Muʿtaṣim.
The miḥna may have contributed to the old resistance to the khalq al-Qurʾān
taking on a new guise in due course. From the middle of the third century on-
wards, highly principled traditionists appeared on the scene here as well as in
Baghdad, some of whom became famous far beyond their home city: first Abū
25 This makes him too old to allow the interpretation of his nisba as meaning he was a
member of Isḥāq al-Aḥmar’s circle which attracted a number of extremists during the
time of the tenth and eleventh imams; Isḥāq died only in 286/899 (cf. Halm in: Der
Islam 55/1078/245ff.). Regarding the nisba in general cf. Samʿānī I 124f.; he believed the
Banū Aḥmar to be a sub-tribe of the Azd.
26 TB IX 453 no. 5085.
27 Regarding him IAW I 407, 1ff. no. 1130; TB XII 357ff. no. 6790.
28 TB XII 359, 10.
29 Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-Mīzān IV 446, 8ff.; interestingly he would become one of the miḥna’s
most prominent victims when he was spending his twilight years in Baghdad (Ṭabarī
III 1121, 6, and 1132, 8). Still, Maʾmūn was able to draw attention to the fact that he had
acquired a bad reputation in Egypt, where he also remained as qāḍī for one year only
(ibid. 1127, 15ff.; cf. TB XII 359, 12ff.).
30 Ibn Taymiyya, Fatwā Ḥamawiyya 114, 19ff.; Dhahabī, ʿUlūw 209, 8ff.
31 IAW II 205f. no. 643; further sources in GAS 1/433. The date of his death given there
(201/817) is supported by Hadiyyat al-ʿārifīn II 508, 9f., only; Dhahabī, loc. cit., has “221”.
32 See ch. C 3.3.3 below with further details.
714 CHAPTER 3
Zurʿa al-Rāzī (d. 264/878)33 and Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 277/890),34 then the lat-
ter’s son Ibn Abī Ḥātim (d. 327/938).35 The former two had studied under Ibn
Ḥanbal while the latter brought Shāfiʿī into this tradition as well. He went to
meet Yūnus b. ʿAbd al-Aʿlā (d. 264/877–8) in Egypt36 and composed a K. ādāb
al-Shāfiʿī wa-manāqibihī.37 Even so, the Ḥanbalites still count him as one of
their own.38 It is true that his father had composed an ʿaqīda following Ibn
Ḥanbal’s precepts in which he exhorted people to adhere to the madhāhib ahl
al-athar,39 and that he told his son about the scholars he met on his travels
far and wide, and in which points of dogma they agreed. The son interviewed
Abū Zurʿa on the same subject and published his findings as a kind of funda-
mental consensus of the Islamic world,40 pushing both Ḥanafites and Shīʿites
to the margin. Abū Ḥātim recommended that one should turn one’s back on
all those who composed books not based on traditions but on their own opin-
ion (bil-raʾy bilā āthār).41 His son acted accordingly, quoting only hadiths in
his extensive Tafsīr, but no earlier Tafsīr works.42 He also wrote a Radd ʿalā
l-Jahmiyya; showing us another front where the ahl al-ḥadīth took the place
of the Ḥanafites. While Ibn Abī Ḥātim mentioned Faḍl b. Ghānim al-Khuzāʿī
and Hishām b. ʿUbaydallāh al-Rāzī approvingly,43 the systematic context had
changed. All three theologians stressed that God sat on his throne in heaven.44
Each of the three also wrote a K. al-zuhd; emphasising, like Ibn Ḥanbal, the
value of moderately ascetic practical piousness, even though a Ḥanbalite mys-
ticism of the kind seen in Isfahan did not develop in Rayy. Here, there was
already mysticism, which, however, seems to have emerged from the spirit of
irjāʾ, as we can see in the character of
33 Cf. GAS 1/145.

34 GAS 1/153.
35 GAS 1/178f.
36 Halm, Ausbreitung 133; regarding Yūnus b. ʿAbd al-Aʿlā, one of Shāfiʿī’s most important
Egyptian pupils, ibid. 236.
37 Ed. ʿAbd al-Ghanī ʿAbd al-Khāliq, Cairo 1953; reprint Beirut, n. d.
38 Ibn Abī Yaʿlā, Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila II 55 no. 596. He also wrote Faḍāʾl Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal
(ibid. 55, 12).
39 Ibid. I 286, 3ff.
40 The text was adopted by Lālakāʾī, Sharḥ uṣūl iʿtiqād ahl al-sunna 176, 7ff., and also survives
in a Damascene MS; the title Aṣl al-sunna wa-ʿtiqād al-dīn (cf. GAS 1/179) noted in the lat-
ter is not found in the former and is presumably secondary.
41 Ibn Abī Yaʿlā 286 14f.
42 Cf. Aḥmad ʿAbdallāh al-ʿImārī al-Zahrānī’s edition, 1ff.; Medina 1408/1988ff.
43 In the sources mentioned these reports are always traced back to him.
44 Dhahabī, ʿUlūw 235ff.
Iran 715
Yaḥyā b. Muʿādh al-Rāzī,
who died 258/872 in Nishapur. He ranked faith higher than actions and God’s
grace higher than his justice; his theory of hope (rajāʾ) evolved out of this, con-
trasting with the emphasis on fear that had been typical of the self-tormenting
early ascetics.45 In Balkh he preached the merits of wealth over poverty,46
taking the wind out of Shaqīq al-Balkhī’s sails.47 He did not get on with the
Jahmites, either; God, he said, was on his throne “separate from his creation”.48
It is, however, characteristic that Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī conducted a debate on
“self-assuredness” (amn) with him.49
There was no definite victor in this struggle of wills for the time being.
The Sunnites could not be argued out of kalām. During the second half of
the third century Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Qalānisī, often named together with Ibn
Kullāb, was living in the city; he composed treatises against Naẓẓām and a
K. al-maqālāt among other things.50 The Shīʿa in its turn became more tradi-
tionalist; Kulīnī (d. Shaʿbān 329/May 941) was born in a village southwest of
Rayy.51 The area was fertile ground for the Ismāʿīliyya, too. The first missionary,
a certain Khalaf, arrived with the instruction: “Go to Rayy, for there – in Rayy,
Āba, Qom, Qāshān, and in the provinces Ṭabaristān and Māzandarān – are
many Shīʿites who will heed your call.’ He made his home in Kulēn at some
point during the third century.52 At the beginning of the fourth century the
city was home to the Ismāʿīlī Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī53 as well as the philosopher
45 In detail Meier, Abū Saʿīd 173ff. and earlier; also p. 613 and 620 above.
46 Ibid. 178ff.
48 Ibn Taymiyya, Fatwā Ḥamawiyya 33, 7f.
49 Khatm al-awliyāʾ 388, 2 and earlier; cf. also 403, 8ff.
50 Regarding him in detail see Gimaret in: JA 277/1989/227ff.
51 Cf. Madelung in EI2 V 362f. The Shīʿite mutakallim Abū l-Ṭayyib al-Rāzī mentioned in
Ṭūsī’s Fihrist (376 no. 850 > Ardabīlī II 396), who is difficult to classify, was probably older;
Ṭūsī calls him Abū Muḥammad al-ʿAlawī’s teacher (regarding whom see Ardabīlī II 414).
He was a “Murjiʾite”, i.e. he did not believe in the eternal duration of the punishment
of hell – maybe because of ʿAlī’s intercession. A contemporary of Kulīnī’s was Abū Jaʿfar
Muḥammad Ibn Qibba al-Rāzī (cf. Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 225, 5ff.; Ṭūsī 287f. no. 648; EIran
I 360a); H. Modarressi has written a monograph on him.
52 Cf. the details provided by Stern, Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism 190ff. Regarding the Shīʿite
community in Rayy from the mid-third century onwards see Madelung, Religious
Trends 84; it looked after the tomb of a companion of the ninth and tenth imams, ʿAbd
al-ʿAẓīm al-Ḥasanī (cf. Madelung in EIran I 96f. s. n.).
53 Regarding him GAS 1/573; Stern, ibid. 195ff.
716 CHAPTER 3
Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Zakariyyāʾ.54 The Ḥanafites were able to withstand

the Shāfiʿites and the Ḥanbalites; between 375/985 and 380/990 Muqaddasī
wrote that the majority of the inhabitants of Rayy followed Abū Ḥanīfa’s law
school and Najjār’s theology.55 Still, the chief qāḍī of the city at the time was a
Shāfiʿite, the Muʿtazilite ʿAbd al-Jabbār;56 the Ṣāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād who appointed
him in 367/978 was himself a good example of how blurred the borders be-
tween Muʿtazila, ahl al-sunna and Shīʿa had become by that time.57
54 Regarding him see, after the ground-breaking studies by P. Kraus, the articles by
L. Goodman in: Philosophical Forum 4/1972/26ff. and Essays in Islamic Philosophy and
Science, ed. Hourani 25ff., as well as M. Muḥaqqiq, Faylasūf-i Rayy (Teheran 1970).
55 Aḥsan al-taqāsīm 395, 1; see also ch. 5.2.2 below.
56 Regarding him see Madelung in EIran I 116ff.
57 Cf. Cahen and Pellat in EI2 III 672b.
CHAPTER 4
The Arabian Peninsula
There is a great contrast between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula; the region
from which Islam came was at the same time the one in which it was subject
to the smallest foreign influence. Of course, Arabia was not entirely secluded
from events in the “Old World”; we need only consider the frescoes and stat-
ues in Qaryat al-Fāʾw1 or the Sasanid occupation of Yemen.2 Still, it is likely
that religion was able to grow undisturbed and according to its own laws there,
just as society still preserves pure ancient Arabian traits to this day. Research
is complicated by the fact that we possess only few indigenous and reliable
sources; even Mālik b. Anas’ Muwaṭṭaʾ survives only in non-Hijazi recensions.3
The reason for this was that the Arabian Peninsula moved into a marginal po-
litical position as early as the first century; ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr was the last
to try to restore its importance. Our account begins at a point when the loss
of importance was already established fact, when even the Khārijites who had
first appeared in Arabia had found another target region. Politics was deter-
mined by governors about whose activities we know little;4 and scholarship
was dominated by men whose images we find in the biographies in Iraq or
the Maghreb. Thus while the contours are blurred, three regions can be distin-
guished as individual cultural provinces: the Hijaz with its two centres Mecca
and Medina, Yemen, and Oman with Ḥaḍramawt.
1 Cf. the images in A. R. al-Ansary, Qaryat al-Fau, p. 104 and 135ff.

2 See p. 787 below.
3 Cf. Schacht in EI2 VI 264.
4 Regarding the administration of the Hijaz in the first centuries cf. Ṣ. A. al-ʿAlī in:
Abhath 21/1968, issue 2–4, 3ff.

718 CHAPTER 4
4.1 The Hijaz
4.1.1 Mecca
Once a year, during the pilgrimage, Mecca was the meeting place of the great
wide world. Ordinary people came, too, as well as those who did not have much
money, such as scholars, their elation occasionally dampened by the avarice of
the locals. A building boom under Muʿāwiya had limited the space available
in the city; visitors had to pay for lodgings. This did not seem to the pious to
be compatible with the prophet’s teachings; and a hadith debate erupted on
whether it was in fact permitted at all to let houses in Mecca.1 Furthermore
the crush was such that during the ṭawāf men and women were close to one
another in a not very decorous fashion; the governor Khālid al-Qasrī was the
first to take action and separate the sexes.2 Al-Mahdī censured the Meccans’
bad morals, namely usury and an easy-going lifestyle, in an official letter.3
People in the city were certainly no less pious than elsewhere, only more care-
free and inclined to pleasure. The governor had little reason to intervene, and
if he did it was usually because political turmoil elsewhere extended as far as
his city. When Ḥajjāj persuaded Khālid al-Qasrī to surrender the Iraqi scholars
who had taken part in Ibn al-Ashʿath’s uprising,4 some Meccans were arrested
as well: the Quranic exegete Mujāhid b. Jabr (d. 103/721 or 104/722) as well as
the jurists ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ (d. 114/732) and ʿAmr b. Dīnār (d. 126/743).5 Later,
Hishām would revoke the inhabitants’ ʿaṭāʾ for a year because they had leaned
towards Zayd b. ʿAlī.6
Two of the three Meccan scholars were soon released, only Mujāhid remain-
ing in prison for some months until Ḥajjāj’s death;7 he had in fact been present
at Dayr al-Jamājim.8 We do not know why the other two had been troubled.
Maybe they had only given shelter to their colleagues, or protested against their
arrest; ʿAmr b. Dīnār was reported to have abused a guardsman when the latter
1 Cf. in more detail Kister in: JESHO 15/1972/86ff. (= Studies in Jāhiliyya and Early Islam, no. II).
2 Wüstenfeld, Chroniken IV 148.
3 Extant as an addition by Khuzāʿī to Azraqī’s Akhbār Makka (Wüstenfeld, Chroniken IV 164ff.).
5 Ṭabarī II 1262, 6ff.; quoted in TT V 32, 5ff. Ibn Saʿd talks of ten prisoners in all (VI 184, 15). The
event took place in 94/713, the same year in which persecution started in Medina, too (see
p. 744 below).
6 Agh. VII 22, 3ff.
7 Thus according to the original text in Ṭabarī; Ibn Ḥajar quotes Ṭabarī differently.
8 Fasawī I 711, –4ff.
The Arabian Peninsula 719
arrested a “Qadarite”, afraid that the same fate might befall him.9 Searching for
deeper reasons meets with difficulties. Madelung assumed that they, like the
Iraqis arrested with them, were Murjiʾites,10 but the Murjiʾa was not really es-
tablished in the Hijaz.11 Furthermore, two of them, Mujāhid and ʿAmr b. Dīnār,
were claimed by the Ibāḍites.12 The latter was a Qadarite as well,13 and in addi-
tion was thought to have ties to the Shīʿa.14 And while Kufan jurists visited ʿAṭāʾ
b. Abī Rabāḥ, it was not for his theological but his legal opinions;15 he was also
quoted as having spoken out against the Basran Qadariyya.16
The only text that promises greater certainty compared to these not easily
verifiable speculations is Mujāhid’s Tafsīr. It is available in a printed edition17
which, however, will require more in-depth scrutiny as it has clearly been re-
vised and castigated.18 Even without this edition, G. Stauth reached the con-
clusion that “Mujāhid’s Tafsīr is impossible to reconstruct on the basis of the
extant sources”. This verdict refers to the linguistic appearance; before AH 150
tradition permitted a “largely free approach to the text as long as the mean-
ing was conveyed correctly”.19 Which gives rise to the question of whether this
“free” approach might have resulted in corrections to the substance – such as
omissions – as well. The question must, as we shall see, be answered in the
affirmative, but a detailed analysis is yet to be undertaken. It must always
9 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 337, 14ff. > IM 135, 1ff., after Muḥammad b. Yazdādh’s
K. al-maṣābīḥ. Cf. also Wüstenfeld, Chroniken IV 150.
10 Qāsim 233.
13 Thus Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn (cf. Kaʿbī 81, 7, and 82, 7f. > Faḍl 337, 15), but maybe due simply to the
anecdote mentioned above.
14 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Kifāya 125, 11. He was a friend of Muḥammad al-Bāqir’s (Fasawī
I 704, 6f., where this fact is taken as proof of his distance to the Qadariyya).
15 See vol. I 228. Regarding ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ as a jurist cf. Schacht, Origins 250ff., and
Motzki, Die Anfänge der islamischen Jurisprudenz 157ff. and 219ff.; he was an authority on
pilgrimage rites (cf. Juynboll in: JSAI 10/1987/100).
16 HT 167f.; also Index s. n.
17 Vol. 1–2, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṭāhir Muḥammad al-Sūrtī; Islamabad (ca. 1980).
18 It is essentially Warqāʾ b. ʿUmar’s redaction after Ibn Abī Najīḥ, expanded by Ādam b. Abī
Iyās al-Khurāsānī (d. 220/835; cf. GAS 1/37 and 102; also p. 77 above and p. 722 and 730
below). ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ also gave exegetic lectures the contents of which came down
to Ṭabarī (GAS 1/31); but they are even more in need of reconstruction (cf. Cerrahoğlu in:
İlah. Fak. Dergisi 22/1978/17ff.; also id., Tefsir tarihi I 163ff.).
19 Die Überlieferung des Korankommentars Muǧāhid b. Ǧabrs (PhD Gießen 1969), p. 225
and 223; cf. also Leemhuis in: Proc. IX. Congress UEAI Amsterdam 169ff., and Approaches
to the History of the Interpretation of the Qurʾān 19ff.
720 CHAPTER 4
be borne in mind that in the case of an early “author” like Mujāhid, as with
Muqātil b. Sulaymān, later approaches to a problem do not necessarily apply
and that he should not be linked to a particular camp because of one isolated
remark. Goldziher pointed out the differences in his treatment of popular re-
ligious concepts. On the one hand Mujāhid modified them with metaphoric
exegesis,20 on the other he interpreted the “praiseworthy rank” or “honourable
place” (maqām maḥmūd), to which Muḥammad will be awakened by God ac-
cording to sura 17:79, to mean quite literally that on the Latter Day God would
have Muḥammad sit on the throne beside him. Other exegetes favoured the
interpretation that this indicated Muḥammad’s intercession, even if they were
not usually inclined to metaphorical exegesis.
In the same place (Richtungen der Koranauslegung 107ff.) Goldziher also

looked at the subsequent fate of the latter of Mujāhid’s exegeses. It is not
found in the printed version of his commentary where it is replaced by
the more common shafāʿa interpretation (I 369, 2ff.). This is not, in fact,
an entirely new interpretation as the earlier one, too, presumed that the
prophet would use his position sitting beside God to intercede on behalf
of his community. The attendant circumstances were not mentioned in
order to avoid criticism (cf. ch. D 1.2.1.5). In the third century this kind of
evasive tactics led to a quarrel among the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth in Baghdad.
Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl b. Yūsuf al-Tirmidhī (d. Ramadan 280/Nov.–Dec.
893), a traditionist from eastern Iran who had studied in Kufa under Faḍl
b. Dukayn among others and later enjoyed great renown in the capital
(cf. TB II 42ff. no. 435), told Ibn Ḥanbal in a letter that in his view some-
one who did not continue to transmit Mujāhid’s view was a Jahmite (!)
and dualist. This angered Ibn Ḥanbal, already an old man at the time,
and he urged his pupil Abū Bakr al-Marrūdhī to refute the claim (Khallāl,
Musnad 77, –6ff. and earlier; also 86, –8ff.). Ibn Baṭṭa, too, took Ibn Ḥanbal’s
part (Ibāna 61, 1ff.), later also Dhahabī (ʿUlūw 156, –5ff., and 211, –4ff.).
Dhahabī also included information according to which Mujāhid’s inter-
pretation was attributed to ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd and Ḍaḥḥāk b. Muzāḥim
(ibid. 119, 9ff., and 166, 5ff.), which tells us that it was also known in Kufa
as well as Khorasan. Ṭabarī considered it scandalous, as would Wāḥidī
later whom Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī quoted extensively (Mafātīḥ al-ghayb
XXI 32, 9ff.). Ṭabarī met with militant opposition from the Ḥanbalites
20 Thus e.g. the statement in sura 2:65 that those who do not keep the Sabbath would be
turned into apes (cf. Ṭabarī, Tafsīr 3II 172, –5ff.; cf. transl. Cooper I 372f.), and especially
sura 75: 22f., the famous instance of seeing God (cf. Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mughnī IV 212,
9ff. > Malāḥimī, Muʿtamad 465, apu. ff., after non-Muʿtazilite sources).
and consequently expressed himself diplomatically in his Tafsīr (2XV 145,

–10ff.; cf. Andrae, Person Muhammeds 270ff.); he felt compelled to pub-
lish a separate text stressing his orthodoxy (Yāqūt, Irshād VI 436, 2ff.;
probably his K. ṣarīḥ al-sunna, ed. Sourdel in: REI 36/1968/177ff.). Shortly
after his death in 317/929 there were riots in Baghdad fired by this issue
(Goldziher, Richtungen 101f.; also Rosenthal in: The History of al-Ṭabarī I,
Introduction 71ff. and 149ff., and Gilliot, Exégèse, langue et théologie en
Islam 250ff.). For later opinions cf. Huitema, Voorspraak 17, n. 6).
It may have been this matter that led to Mujāhid being accused of bas-
ing his teachings on the ideas of the “people of the book”. The OT has sit-
ting on the throne together as a symbol of shared rule (Job 36:7; Ps. 110:1,
quoted in Mt. 22:44); the son of man will sit on the right hand of “power”
(Mt. 26:64). But the idea may just as well have come from Arab culture;
we read repeatedly how a ruler or governor invites a pious man – the righ-
teous man, in Biblical terms – to sit on the throne beside him (Balādhurī,
Ansāb IV1 242, –6 ʿAbbās; Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya V 140, 5f.; Dhahabī, Siyar
IV 461, –6f.).
4.1.1.1 The Qadarites

Mujāhid imagined that when God “sealed” the hearts, he did so gradually and
in the wake of human sin.1 This idea was pleasing to Qadarite ears, and in fact
Mujāhid was occasionally listed among the Qadarites,2 as were several of his
pupils and their pupils, the first of whom edited his exegetic lectures:
Abū Yasār ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Najīḥ Yasār,
d. before the great pestilence, in 131/748,3 according to other sources in 132/749.4

His father Abū Najīḥ (d. 107/727) had been a mawlā of the Thaqīf,5 while he
himself moved his allegiance to the Makhzūm.6 The family possessed some
wealth and could allow themselves the luxury of scholarly activity. The father
transmitted traditions and was close to Ṭāwūs b. Kaysān (d. 106/725 in Mecca).7
1 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr 3I 258f. no. 300f.; Ibn al-Jawzī, Quṣṣāṣ 53f. no. 101.
2 Faḍl 338, 8 > IM 135, 9; but cf. his alleged criticism of Ghaylān al-Dimashqī (Ibn Waḍḍāḥ,
Bidaʿ IX 14).
3 IS V 355, 17f.; Khalīfa, Ṭab. 707 no. 2561, and Taʾrīkh 603, 17.
4 IS 355, 18f.; Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 71, 1 after Wāqidī; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 469, 5.
5 IS 348, 22.f. More precisely, according to Bukhārī III1 233 no. 767, and IAH II2 203 no. 947:
mawlā of Akhnas (b. Sharīq b. ʿAmr) al-Thaqafī. Regarding him cf. Ṭabarī, Index s. n., and
p. 169 above.
6 Maʿārif 469, 1.
7 AZ 516 no. 1375.
722 CHAPTER 4
The mother’s brother, Sulaymān b. Abī Muslim al-Aḥwal, of whom we know

hardly anything else, was also a traditionist.8 Ibn Abī Najīḥ’s sister Fāṭima mar-
ried al-Qāsim b. (Nāfiʿ b.) Abī Bazza (d. 124/742), the only one to have heard
Mujāhid’s entire Tafsīr from the author.9 He came from a humble background;
his father Nāfiʿ had been sold as a slave in his youth. His son ʿAbdallāh, how-
ever, Ibn Abī Najīḥ’s nephew, married a great-great-granddaughter of Bādhān’s,
the Sasanid governor in Yemen in the prophet’s day.10 Together with his broth-
er Nāfiʿ this ʿAbdallāh b. Qāsim inherited the house Ibn Abī Najīḥ had built
“on the rock”, i.e. in al-Ṣafā, the well-known hill near Mecca. Ibn Abī Najīḥ was
survived by a minor daughter who died soon afterwards. The kinship ties are
shown on the family tree below.11
Ibn Abī Najīḥ received the notes of Mujāhid’s lectures first hand, from his
brother-in-law. On the whole the riwāyāt do not consider that the latter was
the only one who could claim genuine samāʿ from the author and ought to
be marked as an intermediate link. On the other hand, tradition did not for-
get that other authorities adduced by e.g. Ṭabarī in addition to Ibn Abī Najīḥ,
such as the two Kufans Layth b. Abī Sulaym (d. after 140/757)12 and al-Ḥakam
b. ʿUtayba (d. ca. 115/733),13 but also Ibn Jurayj,14 took this “fundamental text”
as their starting point.15 It is doubtful whether Ibn Abī Najīḥ also wrote a com-
mentary of his own, as Sezgin assumed.16 Sezgin himself believed that this
work was based on Mujāhid’s Tafsīr, but it would seem more straightforward
to assume that Ibn Abī Najīḥ added some of his own explanations in the re-
daction.17 In his commentary Ṭabarī copied these in full in around 700 places,18
and referred to them in his history as well.19 However, we must assume further
8 Fasawī II 22, 7f.; cf. also IS V 355, 21f., and TT IV 218 no. 368. According to Kaʿbī 84, 13ff., he,
too, was a Qadarite.
9 Fasawī II 154, 5ff. (regarding the form of the name cf. Dhahabī, Mushtabih 56, 6; IS V 352,
16ff.; IAH III2 122 no. 697. The MS has here as well as at I 703, pu. ff., Burda instead of Bazza
every time.
10 Regarding him cf. EI2 Suppl. 115f. s. n.; also p. 787 below.
11 Cf., also for the preceding, the passage in Fasawī I 704, 8ff.
12 Mīzān no. 6997; slightly confused TT VIII 465ff. no. 833.
13 Dāwūdī II 306, –7. Regarding him see vol. I 278ff. above.
14 Regarding him see GAS 1/91.
15 Cf. e.g. Fasawī II 154, 5ff.; for Ibn Abī Najīḥ also Bukhārī III1 233, 9f., and Mīzān II 515, 3f. –
Concerning the issue cf. Abbott, Arabic Papyri II 98, and Stauth 71f. and 226f.; also 131. The
term Grundwerk “fundamental text” is Stauth’s.
16 GAS 1/20.
17 References in Stauth 97ff.
18 H. Horst in: ZDMG 103/1953/296f.; in detail Stauth 105ff.
19 Cf. Taʾrīkh, Index s. n.
Bādhān
Mūsā ʿAbdallāh Abū Bazza Bashshār1 Abū Muslim

The Arabian Peninsula
al-Aswad Yaʿlā ʿAlī Nāfiʿ2 Abū Najīḥ Yasār ⚭ (X) Sulaymān
ʿUthmān3 Qisma ⚭ Muṭahhar Qāsim ⚭ Fāṭima ʿAbdallāh
Umm Yaʿlā ⚭ ʿAbdallāh Nāfiʿ (Daughter)

1 Cf. IAH III2 122, 14. Fasawī I 704, 9 to be corrected accordingly.
2 According to IS V 352 Nāfiʿ would be the same person as Abū Bazza, but Fasawī’s tradition contradicts this. According to the latter, Abū Bazza was
a client of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Sāʾib al-Makhzūmī (cf. Khalīfa, Ṭab. 695 no. 2506), while his son was a client of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Surāqa of the Kināna
who had bought him from ʿAbdallāh b. al-Sāʾib’s daughter Fāṭima and later freed him.
3 Also known as ʿUthmān b. al-Aswad al-Jumaḥī because of his clientage (d. 150/767; Fasawī I 704, –5, and IS V 361, 1f.). He was a traditionist as well
and took Qāsim’s two sons under his wing (Fasawī I 705, 1).
723
724 CHAPTER 4
intermediate stages; ʿĪsā b. Maymūn20 and Warqāʾ b. ʿUmar (d. ca. 160/776) for
instance based their work on Ibn Abī Najīḥ’s text one generation after him.21
Like many other Quranic experts of the time Ibn Abī Najīḥ applied his
knowledge practically as a jurist. During his last years, after ʿAmr b. Dīnār’s
death (126/743), he was the leading jurisconsult (muftī) in Mecca, more highly
regarded than Ibn Jurayj.22 The Kufan qāḍī Ibn Shubruma (d. 144/762), who
was greatly esteemed at the time, respected him and is said to have sought
his advice regarding pilgrims’ rites (manāsik).23 Ḥajjāj b. Arṭāt, whom the
Abbasids appointed qāḍī in Basra immediately after the revolution, also came
to see him.24 Abū Yūsuf quoted him in his K. al-kharāj,25 and Sufyān b. ʿUyayna
(d. 196/812) was proud to have heard him as a child.26
Such prestige was not possible without knowing community tradition and
hadith. In this area, too, he transmitted from Mujāhid among others, and to
Warqāʾ b. ʿUmar.27 He was said to have claimed to always transmit text exactly
as he heard it.28 Ismāʿīl b. ʿUlayya (d. 193/809) owned material from him which
contained salient features (aṭrāf) of traditions.29 Despite his conservative
attitude30 he does not seem to have minded Ibn Abī Najīḥ being a Qadarite,
although this was known throughout Iraq31 and would soon begin to cause
offence. In Mecca, criticism was said to have arisen among the family of Ibn
Abī Najīḥ’s nephew, the – presumably distinguished – descendants of Bādhān;

21 Cf. GAS 1/37 and, in general, 1/29; Stauth 2ff. and 69ff. Also Azmi, Studies 206; Cerrahoğlu
in: İlah. Fak. Dergisi 23/1978/40f.
22 Who was considerably younger; he died 150/767, or 151/768 (GAS 1/91). Cf. AZ 451, 1ff. = 514,
15 = 558, 1f.; Fasawī I 702, 9ff. = II 25, 11ff.; I 703, 9f. Also Kaʿbī 83, 6f. after Sufyān b. ʿUyayna.
General information in Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 70, ult. ff.
23 Wakīʿ III 54, –4ff.; cf. also Fasawī I 703, 11ff.
24 AZ 557 no. 1522. Regarding him see p. 177 above.
25 Kharāj 140, 5, and 175, 3.
26 Fasawī II 158, –4f.
27 Khaṭīb, Kifāya 215, 4ff.; Azmi, Studies 69 and 203. Further authorities in Cerrahoğlu in:
İlah. Fak. Dergisi 23/2978/39.
28 Wakīʿ III 55, 1 (read aqūdu for aqūlu in accordance with Fasawī I 703, 14; probably also
uḥaddithuka instead of akhadhtuka).
29 Fasawī II 134, 6ff. = 242, 4ff.; regarding aṭrāf see p. 411 above.
31 Cf. IS V 355, 20; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 469, 2, and 625, 11, as well as Taʾwīl 11, 4ff. = 10, 5ff./
transl. 9 § 17, and 102, 6 = 85, 12f./transl. 95 § 122; Fasawī II 207, 2f. (after Abū Yūsuf); IAH
II2 203, 14; Kaʿbī 83, 2ff. > Faḍl 337, apu. ff. > IM 135, 5f.; Dhahabī, Mīzān no. 4651, and
Taʾrīkh V 269, 10ff.; TT VI 54 no. 101; Hady al-sārī II 140, 1f.; Suyūṭī, Tadrīb I 329, 2; also
HT 65.
ʿAmr b. Dīnār – who was a client of Bādhān’s (or rather, his descendants)32 –
was resented for getting involved with Ibn Abī Najīḥ.33 Ibn Isḥāq, who was con-
siderably younger, was subject to the same accusation.34 In Iraq it was said that
Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, who died in the same year as Ibn Abī Najīḥ, expressed his
regret that the Qadarites had “spoiled” such an excellent man.35 Ibn al-Madīnī
(d. 234/849) tried to detract from his scholarly achievement: the Kufan Manṣūr
b. al-Muʿtamir al-Sulamī (d. 132/750), a confirmed predestinarian,36 he said,
had had much greater insight into Mujāhid’s legacy than Ibn Abī Najīḥ.37
The same Ibn al-Madīnī also bluntly called him a Muʿtazilite.38 He based
his verdict on the Basran Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān (d. 198/813) who had regarded
Ibn Abī Najīḥ as one of the “chief propagandists”.39 The reason for this was
a story Muʾammal b. Ismāʿīl (d. 206/821–22) had heard from a certain Ḥasan
b. Wahb al-Jumaḥī40 and which Ibn al-Madīnī had had the latter confirm af-
terwards: Ibn Abī Najīḥ had invited him and at breakfast, after he had spent
the night in prayer at his house, made “announcements regarding qadar” and
called him to follow “Ḥasan’s teachings”, but he refused to be drawn in. Later he
met him by the Kaʿba, where Ibn Abī Najīḥ asked him how he should respond
to someone who said that the Abū Lahab verses were not part of the Quran.41
This was a topos,42 but in this case it may have aimed at his connection with
ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd whose lectures Ibn Abī Najīḥ was believed to have attended.43
We have no tradition confirming that he went to Basra to this end, but then
ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd went on the pilgrimage a number of times.44 It is not impos-
sible that Ibn Abī Najīḥ was converted to Muʿtazilism by an envoy from Wāṣil
b. ʿAṭāʾ; in any case he, like Wāṣil, died too early.
32 IS V 353, 4.
33 Fasawī I 703, pu. ff.; Umm Yaʿlā, the nephew’s wife, recalled a conversation between her
parents.
34 Ibid. II 26, 4f. with a similar expression. Is it a doublet with different names? It is true that
Ibn Isḥāq was close to the Qadarites (see p. 756ff. below).
35 Kaʿbī 83, 3f. = Fasawī II 154, pu. f.
36 HT 43 and 188.
37 Fasawī II 638, 11 = III 15, 3f.
38 Ibid. II 154, pu. = III 33, 11ff. After which probably Bukhārī (in ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 317, 4f.)
and Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Kifāya 125, 12.
39 Kaʿbī 83, 2f. and ʿUqaylī II 317, 15f. > Mīzān II 515, 8f. Cf. also the dictum transmitted in
slightly corrupted form in Kaʿbī 83, 7f.
40 He may have been a son of the poet Abū Dahbal al-Jumaḥī (regarding him GAS 2/419).
41 ʿUqaylī II 317, –7ff.; cf. also Kaʿbī 83, 5f.
42 See p. 82, 124 and 341 above.
43 ʿUqaylī 317, 14: after Ibn Ḥanbal.
726 CHAPTER 4
The Qadarites who gathered around him are named in a remark by Ibrāhīm
b. Yaʿqūb al-Jūzajānī (d. 256/870 or 259/873);45 Kaʿbī, too, collected the relevant
names.46 We will list them briefly in the following.
Abū Dāwūd Shibl b. ʿUbād (or ʿAbbād?),
ca. 70/689–148/765 or later.47 So far Jūzajānī is our oldest witness of his

Qadarite tendencies; around the same time Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī (d. 275/889)
mentioned them to his pupil Abū ʿUbayd al-Ājurrī.48 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī
joined them in the fifth century49 and later works adopted the verdict.50 It
is worth noting that Kaʿbī did not include the name in his list.51 Shibl’s true
achievements were on the field of Quran recitation. He was a member of the
circle around Ibn Kathīr (d. 120/738);52 Makkī b. Abī Ṭālib al-Qaysī quoted him
comparatively frequently in his Kashf ʿan wujūh al-qirāʾāt al-sabʿ.53 His son
Dāwūd continued this tradition.54 He also transmitted Mujāhid’s Tafsīr which
he had heard from Ibn Abī Najīḥ;55 al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī as well as Thaʿlabī
used this edition of that work.
Cf. GAS 1/35. This note conveys the impression that it was an entirely in-
dependent work, but the isnāds going back to Ibn Abī Najīḥ or even usu-
ally to Mujāhid are in the majority (cf. e.g. Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh I 103, 4f.; 341,
3f.; 379, 14f.; Wakīʿ I 2, pu. f., and 54, 7f.; also Horst in ZDMG 103/1953/298.
Only up to Ibn Abī Najīḥ e.g. Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh I 313, ult. f.). Cf. Stauth 108ff.
and 153f.; summary 134. Thaʿlabī also mentioned a Tafsīr Shibl and did not
trace the riwāya back beyond him (Kashf, Intro. 44, 1f.). Shibl probably
published his selection of Ibn Abī Najīḥ’s works.
45 Dhahabī, Mīzān II 515, 10f. He composed works on jarḥ wal-taʿdīl that do not survive
(Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam I 129; GAS 1/135). But see his K. Aḥwāl al-rijāl.
46 Maq. 83, 12ff.
47 Regarding the dates cf. Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭabaqāt al-qurrāʾ no. 1414.
48 TT IV 305f. no. 522; cf. vol. I 70 above.
49 Kifāya 125, 13; TB XIII 486, 19.
50 Besides TT cf. Hady al-sārī II 133, –8f., and 179, 19f.; as well as Suyūṭī, Tadrīb II 329, 1.
51 Nothing in IAH II1 380f. 1659.
52 Regarding him cf. GAS 1/7.
53 Cf. Muḥyī al-Dīn Ramaḍān’s edition (Damascus 1394/1974), Index s. n.
54 Ibn al-Jazarī no. 1254.
55 Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn II 308, 10; GAS 1/29.
Abū Sulaymān Sayf b. (Abī?)56 Sulaymān al-Makhzūmī,
d. 156/773 in Basra, where he spent the last years of his life.57 He was a mawlā
of the Makhzūm.
He was a Qadarite according to Abū Yūsuf (cited in Fasawī II 207, 2), Ibn
Maʿīn (cited in Kaʿbī 83, apu. > Faḍl 338, 3 > IM 135, 7) and Abū Dāwūd al-
Sijistānī (cited in Ājurrī > TT VI 294, 13). Also in ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 173, –4f.;
Khaṭīb, Kifāya 125, 13; Mīzān no. 3636; Hady al-sārī II 133, 12ff.; Tadrīb I 328,
ult. Al-Faḍl b. Ghassān al-Ghalābī (d. 245/859; regarding him cf. Kaḥḥāla
VII 71) apparently called him a Ghaylānite (Kaʿbī 83, pu.; cf. Anfänge 245).
Abū Mūsā ʿĪsā b. Maymūn al-Jurashī al-Makkī, known as Ibn Dāya,
d. between 150 and 16058 or between 160 and 170,59 yet another exegete who
does not seem to have made his mark on the field of hadith. He transmitted
Mujāhid’s Tafsīr in Ibn Abī Najīḥ’s recension; Ṭabarī used the entire work with
this riwāya.60 He also seems to have written another “small” Tafsīr of his own
in which he collated material from Mujāhid, Ibn Abī Najīḥ and Qays b. Saʿd
(d. 119/737).61 Like his colleagues he followed Ibn Kathīr’s Quranic reading.
It was once again Ājurrī after Abū Dāwūd who claimed that he was
a Qadarite, but Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī had also been of this opinion (TT
VIII 235, ult. ff.). It was then adopted by Dhahabī (Mīzān no. 6619, and
Taʾrīkh VI 367, 1ff.) and Ibn Ḥajar. There are no references in Bukhārī III2
401 no. 2780, IAH III1 287f. no. 1596, and ʿUqaylī III 387f. no. 1427.
56 Thus Khalīfa, Ṭab. 710 no. 2579. Mentioned as a variant in IS V 362, 22 and in later works.
57 TT IV 294, –4f. Elsewhere we merely read that he was still living in 150/767 (IS V 362, 22f.;
Fasawī I 135, 12; Kaʿbī 83, ult., after Ibn Maʿīn).
58 Thus according to Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 367, 1ff.
59 Thus according to Ibn Ḥajar, Taqrīb II 102, no. 925.
60 Cf. Horst in: ZDMG 103/1953/297; after him GAS 1/20 and 29; also Stauth 107f. Cf. also
Fihrist 36, 17 (where Ibn must be added before Abī Najīḥ).
61 Another Meccan. He continued ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ’s circle after his death (IS V 355, 11ff.)
and probably also transmitted his Quranic commentary.
728 CHAPTER 4
Zakariyyāʾ b. Isḥāq al-Makkī,
a pupil of Ibn Abī Najīḥ’s, whose reputation rested on his having known the
latter.62 He was probably considerably younger and died after 160/776. Abū
Yūsuf63 and Ibn Maʿīn64 called him a Qadarite. Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī ex-
pressed only a suspicion to Ājurrī.65 Dhahabī used the term ṣāḥib ʿAmr, point-
ing in the same direction as Ibn Abī Najīḥ. An interesting piece of information,
which can unfortunately not be substantiated further, came from his pupil
Rawḥ b. ʿUbāda al-Qaysī (d. 205/820–1 at over eighty years of age) who had
heard it from him directly, that an unnamed governor (amīr) of Mecca had
a town crier announce that it was prohibited to attend Zakariyyāʾ’s lectures
because of his Qadarite tendencies.66 The event may have taken place during
the late Umayyad era. Rawḥ appears to have been the one who transmitted the
largest amount of material from him.67 Zakariyyāʾ dictated hadith from writ-
ten notes.68 When Zakariyyāʾ’s memory became unreliable, Ibn al-Mubārak
(d. 181/797) requested his notes from him.69
Abū Khālid Muslim b. Khālid b. Saʿd b. Jurja al-Zanjī,
mawlā of the Makhzūm, d. 179/795 or 180/196 at the age of 80.70 Later Muʿtazilite
sources name him as a Ghaylānite,71 but this may simply be due to the fact
that immediately after his name, Kaʿbī quoted his authority’s opinion of the
entire Meccan group, that they “adhere to the teachings of Ghaylān, Wāṣil and
ʿAmr”.72 It is remarkable that Muslim b. Khālid came from Syria.73 He was Ibn
62 IS V 362, 14f., and Fasawī II 26, 4ff. (to be completed after IS).
64 Kaʿbī 83, 12ff. > Faḍl 338, 1f. > IM 135, 6f. (with Ibn missing before Abī Najīḥ; pointed out by
Fück in OLZ 59/1964/374); also TT III 329, 6.
65 TT III 328, apu. Cf. also Dhahabī, Mīzān no. 2870 and Taʾrīkh IV 178, –4ff.; Hady al-sārī
II 127, pu. ff.; Suyūṭī, Tadrīb I 328, ult. Nothing in IS V 362, 13ff.; IAH I2 593 no. 2684.
66 TT III 329, 7f.
67 Cf. e.g. Ṭabarī I 114, 4ff.; 1246, 17f.; 1263, 3ff.: mainly after ʿAmr b. Dīnār.
69 IS 362, 14ff.; Fasawī II 26, 5ff. (wrongly identified). Ibn Abī Ḥātim, loc. cit. confirms that
Ibn al-Mubārak transmitted from him.
70 The “round” number is found in IS V 366, 7, and Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 511, 5.
71 Faḍl 253, 15 > IM 129, 12f., and 43, 2f.; without the designation Faḍl 338, 6, and IM 135, 8. Cf.
also Anfänge 244f.
72 Maq. 84, 8ff.
73 IS V 366, 2.
Abī Najīḥ’s pupil in Mecca.74 Orthodox sources note his Qadarite leanings only
late,75 but then Ibn Ḥajar added that he even circulated pro-Qadarite hadith.76
The reason why we know a little more about him than about his fellow
believers mentioned before is that he was one of Shāfiʿī’s teachers.77 He had
visited Mālik during his early period in Medina “when the tābiʿūn were still at-
tending his lectures”,78 but not even the Malikite tradition concealed the fact
that he embraced his own Meccan tradition different from that of the great
Medinan jurist, who, coincidentally, died in the same year as he.79 After Ibn
Jurayj’s death (150/767 or 151/768) he, rather like Ibn Abī Najīḥ before him, was
considered to be the leading jurisconsult (muftī) in the city.80 He was not, how-
ever, without competition; some favoured Saʿīd b. Sālim al-Qaddāḥ, another
mawlā of the Makhzūm.81 When the caliph al-Mahdī led the pilgrimage in 160
he requested an expert opinion from Muslim b. Khālid according to which the
oath confirming the succession of his cousin ʿĪsā b. Mūsā nearly thirty years
before was invalid.82 Shāfiʿī was still a young man when he went to visit Muslim
b. Khālid. Muslim b. Khālid greatly appreciated that Shāfiʿī, who came from a
distinguished background (he was a Quraysh and distant relation of the proph-
et), studied with him, a mere mawlā, and that he should be interested in juris-
prudence at all.83
Despite his sobriquet he was not black. He had been called “black one” (zanjī)
as a child, because his skin was reddish-white.84 His ascetic lifestyle was well-
known; he was said to fast excessively.85 Like Shibl b. ʿUbād he studied Quran
74 Kaʿbī 84, 11.

75 Mīzān no. 8485 after Zakariyyāʾ b. Yaḥyā al-Sājī (d. 307/920), probably his K. al-ḍuʿafāʾ
(GAS 1/349f.). Nothing in IS V 366, 1ff.; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 511, 1ff.; Bukhārī IV1 260
no. 1097; TH 255 no. 241, etc.
76 TT X 129, –5.
77 Bayhaqī, Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī I 97, –5ff. + 338, –4ff.; Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Manāqib al-Imām
al-Shāfiʿī 50, 9; Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik I 383, 8f., and 386, –5ff.
78 Bayhaqī I 517, 10ff.
79 Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ I 140, 14ff.
80 Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 71, 10.
81 Shāfiʿī, Jimāʿ al-ʿilm 61, 2ff. = Umm VII 257, 3; transl. Schacht, Origins 7. Regarding Saʿīd
b. Sālim see p. 742 below.
82 Cf. Moscati in: Orientalia 15/1946/160.
83 Shīrāzī 72, 2ff.
84 IS V 366, 5; according to Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 596, 3f., a designation per antiphrasin, just
like Ethiopians were given the kunya Abū l-Bayḍāʾ. Or it may refer to the colour of black
people’s palms or lips. A further, probably secondary explanation, in TT X 129, 6ff.
85 IS V 366, 6f.
730 CHAPTER 4
recitation under Ibn Kathīr.86 He had in his possession some of Ibn Abī Najīḥ’s
Tafsīr notes of Mujāhid’s tradition which are still extant.87 They mainly cover
legal issues, but in one instance quote ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd whom Zanjī asked for
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s opinion on a certain passage.88 It is interesting that he trans-
mitted ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar’s exegesis that sura 4:116 implied that even a mur-
derer might expect forgiveness from God.89 This was aimed at the Bakriyya;90
clearly, he was not an adherent of excessively strict views. Even so we are sur-
prised to find that he was also a pupil of Ḥafṣ al-Fard’s, who not only was by
no means a Qadarite but also rather younger than he.91 Maybe Fakhr al-Dīn
al-Rāzī, who recorded this information,92 misunderstood the tradition.
A parallel list compiled by ʿUqaylī adds93
Ibrāhīm b. Nāfiʿ al-Makhzūmī,
(d. before 170/787) a pupil of ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ’s,94 to the others.95 He, too, was
part of the exegetic tradition of Mujāhid via Ibn Abī Najīḥ.96 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ
claimed, among others, that he was a Qadarite.97
We are obviously looking at an interconnected group. They were all mawālī.
While we do not know anyone’s profession, they were all linked to the Makhzūm
clan and consequently close to the Quraysh nobility.98 They also have in com-
mon that they were all involved in some way with the Tafsīr of Mujāhid or
Ibn Abī Najīḥ; furthermore, Mujāhid, too, was a client of the Makhzūm.99 The
question is how these observations can be linked to their Qadarite views. It
is improbable that they were a “Muʿtazilite” conspiracy grown up around Ibn
86 Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭab. no. 3601.

87 GAS 1/38. The riwāya is every time: Muslim b. Khālid ʿan Ibn Abī Najīḥ ʿan Mujāhid. If this is
the same text Thaʿlabī called Tafsīr Mujāhid, ṭarīq Ibn Abī Najīḥ (Kashf 27, 6ff.), this would
be a good example of the word Tafsīr not necessarily referring to a complete work.
88 Fol. 123b, 1.
89 Mīzān IV 102, 4ff.
92 Rāzī, Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī 50, 9.
93 Ḍuʿafāʾ II 173, apu.
94 Mīzān I 40, 4.
95 Ṣafadī, Wāfī VI 152 no. 2599.
96 Ṭabarī I 1165, 4, and 1793, 13.
97 TT I 174 no. 318; cf. also Faḍl 338, 5 > IM 135, 8. Regarding him also IS V 364, 2; Khalīfa,
Ṭab. 718 no. 2594; Bukhārī I1 332f. no. 1047; IAH I1 140f. no. 458.
98 Regarding the Makhzūm cf. M. Hinds in: EI2 VI 137ff. s. v. Mak̲h̲zūm.
99 IS V 343, 9; also Stauth 18f.
Abī Najīḥ during the last years of Umayyad rule, as there is no evidence of this.
It does not seem likely that the entire tribe of the Makhzūm could have been
Qadarites, either; none of those mentioned was a free Arab. It is much more
likely that exegetic tradition was the decisive criterion. After all, the verdicts re-
ported in the sources are not usually based on genuinely Meccan information
but come from later Iraqi scholars. There is nothing to suggest that they were
any better informed concerning Meccan local politics of the second century
than we are. They did have Mujāhid’s Tafsīr and, as the isnāds in Ṭabarī show,
were able to distinguish between the different redactions of the work. Thus the
Meccan “Qadariyya” probably owed its presence in our sources to a retrospec-
tive critical assessment of the literary material. So far we have not been able to
determine where exactly the doubts concerning the dogma started; Mujāhid’s
Tafsīr has not been studied under that aspect. It is even possible that the rel-
evant passages have been lost forever as Warqāʾ b. ʿUmar, who brought Ibn Abī
Najīḥ’s recension to Iraq, was a Murjiʾite,100 and his contemporary Sufyān al-
Thawrī was also said to have “corrected” Mujāhid’s Tafsīr.101
This does not mean that everything has been explained. It would have to be
proven that Mujāhid deliberately interpreted the Quran in a Qadarite fashion.
Ibn Abī Najīḥ, on the other hand, is a different matter, as he was lecturing at
a time when people were more likely to wear their hearts on their sleeves. We
should also like to know how much external influence was involved. In a city
like Mecca it would have to be expected, and mawālī were often, whether by
choice or through circumstances beyond their control, immigrants. We have
seen that the Basran Qadarite Ismāʿīl b. Muslim, who was known as al-Makkī
in his home city, had received his training in the law from Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, while
he studied Quran recitation under Ibn Kathīr in Mecca.102 We know of another,
similar case:
ʿAbbād b. Kathīr al-Thaqafī.
His path took the opposite direction: he came from Basra and settled in Mecca.103
He was highly respected there, apparently becoming qāḍī once and even being
elected governor by the population after a revolt.104 Unfortunately we are un-
able to date this event, and have no means of determining whether it is a true
100 TB XIII 486, 19; regarding him see ch. C 1.1 below.
101 IAH II2 203, 9. Regarding Sufyān al-Thawrī’s position in the Mujāhid tradition cf. Horst 304
and Stauth 119ff. Regarding his own Tafsīr see vol. I 260f. above.
104 Kaʿbī 93, 1ff.
732 CHAPTER 4
report.105 However, Ṭabarī tells us that in 158/775 ʿAbbād was one of the dig-
nitaries of the city, together with Ibn Jurayj and Sufyān al-Thawrī.106 Manṣūr
was leading the pilgrimage at the time and had sent the order from Medina107
to Mecca that these three persons, together with an anonymous ʿAlid, should
be arrested. The governor, Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, son of
Ibrāhīm al-Imām and nephew of the caliph, had doubts afterwards and secret-
ly released the three, angering the caliph severely.108 Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm
lost his position,109 the caliph died in an accident in Mecca. ʿAbbād b. Kathīr
appears to have been advanced in years by that time.110 In 145/762, during
al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s uprising, he had already possessed great prestige: he had
dared to request the release of a partisan of the vanquished ʿAlid, the Qadarite
Muḥammad b. ʿAjlān, from the governor of Medina Jaʿfar b. Sulaymān who was
al-Manṣūr’s cousin.111
This allows us to conclude that he had not compromised himself. When the
Muʿtazilite sources – and only they – call him a Qadarite,112 they were clearly not
referring to his political commitment. When he was arrested in 158, the other
two scholars, Ibn Jurayj and Sufyān al-Thawrī, had no ties to the Qadariyya ei-
ther. The fact that an ʿAlid was being persecuted as well indicates that Manṣūr
thought he, as well as the two others, was sympathetic to the ahl al-bayt; appar-
ently with good reason.113 Kaʿbī, on the other hand, based his opinion on that
of Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn who, being a traditionist, probably recalled the hadiths trans-
mitted by ʿAbbād. There were some praising the intellect,114 and he also wrote
a K. al-zuhd.115 He demonstrated his ascetic conviction by wearing hair-shirts,116
105 There is no trace anywhere of ʿAbbād b. Kathīr’s term in office as qāḍī. Might he have
been confused with ʿAbbād b. Manṣūr, the qāḍī of Basra in Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh’s time
(regarding him see p. 380f. above)? The remark that Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī was acquainted
with him at this time (Kaʿbī 93, 5) would also indicate Basra. The report, however, clearly
mentions Mecca.
106 Min ʿuyūn al-nās (III 386, 9).
107 Ibid. 387, 11.
108 Ibid. 385, 17ff.
110 The biographical sources that were unaware of this report in Ṭabarī say only that he died
“after 150” (Mīzān no. 4134).
111 Ṭabarī III 259, 3ff. (autobiographical account by ʿAbbād); cf. p. 762 below.
112 Kaʿbī 93, 1ff. > Faḍl 342, 5 > IM 137, 15f.
113 Kashshī seems to count him among the Butrites (Rijāl 391, ult.; although we would have to
assume that the heading in the MS is incorrect).
114 Ibn Ḥibbān, Rawḍat al-ʿuqalāʾ 4, 8; cf. also Anfänge 57.
115 Fażāʾil-i Balkh 135, ult. f.
which led Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq to accuse him of pride.117 His dicta were paraenetic in
character: those who do not quarrel with God when a daughter is born to them
will be given divine blessing by an angel descending from heaven on a ladder
of light. Or: the self-important Quran reciters are worse than worldly rulers.118
He also attempted to buttress liturgical usage with hadith: those who speak the
formula lā ilāha illā llāh loudly and with a drawn-out voice will go to the “house
of sublimeness” where they will see God face to face; those who do not believe
this will be punished more than all others in the afterlife.119
It is possible that people disagreed with the substance of what he said; but
it was the form that was criticised most: ʿAbbād was said to have passed on a
sheet of hadith notes that had only come into his hands by chance,120 and to
have advised a pupil not to try and profit from paraenetic material (fī l-raghāʾib)
as the experts had refused to accept it.121 The verdict was unanimous: “people
gave him a wide berth” (tarakūhu).122 Of course, this was only in Iraq, and pre-
sumably only retrospectively; in Mecca he met with barely any suspicion.
He was also liked in Balkh; all the jurists of that city were said to have stud-
ied under him.123 This does not necessarily tell us that he went there himself;
maybe the Transoxianans went to find him during the pilgrimage, believing
him to be the most competent scholar in Mecca. Abū Muṭīʿ al-Balkhī cer-
tainly met him in that city;124 he heard him speak approvingly of Muqātil
b. Sulaymān,125 and he is the one reporting that the population elected him
governor. In fact ʿAbbād does not seem to have had any connection with Abū
Ḥanīfa’s doctrine that was just gaining ground in Balkh due to Abū Muṭīʿ’s ef-
forts; he was even said to have debated with Abū Ḥanīfa.126 People were im-
pressed by his asceticism; Shaqīq al-Balkhī attended his lectures and heard his
K. al-zuhd from him.127
117 Kashshī 392 no. 737 > Biḥār XLVII 361 no. 72.
118 Mīzān II 373, 12ff., in part after Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn II 169, 11f.
119 Ibn Ḥibbān II 168, –4f. > Mīzān II 373, 1ff.
121 Ibid. I 434, 13ff.
122 Bukhārī III2 43 no. 1642; IAH III1 84f. no. 433; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 140f. no. 1124. Cf. also
Muslim, transl. Juynboll in: JSAI 5/1984/280.
123 Kaʿbī 93, 8.
124 Ibid. 93, 2 .
126 TB XIII 371, 21ff. This is, of course, a motif found in the context of more than one person
(cf. Text II 6 with commentary).
127 Fażāʾil-i Balkh 129, 8, and 135, ult. f.; also p. 546 above. This may have been the source of the
hadith in Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 213, 7ff.
734 CHAPTER 4

The Khārijites, too, had their chief witness among the Meccan exegetes, the
client ʿIkrima who had originally been Ibn ʿAbbās’ slave and then been freed by
the latter’s son ʿAlī.1 He had travelled widely, maybe on business for his master.
It has been assumed that he came across Khārijite ideas in Basra,2 but there
would have been many opportunities across the Arabian peninsula, and the
Khārijite ideal of equality – as long as its adherents were not radicalised –
would have seemed to a slave to be the straightest path to true Islam. ʿIkrima’s
convictions left their mark on his exegesis; he was accused of having spread
lies about Ibn ʿAbbās.3 This, however, was a matter of opinion. ʿAlqama in Kufa
reviled him as an unbeliever,4 in Mecca Mālik frowned while quoting him in
his Muwaṭṭaʾ all the same,5 and in Basra Qatāda believed him to be the best
exegete of the older generation.6
Later, people would not know how to label him. The individual branches
of the Khārijites had not yet separated. Ibn al-Madīnī thought him a Najdite
at one time,7 and an Ibāḍite at another.8 There is something to be said for the
former view, as Najda b. ʿĀmir corresponded with Ibn ʿAbbās concerning legal
issues.9 ʿIkrima did not, however, take part in his military enterprises, which
is why he appeared to be an Ibāḍite in the eyes of later generations. He barely
features in Ibāḍite tradition. While Jābir b. Zayd took some notes of his mate-
rial via Ibn ʿAbbās in Basra,10 in Muḥkim al-Hawwārī’s Tafsīr, which is in use
among the Ibāḍites in the Maghreb to this day, Meccan exegesis is represented
1 Regarding him cf. Schacht in EI2 III 1081f. s. n.

2 Rebstock, Ibāḍiten im Maġrib 11. Juynboll regarded ʿIkrima as a Basran, but did not exam-
ine his Khārijite tendencies (Muslim Tradition 55, n. 203).
3 Kaʿbī, Qabūl 69, –4ff., and Fasawī II 5, 9f.; Ṭabarī III 2483, ult. ff. This may be a reference
to traditions such as the one in Ibn Khuzayma, Tawḥīd 130, 2ff., according to which he
expressed doubt in conversation with Ibn ʿAbbās as to whether the prophet could have
seen God. In general Juynboll 56f.
4 Fasawī II 12, 1.
5 Mālikī, Riyāḍ al-nufūs 92, 8ff./I 145, 5ff.
6 Fasawī I 701, pu. ff.; in general also Cerrahoğlu, Tefsir tarihi 158ff.
7 Ibid. II 7, 4.
8 Ibid. II 12, 2; also Kaʿbī, Qabūl 70, 8.
9 Abū Yūsuf, Kharāj 104, 5ff.
10 He marked it with the abbreviation ʿAyn (Fasawī II 10, 4ff.).
by Mujāhid.11 In North Africa, Ṣufrite tribes establishing a Khārijite community

in the Sijilmāsa region referred to him, which is why he is frequently listed
among the Ṣufrites as well.
Thus in Kaʿbī, Qabūl 70, pu. f. after Ibn Maʿīn; also Ṭabarī III 2484, 10 = Dhayl
al-mudhayyal 633, apu. f. The ancestor of the Midrār dynasty of Sijilmāsa
was said to have attended his lectures in Qayrawān (Bakrī, Mughrib 149,
6f./transl. de Slane, Description 284). This presumes that he did visit that
city. Schacht viewed this journey with scepticism (EI2 III 1081). Lewicki’s
suggestion (in: Cahiers de l’histoire mondiale 13/1971/84ff., adopted by
Khulayfāt, Nashʾat al-ḥaraka al-Ibāḍiyya 113f.), that he was among the
scholars sent to the Maghreb by ʿUmar II, is not unproblematic. The
fact that it was possible to view the place where he sat in the mosque in
Qayrawān does not, of course, mean much (Abū l-ʿArab, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ
Ifrīqiya 83, 1f.). There are certain indications outside literature from the
Maghreb as well (e.g. Fasawī II 7, 1ff.). In the Maghreb this tradition was
a serious problem for the Ibāḍites, and they published a counter-report
according to which ʿIkrima travelled there with a certain Salam b. Saʿd
(or Saʿīd), a Basran (!) of Ḥaḍramite origin, on the same camel – in a two-
man litter – sharing the missionary work with the latter, who was a true
Ibāḍite. This is probably an aetiological legend; unlike ʿIkrima, Salama is
not mentioned in non-Ibāḍite sources such as Mālikī’s Riyāḍ al-nufūs. Cf.
Rebstock 11f. and Schwartz, Anfänge der Ibāḍiten 96ff.; less sceptical once
again Lewicki in EI2 III 653b and Cahiers 74 and 86, and Khulayfāt, loc.
cit.; in detail also Talbī, Etudes d’histoire ifrīqiyenne 27ff.
4.1.1.2.1 The Ibāḍites

Around the middle of the third century Mecca was home to an Ibāḍite com-
munity of around 150 “men” 25 of whom came from Oman. Every year during
the pilgrimage one of the Omanis pitched tents in Minā in which he accom-
modated, and presumably entertained, his fellow-countrymen. “Men” should
probably be counted as families, in which case their percentage of the entire
11 Cf. ZDMG 126/1976/42f. I have since discovered that there are more MSS extant besides the
two mentioned by Schacht (in: Revue Afr. 100/1956/379): one in the possession of Shaykh
BalḤajj in Mzāb (vols. 2–3 of the text) and another one on Djerba (vol. 4). I have not been
able to view these textual witnesses; I am relying on information given me by Shaykh
Sulaymān b. Dāwūd from al-ʿAṭf.
736 CHAPTER 4
population would be rather more considerable.1 It is difficult to say how far

back its beginnings might date; this community certainly had nothing to do
with ʿIkrima. What is noticeable is that Abū Ḥamza Mukhtār b. ʿAwf was able
to take Mecca without a fight when he marched from Yemen on the holy cities
on Ṭālib al-Ḥaqq’s orders in 129/747. This would not have been quite so easy
without support from the local population; he met with much more resistance
in Medina. Like his second-in-command Balj b. ʿUqba he was born in Oman.2
Both had spent some time in Basra,3 and it seems that there were numerous
young men from Iraq among their troops.4 The take-over may well have been
planned there, in Abū ʿUbayda al-Tamīmī’s circle.
Regarding Ṭālib al-Ḥaqq’s uprising cf. Wellhausen, Oppositionsparteien

52ff.; Lewicki in FO 1/1959/5f. and EI2 III 651b; Pellat, Milieu basrien 211ff.;
Laoust, Schismes 43f.; Khulayfāt, Nashʾa 117ff.; Chelhod, Arabie du Sud
II 27f.; also Aḥmad ʿUbaydilī’s introduction to Kashf al-ghumma, p. 162ff.
The most important sources are Madāʾinī’s account in Aghāni XXIII 224ff.
and (shorter) Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 582, 10ff. and 592, 6ff.; also Ṭabarī II 1942,
13ff., and Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 77, 4ff.; 101, 12ff.; 108, 4ff. Cf. also Kitāb
Ibn Sallām 112, 1ff.; Shammākhī, Siyar 98, –5ff.; Darjīnī, Ṭab. 258ff.
(with Lewicki in: RO 11/1935/165f.); Fāsī, Faḍāʾil Makka in: Wüstenfeld,
Chroniken II 179, 6ff. The khuṭba Abū Ḥamza preached after entering the
city is often transmitted separately (transl. in Pellat, Milieu 212ff.; J. Alden
Williams, Islam 215ff.; Crone/Hinds, God’s Caliph 129ff.). When compar-
ing the different versions it is important to consider that Abū Ḥamza
preached such a sermon not only in Mecca but apparently in Medina
as well (cf. the sources in Lewicki, FO 12/1970/205; Crone/Hinds, loc. cit.;
also Werkmeister, Quellenuntersuchungen zum K. al-ʿIqd 441).
When the enterprise failed, a noble Arab who had collaborated with Abū
Ḥamza met his end in Mecca:
1 Kitāb Ibn Sallām 109, 6ff. This also lists some names of scholars, but we do not know who they
were. Regarding the date cf. 109, ult.
2 Wilkinson in: Studies in the First Century 142f.
3 Regarding Abū Ḥamza cf. Agh. XXIII 227, 16; regarding Balj b. ʿUqba cf. Shammākhī, Siyar 91,
2, where he appears in the circle of Ḥājib al-Ṭāʾī (regarding him see p. 226f. above).
4 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 582, 13; Agh. XXIII 238, 14 = Ṭabarī II 2010, ult. f.; Darjīnī, Ṭab.226, 5ff. Regarding
an Ibāḍite free corps from Mosul see p. 528 above.
Abū l-Ḥurr ʿAlī b. al-Ḥuṣayn b. Abī l-Ḥurr Mālik b. al-Khashkhāsh

al-ʿAnbarī.
He, too, was a Basran, an uncle of ʿUbaydallāh b. al-Ḥasan al-ʿAnbarī’s, who was
qāḍī and governor of Basra under Manṣūr.5 As was to be expected in this fam-
ily, he was very wealthy and received a regular allowance from Basra.6 When
in the past the Ibāḍites had sent a delegation to ʿUmar II, he had been among
them;7 presumably he was still living in his home city at that time. In Mecca
he had a teaching circle,8 and we are told that he held dhikr every Monday and
Thursday.9 He had been arrested once before the uprising, probably because
he was believed to be a go-between.10 This may be why he in particular later
advised Abū Ḥamza to be severe.11 When it was all over, he was smoked out at
the house of a Quraysh to which he had fled, and afterwards fell in battle. His
corpse was left hanging on the cross next to Abū Ḥamza’s for years and only
taken down after the Abbasid revolution.
Agh. 248, 1ff. Regarding him cf. also Fasawī II 215, 7ff.; Bukhārī III2 267f.
no. 2367; Dhahabī, Mīzān no. 5828 and Taʾrīkh V 111, 7ff.; Mīzān no. 5823
probably refers to the same person. – One might wonder whether the
ʿAmr b. al-Ḥuṣayn al-ʿAnbarī who lamented the death of Abū Ḥamza
and his followers was his brother (cf. Agh. XXIII 250. 8ff. after Madāʾinī;
ʿAbbās, Shiʿr al-Khawārij 84ff. no. 165). However, there he is described as a
client of the ʿAnbar, and elsewhere his name is given as ʿAmr b. al-Ḥasan
al-Kūfī.
5 See p. 179ff. above; also Darjīnī, Ṭab. 251, 2.

6 Darjīnī 269, –7ff. = Shammākhī 101, 5ff.; the passage in Shammākhī 108, 8f. probably refers
to Mecca.
7 Khamīs b. Saʿīd, Manhaj al-ṭālibīn I 617, 8ff.
8 Darjīnī 271, ult.; also Shammākhī 102, 4.
9 Ibid. 270, –9 = Shammākhī 101, –5f. During the hajj he once asked Abū ʿUbayda al-Tamīmī
to teach there; the latter recommended Ḍumām b. al-Sāʾib. The fact that Abū l-Ḥurr did
not know him suggests that he did not have close links to Basra (Shammākhī 88, 7ff.).
10 Ibid. 262, apu. ff. = Shammākhī 100, 2ff.
11 Agh. XXIII 233, 10ff., and 247, 1ff.; Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 592, ult. ff.; Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 108,
pu. ff.
738 CHAPTER 4
ʿAlī b. al-Ḥuṣayn had had friends in the city. After his first arrest they snatched
him back from the government troops. Fourteen men set out to ambush
them; a certain ʿĪsā b. ʿUmar or ʿĪsā b. Abī ʿAmr told the historian Abū Sufyān
about it in his old age.12 However, there is no more substance to help us get a
more concrete idea of his following. The Ibāḍite sources name only one other
person:
Abū Bakr b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qurashī.
He was a member of the Banū ʿAdī,13 but once again we do not know for certain
whether he belonged to an old-established family. It may be possible that
Ṣadaqa b. Yasār
belonged among these people as well, as he was said to have loved Mukhtār
more than his own parents.14 This may have been Mukhtār b. ʿAwf and not
the Kufan Shīʿite, as Ṣadaqa was an Ibāḍite.15 Later he would break off con-
tacts with the Khārijites;16 consequently the Ibāḍite source did not consider
him worth mentioning. He came originally from the Jazira but had moved
to Mecca and settled among the abnāʾ,17 presumably in Bādhān’s fam-
ily circle like Mujāhid, from whom he transmitted.18 He might have been a
Qadarite.
4.1.1.3 The Murjiʾites

The Murjiʾites of whom we hear in Mecca were all immigrants, mujāwirūn.
The oldest among them was
12 The former form of the name is found in Darjīnī (262, apu.), the latter in Shammākhī (100,
2). A certain Abū ʿAmr died during the uprising with one of his sons (Shammākhī 101, 1f.).
13 Kitāb Ibn Sallām 112, 5f.; Shammākhī 102, 12f.
14 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 208 no. 740; Mīzān no. 3883.
15 Thus according to Kaʿbī, Qabūl 215, 4f.; who may be relying on Karābīsī here; the latter was
a Khārijite himself (see ch. C 6.3 below).
16 IS V 357, 3ff.; AZ 526 no. 1414 = Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 153 no. 961; TT IV 419, 722.
17 IS, ibid.; Khalīfa, Ṭab. 709 no. 2572. Cf. also Bukhārī II2 293 no. 2872; IAH II1 428
no. 1884.
18 AZ 678 no. 2057. Regarding the abnāʾ in Mecca see p. 722f. above. ʿUqaylī’s regarding him
as a Kufan was probably due only to the Mukhtār quote.
Abū Umayya ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Abī l-Mukhāriq Qays al-Muʿallim,
a Basran who seems to have left his home city early in the second century
and became a schoolteacher in Mecca.1 He attended the lectures of ʿIkrima
and Ṭāwūs b. Kaysān (d. 106/725).2 He did not agree with the Basran style and
had been unable to get along with Ḥasan al-Baṣrī or Ibn Sīrīn.3 In Kufa, on the
other hand, he was regarded as an authority: Abū Ḥanīfa quoted him in his
letter to ʿUthmān al-Battī, and Misʿar b. Kidām referred to him as well. Both
these cases concerned Murjiʾite matters: Abū Ḥanīfa quoted him in a saying
by Ibn ʿAbbās according to which God alone knows everything about the
diverging opinions of the companions of the prophet,4 and Misʿar heard the
divergent interpretation of an anti-Murjiʾite formula in a hadith from him.5
He also transmitted from Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. al Ḥanafiyya, characteristi-
cally via the Murjiʾite Qays b. Muslim al-Jadalī.6 Consequently it comes as no
surprise that Ibn Ḥanbal had already listed him as a Murjiʾite – also, it is true, as
a good jurist.7 Often, however, people focussed on criticising his hadith: he was
said to have adopted it without naming the intermediaries.8 This may be linked
to the fact that he wrote hadith down.9 He probably died around 140/757.10 –
1 IAH III1 59 no. 311; following which Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 130 no. 801 taraka must be corrected
to nazala. Also Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 251, 4; Mīzān no. 5172.
2 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 62ff. no. 1027; Fasawī II 713, 7ff.
3 ʿUqaylī II 64, 9ff.
4 Text II 5 t.
5 Cook, Dogma 78; cf. vol. I 209 above.
6 Cf. Cook 221 after Ṣanʿānī, Muṣannaf no. 8325 and 8461. Regarding Qays b. Muslim see
vol. I 205f. above.
7 ʿIlal 346 no. 2278; also Kaʿbī, Qabūl 216, 9f.; ʿUqaylī, loc. cit.; Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn II 144,
pu.; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh V 103, 12ff. and TH 140, –6ff. Regarding his juristic competence only
Wakīʿ I 332, 1f. It is sometimes said that Mālik respected him greatly; this, however, mis-
takes him for a contemporary, Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Mālik al-Jazarī (d. 127/745; AZ 551
no. 1500–1; also Suyūṭī, Isʿāf al-mubaṭṭaʾ 27, –9ff.). Cf. also Motzki, Anfänge der islamischen
Jurisprudenz 202ff.
8 ʿIlal, ibid.
9 Azmi, Studies 61 and 109. Cf. also the remark in Fasawī II 714, –6ff.
10 When Bukhārī III2 89 no. 1797 or Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn II 144, pu., give the date as 126
or 127, this is probably due to the mistake mentioned in n. 7.
740 CHAPTER 4
Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Abī Rawwād,11
whose clientage of Mughīra b. al-Muhallab12 showed that he came from

Khorasan, was considerably younger. Nishapur claimed him,13 but he prob-
ably spent the major part of his life in Mecca. He transmitted from Meccan
authorities14 and worked as a jurisconsult;15 he also died in Mecca in 159/776
or slightly earlier. His Murjiʾite views were beyond doubt.16 He regarded every-
one’s relationship with Abū Ḥanīfa as a criterion of “Sunni” belief.17 The Basran
Khuwayl b. Wāqid, son-in-law of Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj, claimed to have heard
him say that the faith of everyone on earth was the same, but that distinctions
would be made in paradise, presumably on the basis of actions.18 He disliked
Basra altogether; his attitude was anti-Qadarite,19 but he did not like Ayyūb
al-Sakhtiyānī and his followers, either, because they “doubted” faith.20 His re-
sponse to Ḥasan’s munāfiq theory was the question whether Joseph’s brothers
had been munāfiqūn as well.21 Sufyān al-Thawrī made a point of not praying
over his bier as he considered him to have been heterodox.22 Still, he did not
withhold his appreciation altogether as ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz was a pious man preach-
ing trust in God and surrender to his will without expecting self-castigation or
hair shirts.23 There were even people who saw his son
11 His father’s name is usually given as Maymūn, but ʿAmr b. Badr has also been transmitted
(Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn II 136, 9).
12 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 711 no. 2582, and Taʾrīkh 669, 13.
13 Khalīfa-i Naysābūrī, Talkhīṣ-i Tārīkh-i Naysābūr 16, 9. Going by his nisba his nephew
ʿUthmān b. Jabala b. Abī Rawwād lived in Marv (TT VII 107f. no. 230).
14 Thus e.g. from ʿIkrima and Nāfiʿ, Ibn ʿUmar’s mawlā (d. 117/735). If the nuskha in the latter’s
possession was considered a falsification (cf. Ibn Ḥibbān II 137, –5f.; Azmi, Studies 97),
this was probably because of its subject matter.
15 Fasawī I 725, –7f.
16 Cf. e.g. IS V 362, 20; Maʿārif 625, 3 (read Rawwād for Dāwūd); Bukhārī III2 22 no. 1561;
IAH II2 394 no. 1830; Kaʿbī, Qabūl 216, 13; ʿUqaylī III 6ff. no. 963; Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī,
Maʿrifa 136, 12ff., and 139, apu.; Sulaymānī (d. 404/1014) in Mīzān no. 8470; Mīzān no. 5101;
TT VI 338f. no. 650.
17 Ṣaymarī, Akhbār Abī Ḥanīfa 79, apu. f.
18 Ibn Ḥibbān II 137, 6ff. > Mīzān II 629, 8. Only Ibn Ḥibbān gives Khuwayl’s name, but he
does not identify him, either; regarding him cf. my Trad. Pol. 25.
19 ʿUqaylī III 8, –10ff.
20 Ibid. 10, 8ff.; once again after Khuwayl b. Wāqid.
21 Ibid. 7, –6ff.
22 Ibid. 6, 9ff.; also Ibn Ḥibbān II 136, –4f. > Mīzān, loc. cit.; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 241, 5ff.;
Madelung, Qāsim 238.
23 Gramlich, Ġazzālīs Lehre von den Stufen zur Gottesliebe 733; cf. also the long hadith in
Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 321, –9ff., the wording of which recalls phrases of the New Testament.
Abū ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd24 ʿAbd al-Majīd b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Abī Rawwād,
d. 206/821, as the true villain.25 It was said that he converted his father to irjāʾ.26
In Balkh people quoted a saying by Ibn ʿAbbās that he transmitted, in which he
gave out marks in a heresiographical fashion: “The Qadarites are unbelievers,
the Shīʿites doomed, the Ḥarūrites innovators. Truth is (preserved) only among
the Murjiʾites”.27 In a parallel, irjāʾ was actually defined, in an entirely tradi-
tional way, as the attitude of “people who leave to God’s decision everything
they do not understand in the world”.28 It goes on to say “ . . . and who leave
their affairs in God’s hands and who know that everything that happens is de-
creed and determined by God”.29 Irjāʾ and determinism thus came from the
same root, for “God will condemn those who claim that there is another one
beside God who decrees and determines, who gives sustenance or disposes in
his favour over what is good and beneficial, over death or life or resurrection.
He will stop their tongues and blind their eyes; he will make their prayers and
their fasts go up in smoke; he will take their every opportunity (of living) and
throw them down on their faces into the fires of hell.”30 When it came to the
Shīʿites, ʿAbd al-Majīd did not even tolerate the Kufan traditionists’ tashayyuʿ.31
When Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ caused a scandal in the city with his graphic descrip-
tion of Muḥammad’s abandoned body (the descendants of Abū Bakr and
ʿUmar, whose negligence was implicitly criticised here, still lived in the Hijaz),
he pleaded with Hārūn al-Rashīd, who was in Mecca for the pilgrimage, for
capital punishment.32 He was very well versed in Ibn Jurayj’s (d. 150/767) had-
ith, but had learnt it only from his teacher’s books.33 –

25 Fasawī I 700, 2ff.; also III 52, 6ff.
26 Ibn Ḥibbān II 161, 2 > Mīzān no. 5183; Lālakāʾī, Sharḥ uṣūl iʿtiqād ahl al-sunna 1004f.
no. 1848f.
27 Ibn Ḥibbān II 161, 4ff. > Mīzān, loc. cit.; also Madelung, Qāsim 2233, n. 23. He is named as a
Murjiʾite in IS V 367, 3; Maʿārif 625, 3f.; Bukhārī III2 112 no. 1875; ʿUqaylī III 96 no. 1068; TB
IX 143, 8f.; Mīzān, loc. cit.; TT VI 381ff. no. 721.
28 See vol. I 195f. and 199f. above.
29 Lālakāʾī 696 no. 1287 (read arjaʾu for aljaʾū). Maybe fī l-umūr should be corrected to read
min al-umūr: “those who leave the decision to God in matters that are hidden from them”.
30 Ibid. 698 no. 1292.
31 Cf. vol. I 270f.
32 Mīzān, loc. cit.; cf. ch. C 1.4.2 below. The event cannot be dated precisely; Hārūn led the
pilgrimage a number of times, especially during the seventies.
33 Mīzān, loc. cit.; also Azmi, Studies 114. Regarding him cf. also IAH III1 64f. no. 340.
742 CHAPTER 4
Another one who had moved to Mecca from Khorasan or Kufa34 was
Saʿīd b. Sālim b. Abī l-Hayfāʾ al-Qaddāḥ.
He had assimilated enough to have entered into clientship with the

Makhzūm.35 He combined Shīʿite and Murjiʾite sympathies at a time when this
had already become impossible in Kufa. Shīʿite rijāl works link him to Jaʿfar al-
Ṣādiq, although he did not play a major part.36 Sunnite jarḥ wal-taʿdīl literature
simply saw him as a Murjiʾite.37 He was known to have borne witness against
a “Jahmite” together with a colleague, putting the “Jahmite” into an invidious
position; the victim claimed that he had made his statement against his bet-
ter judgment.38 He made “propaganda” for his convictions; consequently his
hadith was disliked later.39 It is all the more surprising that Shāfiʿī attended
his lectures;40 clearly, he was not shunned during his lifetime. As he transmit-
ted from Ibn Jurayj,41 he probably died during the second third of the second
century.42
Abū Muḥammad Khallād b. Yaḥyā b. Ṣafwān al-Sulamī,
finally, came from Kufa. He died in Mecca in 212/827 or slightly later.43 His “em-
bracing slightly Murjiʾite views”, as Ibn Ḥanbal put it, seems probable as he
transmitted from Misʿar b. Kidām and ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Ayman, who had circu-
lated Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya’s missive in Mecca in his youth.44 –
Presumably even the “Jahmite” mentioned above was closer to the Murjiʾa than
to the Qadarites, differing from the former in his image of God, not in his defi-
nition of faith. He was
34 Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 320, 10; TT IV 35 no. 54.

36 Ardabīlī, Jāmiʿ I 360a, where he is listed as a Meccan.
37 ʿUqaylī II 108 no. 579; Mīzān no. 3186; TT, loc. cit. Cf. also IAH II1 31 no. 128.
38 Fasawī III 51, ult. ff.; regarding the Jahmites see below.
39 Ibid. III 54, –5f.
40 Mīzān, loc. cit.; see also p. 729 above.
41 He possessed written notes by him (Azmi, Studies 115).
42 The date of “before 200” in TT, loc. cit., is probably inferred, too.
43 Mīzān no. 2526; TT III 174f. no. 331. Cf. also Bukhārī II1 189 no. 638; IAH I2 368 no. 1675.
44 Regarding him see Cook, Dogma 1f.; also regarding the issue of the chronological distance
between the persons mentioned. Cf. also Text II 1, commentary.
Sālim b. Muslim al-Khashshāb al-Kātib,
who, like his opponent Saʿīd b. Sālim, transmitted from Ibn Jurayj. He was
a mawlā of the ʿAbd al-Dār45 and, going by his laqab, an official. We do not,
however, learn anything else about him.46 – The distaste many locals felt for
the Murjiʾite doctrine was expressed most strongly by Sufyān b. ʿUyayna. People
recalled that when asked during a lecture in 170 he had rejected the doctrine
that faith could neither increase nor decrease with strong words.47 ʿAbd al-
Majīd Ibn Abī Rawwād counted him among the “doubters” for this reason.48
He had attended ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s lectures in his youth, although his father
had forbidden him to go there.49 When he died in 196/812, Aṣmāʿī composed
a mourning poem lamenting that no-one paid attention to hadith any more,
and that the “heretics (zanādiqa) whom Jahm leads to divine wrath and the
punishment of hell” were gaining ground.50 This, however, was the Iraqi view
of the situation.51 After all, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Kinānī, who would become the hero
of an anti-Jahmite legend, also came from Mecca.52
4.1.1.4 The Shīʿites

We know very little about Shīʿites in Mecca. While the ʿAlid uprisings did
spread here as well, the members of the prophet’s family lived in Medina. The
Quraysh’s dislike of everything to do with ʿAlī continued for a long time. ʿAbbād
b. Kathīr, who was acquainted with Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq,1 was originally from Basra.
The only one for whom the Sunni sources had room was

46 He is listed as a Jahmite in Samʿānī, Ansāb V 129, 12ff.; Mīzān no. 3547.
47 Ājurrī, Sharīʿa 103, 9ff.; interestingly the inquirer was a stranger, probably a Kufan. Cf. also
ibid. 116, –4ff.
48 ʿUqaylī II 108, 6f.
49 Fasawī II 259, 11ff.; see also p. 345 above. Regarding him in general see GAS 1/96; his tradi-
tions were mainly collected by Ḥumaydī in his Musnad.
50 Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn II 135, 7ff.
51 Regarding Aṣmaʿī see p. 98 and 423 above.
52 In the K. al-Ḥayda; more details in ch. C 3.3.6 below.
1 See p. 733 above; also Biḥār XLVII 360 no. 70, and 368f. no. 86.
744 CHAPTER 4
Maʿrūf b. Kharrabūdh,
who, like the Kufan Zurāra b. Aʿyan, was closely acquainted with Muḥammad
al-Bāqir. In the Sunnites’ eyes he was a traditionist,2 while the Shīʿites regarded
him as a jurist.3 He also transmitted the Hudhaylite Dīwān;4 Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq was
not impressed with this frivolity.5 Maybe he was a Qadarite like Zurāra.6
4.1.2 Medina
Medina displayed more rebellious spirit. Not only were the ʿAlids a constant
opposition, the scholars were often blunt as well. Mālik b. Anas recalled that
two of his teachers, Rabīʿat al-raʾy1 and Muḥammad b. al-Munkadir,2 but be-
fore them also the eminent jurist Saʿīd b. b. al-Musayyab,3 had been punished
because of their amr bil-maʿrūf; their beards had been shaved or they had been
forced to wear dishonourable clothing.4 Ibn al-Ashʿath found support here,
and Maʿbad al-Juhanī is said to have circulated his ideas in the city.5 When the
refugees from Iraq had to be handed over in both Mecca and Medina, the gov-
ernor ʿUthmān b. Ḥayyān al-Murrī made himself deeply unpopular with the
population. Some families had sheltered the “pious men” (ʿubbād) from Iraq;
the governor had to publicly threaten sanctions. It seems that old business ties
2 ʿUqaylī IV 220f. no. 1810; Bukhārī IV1 414 no. 1816; IAH VI1 321 no. 1481; Mīzān no. 8655;
TT X 230f. no. 421.
3 Kashshī 238 no. 431; cf. the biography ibid. 211f. no. 373ff., which emphasises only his pious-
ness. Cf. also Ardabīlī, Jāmiʿ II 246f.; Biḥār VII 267 no. 31.
4 IAH, loc. cit.
5 Kashshī 211f. no. 375.
6 If indeed he was the same as the Maʿrūf b. Abī Maʿrūf whom Kaʿbī lists among the Meccan
Qadarites (Maq. 84, 5ff.). This is, however, quite doubtful. Regarding a Qadarite named Maʿrūf
b. Abī Maʿrūf in Mosul see p. 528 above.
1 Regarding him cf. GAS 1/406f. and Giffen in: EIran I 356f. s. n. Abū ʿOṯmān Rabīʿa; also vol. I 215
above.
2 Regarding him cf. Khalīfa, Ṭab. 670 no. 2389; TH 127f. etc.; also p. 774 below.
3 Regarding him GAS 1/276; also Hāshim Jamīl ʿAbdallāh’s remarkable collection of material,
Fiqh al-Imām Saʿīd b. al-Musayyab (1–4; Baghdad 1394/1974–1395/1975).
4 Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī, Jāmiʿ 155, pu. ff.
5 Festschrift Meier 51. The story in Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 441, 7ff., according to which ʿAṭāʾ b. Yasār
al-Hilālī, who worked in Medina as a qāṣṣ, had ties to Maʿbad al-Juhanī and expressed his out-
rage at the rulers freely in front of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, probably refers to the Basran Qadarite ʿAṭāʾ
b. Abī Maymūna (see p. 62f. above).
also played a part, as we hear that he “did not suffer a single Iraqi in the city,
whether he was a merchant or not”.6
ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, who had prevented this step until then, was regarded
as the mahdī in the city. Originally people had hoped for a successor to ʿUmar I
from the male line, but in the end they settled for the namesake, even though
ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz was an Umayyad.7 One of the oldest ascetics we know
was close to him, a client of the Makhzūm named Ziyād b. Abī Ziyād; he did
not eat meat and wore woollen clothing.8 Mālik later recommended wearing
coarse cotton: it was not as noticeable but just as cheap.8a Kalām seems to
have existed in the city early on; one of Mālik’s teachers, Abū Bakr ʿAbdallāh
b. Yazīd b. Hurmuz al-Aṣamm, was said to have refuted the heretics (ahl al-
ahwāʾ).9 This assumption would become certainty if Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b.
al-Ḥanafiyya’s anti-Qadarite quaestiones could be proved to be genuine; the
text’s most likely home would be Medina.10
Cultural life was enhanced by wealth and leisure. Poetry blossomed;11 ʿUmar
b. Abī Rabīʿa, originally from Mecca, had settled in Medina.12 A school of gram-
marians was founded early on.13 The abovementioned ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd al-
Aṣamm was one of its members, as was a Persian of the name of Bashkast who
joined the Ibāḍite Abū Ḥamza and was executed after the uprising.14 There may
even have been zanādiqa, but none of the reports have been examined suffi-
ciently as yet.15 One of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr’s sons was suspected of practising
“occult sciences”; ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz had him flogged and doused with cold
water in 93/712 on Walīd’s orders. He died as a consequence, as he was made to
6 Cf. the account in Ṭabarī II 1258, 8ff.; a later reflection is found in Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh III 328,
1ff., which tells us that ʿUthmān b. Ḥayyān had some people flogged because of their nahy
ʿan al-munkar. He had taken office in late Shawwāl 94/late July 713 (Ṭabarī II 1258, 4f.,
and 1254, 17f.). Regarding this event cf. also Arazi in: JSAI 5/1984/190ff.
7 Cf. Madelung in EI2 V 1231b.
8 IS V 225, 1ff.; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh V 73, 7ff.; also Goldziher, Vorlesungen 152, and Ges. Schr.
IV 173ff. He would later visit the caliph in Damascus (Fasawī I 596. 1ff.).
8a Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī, Jāmiʿ 225, 7ff.
9 Fasawī I 652, 4f.; Qifṭī, Inbāh II 172, pu. ff.; Zubaydī, Ṭabaqāt al-naḥwiyyīn 20, 3ff. Regarding
him in general cf. Fasawī I 651ff.; Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 66, 8ff.; IAH II2 199 no. 924; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh
V 98ff.
10 Cf. Anfänge, passim; Cook, Dogma 137ff.
11 Cf. GAS 2/241ff.
12 Ibid. 415.
13 Cf. Talmon in: BSOAS 48/1985/224ff.
14 Ibid. 231f.; cf. Agh. I 290, 4ff.
15 See p. 700, above regarding ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya; also vol. I 494, and p. 772 below.
746 CHAPTER 4
stand by the entrance of the prophet’s mosque in wintry weather afterwards.16

As in Mecca, the authorities ensured over time that men and women could not
meet as freely as before. Ḥasan b. Zayd, ʿAlī’s grandson, whom Manṣūr appoint-
ed governor of the city in 149/766,17 prohibited women from entering mosques;
during Ramadan only old women were permitted to attend prayers.18

The Ibāḍite Abū Ḥamza was not received with rejoicing in Medina. The dis-
tinguished families saw his followers – who came from Ḥaḍramawt – as un-
couth Bedouins.1 Consequently battle erupted close to the city, near Qudayd,
and many Medinans died.2 The names of only very few Ibāḍite scholars survive
from the following years: a certain Isḥāq b. Maʿdhīr3 or Ibn ʿAbbād al-Madanī.4
The community does not seem to have been very large, and it met with con-
siderable hostility. Mālik b. Anas was of the opinion that Ibāḍites could be ex-
ecuted if they did not convert.5 Maybe he was referring to their militant phase
under Abū Ḥamza.
There were other Khārijites in the city as well, ʿIkrima’s pupils from whom
even Mālik transmitted hadith. Interestingly, they were Qadarites, but de-
spite this double motivation they were no rebels and did not take part in Abū
Ḥamza’s uprising. Ibn Ḥibban says this explicitly of
Abū Sulaymān Dāwūd b. al-Ḥuṣayn al-Umawī,
d. 135/752–3; he was not a “propagandist”.6 Later, it would be impossible to avoid

him in any case, as not only Mālik transmitted from him,7 but all six canonical
16 Ṭabarī II 1255, 1ff.; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh III 363, 9ff. The causal link is not entirely certain.
17 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 682, 8f.; also EI2 III 244f.
18 Zubayr b. Bakkār, Muwaffaqiyyāt 337, ult. f. no. 188. Regarding the development of Medina
during the Umayyad and early Abbasid eras cf. Arazi in: JSAI 5/1984/177ff.; Blachère
assumed that the city was cleansed of worldly tendencies during the first quarter of the
second/eighth century (EI2 II 1031a). Regarding the topography of the city cf. Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī
in: IC 35/1961/65ff.
1 Agh. XXIII 238, 14 = Ṭabarī II 2010, ult. f.

2 Cf. the sources named on p. 736 above; also Abū l-ʿArab, Miḥan 238ff.; a list of the fallen in
Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 692, 6ff.
3 Sic! Kitāb Ibn Sallām 114, ult.
4 Lewicki in: EI2 III 651a with further names.
5 Saḥnūn, Mudawwana (Cairo 1323/1905–6) II 47, –5ff.; also Ibn Qudāma, Mughnī X 59, pu.
6 Thiqāt VI 284; adopted in Mīzān no. 2600.
7 Suyūṭī, Isʿāf al-mubaṭṭaʾ 12, 18ff.
collections named him as an authority. It is true that he was not an ideal

revolutionary; being a client of one of ʿUthmān’s grandsons, he had to be cir-
cumspect. After the Abbasids came to power the first governor, Dāwūd b. ʿAlī,
entrusted his sons’ education to him.8 ʿIkrima sought refuge with him shortly
before his death when the governor was after him because of his Khārijite sym-
pathies; and he died in his house.9 ʿIkrima also gave him historical information
about the prophet,10 and also about ʿUthmān,11 most of which had come down
to him from Ibn ʿAbbās; Ibn Isḥāq would profit from this information.12 Later
sources in particular claimed that he was a Qadarite,13 as do the Muʿtazilites
whose earliest witness, Kaʿbī, relied on Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shāfiʿī.14 The
Medinan Qadarite Ibrāhīm b. Abī Yaḥyā15 possessed a booklet (nuskha) with
hadith notes by his hand.16 The hadith he transmitted from ʿIkrima was consid-
ered unusual, namely that the dream of adolescence (ḥulm) was sent by Satan,
which was why the prophet was spared this experience;17 an expression of the
strong emphasis on the ritual purity and increasing idealisation of the prophet.
– The same constellation applies to
Thawr b. Zayd al-Dīlī (or Duʾalī),
who may have died in the same year;18 Ibn Isḥāq transmitted traditions on the
prophet’s biographies from him, too.19 The Muʿtazilites tell us that he was a
Qadarite,20 as do some later, but relevant, sources.
8 Kaʿbī, Qabūl 70, 13ff.; cf. also Khalīfa, Ṭab. 648 no. 2274.
9 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 457, 1f. The governor might have been ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. ʿAbdallāh
al-Naḍrī, who took office under Yazīd II in 104. (Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 482, 5f., and Ṭabarī II
1449, 13).
10 Ṭabarī I 149, 14ff.; 1129, 18ff.; 1191, 2ff.; 1248, 10ff.; 1351, 16ff.
11 Ibid. I 3038, 9ff.
12 Cf. e.g. Ṭabarī I 149, 14f.
13 Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh V 241, 9ff.; Suyūṭī, Tadrīb I 328, pu. f.; Ibn Ḥajar, Hady al-sārī 120, 20.
Nothing in Bukhārī, Taʾrīkh II1 231 no. 779, and ʿUqaylī II 35f. no. 459. TT III 182, 1 and 4,
and Hady al-sārī II 127, –7ff. only point out his Khārijite tendencies.
14 Maq. 77, 6 > Faḍl 335, 6.
17 Mīzān II 6, 1ff.
18 Cf. e.g. Suyūṭī, Isʿāf al-mubaṭṭaʾ 9, 11ff.; Khalīfa has 140/757 as the date of his death
(Ṭab. 671f. no. 2399); this may be because it is a round number.
19 Cf. Ṭabarī I 1329, 3ff., and 1371, 6ff.; after a different authority ibid. I 1584, 13ff.
20 Kaʿbī 79, 5ff. > Faḍl 336, 4 (corrupt) > IM 134, 5 (with misspelling, see below).
748 CHAPTER 4
Ibn Ḥajar, TT II 31 no. 55 and Hady al-sārī II 120, 17ff.; Suyūṭī, Tadrīb I 328,
apu. Nothing in Bukhārī I2 181 no. 2125, and IAH I1 468 no. 1903. It must
be said that his name gave rise to a number of misidentifications and
misspellings. Ibn al-Murtaḍā has Nūn b. Zayd rather than Thawr b. Zayd;
Ibn Qutayba probably confused him with the Syrian Thawr b. Yazīd al-
Kalāʿī (cf. Maʿārif 625, 13 and the correction in Ibn Rusta, Aʿlāq 221, 1). The
latter was a notorious Qadarite (see vol. I 131ff. above), and Dhahabī con-
sequently believed that this was the only reason why the Medinan had
the same reputation (Mīzān no. 1404). Ibn Ḥanbal seems to make a simi-
lar distinction (ʿIlal 240 no. 1512). These assessments may be due to the
fact that nothing much was known about the intellectual atmosphere in
second-century Medina.
We know of one Ibāḍite who left the city around this time:
Abū Muḥammad al-Walīd b. Kathīr al-Makhzūmī.
He had been a client of the Makhzūm, but then went to live in Wāsiṭ, where
Sufyān al-Thawrī visited him and stayed in his house.21 Later he went to Kufa,
where he died in 151/768.22 ʿUqaylī23 as well as Kaʿbī24 tell us that he was a
Qadarite. The interest in maghāzī Ibn Abī Ḥātim ascribed to him is not men-
tioned in the literature.25
4.1.2.2 The Murjiʾa

Mālik apparently did not allow Murjiʾites to attend his lectures.1 One of them, a
certain Abū l-Juwayriya, stopped him on his way to the mosque and challenged
him to a debate. He clearly was a true dāʿiya, as he believed that the loser must
convert to his opponent’s view. Mālik declined, outraged; forced disputation
(jidāl) had no place in religion.2 This may well be an exemplary anecdote
without much claim to historicity. Dawlābī’s dictionary of kunyas identifies Abū
21 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ IV 320, 7ff.; cf. also Mīzān no. 9397.
22 TT XI 148, 12.
23 Ḍuʿafāʾ IV 320, 5.
24 Maq. 80, 6ff. > Faḍl 336, 7 > IM 134, 7f.
25 IAH IV2 14 no. 62. Ṭabarī quoted him only once (I 2746, 7); in that passage he is transmit-
ting from Muḥammad b. ʿAjlān (see p. 761ff. below).
1 See p. 611 above.

2 Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik I 170, 5ff.; Ājurrī, Sharīʿa 56, –5ff.; also REI 44/1976/46.
l-Juwayriya: his name was ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. ʿImrān and he was a Kufan living
in Medina,3 which is all we know about him. We do, however, know a certain
Abū l-Ḥuwayrith or Abū l-Ḥuwayritha4 whom Abū Dāwūd also listed among
the “Murjiʾites of Medina” and of whom Mālik did not approve; his name was
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muʿāwiya.5 The kunya may simply have been misread.6 It
is furthermore not entirely true that no Murjiʾites at all studied under Mālik,7
but we can still say that their school did not have very many followers in
Medina.8

The Qadariyya, on the other hand, had been established in the city for some
time, and was reasonably well-respected. Ṣāliḥ b. Qaysān, who had taught
ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’ sons when he was governor, as well as supervising the
construction of the prophet’s mosque, was said to have had ties to it.1 He
praised Ibn al-Ashʿath’s followers for the courage they had shown at Dayr al-
Jamājim;2 in an account of the conquest of Ḥīra he displayed the kind of egali-
tarian pathos expected of a client.3 When Ghaylān al-Dimashqī accompanied
the caliph Hishām on the pilgrimage in 106/725, he and Rabīʿat al-raʾy were
said to have had a debate in Medina.4 According to the account by Mālik, after
the end of the debate Saʿd b. Ibrāhīm, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf’s grandson who
held the office of qāḍī in the city at the time,5 obtained the notes of Ghaylān’s
3 Dawlābī I 139, 8ff.

4 Regarding the latter form cf. Fasawī II 644, 12, and Dawlābī I 161, 2 (which has Abū l-Ḥuwayriya
instead).
5 TT VI 272f. no. 539; regarding him cf. also ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 344f. no. 945, and Mīzān no. 4979.
6 He is, however, believed to have died as early as 128/746 or 130/748 (TT, loc. cit.).
7 Cf. vol. I 159.
8 I do not know who the Murjiʾite Ibn Abī Dāwūd was of whom Sufyān b. ʿUyayna warned
(ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 62, 3f.).
1 TT IV 399, 4f. and TH 148, pu.; Ṭabarī II 1193, 15ff. Regarding his Qadarism cf. Kaʿbī 80, 10ff. >
Faḍl 336, 7 > IM 134, 8; Suyūṭī, Tadrīb I 329, 1; Mīzān no. 3823 (where the suspicion is rejected).
According to Fasawī I 568, 6ff., he had already been ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’ own tutor. For
more information see TTD VI 378.
3 Ibid. I 2016, 15ff. and 2017, 9ff.; cf. also Abū Bakr’s speech transmitted by him, which he was
said to have given on his deathbed (I 2139, 6ff.).
4 In more detail Anfänge 204ff. Regarding the date cf. ibid. 225; Hishām was in Medina during
Muḥarram/May 725.
5 Wakīʿ I 150ff.: from 104/722 onwards with interruptions until his death in 127/745 (thus
according to Wakīʿ I 164, 2f.) or 128/746 (thus after Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 577, 9).
750 CHAPTER 4
address (maqāla) and revised them.6 This led Ibn Qutayba to believe that he
was a Qadarite,7 which was given as the reason why Mālik would not transmit
from him.8 When Ghaylān’s ideas became the official line under Yazīd III, they
probably found some support in Medina; certainly some people found them-
selves in hot water when reaction began under Marwān II. One of them was
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Isḥāq b. ʿAbdallāh al-ʿĀmirī al-Qurashī,
who had settled “by the water” in Medina after Walīd’s death, and now had
to flee to Basra.9 This is the only definite report. The name alone is confusing
enough. Ibn Ḥanbal believed ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was also called ʿAbbād;10 accord-
ing to Bukhārī, this was the form customary in the west, presumably Spain.11
Some later authors listed him twice because of this.12 Instead of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
b. Isḥāq b. ʿAbdallāh one definitive isnād has ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Isḥāq b. al-
Ḥārith,13 which is probably an abbreviation, as we learn that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
also transmitted from his father, who apparently was Isḥāq b. ʿAbdallāh b. al-
Ḥārith al-ʿĀmirī,14 son of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥārith b. Nawfal, named Babba, who
had ruled in Basra in 64/684 for a year on behalf of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr. He
was a Hāshimid, and connected to the Umayyads on his mother’s side; because
of this noble descent he had previously already held official positions. Towards
the end of his life he joined Ibn al-Ashʿath,15 which may have influenced his
grandson’s Qadarite interests. It also explains why the latter fled to Basra: the
6 Kaʿbī 76, 4ff. after Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shāfiʿī, who referred to Mālik via his own
teacher Shāfiʿī > Faḍl 334, –5ff. > Ḥākim al-Jushamī > al-Manṣūr billāh, Shāfī I 151, 11ff.
7 Maʿārif 625, 12, the name to be corrected in accordance with Ibn Rusta, Aʿlāq 220, 7.
8 Kaʿbī 76, 11f. (corrupt) > Faḍl 334, pu. f. > IM 133, 9ff.; also TT III 465, 9ff. Nothing in Wakīʿ,
in TTD VI 80 and Mīzān no. 3133.
9 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 322, 1f. > Mīzān no. 4811 (with a better reading); TT VI 137ff. The
Muʿtazilites also name him as a Qadarite (Kaʿbī I 106, 4 > Faḍl 343, 11ff. > IM 139, 3f.), as
does Suyūṭī (Tadrīb I 329, 3). Regarding the “water” cf. Samhūdī, Wafāʾ al-wafāʾ II 200, 13
and –4.
10 ʿIlal 372, 17f.
11 Taʾrīkh III1 258, 7f. According to Dāraquṭnī, Ḍuʿafāʾ 338f. no. 341, on the other hand, ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān was the form used in Basra.
12 Thus Dhahabī, Mīzān no. 4811 and 4109. On the other hand the same author claims in his
Taʾrīkh al-Islām that ʿAbbād was ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s brother (VI 93, 3ff.).
13 Fasawī I 454, 3. Thus also Bukhārī III1 258f. no. 834, and IAH II2 212f. no. 1000.
14 TT I 238f.; Khalīfa, Ṭab. 507 no. 1742.
15 Regarding him cf. Madelung in: JNES 40/1981/292f. and 297ff.
family is likely to have had considerable support there.15a They also owned a
house in Mecca.16 Should we assume that the unusual Maghrebin form of the
name, which appears to have been a hypocoristic, could be explained with
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s fleeing to Spain from the Abbasids because of his close ties
to the Umayyads?
The rijāl texts show his position as an intermediary: he was important for
Medinan hadith,17 but had pupils in Basra as well.18 Ibn Abī Ḥātim notes that
he was close to Ibn Isḥāq;19 the latter, too, had been a Qadarite in his youth and
consequently not liked by the authorities.20 – A connection with Basra is also
clearly visible in the case of
Abū Naṣr21 Yaḥyā b. Abī Kathīr Yasār22 al-Ṭāʾī al-Yamāmī,
a mawlā of the Ṭayyiʾ,23 who had also moved between cities, but in the oppo-
site direction. He came from Basra and allegedly left the city because he could
not get along with Qatāda,24 sometime before 117/735; from then onwards he
lived in the Yamāma.25 Walīd II’s lifestyle was not to his liking; he transmitted
that in 125/743 the world had lost its jewel.26 Maybe he refused to pay hom-
age to him or his sons; he was said to have been interrogated because of this
crime, and then beaten and his head shaved.27 He died towards the end of the
Umayyad era, in 129/747 or 132/750.28
15a See also p. 182 above.

16 Madelung, loc. cit. 298.
17 Ibn al-Madīnī, ʿIlal 81, 1; 87, 7; 88, 1; also 84, 5.
18 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 372 no. 2467; also Wakīʿ, Akhbār I 46, apu. f.
19 IAH II2 213, 1f.
21 Or Abū Ayyūb (IS V 404, 9). He had several sons besides Naṣr: Kathīr (IS V 404, 7), ʿAbdallāh
(AZ 448, apu., and Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 218, 7), and ʿĀmir (Jāḥiẓ, Bayān III 212, 7).
22 Cf. Khalīfa, Ṭab. 514 no. 1780; IS V 404, 3f.; IS V 404, 15, has Dīnār instead.
23 IS V 404, 6. in Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 218, 3f., Ṭayyiʾ is corrupted to read ʿAlī.
25 Fasawī I 621, 11f.
26 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 390, 13ff.; also vol. I 96f.
27 Thus Abū l-ʿArab, Miḥan 316, 7ff.; in general Dhahabī, TH 128, 15f., and Taʾrīkh V 180, pu. f.:
because of criticising the Umayyads.
28 The date of 129 is more frequent; 132 is an inference from the report that he survived
Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī (see p. 391 above) by a year (Bukhārī IV2 301, 6f.).
752 CHAPTER 4
He had been well-respected in Basra. Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī held him in great

esteem,29 and Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī transmitted much from him.30 Ibn al-
Madīnī would later name him the greatest traditionist of his generation be-
sides Qatāda.31 He was also well-versed in Medinan and Hijazi hadith; only
Zuhrī surpassed him.32 Ṭabarī shows him as knowledgeable concerning the
prophet’s biography.33 In his view the Sunna was superior to the Quran – and
maybe not exclusively because it contributed to explaining the Quran, as peo-
ple would claim later.34 He insisted on being given hadith material in writing,
so it would not be lost,35 and he transmitted hadith in writing as well.36 Later
critics considered this important only because oral confirmation might be
lacking in some cases.37 The great number of those who transmitted from him
serves as proof that his method was entirely acceptable in his lifetime.38
Ibn Ḥajar testified to his great piousness.39 He may have inferred this from
statements like his son ʿAbdallāh’s that he was always sad – meaning concerned
for his salvation.40 Together with his political views this would make him a good
Qadarite, but that is a claim we do not find anywhere. Not even Kaʿbī listed
him. Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, on the other hand, tells us that ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd went
to visit him, and mentions in this context that they were both Muʿtazilites.41
This does not seem to agree with those among his hadiths that could be used
against the Qadarites.42 We are unable to solve the case. – Political commit-
ment might be assumed in the case of
29 IS V 404, 10f., and Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 218, 5f.

30 AZ 452 no. 1142.
31 Fasawī I 621, 7ff; IKh VI 140, 10ff.
32 Ibid. I 621, 10f. after Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī.
33 Cf. Index s. n.; he transmitted mainly from Abū Salama b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (d. 104/722–3),
in whose hand he possessed a nuskha (Azmi, Studies 63).
34 Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl 250, 8ff. = 199, 8ff./transl. Lecomte 222 § 216d; cf. Juynboll in:
JSAI 10/1987/109f.
35 Khaṭīb, Taqyīd 110, 16ff.
38 Ibid. 176f.
39 TT XI 269, 5f.
40 AZ 448, apu. f. Of his other son Naṣr it was even said that he could walk on water or fly in
the air (Abū Yaʿlā, Muʿtamad 164, 12ff.).
41 Faḍl 343, 1ff. > IM 138, 9 (giving the name only).
42 HT 127 and 164.
Abū Muḥammad Ismāʿīl Muḥammad b. Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ,
d. 134/751–2,43 a member of the Medinan aristocracy whose father had taken

part in Ibn al-Ashʿath’s uprising and was executed on Ḥajjāj’s orders after being
taken prisoner near Herat in 82/701.44 The son, Kaʿbī tells us, was known for
his Qadarite views in the city.45 Other sources do not confirm this, but then
we know very little indeed about this grandson of the well-known general.
According to Ibn Qutayba he was one of the fuqahāʾ of the Quraysh.46 He
appears a number of times as Ṭabarī’s source of historical information up to
ʿUthmān’s time, with precise chronological data in several instances;47 Ibn
Isḥāq also quotes him once.48 – Other Medinan Qadarites of this time are less
concrete. One of them was a member of an ancient family,
al-Qāsim b. al-ʿAbbās b. Muḥammad al-Lahabī.
He was a descendant of Abū Lahab and consequently probably rather biased;49

his great-grandfather Muʿattib had become a Muslim in the year of the con-
quest of Mecca.50 He himself died in the battle of Qudayd in 130/748, or was
murdered by the Khārijites in Medina shortly afterwards.51 The Muʿtazilites
were the only ones to note his Qadarite views.52
Abū Mawdūd ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Abī Sulaymān
was a mawlā of the Hudhayl who worked as a qāṣṣ in Medina. He was be-
lieved to be an ascetic; Ibn Saʿd called him a mutakallim who preached to the
43 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 627, 13; TT I 329f. no. 592.

44 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 367, 12, and 368, 5ff.; also Zubayrī, Nasab Quraysh 264, 11ff., and Ibn Ḥazm,
Jamhara 129, –4f.
45 Maq. 76, 13ff. > Faḍl 335, 1f. > IM 133, 13.
46 Maʿārif 244, 4.
47 Cf. Index s. n., esp. I 2726, 10ff.
48 Sīra 587, 9f.
49 His family is not mentioned either in Zubayrī or in Ibn Ḥazm’s Jamhara.
50 Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Istīʿāb 1430 no. 2459.
51 Most sources have 131 as the year of his death; only Bukhārī has 133, after ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
b. Shayba. This may be a copyist’s error; TT VIII 320, 2f., has 130 after the same source.
52 Kaʿbī 76, 1f. > Faḍl 335, 3 > IM 133, 11f. (incorrect al-Laythī here). Nothing in Bukhārī IV1 168
no. 748; IAH III2 114 no. 658; Mīzān no. 6810; TT VIII 319f. no. 576.
754 CHAPTER 4
people.53 Kaʿbī based his view of him as a Qadarite on Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
al-Shāfiʿī.54
Abū ʿAbdallāh Ṣafwān b. Sulaym al-Zuhrī,
d. 132/749–50,55 a mawlā of Ḥumayd b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf who later

appears to have forged ties with the Banū Zuhra,56 had in his youth, during
Muʿāwiya’s caliphate, trained the officials (kuttāb) in Medina, but increasingly
turned to devotional exercises. He spent his nights in prayer and tried to reduce
his need for sleep. He did not use a pillow and made his bed, against the usual
custom, on the roof in winter, and inside the house in the summer. He slept sit-
ting up, his head on his knees, supported by a strap (ḥubwa) tying his knees to
his chest, preserving his ritual purity in this way.57 His actions were noted with
great respect and considered unusual.58 There is an early report that names
him as a Qadarite;59 Ibn Ḥajar quotes it,60 as do the Muʿtazilite sources.61 It did
not deter Mālik b. Anas from attending his lectures.62 – According to Wāqidī,
Abū l-Mughīra ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Labīd al-Thaqafī
died at the beginning of Manṣūr’s caliphate, in 136/754 or shortly afterwards,

according to Wāqidī.63 He may have inferred this from an anecdote of un-
doubtedly fictional content.64 It would be too late in any case, if it should be
correct that the abovementioned Ṣafwān b. Sulaym refused to say the prayer
53 mutakallim yaʿiẓu; cf. TT VI 340 no. 653. The original passage is not extant in the printed
version of Ṭabaqāt which has a few gaps in vol. V in particular. mutakallim does not neces-
sarily mean “theologian” here (see vol. I 57f. above).
54 Maq. 80, apu. ff. > Faḍl 336, 8 (once corrected) > IM 133, 8 (corrected by Fück in
OLZ 59/1964/374).
55 Thus after Khalīfa, Ṭab. 653 no. 2304, and Taʾrīkh 613, 4; also TH 134 no. 120, and TT IV 425
no. 734. According to Ibn ʿAsākir, however, already 124/742 (TTD VI 433, 13f.).
56 Khalīfa, Ṭab., and AZ 641, 7.
57 TTD VI 433, 15ff.; Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifa II 86ff.; cf. also the prayer AZ 429, 1. Only if one stretches
out while sleeping at night does one have to perform the ablution in the morning (cf. Text
XXII 257 with commentary). Regarding the ḥubwa see p. 204 above.
58 Kaʿbī 78, 1f., and in more detail Fasawī I 661, 2ff.: after Sufyān b. ʿUyayna.
59 TTD VI 434, 4; also Kaʿbī 77, ult. f.
60 TT, loc. cit.
61 Kaʿbī 77, ult. f. (after Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shāfiʿī) > Faḍl 335, 15f. > IM 133, 16f. Nothing
in IAH II1 423f. no. 1858.
62 Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik I 127, –5; Suyūṭī, Isʿāf al-mubaṭṭaʾ 19, 9ff.
63 TT V 372, 15.
64 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 335, 11ff.
of the dead over him.65 They were both pietists, but Abū l-Mughīra’s Qadarite
views are much better documented, e.g. by Ibn Ḥanbal66 as well as Fasawī.67
The reason for this is probably that he once travelled to Iraq, transmitting had-
ith in Kufa where Sufyān al-Thawrī attended his lectures.68
Abū ʿAbdallāh Sharīk b. ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Nimr al-Laythī,69
d. after 140/757–8 but before al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s uprising,70 was a true Arab.
His grandfather Abū Nimr had fought with the Meccans at Badr.71 Kaʿbī, quot-
ing Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī,72 and a number of other sources list him as a Qadarite.73
Mālik b. Anas transmitted from him all the same.74 – Interestingly even an
uncle of Mālik’s belongs in this group:
Abū Suhayl Nāfiʿ b. Mālik b. Abī ʿĀmir al-Aṣbaḥī, also known as Ibn Abī
Anas,75
who had joined the Taym b. Murra as a confederate (ḥalīf). His father Abū
Anas Mālik b. Abī ʿĀmir died in 112/730,76 he himself during Saffāḥ’s caliphate
(132/749–136/754).77 The family was of Southern Arabian origin and command-
ed some respect, as demonstrated by the fact that he transmitted from ʿUmar
b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and consequently must have been in the latter’s circle when he
was governor.78 The Medinan jurist Ibn Abī Yaḥyā, quoted by Shāfiʿī, listed him
65 Cf. e.g. ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 292, 12ff, and Bukhārī III1 182, 5: after ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Muḥammad
al-Darāwardī (d. 186/802).
66 ʿIlal 130 no. 807, and 273 no. 1761.
67 II 697, 4f.; also Bukhārī III1 182, 4; ʿUqaylī II 292 no. 866; Mīzān no. 4529; Hady al-sārī II
139, 21ff.; Suyūṭī, Tadrīb I 329, 2; Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 335, 7ff. > IM 133, 14. Dhahabī
expresses doubts: Taʾrīkh V 267, –4ff. Nothing in IAH II2 148 no. 684.
68 Cf. also Azmi, Studies 109.
69 Regarding this nisba cf. Khalīfa, Ṭab. 665 no. 3264.
70 Khalīfa, Ṭab., loc. cit., and Taʾrīkh 642, 3; also IAH II1 363 no. 1592.
71 Bukhārī II2 236, pu. f.
72 Maq. 78, pu. ff. > Faḍl 336, 3 > IM 134, 5.
73 TT IV 337f. no. 578; Hady al-sārī II 134, 8ff.; Tadrīb I 329, 1. Nothing in IAH II1 363f. no. 1592,
or in Mīzān no. 3696. Not to be confused with the Kufan Sharīk b. ʿAbdallāh al-Nakhaʿī
(see vol. I 246 above).
74 Suyūṭī, Isʿāf al-mubaṭṭaʾ 18, –7ff.
75 Cf. Fasawī I 406, 6ff.
76 Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb I 107, –7f.
77 TT X 409ff. no. 737.
78 Bukhārī IV2 86 no. 2276; also IAH IV1 453 no. 2072.
756 CHAPTER 4
as a Qadarite;79 while he was well-informed, he was probably also biased. He

did not agree with Mālik.80
Abū Sahl Saʿd b. Saʿīd b. Abī Saʿīd al-Maqburī
was slightly younger. Sufyān b. ʿUyayna had named him as a Qadarite.81 He

transmitted from his brother ʿAbdallāh who, while not a Qadarite, would end
up with the worse reputation of the two.82 Their father, on the other hand,
Saʿīd al-Maqburī, a client of the Banū Layth, was much respected. He died
around 125/743.83 – The last one worth mentioning in the context of the early
Qadariyya is
Muḥammad b. Isḥāq b. Yasār,
the well-known author of the Sīra, d. 150/767, or shortly afterwards. He spent

only the first half of his life in Medina; moving to Baghdad in the thirties,
where he established contact with Manṣūr.84 His biography and his works have
been studied a number of times;85 consequently I can limit myself to what is
relevant to the present context. The suspicion that he was a Qadarite is clear-
ly of Medinan origin. A certain Ḥumayd b. Ḥabīb claimed to have seen Ibn
Isḥāq flogged under the governor Ibrāhīm b. Hishām because of his Qadarite
involvement.86 This would have had to be during his youth; Ibrāhīm b. Hishām
b. Ismāʿīl al-Makhzūmī ruled Medina from 106/725, shortly after Hishām came
79 Kaʿbī 82, 3ff. > Faḍl 336, 18ff. > IM 134, 11f.
81 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 117 no. 593; Mīzān no. 3110; TT III 469f. no. 875.
82 Regarding him ʿUqaylī II 258f. no. 810; Mīzān no. 4353 etc.
83 Regarding him TH 116f. no. 101; TT IV 38ff. no. 61 etc.
84 Cf. in detail J. Fück, Muḥammad b. Isḥāq (PhD Frankfurt 1925) and, with a differ-
ent interpretation, R. Sellheim in: Oriens 18–19/1965–66/33ff.; cf. also Schacht in:
Arabica 16/1969/81.
85 Cf. EI2 III 810f. s. n., and GAS 1/288ff.; also the studies, composed independently of one
another, by H. R. Idris, Réflexions sur Ibn Isḥāq, in: SI 17/1962/23ff., and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz
Dūrī, Dirāsa fī sīrat al-nabī wa-muʾallifihā Ibn Isḥāq (Baghdad 1385/1965), as well as
Sadun Mahmud al-Samuk’s dissertation Die historischen Überlieferungen nach Ibn Isḥāq.
Eine synoptische Untersuchung (Frankfurt 1978), all with further references. Also Dūrī,
Rise 33ff.; Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, Intro. xiiiff., and Newby, The Making of the
Last Prophet 5ff.
86 Mīzān III 472, pu. f.
to power,87 onwards, and lost the position in 114/732.88 The information is

problematic for several reasons. We are unable to identify the source with any
certainty;89 and in those days – when Ghaylān al-Dimashqī was probably still
living – Qadarite views were not fraught with danger, at least not in Syria. Most
importantly, another source explains the flogging as having been because of
Ibn Isḥāq’s womanising.
Yāqūt, Irshād VI 400, 13ff., after Wāqidī. In order for the story to make any
sense at all, one would have to read Ibrāhīm b. Hishām al-Makhzūmī for
Hishām al-Makhzūmī (who was governor between 82/701 and 86/705), as
Horovitz already pointed out (in: IC 2/1928/169; also Idris, p. 28). Cf. also
the reports in Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 105, 4ff., and Abū l-ʿArab, Miḥan 378,
4ff.; neither of these gives the governor’s name. Abū l-ʿArab says that Ibn
Isḥāq was exiled at the time; a parallel account (ibid. 377, 8ff.) claims that
Ibn Isḥāq knew too much about genealogy and revealed some scandal
about every family.
Even so, the accusation might have had a concrete cause, as it is possible that
Ibn Isḥāq found himself in trouble with the authorities once again, and this
time because of his Qadarite leanings after all. He was surrounded by his pu-
pils when he was arrested; a dream vision having revealed him his fate shortly
before.90 However that may have been, his reputation in Medina was ruined
for the rest of the century, more than a generation after his death.91 The sourc-
es hastened to add, with reference to Sufyān b. ʿUyayna, that this had nothing
to do with his hadith, but was solely due to his Qadarite views.92 Whether this
was indeed the case will have to remain unanswered; we do hear that he
transmitted hadith “on the attribute” (fī l-ṣifa, explained as “on the attributes
of God”) and caused offence – whatever the strange phrase may in fact have
87 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 544, 7f., and Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt I 168, 10ff.
88 Wakīʿ I 171, 3f.
89 Might he have been Ḥumayd b. Ḥabīb al-Lakhmī who would later support Yazīd III
(Ṭabarī II 1792, 6).
90 Thus TB I 225, 11ff.; once again it was a later transmitter who pointed out the link to the
qadar issue (regarding him cf. Samʿānī, Ansāb VI 323, 1ff.). Without this remark also Yāqūt,
Irshād VI 401, 1ff. – Idris believes this to be merely a doublet of the previously mentioned
tradition (loc. cit., p. 28).
91 Cf. TB I 226, 14ff., with reference to the year 193/809. Entirely negative also the synopsis in
Ibn al-Nadīm (Fihrist 105, 3ff.).
92 Fasawī II 27, 9f.; Kaʿbī 81, 10ff.; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ IV 26, 7f.; also TB I 224, 19.
758 CHAPTER 4
meant.93 We do know that he used Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s Tafsīr in ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s

redaction.94
Mālik b. Anas was said to have been ill-disposed towards him for the same
reason.95 We are unable to confirm this; other reasons are given as well.96 It
does seem exaggerated that Mālik b. Anas should have been able to bully
him out of town, as at that time – more than forty years before his death –
Mālik simply did not command the respect for such a course of action.97 Ibn
al-Madīnī would later claim that Mālik did not know Ibn Isḥāq well at all.98
This is not really true, either; but there can be no doubt that they did not like
each other. Ibn Isḥāq tried to attack Mālik’s social position – he was not a na-
tive Medinan but originally from Yemen – by claiming that he was not an ally
(ḥalīf) of his Medinan clan, but merely a mawlā.99 He also made derisive com-
ments about his achievements as a jurist.100
His Qadarite leanings were confirmed outside the Hijaz, too. Awzāʿī did not
think much of him for that reason.101 In the east, Ibn Maʿīn (d. 233/848),102 Hārūn
b. Maʿrūf (d. 231/846)103 and Sulaymān b. Dāwūd al-Shādhakūnī (d. 234/848)104
agreed with this view, later also Ibn Qutayba.105 Muʿtazilite sources adopted
Ibn Maʿīn’s assessment.106 The Kufan Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh b. Numayr
(d. 234/848), on the other hand, tried to absolve him of the accusation.107 This
rehabilitation, like the other claims, would frequently be repeated by later
93 Fasawī I 137, 7ff. = III 366 apu. ff. > TB I 226, 3ff.; also Mīzān III 474, –4ff. Might these have
been anti-anthropomorphic considerations of the kind the Ibāḍiyya quoted Ibn ʿAbbās as
having said?
94 See p. 339f. above. Also Dūrī, Dirāsa 24.
95 AZ 538 no. 1455.
96 Cf. EI2 III 811a.
97 The tradition appears to have been extrapolated from a remark by Mālik himself that, if
genuine, says more about his great self-confidence than about the actual course of events
(TB I 223, 12).
98 TB I 229, 3.
99 Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb I 106, 3ff.; more detail in U. F. ʿAbdallāh, Mālik’s Concept of ‘ʿAmal’ in the
light of Mālikī Legal Theory (PhD Chicago 1978), p. 39ff., and p. 755 above.
100 Fasawī III 32, 1ff. > TB U 223, 9ff.; ʿUqaylī IV 24, –7ff.
101 TTD III 384, 5ff.
102 Kaʿbī 81, 5ff.; ʿUqaylī IV 28, 14f.
103 TB I 225, 19f.
104 Yāqūt, Irshād VI 400, 8f.
105 Maʿārif 625, 14f.
106 Kaʿbī 81, 4ff. > Faḍl 336, 11ff. > IM 134, 9.
107 TB I 225, ult. f.; regarding his father see vol. I 271 above.
authors.108 However, Abū Dāwūd even went so far as to suggest that Ibn Isḥāq
was a “Qadarite and Muʿtazilite”.109
4.1.2.3.1 Al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s Uprising

In the generation before Mālik, Qadarite involvement was no more shocking in
Medina than in Basra, but the Qadarites were more widely scattered through-
out society, a number of aristocrats being among them. This was probably due
to there being more dissatisfaction in the noble families of Medina, or possi-
bly more boredom. While the ʿAlid Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh knew to use these
sentiments in favour of his uprising in 145, the Qadarite component was much
less relevant than in Basra: intellectuals of all schools were gripped by revolu-
tionary zeal. Mālik b. Anas, too, was involved in the affair, having published a
fatwā that declared the oath of allegiance to Manṣūr not to have been bind-
ing, for which he would afterwards be flogged.1 Manṣūr took great care not
to repeat the error of the battle on the Ḥarra, and did not create martyrs. He
did, however, close the sea route to the Hijaz for many years in order to bring
the wealthy Quraysh to heel.2 He also stopped the Medinans’ pensions,3 but
did not occupy the city, which would have been unwise as shortly after the
uprising had failed the black slaves rebelled.4 For this reason, there were fewer
individual punishments than in Iraq. Among the Qadarites who took part in
the uprising was
108 Mīzān no. 7197 (a very detailed article); TH 172ff. no. 167; TT IX 38ff. no. 51. Nothing in IAH
III2 191ff. no. 1087 nor, surprisingly, in Kaʿbī, Qabūl 139, 7ff., where a number of other nega-
tive reports were collected. Ibn Saʿd VII2 67, 16f., has only a general observation.
109 Quoted in Mīzān, probably after Abū Dāwūd’s responses to Ājurrī’s questions (see vol. I 70
above).
1 Cf. Schacht in EI2 VI 263b; also ʿAbdallāh, Mālik’s Concept of “ʿAmal” 93f. Further instances
in Muth, Der Kalif al-Manṣūr 397, n. 1737. If an oath of allegiance to Muḥammad
b. ʿAbdallāh was really given during the “meeting at Abwāʾ” (see p. 335 above), this would
have been a weighty event for a jurist, and presumably better known and verifiable in
Medina than elsewhere.
2 Cf. Arazi in: JSAI 5/1948/205.
3 It was not until more than a decade later that al-Mahdī restored it (F. ʿUmar in:
Arabica 21/1974/140; in more detail Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī in: MMʿIʿI 20/1970/32f.).
4 Ṭabarī III 265, 14ff. Was this revolt the result of hunger in the wake of the first blockade?
Cf. Arazi, ibid. 205f., and Pipes, Slave Soldiers 133f.
760 CHAPTER 4
Abū Jaʿfar5 ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Jaʿfar b. ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥakam al-ʿAnṣārī,
d. 153/770;6 an ally of the Aws and descendant of Fiṭyawn, a Jewish prince in pre-
Islamic Medina.7 His father Jaʿfar b. ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥakam b. Rāfiʿ b. Sinān had
already transmitted hadith.8 The ḥilf association probably dated back to Rāfiʿ
b. Sinān, who had converted to Islam under the prophet.9 ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd was a
member of Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh’s intimate circle, commanding his police
force10 and later, in battle, his lancers (ḥarba).11 It was said that he, together
with some others, induced Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh to attack (prematurely);12
he himself claimed that later, when the Iraqi forces approached, he had ad-
vised him to flee to Egypt.13 Although his advice was not taken, he remained
faithful;14 finding that there were about as many as had fought the heathen in
the battle of Badr: a little over 300 men.15 He appears to have been left in peace
after the uprising, and despite his Qadarism, his traditions continued to be val-
ued. Sufyān al-Thawrī was the only one to resent his attitude.16 – Another man
who took part in the uprising was
5 This is the only kunya to have been transmitted with certainty; it is found in a direct address
in the context of a historical account (Ṭabarī III 228, 1, and Maqātil al-Ṭālibiyyīn 268, 1f.).
Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ has “Abū l-Faḍl” instead – as, indeed, do most of the later sources
(Ṭab. 682 no. 2450); Bukhārī in his Taʾrīkh (III2 51 no. 1676) “Abū Ḥafṣ”.
6 Khalīfa, Ṭab., ibid., and Taʾrīkh 662, 3.
7 Khalīfa, Ṭab., loc. cit.; regarding Fiṭyawn cf. Ibn Durayd, Ishtiqāq 436, 11ff.; Ibn Ḥazm,
Jamhara 373, 4ff.; Ibn Ḥabīb, Asmāʾ al-mughtālīn, in: Nawādir al-makhṭūṭāt II 136f.
A Hebrew etymology of the name has not yet come to light (Horovitz, Koranische
Untersuchungen 163). H. P. Rüger, Tübingen, suggested that pidyōn (“redeeming”) might
be considered despite the divergent dental, as a variant of Pedāyā “Yahweh redeemed”.
Regarding the use of this word as a proper name cf. Pesiqta de Rab Kahana 37b Buber;
Pesiqta Rabbati 62b Friedmann; Natan ben Jehīʾēl, Arūkh s.v. zḥl etc.
8 TT II 99 no. 147.
9 Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Istīʿāb 481 no. 730; Mizzī, Tuḥfat al-ashrāf III 162f.
10 Ṭabarī III 199, 4ff.; also van Arendonk, Opkomst 285.
12 Ibid. III 190, 14ff. = Abū l-Faraj, Maqātil 261, 2ff.
13 Ibid. III 227, 17ff. = Maqātil 267, pu. ff.; Lassner, Shaping of Abbasid Rule 69f.
14 Ibid. III 260, 2f. = Maqātil 286, 4.
15 Maqātil 284, 2f.
16 ʿUqaylī III 44f. no. 1000; Mīzān no. 4767; also Fasawī I 427, 4ff., and II 458, apu. f. He
is listed as a Qadarite in Kaʿbī 77, 1ff. (after Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn) > Faḍl 335, 4f. > IM 133, 12;
Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh VI 221, 6ff.; TT VI 111 no. 223. Nothing in IAH III1 10 no. 46.
Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. ʿAjlān al-Qurashī,
d. 148/765, a client of Fāṭima bt. ʿUtba b. Rabīʿa,17 the daughter of a well-re-

spected Quraysh who had fought on the Meccan side at Badr and died in the
battle, and Muʿāwiya’s mother’s sister.18 According to Wāqidī, he was a respect-
ed jurist who taught at the prophet’s mosque, transmitting hadith as well as
giving expert opinions.19 He had studied under Zayd b. Aslam (d. 136/753),20
and Mālik b. Anas seems to have known him well.21 It was said that his mother
was pregnant with him for three years and that he had teeth when he was born.
The same was said about Mālik – in both cases as evidence of their unusual
precocity and intelligence. Later, people would remember that this kind of bio-
logical improbability had already been challenged by a dictum of ʿĀʾisha’s, and
Mālik himself was required to confirm the truth of this story.22 Consequently
he is often viewed in a positive light;23 Sufyān b. ʿUyayna (d. 196/812) in particu-
lar praising him.24 When he went to visit Kufa, he triumphed over some pre-
sumptuous young scholars, among them Yūsuf al-Samtī,25 who tried to trick
him with some mixed-up isnāds.26
A child born with teeth is also able to speak immediately. In this way
the idea described is linked with the topos of the talking baby applied to
Jesus in the Quran (sura 19:29f.), and also found in the so-called Alphabet
des Ben Sira (Steinschneider, Alphabetum Siracidis, Berlin 1858, fol. 17a;
Eli Yassiv, The Tales of Ben Sira in the Middle Ages, Jerusalem 1984, p. 199).
In the Islamic world it is also applied to the Egyptian saint Aḥmad al-
Badawī (Littmann, Aḥmed el-Bedawī 68ff. vv. 1ff.), and the Quranic
17 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 676 no. 2421, and Taʾrīkh 655, 9.

18 Zubayrī, Nasab Quraysh 152, 9ff., and Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 76, pu. ff.
19 Abū l-Faraj, Maqātil 289, 1ff.
20 Fasawī I 675, 2ff.; regarding Zayd b. Aslam cf. GAS 1/405f. Based on him Jāḥiẓ transmitted
an opinion of Zayd’s on the question of whether it was permitted to eat eggs after young
people had used them for games of chance, similar to our Easter customs (Ḥayawān
II 292, 4ff.; Rosenthal, Gambling 61f.). Cf. also Ṭabarī I 2746, 7ff.
21 Fasawī I 651, 7ff., and 675, 6ff.
22 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān VII 124, 10ff.; Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 595, 1ff.; Dhahabī, Mīzān III 646, –5ff.,
and TH 165, –5ff.; Ṣafadī, Wāfī IV 92, 12ff. (after Yaʿqūb b. Shayba’s (d. 262/875) Musnad
ʿAlī). Regarding Mālik cf. also EI2 VI 263 a.
23 Cf. e.g. Fasawī II 173, 5; also TH 165f. no. 161.
24 Fasawī I 698, 13f.; Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 213 no. 1325.
26 Mīzān III 645, 5ff.
762 CHAPTER 4
exegete Ḍaḥḥāk b. Muzāḥim, whose name is explained in this way: as he

had teeth, he was able to smile as soon as he was born (Fażāʾil-i Balkh 62,
5ff.; regarding him see p. 572ff. above). For general information, cf. Mach,
Zaddik 69f., and Gramlich, Wunder der Freunde Gottes 148f.
Still, we know only very little about him. Shīrāzī, for instance, does not men-
tion him at all in Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ. Ibn al-Jazarī does not tell us anything,
either, although he is occasionally apostrophised as a Quran reciter,27 and ap-
parently commented on related matters, too.28 This seems to be due mainly to
the dominant position Mālik b. Anas occupied in the subsequent generation.
It was said that despite the difference in their ages, the latter took the wind out
of his sails in a legal question;29 he was also said to have spoken dismissively
of ʿAjlān’s knowledge of hadith.30 His connection with al-Nafs al-zakiyya, on
the other hand, does not seem to have hurt him. He had worked enthusiasti-
cally in al-Nafs al-zakiyya’s interest, believing him to be the mahdī predicted
by tradition.31 Two Quraysh who had committed treason according to a letter
by al-Manṣūr had been flogged on his orders and then claimed that while in
prison they had been bound in such a way that they were unable to perform
the prayer.32 ʿAjlān had even gone to battle, although he really did not know
much about fighting – he was only a mawlā, after all – and people made fun
of him;33 later they recollected that he had ridden a mule.34 After the uprising
had failed, he was faced with punishment, but the city’s notables – and also
ʿAbbād b. Kathīr from Mecca35 – spoke up for him and ensured his release.36
He had probably had ties to the Shīʿa previously as well. He appears in the –
admittedly apocryphal – tradition according to which the ʿAlid dignitaries,
among them Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, went to pay their respects to Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ when he
27 Cf. e.g. Ṣafadī, Wāfī IV 92, 10.

28 Cf. Makkī al-Qaysī, Kashf ʿan wujūh al-qirāʾāt al-sabʿ I 21, 2ff.: concerning the question of
why sura 9 does not start with a basmala.
29 Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb I 225, 8ff.
30 ʿUqaylī IV 118, 10ff.; Mīzān III 644, apu. ff.
31 Abū l-Faraj, Maqātil 289, 8f.
33 Ibid. III 251, 18ff. = Maqātil 281, –5f.; also 292, pu.
34 Maqātil 282, 1.
36 Maqātil 289, 3f.; abridged in Kaʿbī 78, 13ff. ʿAbbād b. Kathīr’s part is emphasised in the
autobiographical account in Ṭabarī III 259, 3ff. = Maqātil 282, 2ff. – Cf. also van Arendonk,
Opkomst 285f., and Muth, Der Kalif al-Manṣūr 438, n. 2097.
visited Medina.37 He was known as an authority reaching back to Muḥammad

al-Bāqir’s time (d. 117/735),38 although he was not a Rāfiḍite, as he had great
respect for ʿUmar.39 As for hadith, he cultivated the traditions of Abū Hurayra,
another one who did not have a good reputation among the Shīʿites of Kufa; he
had them in his possession in notes by Saʿīd al-Maqburī,40 and had also heard
them from his father.41
Only Muʿtazilite sources state that he was a Qadarite, and even Kaʿbī, to
whom they refer, only implied it.42 Whether this was based on more than his
participation in the uprising is impossible to say. He was inclined to amr bil-
maʿrūf; even after the uprising he was unable to refrain from criticising a gover-
nor during Friday worship for not adhering to the puritanical dress regulations
and allowing his robe to drag on the floor.43 Interestingly he transmitted the
hadith stating that Adam was created in the image of God; Mālik would later
criticise this.44 – The third name we come across in this context is
Abū l-Ḥārith45 Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. al-Mughīra b. al-Ḥārith

Ibn Abī Dhiʾb al-ʿĀmirī al-Qaysī,
b. 80/69946 or 81/700,47 d. 159/776.48 His case is the opposite of Muḥammad

b. ʿAjlān’s: his Qadarism was recorded early and comparatively reliably by ʿAbd
al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/827)49 and Ibn Qutayba50 as well as the Muʿtazilite
37 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 239, 1ff.; cf. p. 287 above.
38 Ardabīlī, Jāmiʿ al-ruwāt II 148b., 2f.
39 Fasawī I 457, 1ff., and 461, 10ff.
40 Azmi, Studies 38; regarding him see p. 756 above.
41 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān IV 294, 7. Regarding the father cf. TT VII 162 no. 324.
42 Kaʿbī 78, 11ff. > Faḍl 335, –7ff. > IM 134, 3. Nothing in Bukhārī I1 196f. no. 603, or ʿUqaylī
IV 118 no. 1677.
43 Abū l-ʿArab, Miḥan 413, –6ff.; also Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Ādāb al-Shāfiʿī 48, 5ff., where bayān
should be corrected to thiyāb.
44 TD (ʿAbdallāh) 282, 3ff.
45 Only Ibn al-Nadīm has, possibly mistakenly, “Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān” (Fihrist 281, –7).
46 The date was calculated based on a famous flash flood (sayl) in Mecca (cf. e.g. Bukhārī I1
152f. no. 455; Fasawī I 146, 2 > TB II 297, 10ff.).
47 Thus after Wāqidī, who was acquainted with Ibn Abī Dhiʾb (Ṭabarī II 1063, 7f.; Ibn Ḥazm,
Jamhara 168, 15).
48 Thus after Khalīfa, Ṭab. 684 no. 2459, and Taʾrīkh 669, 7f., and many other sources.
Concerning a contrary report see n. 82 below.
50 Taʾwīl mukhtalif al-ḥadīth 11, 8 = 10, 8/transl. Lecomte 9 § 17, and 102, 6 = 85, –6/transl. 95
§ 122.
764 CHAPTER 4
sources.51 During Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh’s uprising, however, he stayed in

the background. He may have been among those advising the ʿAlids to attack,52
but when Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh took action, he stayed at home.53 According
to a remark in K. al-Aghānī his opinion of the Hāshimids was low.54 He was a
Quraysh himself, but from a different and apparently less prestigious branch.55
Zubayrī and Ibn Ḥazm recorded his genealogy. He bore the name Ibn Abī Dhiʾb
after his great-grandfather56 Hishām b. Shuʿba b. ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Qays, also
known as Abū Dhiʾb, who travelled to Byzantine territory in pre-Islamic times
and was falsely accused and imprisoned there until his death.57 ʿUmar b. al-
Khaṭṭāb knew him, but does not seem to have esteemed him. His grandson,
Ibn Abī Dhiʾb’s father, recollected the caliph’s remark;58 Ibn Abī Dhiʾb would
consequently have had to be a late child. This is confirmed by his referring to
his brother for this report; maybe he himself did not get to know his father. His
mother, Burayha bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. al-Ḥārith b. Abī Dhiʾb, came from the
same clan.59 He transmitted hadith from her brother Ḥārith b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
(d. 129/747).60 He was a member of the tribe of the ʿĀmir b. Luʾayy; all the in-
formation we have, proves Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ’s claim61 that he was their mawlā
to be incorrect.
He developed an interest in the application of the law in Medina early
on; some of his surviving recollections go back to the last decade of the first
51 Kaʿbī 78, 5ff. (after a verdict by Mālik b. Anas transmitted by Shāfiʿī, and after Yaḥyā
b. Maʿīn) > Faḍl 335, 17ff. > IM 134, 1f. (misspelt as Ibn Abī Dhuʾayb). TB II 301, 9f. after an
early source; nothing in IAH III2 313f. no. 1704.
52 If indeed we may emend the parallel traditions in Ṭabarī III 190, 15ff. and Abū l-Faraj,
Maqātil 261, 2ff. against one another and read Ibn Abī Dhiʾb in both passages for the cor-
rupted names.
53 TH 192, 6. Ibn Ḥasan probably refers to al-Nafs al-zakiyya. Van Arendonk (Opkomst 286)
interprets this, presumably in accordance with Zaydite sources, as moral support.
Madelung (Qāsim 72f.) mentions, more generally, participation in the uprising.
54 Agh. XIV 129, 6f.
55 Cf. the remark ibid. 9f.
56 Zubayrī, Nasab Quraysh 423, 7f.
57 Ibid. 422, ult. ff.; also Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 168, 13, and Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 485, 12.
Regarding the genealogy also IKh IV 183 no. 566; Ibn Khallikān’s claiming that the pris-
oner was Ibn Abī Dhiʾb’s father is a mistake.
59 Zubayrī 423, 10.
60 Ibid. 423, 10f.; also Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 264, 6f., and Mīzān no. 1629.
61 Ṭab., loc. cit. Kaʿbī 78, 6, calls him a “brother” (akhū) of this tribe, but this is probably
misread for aḥad (thus IAH III2 313, ult.).
century.62 The sources begin to take notice of him only during Manṣūr’s rule.
He seems to have been quite well-respected in the city at the time. While he
did not become qāḍī, as Ibn al-Nadīm claimed,63 the governors remuner-
ated him or paid him a salary. Jaʿfar b. Sulaymān, who ruled between 146/763
and 149/766, once sent him 100 dinars; his successor Ḥasan b. Zayd paid him
five dinars a month.64 Under Jaʿfar b. Sulaymān he spoke up for Muḥammad
b. ʿAjlān, who had heckled the governor at that time.65 At one point – not, how-
ever, more closely pinpointed – he and Mālik were the only two men allowed
to give expert legal opinions in the city.66
When the caliph himself appeared in Medina during one of his pilgrimages,
Ibn Abī Dhiʾb was received in an audience. People believed that he did not
hold back in his conversation with the caliph. As in the case of ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd,67
this spurred their imagination and accounts of the event were continually em-
bellished. This is obvious as the date soon became problematic. Most of the
versions are set during the time when Ḥasan b. Zayd was governor,68 in which
case the pilgrimage would have been that of 152/769 which we know al-Manṣūr
led himself.69 A parallel version, however, refers to ʿAbd al-Ṣamad b. ʿAlī who
held the position from 155 onwards;70 in that case we would be looking at the
hajj of 158 during which the caliph unexpectedly lost his life.71 The narrator of
this version is Ḥasan b. Zayd himself, unable to hide his glee at Ibn Abī Dhiʾb’s
criticism of his successor – in the other versions this was directed at himself.
There is also an imaginative back story: when a noble Quraysh was imprisoned
62 Wakīʿ I 145, 1ff. The report ibid. I 132, pu. ff., goes back even beyond 87/706; he himself
states that he was a child at the time.
63 Fihrist 281, –6.
64 TB II 304, 18ff. > TH 192, 6ff.; regarding the date cf. Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 682, 5ff.
66 Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 68, 4f.; cf. p. 776 below.
68 The most detailed one is found in Azdī, Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil 176, 1ff. (where it appears in
the year 142 and Ibn Abī Dhiʾb is misprinted as Ibn Abī Dhuʾayb); Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Ādāb
al-Shāfiʿī 45, 5ff. is closely related = Ḍabbī, Bughyat al-multamis 392, apu. ff., each with
criticism of Abū ʿAmr Ghifārī’s clan, of the governor, and of the caliph himself; thus also
TB II 298, 14ff. > TH 192, 13ff., but with a different narrator. Different again TB II 298, 21ff.,
criticising the caliph only, but with concrete points of complaint. Cf. also the versions
in Abū l-ʿArab, Miḥan 399ff., and Ibn ʿAbdrabbih, ʿIqd I 56, 1ff. (after Aṣmaʿī). In most
versions the narrator is Shāfiʿī’s uncle Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Muṭṭalibī. A short note
(maybe the nucleus of the whole story?) in Fasawī I 686, –6ff.
70 Ibid. 682, 14.
71 Ibid. 667, 2; also Moscati in: Orientalia 15/1946/156f.
766 CHAPTER 4
by the governor, one of his relations complained to the caliph and demanded
that Ibn Abī Dhiʾb and some other Medinan scholars should inspect the condi-
tions in which he was kept. While all the others attempted diplomatically to
get out of a clear answer, Ibn Abī Dhiʾb did not hold back with his criticism.
When al-Manṣūr himself came to Medina, he is said to have referred to this
criticism.72 As with the anecdotes about ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, we could either as-
sume that there were two audiences, or believe some, if not all, of the transmit-
ted material to be literary fiction. The latter is more probable, not least because
the accounts of the first group are difficult to reconcile as well. The second
version might have been circulated in response to the first one, in order to ex-
onerate Ḥasan b. Zayd. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad b. ʿAlī clearly did not think highly of Ibn
Abī Dhiʾb;73 there is no record of him having supported him financially in the
way his predecessors did.
Similar to the stories around ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, a statement on the heir to the
throne al-Mahdī is woven into these stories as well.74 In addition later tradition
says that Ibn Abī Dhiʾb did not rise when al-Mahdī entered the mosque of the
prophet when he led the pilgrimage (presumably in 153/770),75 stating that this
kind of honour (in this place) was due to God only.76 Once Mahdī had become
caliph, he called Ibn Abī Dhiʾb to Baghdad, although it is not clear why. Ibn
Ḥazm says absurdly that al-Mahdī appointed him his successor (istakhlafahū),77
but the correct reading is probably istaḥlafahū “he had him swear to his inno-
cence” – namely, that he was not a Qadarite, and did not intend to criticise the
state. We learn that during a prosecution some Qadarites fled to Ibn Abī Dhiʾb’s
house;78 this, too, might have been at the beginning of al-Mahdī’s caliphate
in 158/775 or 159/776, and thus been a reason for Ibn Abī Dhiʾb’s hearing.79 The
story had a happy ending: the caliph left the old man in peace and made him a
72 TB II 299, 7ff.; in addition a further, glorifying conclusion ibid. 300, 16ff. A comparison of
the two versions may be found in Werkmeister, Untersuchungen zum Kitāb al-ʿIqd 222ff.
73 Cf. the anecdote in Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifat al-ṣafwa II 98, –6ff.
74 Negative in Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Ādāb al-Shāfiʿī 48, 1f.; positive ʿIqd I 96, 14f.
76 TB II 298, 10ff. > TH 192, apu. ff.
77 Jamhara 168, 15.
78 TB II 301, 10ff.
79 Maybe the audience with al-Manṣūr was not in fact as great an honour as the sources
would have us believe. In that case the persecution of the Qadarites could have begun
under ʿAbd al-Ṣamad b. ʿAlī, giving the abovementioned back story greater importance.
gift of 1000 dinars.80 Ibn Abī Dhiʾb died on the way home in Ḥīra81 or, as most
sources simplify, in Kufa.82
People remembered Ibn Abī Dhiʾb’s adherence to amr bil-maʿrūf;83 it was
probably an expression of his Qadarism. A hadith against the lust for power
spreading through the Muslim community had a similar tone,84 as did, on a
different level, the tradition that one should not kill frogs (because they are
harmless creatures not deserving of punishment).85 However, this connection
was dismissed very early on. Wāqidī, who had known Ibn Abī Dhiʾb in person,
reported that the latter rejected the Qadarite doctrine, but looked out for ev-
eryone who needed his help;86 Zubayrī, too, claimed that the impression was
due to him protecting the Qadarites.87 These are probably the arguments Ibn
Abī Dhiʾb presented in his defence in Baghdad. This interpretation, in which
Ibn Abī Dhiʾb gained ʿadāla in the eyes of hadith critics, was not adopted by
later sources.88 Shāfiʿī respected him greatly.89 For understandable reasons Ibn
Ḥanbal, too, was a great admirer of Ibn Abī Dhiʾb’s unruliness, ranking him
higher than Mālik b. Anas because, while both of them came in contact with
the authorities, only Ibn Abī Dhiʾb expressed his criticism freely.90
Ibn Ḥanbal was probably thinking of the audience and its back story. Mālik
was also among those who inspected the Quraysh’s prison and were later sum-
moned by al-Manṣūr, but he was said to have wisely kept his mouth shut. Ibn
Abī Dhiʾb was older than Mālik, and it is consequently not surprising that
80 TB II 304, 21f. > TH 192, 9f.

81 Ibid. II 305, 9.
82 Cf. e.g. Zubayrī 423, 8f.; Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 168, 15 etc. If one source says Ibn Abī Dhiʾb
died in the year in which al-Mahdī became caliph (TB II 304, 10f.), and then infers the date
of 158/775 (ibid. 304, 13), this must be incorrect considering other events. Still, it is prob-
ably the inference that is wrong, rather than the information itself. After all, al-Manṣūr
died during the pilgrimage, at the end of 158; the year in which al-Mahdī became caliph
must have referred to 159.
83 Cf. e.g. Zubayrī 423, 9.
84 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 25, 1ff. It was probably for a similar reason that he reported Anas b. Mālik
being punished by al-Ḥajjāj (Ṭabarī II 854, ult. ff.).
85 Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān V 537, 7ff., and Fasawī I 285, 9ff. (with parallels in n. 2); cf. also p. 60 above,
and Conc. III 514b.
86 TB II 301, 17ff.
87 Ibid. 301, 10ff.; Lālakāʾī, Sharḥ 724 no. 1336.
88 Dhahabī, Mīzān no. 7837 (after Wāqidī), and Taʾrīkh VI 282, 2ff., and 284, 1ff.; TT IX 305,
10ff.; similar Hady al-sārī II 161, ult. Cf. also the anecdote in Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik
I 219, 7ff.
89 Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Ādāb al-Shāfiʿī 29, 1f.
90 ʿIlal 179 no. 1113; in more detail Fasawī I 686, 8ff.
768 CHAPTER 4
he criticised the latter’s juristic position, at least in a certain matter.91 Later

Mālikite tradition did not like to be reminded of this. While it was not possible
to get rid of the tradition,92 there were attempts at neutralising it with ac-
counts exhibiting the opposite tendency: the governor Ḥasan b. Zayd preferred
Mālik’s opinions over those of his older colleague,93 as the governor did not
think much of Ibn Abī Dhiʾb in any case.94 And, contradicting this: during the
audience al-Manṣūr inquired after the great scholars of the city, and Mālik
mentioned Ibn Abī Dhiʾb among others.95 This conveyed the idea that Ibn Abī
Dhiʾb had not yet come to the caliph’s notice, and not been invited to an audi-
ence. Furthermore, al-Manṣūr was claimed to have had such high expectations
of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ that he asked him to compose it in such a way that it could
be used as a generally binding codex.96
In reality the relationship between the two scholars was rather different. Ibn
Abī Dhiʾb appears to have relied firmly on prophetic tradition, not admitting
any doubts.97 In the matter in which he clashed with Mālik the latter based his
argument of the consensus of the Medinan ʿulamāʾ, declaring the hadith Ibn
Abī Dhiʾb considered definitive, to be isolated.98 Ibn Abī Dhiʾb composed a K.
al-sunan that appears to have contained mainly hadiths arranged according
to legal topics.99 If we are to believe the slightly unreliable Ḥumaydī, this work
circulated in Spain under the title Muwaṭṭaʾ, like Mālik’s great compilation.
It was transmitted by Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl b. Abī Fudayk (d. 199/814–5), an-
other Medinan,100 and is still documented in the fourth century with a certain
Yūsuf b. Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Istijjī from Ecija southwest of Cordoba, who
91 Fasawī I 686, 8ff. > TB II 302, 8ff.; TB I 224, 2f. confirms that Ibn Abī Dhiʾb criticised Mālik.
92 Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb I 82, 6f. and earlier.
93 Ibid. I 126, pu. ff. (read Ḥasan b. Zayd for Ḥasan b. Yazīd); regarding another disagreement
ibid. 128, 7ff. = 227, 10ff.
94 Ibid. I 196, 6ff.
95 Fasawī I 685, –7ff.; Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 67, 3ff. and passim.
96 Cf. e.g. Pseudo-Ibn Qutayba, Al-imāma wal-siyāsa, ed. Ṭāhā Muḥammad al-Zaynī
(Cairo 1967) II 149, 10ff., including a revealing incorrect date (during the hajj in 163, i.e.
when al-Mahdī was already caliph). The event was in fact linked to al-Manṣūr as well
as al-Mahdī, and also al-Rashīd (cf. Schacht in EI1 III 224b, and Crone/Hinds, God’s
Caliph 86f.; less critical Cottart in EI2 VI 278q).
97 Schacht, Origins 55.
98 Ibid. 64f.
99 Cf. Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 281, –5f.; also Bağdatlı Paşa, Hadiyyat al-ʿārifīn II 7, –5f.
100 Regarding him cf. IS V 324, 10ff.; also Khalīfa, Ṭab. 693 no. 2501, where the name is misspelt
(correct in Akram Ḍiyāʾ al-ʿUmarī’s edition, Baghdad 1387/1967, p. 276, apu.).
was muʾadhdhin at the great mosque in Cordoba and died around 400/1010.101
Shāfiʿī frequently mentioned him in his Risāla, but always via another author-
ity; he furthermore doubted his reliability.102
Thus we cannot doubt that Ibn Abī Dhiʾb wrote hadith down. Wāqidī’s say-
ing that he did not have a book means simply that he did not use a book during
his lectures because he knew everything by heart.103 Information concern-
ing his method is not entirely unanimous. One source says he did not dictate
but let his students memorise the material;104 another one quotes Ibn Maʿīn
(d. 233/847) as an authority that he read his book to the students while they
copied it down without checking the text against the original.105 Ibn Ḥanbal
quotes someone who did have Ibn Abī Dhiʾb check his notes after all.106 Like
Muḥammad b. ʿAjlan he looked after the Abū Hurayra tradition, but he seems
to have paid more attention to the isnād, inserting a further authority between
Saʿīd al-Maqburī (d. ca. 125/742) and the famous companion of the prophet
who died around 58/678.107 The traditions he had heard and preserved from
Zuhrī were particularly controversial. Some doubted whether he had attended
his lectures at all,108 but those were merely retrospective attempts at evading
the problem. There is no doubt that he did meet Zuhrī.109 What caused the
controversy was the subject matter of some hadiths he had received in this way.
Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj was upset at certain ritual extravagances recommended;110
101 Ḥumaydī, Jadhwat al-muqtabis 344 no. 770 > Ḍabbī, Bughyat al-multamis 488 no. 1435,
with complete riwāya. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr knew this recension (Tamhīd VIII 17, 10ff.).
Regarding Yūsuf cf. also Ibn Bashkuwāl, Ṣila 637 no. 1490; he was born 326/938. Also Azmi,
Studies 152; and Goldziher, Muh. Stud. II 220 (with an incorrect date of death). Local
tradition already noted that in those days numerous Muwaṭṭaʾ texts were compiled in
Medina (Muranyi, Ein altes Fragment medinensischer Jurisprudenz 35; cf. also Schacht in
EI2 VI 264a). Examples by Muranyi in ZDMG 138/1988/132, n. 9; see also p. 782 below, and
regarding Egypt cf. ʿAbdallāh b. Wahb’s work (GAS 1/466).
102 Schacht, Origins 256, n. 6.
103 TB II 302, 6f.
105 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Kifāya 239, 5ff.
106 ʿIlal 179, 13f. The “book” of Ibn Abī Dhiʾb mentioned in another report of Ibn Ḥanbal’s is
probably also a collection of pupils’ notes (ibid. 109, 5f. = 374, 6f.).
107 Cf. Ibn al-Madīnī’s examples in ʿIlal 78, 3ff.; 84, 6ff.; 84, ult. ff.
108 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 231 no. 1452; an overview of the entire discussion is provided in TB II 303,
1ff.
109 Cf. the passages in Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān I 179, 1ff., and Ṭabarī I 1167, 9ff., and 1596, 10ff., where he
asks Zuhrī questions.
770 CHAPTER 4
elsewhere the prophet is quoted as saying the astonishing words ‘I do not

know whether Ezra was a prophet or not, whether Tubbaʿ is cursed or not, and
whether a ḥadd punishment expiates the sinner (’s respective crime) (in the
afterlife) or not”.111 In his old age Ibn Abī Dhiʾb regretted having developed an
interest in hadith not until comparatively late, having been a genealogist in
his youth.112
His piousness and scrupulousness ensured him a place in Ibn al-Jawzī’s Ṣifat
al-ṣafwa.113 Like many others at that time he fasted on alternate days.114 He
wore the same clothes in summer and in winter;115 he did not dye his hair in
his old age. 116 In the house his family owned on the “rock” (ṣafā) in Mecca, he
collected the rent himself. 117 The image is probably, as, indeed, it always is,
idealised, but it goes back to one of his brothers.
We know two of them by name: Mughīra (TB II 296, 17) and Ḥārith (Ibn
Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 264, 6f.). Two whole centuries after his death Muḥammad
b. ʿAbdallāh al-Rabaʿī (d. 379/989) wrote about him in Damascus; these
Akhbār Ibn Abī Dhiʾb are preserved on three folia in a collective manu-
script in the Ẓāhiriyya (GAS 1/203). Regarding him cf. also A. Yaḥyāābādī
in GIE II 651f.
4.1.2.3.2 Later Developments. Resistance against the Qadariyya

It was probably not only due to the tangled political situation that the mood
in the city gradually turned against the Qadariyya. Unlike in Mecca there had
always been active opposition against the Qadarites. The early Quranic com-
mentator Muḥammad b. Kaʿb al-Quraẓī (d. between 108/726 and 120/738), a
qāṣṣ and descendant of two formerly Jewish tribes in Medina, the Qurayẓa and
the Naḍīr, appears to have embraced the predestinarian exegesis.1 In Medina,
the idea that Adam’s sin had been written before creation and was consequently
111 Bukhārī I1 152f. no. 455. This is a tendentious tradition against hadiths like those collected
by Ibn Māja, Tirmidhī and Dārimī under the heading of al-ḥadd kaffāra (Conc. VI 38a).
Regarding the problem see p. 669 above.
112 TB II 302, 4ff.
113 Ṣifa II 98f.
114 TB II 301, 21ff.; also p. 407 above.
115 Ibid. II 302, 3f.
116 TH 192, 5f.
117 Ibid. 192, 5. He probably had no intention of offering it rent free during the pilgrimage (see
p. 718 above).
1 HT 59 and 82f. Of course, Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya’s quaestiones should also

be mentioned in this context because of their nearly purely exegetic content. Zayd b. ʿAlī
predestined, was first expressed in the form of a hadith;2 One of the trans-
mitters, the jurist and Quranic exegete Zayd b. Aslam (d. 136/753),3 was linked
to anti-Qadarite arguments elsewhere as well.4 Resistance spread especially
among the legal scholars. We have already mentioned Rabīʿat al-raʾy speaking
out against Ghaylān. While the arguments cited as Rabīʿa’s were stereotypical,
this does not mean the event itself did not take place; and even if it did not,
it is certain that Rabīʿa would be remembered by posterity as an opponent of
the Qadarites.5 Mālik composed a refutation of the Qadarites that Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ
considered to have been “one of the best works in this field”;6 he also appears
to have written to his pupil ʿAbdallāh b. Wahb7 on the subject.8 His Muwaṭṭaʾ
included a special chapter on the issue.9 Among his older acquaintances was a
certain Muslim b. Abī Maryam, a mawlā described as a severe opponent of the
Qadarites;10 he died during Manṣūr’s caliphate.11
A genuine persecution took place under al-Mahdī; Qadarites were beaten
and exiled from the city.12 The command may have come from above, as the ca-
liph had ordered his governor Jaʿfar b. Sulaymān b. ʿAlī, who resided in Medina
from 160/777 to 166/783,13 to send some prominent citizens to the court in
Baghdad to be investigated. Four names are mentioned: Abū l-Walīd ʿĪsā
was said to have composed a refutation of the Qadarites “based on the Quran” (Baghdādī,
Uṣūl al-dīn 307, 12f.). It might be worth considering whether this refers to the same text.
2 HT 165f.
3 Regarding him GAS 1/405f.; p. 761 above.
4 Anfänge 211.
5 Ibid. 205. It is not contradicted by a version preserved in Yaḥyā b. ʿAwn al-Khuzāʿī’s
(d. 298/911) K. al-Ḥujja which does not mention Ghaylān’s interlocutor (cf. M. Talbī in:
Revue Tunisienne de Sciences Sociales 12/1975/48 and 77f.). Regarding the versions
with the Syrian theologian Maymūn b. Mihrān cf. Anfänge 203ff.; subsequently entirely
restructured in Muḥammad b. Yūsuf Aṭfiyāsh, Sharḥ al-daʿāʾim (Lith. 1325) I 158, 10ff. – It
was also said that during his stay in Medina Ghaylān met Muḥammad b. Kaʿb al-Quraẓī
(Anfänge 225f.).
6 Tartīb al-madārik I 204, 8f.
7 Regarding him EI2 III 963, and GAS 1/466.
8 If, indeed, the two texts are not identical; Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ mentions one immediately after
the other. Talbi doubts the authenticity (loc. cit., 66). In this context the remark by the
Mālikite Abū Bakr al-Abharī is significant: that Mālik recognised the ambiguity of the
term qadarī and the opponents’ primacy when using it (Ibn Mattōya, Muḥīṭ II 409,
apu. ff.).
9 P. 898ff.; although this contains one single clearly anti-Qadarite tradition only (HT 60).
10 Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn II 141, ult. f.
11 Suyūṭī, Isʿāf 38, 14ff.
12 TB II 301, 10f.
13 Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 671, 4, and 694, 6f.
772 CHAPTER 4
b. Yazīd b. Bakr b. Dāb al-Laythī, ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd b. Qays al-Hudhalī, known

as Ibn Funṭus, ʿAbdallāh b. Abī ʿUbayda b. Muḥammad b. ʿAmmār b. Yāsir, and
Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr al-Usāmī. Nothing more is known of the
motive. It seems that the mood in al-Mahdī’s entourage was not favourable to
the Qadarites in general,14 but if he intervened in Medina particularly, there
must have been specific reasons. The ancient affinity between the Qadarites
and the ʿAlids continued to exist; Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Abī Yaḥyā best rep-
resents this trend in the second half of the second century.15
Only Ṭabarī names those who were summoned to Baghdad under al-Mahdī
in this context;16 the biographical sources barely register the event, at least not
with regard to these persons, not even mentioning two of the four. The first
one, an expert in poetry and genealogy, was considered to be harmless and was
respected by al-Hādī in particular; the second one was suspected of zandaqa
according to Bukhārī. This tells us that if the event was noticed in Iraq at all,
then only with regard to locally relevant criteria (zandaqa!).
Regarding Abū l-Walīd ʿĪsā b. Yazīd b. Bakr Ibn Dāb al-Laythī, d. 171/787,
cf. Jāḥiẓ, Bayān I 51, 1ff., and 324, 1ff.; TB XI 148ff. no. 5845; Yāqūt, Irshād
VI 104ff.; Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 181, 13ff.; Ṭabarī, Index s. n.; IAH III1 291
no. 1615; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 391 no. 1430; Mīzān no. 6625; Lisān al-Mīzān
IV 408ff. no. 1250; Ziriklī V 298. The involuntary sojourn in Baghdad ap-
pears to have been his springboard to success; once he had been cleared
of suspicion al-Mahdī thought highly of him (Irshād VI 105, 2ff.), and his
son al-Hādī even more so (cf. also Ṭabarī III 589, 1ff., and 592, 15ff.). His
literary knowledge and his style were in his favour; he brought not only
genealogical expertise but also ancient Arabian love stories from Medina
(Fihrist 103, 7ff., and 365, 16; the focus in GAS 2/392 is too limited on Laylā
and Majnun only). His father had been knowledgeable about the ancient
Arabs and their poetry (Bayān I 323, 10ff.); the son would also compose a
text praising ʿAlī (Nagel, Rechtleitung 390ff.; cf. also ch. C 1.4.3.1.1.4 below).
The material he employed was of Hijazi origin and consequently com-
paratively moderate; even so he was suspected of fabricating information
out of bias in favour of the Hāshimids (Irshād VI 109, 7; Suyūṭī, Muzhir II
14 T. Nagel, Rechtleitung und Kalifat 109f.

15 See p. 781f. below. The first of the four, Ibn Dāb, circulated an account according to which
Manṣūr humiliated himself before al-Nafs al-zakiyya, calling him the mahdī (Abū l-Faraj,
Maqātil 239, 1ff.).
16 Taʾrīkh III 534, 11ff.
414, 1ff.; Fück, Arabiya 38f.; also Ibn Munādhir’s and Khalaf al-Aḥmar’s
poems of vilification in Irshād VI 108, 5ff. and 14ff.). He probably simply
knew far too much Medinan family gossip; a fragment preserved by Fakhr
al-Dīn al-Rāzī recounts quarrelling among the Quraysh (Maḥṣūl II1 487,
ult. ff.). These polemics do not, however, mention an interest in Qadarism.
Regarding ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd b. Qays al-Hudhalī cf. Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 57
no. 327; Bukhārī III2 227 no. 741; IAH II2 197f. no. 919; ʿUqaylī II 316 no. 901;
Mīzān no. 4694; Lisān al-Mīzān III 377f. no. 1508; as a transmitter also
Ṭabarī I 3048, 1ff. He was the teacher of Ibn Abī Dhiʾb, among others.
ʿAbdallāh b. Abī ʿUbayda b. Muḥammad b. ʿAmmār b. Yāsir appears a
number of times as a rāwī in Ṭabarī (cf. Index s. n.) and the K. al-Aghānī;
he was an expert in poetry and was familiar with Kuthayyir’s Dīwān,
among others (GAS 2/409). His father was a well-known genealogist; his
grandfather Muḥammad, son of the well-known “Shīʿite” companion of
the prophet, was persecuted in 60/680 in Medina for being a follower of
ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr, and killed six years later in Kufa by Mukhtār for
being “the murderer of Ḥusayn” (Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara 406, 1f.; cf. Ṭabarī
II 224, 1ff., and 667, 8ff.). His father appears as an authority of Ibn Iṣḥāq’s
(cf. Ṭabarī I 1336, 5f.; and 1682, 3).
It is possible that Mahdī’s animosity towards the Medinan Qadarites was stoked
by a Medinan whom he had called to his court in Baghdad, and of whose po-
lemic writings several comparatively lengthy ones are extant:
Abū ʿAbdallāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Salama al-Mājashūn,
d. 164/780.17 He came from a respected family of scholars whose ancestor was

a man from Isfahan named Abū Salama. His actual name was not known for
certain later; Maymūn and Dīnār were mentioned, as well as Yūsuf.18 Only a
nickname was recalled besides the kunya: Mājashūn “rose-coloured”; Ḥusayn’s
daughter Sukayna was believed to have thought of it.19 It referred to Abū
17 Regarding him cf. the summary in Ziriklī, Aʿlām IV 145f.; Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam V 251; Muranyi,
Ein altes Fragment medinensischer Jurisprudenz 30ff.; briefly id. in GAP II 312, all with
more precise information on the sources. I occasionally diverge from these accounts in
some details.
18 Cf. TB X 436, 1; TT XI 388, 11; Zabīdī, Tāj al-ʿarūs IV 348, 6f. Regarding his origins in Isfahan
see Fasawī I 429, 11f.; Samʿānī XII 6, ult.; Abū Nuʿaym, Dhikr akhbār Iṣbahān II 124, 15ff.
19 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 252, 6f. Sukayna died in 117/735 (Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 514, 14).
774 CHAPTER 4
Salama’s ruddy cheeks, possibly implying that he looked as if he wore make-

up.20 He had probably been a slave, maybe travelled on business;21 there
certainly was no older recollection of him in Isfahan.22 He must have been
manumitted quite soon, as his sons Yaʿqūb and ʿAbdallāh were already known
as traditionists and legal scholars.23 Yaʿqūb was friendly with ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-
ʿAzīz when the latter was governor of Medina;24 he was the first of the “decent
people” to have an understanding of singing.25
The speed with which the emancipation took place was probably due to
the fact that the master to whom Abū Salama was tied in clientage, Munkadir
b. Hudayr of the Taym Quraysh, was himself a pious man. He had three sons
with an umm walad he had allegedly bought with a donation from ʿĀʾisha; all
three of them made a name for themselves,26 especially Muḥammad b. al-
Munkadir (d. 130/748), who is ranked among the early ascetics.27 Rabīʿat al-raʾy
was a mawlā of this family, too.28 The name Mājashūn, or Ibn al-Mājashūn,
passed to the following generations, which could lead to confusion as the
names as well as the kunya were repeated several times. A family tree will help
clarify the most important kinship relations:
20 Regarding mājashūn – muwarrad cf. Samʿānī XII 5, apu.; Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik I 360,
10 etc. The word was of Persian origin; it was in use in Medina as a colour term. Arab schol-
ars disagreed regarding the etymology (cf. Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, loc. cit.). The most like one is may-
gūn “wine-coloured” (thus TB X 436, ult. f.); māh-gūn “like the moon” is also suggested a
number of times (thus Qāmūs II 287, 13, and IV 270, 9 > Tāj al-ʿarūs IV 348, 8, and IX 341, 17).
However, the latter would only work as a metaphor of Abū Salama’s beauty – and is
indeed explained as such – not as the basis of the colour term. There was also a folk ety-
mology for the name (Fasawī I 429, 12f.; Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, loc. cit.).
21 Maymūn and Dīnār are typical slave names. Yūsuf may have been his original name, used
later by his grandson (see below). Could he have been from a Jewish or Christian family?
22 This is clear from the information Abū Nuʿaym provides. However, people pointed with
pride to the lane in Medina named after the family.
23 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 462, 3ff.
24 IKh VI 376, 8ff.
25 TD (ʿAbdallāh) 275, 5ff.
26 Zubayrī, Nasab Quraysh 295, 6ff.
27 TH 127f. no. 114; Ziriklī VII 333 with further sources. It is surprising that the father should
have been so poor considering that Abū Bakr was also a member of the Taym Quraysh. His
brother Rabīʿa b. Hudayr had also been a legal scholar (Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 461, 8).
28 Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif 462, 10f.; regarding relations between him and Abū Salama’s son
Yūsuf cf. TD (ʿAbdallāh) 275, 5f.
I: Abū Salama (d. 108/126–27?)29
IIa: Yaʿqūb IIb: ʿAbdallāh

(d. after 120/738)30 (d. 106/724–25)31
IIIa: Abū Salama Yūsuf IIIb: Abū l-Asbagh (?) IIIc: ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz

(d. 183/799 or 184/800)32 ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz33 (d. 164/781)34
IVa: Abū Marwān ʿAbd al-Malik IVb: Yūsuf36

(d. ca. 213/828)35
This reconstruction of a genealogy follows the usual sources, but is not

above all doubt. The long gaps in the chronology between the second and
third generations are particularly noticeable, but the occasional devia-
tions appear to be mistakes rather than genuine alternatives. Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ
doubles IVa’s line of ancestors behind IIIc, omitting IIb instead: ʿAbd
al-Malik b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Abī Salama
(Tartīb I 360, 5ff.). Immediately afterwards (360, –5), however, he men-
tions IIb as his grandfather (or ancestor: jadd). Samʿānī, Ansāb XII 5, 9,
inserts a further ʿAbdallāh between IIa and I (but not in all MSS), as does
Zabīdī, Tāj, loc. cit., where I has IIIa’s line of ancestors instead. According
to IKh VI 377, 14f., IIa died as late as 164/780; this, however, mistakes him
for IIIc. IIIb is attested only weakly; he is said to have left only three ha-
diths. The kunya Abū l-Asbagh is usually accorded to his namesake IIIc,
but he already had one of his own.
29 The date is noted in Zabīdī, Tāj al-ʿarūs IV 348, 6f.

30 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 671 no. 2394; IAH IV2 207 no. 863; summarised in IKh VI 376f., and TT XI 388f.
no. 749.
31 TT V 243 no. 421; IAH II2 70 no. 331.
32 TT XI 430f. no. 837.
33 Samʿānī XII 6, 1ff.
34 The scholar discussed here.
36 Witnessed by Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb I 360, apu.
776 CHAPTER 4
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Ibn al Mājashūn (IIIc) was rather well-respected as a jurist in

Medina, certainly a town crier named his office together with that of Mālik
b. Anas as the best in the city when the pilgrims arrived there in 148/765.37 He
was not on good terms with his rival; he mocked Mālik, who did not hold back
with derogatory remarks, either.38 He was able to impress al-Manṣūr and his
son al-Mahdī who visited Medina during the hajj. He flattered Mahdī during
an audience with a – not exactly original – paean,39 maybe in 153/770, when he
led the pilgrimage.40 Later it was said that al-Manṣūr appointed him his son’s
adviser in religious matters when they set out on their way home from the
hajj.41 This would have had to have happened in 152/769,42 but in fact Ibn al-
Mājashūn was summoned to Baghdad in writing, probably only after al-Mahdī
inherited the throne in 158/775.43 Now Mālik was the only one in Medina, as
Ibn al-Mājashūn would stay in Iraq until his death. He enjoyed great prestige
there; after his death Mahdī said the prayer over him and had him buried in the
cemetery of the Quraysh, whose mawlā he had remained formally all his life.44
He never felt at home among the Iraqi scholars in the few years left to him
in Baghdad. It upset him that they had given his friend Rabīʿa b. Abī ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān the sobriquet Rabīʿat al-raʾy,45 as it was aimed at him, too; he was a
jurist of the old school. If people requested hadith from him to confirm a legal
opinion, he could be quite gruff: “We are the ones giving the opinion!”46 In a
recently edited fragment of his K. al-ḥajj he quoted the Quran verbatim, but
the prophet only according to his meaning; he did not use a complete isnād,
either.47 This was normal in Medina; the report is confirmed by other fragments
37 TB X 437, 10ff.

38 Fasawī I 429, –4f., and 683, 6ff.; also 685, 7ff. In Mālikite tradition as preserved e.g. by
Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, this has been balanced out; Ibn al-Mājashūn’s respect for Mālik is emphasised
(Tartīb I 140, 10ff., and 166, 8f.; further passages cf. Index s. n. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Abī Salama).
39 Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ I 284, 6ff.
41 TB X 437, 14ff.
42 See p. 766 above. When al-Manṣūr led the hajj again in 158, he died in Mecca (see p. 732
above).
43 Fasawī I 685, 3f.
44 IS V 307, 3f.; TB X 438, 18ff.
45 Fasawī I 672, –6ff.
46 Ibid. I 429, apu.
47 Muranyi, Ein altes Fragment medinensischer Jurisprudenz aus Qairawān (Stuttgart 1985);
cf. the summary ibid. 85.
preserved among the ancient parchments in the chief mosque of Qayrawān.48

Some of his expert opinions remained common knowledge in the Maghreb,
Ibn Ḥazm recording, for instance, that Ibn al-Mājashūn considered someone
who deliberately omitted a prescribed prayer to be an apostate.49
In Iraq, on the other hand, the focus of interest was on his theological opin-
ions. At that time it was much less common there to refer to hadith as well as
the Quran in this field; his pronouncements may also have met with official
support. No fewer than three of them are still extant: a fatwā on the teachings of
the Jahmiyya,50 and two texts on the issue of qadar.51 They were all collected by
one single author, Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Athram (d. 261/875) from Baghdad,
a pupil of Ibn Ḥanbal’s, who included them in his K. al-sunna, from where Ibn
Baṭṭa knew them in whose work we find them to this day.52 This raises the
question of where they were composed: still in the Hijaz, or not until Ibn al-
Mājashūn’s later phase in Baghdad. It is not easy to answer. On the one hand we
have the riwāya, undisputed since Athram, on the other the fact that the two
qadar texts ultimately go back to one Egyptian only, Abū Ṣāliḥ ʿAbdallāh b. Ṣāliḥ
(137/754–223/838), the secretary of Layth b. Saʿd.53 This might argue in favour
of Medina, as relations between Egypt and the Hijaz were very close, especially
among jurists. On the other hand we do know that Abū Ṣāliḥ visited Baghdad
together with his employer. They set out in 161/778,54 which means that they
would have met Ibn al-Mājashūn at the height of his influence. Of course, this
does not rule out his having brought the texts with him from Medina.55 What is
certain is that the Iraqi Athram brought them back from Egypt.
There is no reason to doubt that they are genuine. The fatwā against the
Jahmiyya shares its wording with the first text against the Qadariyya saying
that those “who are firmly rooted in knowledge” (al-rāsikhūna fī l-ʿilm) stop
48 Thus according to information provided by Dr. Muranyi. The edited fragment was trans-
mitted by the predestinarian Abū Ḍamra Anas b. ʿIyāḍ among others (p. 20). It was prob-
ably part of an extensive Muwaṭṭaʿ work (ibid. 34f.).
49 Fiṣal III 229, pu. ff.
50 In more detail p. 785 below.
51 In more detail my short article in: WO 16/1985/131ff.
52 In his Ibāna al-kubrā; cf. the abovementioned article. Riḍā b. Naʿsān Muʿṭī’s incomplete
edition (1–2, Riyadh 1409/1988) unfortunately does not include the text with the excep-
tion of a fragment on p. 533f. cf. now Riyadh 1994, II2 240ff. nr. 1852. Regarding Athram’s
father Muḥammad b. Hāniʾ see p. 806 below.
53 Regarding him GAS 1/104; regarding Layth b. Saʿd see p. 806 below.
54 TB XIII 4, 8ff.; also IX 478ff. no. 5110.
55 Abū Ṣāliḥ also transmitted the K. al-ḥajj that was certainly composed in Medina (Muranyi,
Fragment 14).
778 CHAPTER 4
where their knowledge reaches its limit.56 This characterises Ibn al-Mājashūn’s
attitude. He was not a theologian; he thought it was not necessary to discuss
(jadal) or delve deeply into (taʿammuq) the issue of qadar, as that would only
lead us astray. It was sufficient to read the Quran, and especially those verses
talking of war, such as the battle of Badr. If these events had really depended on
humans, everything would have turned out quite differently. Ibn al-Mājashūn
does not interpret one single passage, but interweaves a number of entirely di-
verse passages: sura 9:14f., 3:154, 3:140, 8:17, 8:48 etc. His conclusion is the same
every time: humans are tools in God’s hand. God has no need of them even so,
as he can bring punishments without them. He annihilated Sodom with stones
hailing down from the sky. In other cases he used ruses (makr), leading the
evildoers gradually to their doom (istidrāj). The weakest can become strong
with God’s help; after all, Moses started in a wicker basket.
The reference to the battle of Badr recalls an argument used in Ḥasan
b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya’s Quaestiones which links suras 3 and 8 in this
context as well.57 Where Ibn al-Mājashūn begins to use theological terms,
however, we find certain similarities with the anti-Qadarite Risāla attributed
to ʿUmar II.58 This is not surprising in an author whose uncle, as we have seen,
was close to this very caliph; presumably the concept of the text, however gen-
uine, had already been formulated by that time.58a Qadar, Ibn al-Mājashūn
says, is God’s royal power (mulk, tamalluk);59 humans are merely “empowered”
(maqdūr ʿalā):
(God) grants him a good deed (razaqahū l-ḥasana) and then praises him
for it, or he decrees a transgression for him (qaddara ʿalayhi l-khaṭīʾa) and
criticises him for it. Because he praises and criticises him, you believe that
power is granted him (annahū mumallak); but you are forgetting that God
claims the decreeing for himself, because he grants power.60 (God) does
not dismiss him from his royal power by praising or criticising, and he
56 Regarding this and the following cf. WO 16/1985/133ff.

57 Anfänge 64ff.
58a Possibly without the attribution to ʿUmar II (see p. 641 above).
59 Cf. the use of the verbal forms malaka and mallaka/mullika in ʿUmar II’s Risāla
(Anfänge 117, also 140 and 167; cf. also Cook, Dogma 149).
60 nasīta intiḥālahū l-qadar li-annahū mumallik. The pronominal reference is anything but
clear; intaḥala seems at least unusual expressed by God. However, with regard to the fol-
lowing, it is also difficult to refer qadar to humans.
does not excuse a transgression with the reason that he decreed it him-
self. He created him in such a way that he is (always) looking for his own
way;61 (man) knows this and criticises himself if he ignores it. (God) gives
him knowledge of the faculty of action (ʿarrafahū l-qudra), and (man)
believes in this and relies on it. His desire is directed at God, to give him
success, as he is aware of his royal power and has the certainty that it is
in his hands. Then, however, his aims make him commit a transgression,
and he retracts it by criticising himself . . . .
God, we discover, has “mixed” (khalaṭa) the way humans for which humans are
searching and the predestination. Consequently when doing good one hopes
for God’s help and accompanies one’s actions with words such as “there is no
power and no force but God”. When doing evil, which is after all decreed by
God as well, one assumes responsibility and says “I have no excuse for acting
contrary to God’s wishes”. When doing good, one describes oneself as weak,
when doing evil, as strong.
In the second text Ibn al-Mājashūn avoids these deliberations, but the basic
tendency is the same. He makes quite clear from the outset that all this talk
about qadar is only “innovation”. Like the ancestors, one should abide by the
Sunna (luzūm al-sunna). “Delving deep” is wrong, as they avoided it, too. If one
is tempted to ask “And how about the following Quranic verse?” or “And why
did God say this or that?”, one must remember that they, too, recited these
verses and understood them better than their descendants nowadays. They ac-
knowledged predestination, accepting responsibility for their sins at the same
time. The emphasis on the fideistic aspect in this text is probably linked to
the fact that we are looking not at a fatwā but at a letter of admonition; Ibn
al-Mājashūn says at the beginning that his intention is to offer advice to the
addressee (innī mūṣīka). As nothing is said about the latter’s identity, this may
well be literary form only.
Even if all this was written in Iraq, it is very much in the Medinan spirit. The
Qadarite approach retains a certain validity, at least subjectively. Maybe this
was why Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn claimed that Ibn al-Mājashūn was a Qadarite originally
and abandoned this belief only later.62 His legacy was not entirely lost in the
Hijaz, as he had a son who achieved eminence in Medina:
61 khalaqahū ʿalā l-ṭalab bil-ḥīla. Cf. the usage of ḥīla in sura 4:98.
62 TB X 438, 6ff.; Kaʿbī, too, mentions a “Mājashūnī” who was a Qadarite (Qabūl 215, 3).
780 CHAPTER 4
Abū Marwān ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (Ibn) al-Mājashūn,
d. ca. 213/828 at over sixty years of age, having known his father only in his youth.
He may not even have accompanied him to Baghdad. In his home city he adapt-
ed to circumstances, keeping on good terms with Mālik’s school. Consequently
Mālikite tradition quotes him frequently as a representative of Medinan legal
thought;63 Bāqillānī occasionally agreed with him on uṣūl al-fiqh.64 He debat-
ed with Shāfiʿī, but their discussions were difficult to follow as they had both
grown up in the desert.65 As for theology, the front had shifted slightly, and he
wrote a “Refutation of those who believe in the createdness of the Quran and
the faculty of action (istiṭāʿa, of men)”, i.e. presumably the Muʿtazilites,66 and
he railed against Bishr al-Marīsī.67 On the other hand he admonished Saḥnūn
(d. 240/854) in a letter to show restraint in matters concerning the image of
God (tashbīh) and the Quran.68 This probably explains the doctrine Ashʿarī
linked to him: that the Quran was half created, and half uncreated69 – not so
much as a firm theological opinion, but as cautious reticence making allow-
ances for both sides, similar to his father’s comments on qadar. He was, for
instance, unable to imagine that the text of sura 112 was created.70
We must bear in mind that this idea was probably formulated at a time
when the khalq al-Qurʾān had not been formally proclaimed; Dhahabī’s
account is dated to 209/824–5. Ashʿarī’s information could have been
found in slightly more detail already in a doxographical text by Sulaymān
b. Jarīr al-Raqqī (see p. 546 above). Furthermore, he only says “Ibn al-
Mājashūn”, which might just as well refer to the father, although the son
is more probable. Ritter already identified the name in the index as his
(p. 625f.). Regarding him cf. IS V 327, 18ff.; Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 252, 6;
Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb I 360ff. (the form of the name is probably incorrect; see
p. 776 above); Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 148, 1ff.; IKh III 166f.; Mīzān no. 5226; Dhahabī,
Siyar X 359f.; Ibn Farḥūn, Al-dībāj al-mudhahhab II 6, 4ff.; Ziriklī, Aʿlām
IV 305; Turki in: Bājī, Iḥkām al-fuṣūl 858; also the witty anecdote in Ibn
al-Jawzī, Adhkiyāʾ 194, 3ff.
63 Cf. Muranyi, Ein altes Fragment 5f., and Materialien zur mālikitischen Rechtsliteratur 26
and 87f.
64 Bājī, Iḥkām al-fuṣūl 249 no. 162, and 276 no. 214.
65 Shīrāzī, Ṭab. 148, 2ff.; but cf. Bayhaqī, Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī II 344, 1ff.
66 Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb I 362, pu. f.
67 Ibid. 363, 11f.; Dhahabī, ʿUlūw 210, pu. f.
68 Ibid. 363, 4ff.
69 Maq. 586, 5f.
70 Dhahabī, ʿUlūw 210, –6ff.
The development we are able follow from father to son here is observable in
a similar form on the opposing side. Among the Medinan Qadarites Abū ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān al-Shāfiʿī mentions a certain
Abū Ibrāhīm (Abū ʿAbdallāh) Muḥammad b. Abī Yaḥyā Samʿān al-Aslamī,71
d. ca. 145/762,72 who like his father and his two brothers Anīs and ʿAbdallāh was
a client of ʿAmr b. ʿAbdnihm of the Aslam.73 The family may have come from
Basra.74 His son,
Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Abī Yaḥyā al-Aslamī,
d. 184/800, was an arrant heretic; he was named as a Qadarite, a Muʿtazilite,

a Jahmite and a Shīʿite.75 Ibn Saʿd did not like him.76 He may have been
the Muʿtazila’s contact in Medina; he was said to have studied under ʿAmr
b. ʿUbayd.77 ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/827) claimed to have asked him
in later years to confirm that he saw himself as a Muʿtazilite, and gave that as
the reason why he did not follow him to the mosque.78 The Muʿtazilite report
that Ibn Abī Yaḥyā invited Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ into his house, however, is faced with
chronological difficulties; it can only refer to his father, and is found in a rather
apocryphal context in any case.79 It is noticeable that the same context links
him to the ʿAlids of Medina, which appears to be based on a correct recollec-
tion. After all, Ibn Isḥāq, Muḥammad b. ʿAjlān and others had been close to the
Shīʿa, as was ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī although he distanced himself from him
elsewhere.80 In the case of Ibn Abī Yaḥyā this affinity went far enough for Ṭūsī
to include him in his Fihrist; the Shīʿites approved of his great expertise in the
71 Kaʿbī, Maq. 80, 1ff. > Faḍl 336, 4.

72 144 after Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 647, 12; 145 after Khalīfa, Ṭab. 677, 8f.; 146 or 157 after TT IX 523, 2f.
73 Khalīfa, Ṭab. 677 no. 2427–9; also IAH III2 282 no. 1522. Ibn Isḥāq also transmitted from
ʿAbdallāh, interestingly a tradition with a Shīʿite tendency (Naṣr b. Muzāḥim, Waqʿat
Ṣiffīn 448, 8ff.; cf. also Ṭabarī II 227, 10f.). Regarding his father cf. TT IV 238 no. 405.
74 Among Mālik’s alleged pupils Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ mentions a certain Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā (rather
than Abī Yaḥyā) al-Aslamī al-Baṣrī.
75 Fasawī III 55, 1ff., and 138, apu. f.; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 62ff. no. 59; Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī,
Maʿrifa 135, 11, and 136, 14f.; Mīzān no. 189; TT 158ff. no. 284. Baghdādī even achieved the
feat of appointing him head of a group of anthropomorphists (Farq 216, –4ff./228, 6ff.).
76 IS V 314, 12.
77 Thus after Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 253, 9f.
78 Presumably because it was attended by Muʿtazilites and he did not wish to pray behind
one of them (Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 106, ult. ff.).
79 Faḍl 239, 1ff. = 335, –6ff, > IM 33, 3ff; cf. p. 287f. above.
80 Cf. GAS 1/99.
782 CHAPTER 4
traditions of Muḥammad al-Bāqir and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq.81 All the same, he was
no Imāmite; he only – like Ibn Isḥāq believed ʿAlī outranked ʿUthmān.82 In his
old age he paid homage to Yaḥyā b. ʿAbdallāh while the latter was planning his
uprising in Daylam around 175/791–92.83 The accusation that he was a Jahmite
might go back to Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād (d. 228/843), a committed anti-Jahmite
and a not always conscientious traditionist, who claimed to have burnt several
of Ibrāhīm b. Abī Yaḥyā’s books because of his Qadarite and “Jahmite” teach-
ings.84 Maybe this combination of ʿAlid, Qadarite and “Jahmite” sympathies
was exactly what people at the time imagined a Muʿtazilite to be.
This negative image is cast into doubt by Shāfiʿī’s having attended his
lectures as a young man and attesting him great veracity, even including some
of his traditions in his own works.85 There are other casual remarks which tell
us that he was not entirely without prestige: he corresponded with the caliph
al-Mahdī86 and was said to have conducted a legal debate before Hārūn al-
Rashīd with Abū Yūsuf, in which he proved to be superior to the latter.87 Ṭūsī
mentioned a book divided in chapters concerning permitted and prohibited
things following Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq.88 He also claimed to have learnt, from an
81 Ṭūsī, Fihrist 16, 4f.; Najāshī, Rijāl with a commentary by Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Abṭaḥī
(Najaf 1389), p. 240ff.; Māmaqānī, Tanqīḥ al-maqāl I 30, 2ff. no. 169, and 33 no. 194;
Ardabīlī, Jāmiʿ al-ruwāt I 30f. One example of these traditions presumably in HT 20: with
a hadith in the Qadarite (!) style. Kulīnī, Mufīd and Ibn Bābōya also referred to him (cf.
Abṭaḥī, Commentary 243, 4ff.). For Nasāʾī, this was the very reason why he must have had
the reputation of being one of the greatest falsifiers of hadith (cf. Suyūṭī, Laʾālī II 473, 12f.,
and IKh V 256, 17ff.).
82 Yāqūt, Irshād VI 400, 6ff.; Madelung, Qāsim 132. Even the Imāmites had their doubts
(Māmaqānī I 30, 12ff.).
83 van Arendonk, Opkomst 290f.; also Madelung, Qāsim 74. Regarding the uprising see
p. 534f. above and ch. C 1.4.1 below.
84 Mīzān I 61, 1ff. The accusation would be more understandable if it were true that Ibrāhīm
b. Abī Yaḥyā had originally been an Ibāḍite, as Kaʿbī claimed (Qabūl 215, 3f.); in the
Ibāḍiyya the metaphorical explanation of anthropomorphic divine attributes, which
would later become characteristic of the Jahmiyya, was widely accepted (see p. 238f.
above). What is most important is that he circulated traditions against the vision of God
(see p. 786 below); Nuʿaym was very sensitive regarding this point (see p. 618 above).
85 Faḍl 253, 13f.; Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn I 105, 11; Mīzān I 58, 11ff. Also Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Ādāb
al-Shāfiʿī 178, 5ff.
86 Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 74, 2ff.; also Ṣafwat, Jamharat rasāʾil al-ʿArab III 168 no. 111.
87 Faḍl 253, 10ff.
88 Fihrist 16, 8ff.
unnamed Sunnite source, that Wāqidī (130/747–207/823) appropriated some

of Ibrāhīm b. Abī Yaḥyā’s writings and circulated them under his own name.89
The work of jurisprudence is probably identical with Ibn Abī Yaḥyā’s Muwaṭṭaʿ,
said to have greatly outshone his older contemporary Mālik b. Anas’ work
of the same name.90 This competition with Mālik could not have helped his
posthumous fame. While the Mālikites tried to integrate him, claiming that
he transmitted from Mālik,91 it was known that he had apostrophised Mālik,
who was very proud of his descent from the Southern Arabian princely house
of Aṣbaḥ, as their mawlā, thus incurring his enduring hostility.92 His desire to
outshine Mālik explains why Shāfiʿī referred to his texts: he was pursuing the
same aim.
Shāfiʿī was well aware of Ibn Abī Yaḥyā’s controversial reputation;93 he
omitted his name in the isnāds, replacing it with anonymous man lā attahimu
(min ahl al-Madīna).94 Ibn Ḥibbān’s attempt at explaining the quotations was
that Shāfiʿī, when he wrote books in Egypt towards the end of his life, did not
have access to any reliable (read: Iraqi) hadith collections and therefore relied
on his memory.95 However, Ibn Abī Ḥātim confirmed that he did tolerate Ibn
Abī Yaḥyā’s Qadarism,96 and was probably just considering the sensibilities
of his non-Medinan reading public. Scholars like the Kufan historian ʿAbbād
b. Yaʿqūb al-Rawājinī (d. 250/864) continued Ibn Abī Yaḥyā’s tradition.
89 He was unable to discover this for himself (Fihrist 16, 6ff.; quoted GAS 1/254, but incorrect
Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā).
90 Mīzān I 59, –4ff. after Ibn ʿAdī; also ḤKh 1907, apu. ff., with incorrect date. Goldziher, Muh.
Studien II 220, n. 2, quoted a commentary by Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī after this passage, but
it actually refers to Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʿ.
91 Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb I 257, pu.; cf. also the story ibid. I 244, –4ff.
92 Faḍl 253, 12f. Ibn Isḥāq made a similar claim concerning Mālik (see p. 758 above).
93 Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Ādāb al-Shāfiʿī 223, 2; he called him a Qadarite.
94 Risāla 448, 1, and 450, 1; regarding the identification Khadduri, Muslim Jurisprudence 273
after Bayhaqī, Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī. Cf. also Māwardī, Adab al-qāḍī 401, pu. ff., with 402, n. 1.
95 See n. 85 above.
96 Ādāb al-Shāfiʿī 223, 3f.
784 CHAPTER 4
Cf. Prozorov, Arabskaja istoričeskaja literatura 109; GAS 1/316f. with fur-
ther sources. Ṭūsī called him ʿāmmī al-madhhab (Fihrist 176, 8). – Ibn Abī
Yaḥyā probably died at the age of not quite 70. We can infer this from
the fact that he had a brother named ʿAbdallāh, called Saḥbal, who was
ten years older than he (IS V 314, 10f.) and died in 162/779 (thus accord-
ing to IS V 311, 5ff.) or slightly later (according to TT VI 20 no. 26) at the
age of 57; consequently he would have been born around 115/733. Cf. also
Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 178 no. 1108. In Maʿrifa III 55, 1ff., Fasawī mentioned two
further brothers, Muḥammad and Anīs, but presumably meant his father
and his uncle. His name was often abbreviated to read Ibrāhīm b. Abī
Yaḥyā (thus e.g. Jāḥiẓ, Bayān II 74, 2; AZ 307/7; Fasawī III 55, 1f.; Faḍl 253,
9f.; also Ṣafadī, Wāfī VI 165, 5ff.). Later biographers consequently do not
always avoid the mistake of noting him in two different places (for in-
stance Māmaqānī, loc. cit.). Ṭūsī’s claim that he was the client of a cer-
tain Aslam b. Afṣā is probably an error in view of the information we
have concerning his father. At the time the nisba al-Aslamī was gener-
ally derived from this name (but cf., later, Samʿānī, Ansāb I 238 no. 156).
Regarding him in general see also IS V 314, 10ff.; Bukhārī I1 323 no. 1013;
IAH I1 125 no. 390; Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 178 no. 1108; Ibn Ḥibbān, Majrūḥīn
I 105, 9ff.; Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ VIII 450ff., and TH 246f. no. 233;
Kaʿbī 80, 4f.; Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam I 96; GIE II 452f.
We do not hear much about Qadarites of the old school any more. A certain
Isḥāq b. Ḥāzim died sometime after the middle of the second century; ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān b. Mahdī (d. 198/813)97 transmitted from him.98 Isḥāq b. Muḥammad
b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Musayyabī died in 206/821–22.99 He was by far the most
respected Quran reciter of his time in Medina.100 In spite of his nisba he was
no direct relation of Saʿīd b. al-Musayyab, but he was a member of the same
clan, the Makhzūm. With him our tradition on the Medinan Qadariyya ends.
97 He was probably a Qadarite himself; see p. 89 above.

98 A Qadarite according to Mīzān no. 745 and TT I 229 no. 426; nothing in IAH I2 216 no. 740.
99 A Qadarite according to Mīzān no. 791 and TT I 249 no. 467.
100 Ibn al-Jazarī, Ṭab. I 157f. no. 734.
4.1.2.4 The Jahmiyya

There is just as little to report about the Jahmiyya in Medina as about the
Murjiʾa. Still, we do have the abovementioned expert opinion by Ibn al-
Mājashūn.1 He may have written it in Baghdad, but the case of Ibn Abī Yaḥyā
shows that a generation after him, Jahmite tendencies were found in Medina,
too. So far the point at issue was not the Quran but the image of God. Ibn al-
Mājashūn comments especially on the vision of God: those who deny it deny
the greatest honour God accords humans; but then Ibn al-Mājashūn also ac-
cepted those hadiths according to which God laughs or places his foot onto
hell. One must not inquire into the “how” (kayfa), as this would be meaningful
only with regard to changeable things.2 He is even more averse to theoretical
deliberations here than in the issue of qadar, appearing to reject not only the
Jahmites but also the theologising anthropomorphists. “If God claims an at-
tribute for himself or has it named by the mouth of the prophet, we, too, call
him thus, but we do not labour to find other attributes for him, not this and
not that one. We neither deny the attributes he claims, nor do we labour (na-
takallafu) to perceive something he has not claimed as an attribute”.3 Even if
he shows himself in all his beauty to the believers in the afterlife, this does not
detract from his sublimity; humans are given new eyes to perceive God as He
wills it.4
Especially when it came to the question of ruʾya it does indeed seem as
though there had been a “Jahmite” climate in the Hijaz of the heretic nature
of which people were ignorant for a long time. As we have seen, Mujāhid was
believed to have interpreted wujūhun yawmaʾidhin nāḍira ‫ ٭‬ilā rabbihā nāẓira
in sura 75:22f. metaphorically.5 Ibn ʿAbbās had already been reported to have
held similar views.6 Saʿīd b. al-Musayyab seems to have believed this, too.7 Ibn
Abī Dhiʾb transmitted a hadith from ʿĀʾisha which rejected emphatically that
1 It is extant in Ibn Taymiyya’s Fatwā Ḥamawiyya, who found it in Ibn Baṭṭa’s works
(Cairo 1387/1967, p. 28, –5ff.; also Majmūʿ fatāwā V 42, 4ff.). Dhahabī quotes part of the text in
ʿUlūw 177, 2ff., as does Lālakāʾī (Sharḥ 502f. no. 873). It was brought to light in its entirety by
M. Schreiner (in: ZDMG 53/1899/74ff.).
2 Fatwā Ḥamawiyya 29, 2ff.; his view of God’s sitting on the throne is found in Ibn Taymiyya,
Sharḥ ḥadīth al-nuzūl 126, –4ff. (after Ibn Abī Ḥātim).
3 Ibid. 30, 13ff.; also 29, 11f. Regarding the problem cf. Gimaret, Les noms divins en Islam 43ff.
and earlier.
4 Dhahabī, ʿUlūw 119, 4ff.
5 See p. 720, n. 20 above.
6 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mughnī IV 213, 10ff.; Malāḥimī, Muʿtamad 466, pu. ff.
7 Malāḥimī 466, –5ff.
786 CHAPTER 4
it was suitable for anyone to look upon God; as the speaker was the prophet,
this included him and his journey to heaven.8 Ibrāhīm b. Abī Yaḥyā passed on
comparable traditions to the Basran Muʿtazilites ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Rawḥ and
Abū ʿĀmir al-Anṣārī.9 The Iraqi “Jahmite” Muḥammad b. Shujāʿ al-Thaljī trans-
mitted from Ibn Abī Dhiʾb.10
8 Ibid. 488, 4ff.; regarding an ʿĀʾisha tradition with similar content cf. Anfänge 37.
4.2 Southern Arabia
4.2.1 Yemen
Yemen, like Medina, was among the losers during early Islamic history. The
cultural potential of the country was great, but the importance of the Yemenis
came into its own in Ḥimṣ and in Kufa.1 The region emerged from the shad-
ows for a brief period only, when Bādhān, the chief of the Persian garrison,
entered into negotiations with the prophet and converted to Islam. When the
Yemeni tribes rose up against the Ethiopian occupation around 570 they had
asked the Sasanids for support; there had been an Iranian contingent in Ṣanʿāʾ
ever since. The soldiers had married into local families; their descendants were
known as abnāʾ. Their position became increasingly precarious with the de-
cline of the Sasanid Empire during Heraclius’ campaigns; this was probably
why they sought to align themselves with the new power to the north. Insofar
as the ridda did affect Yemen, it started with other forces; after all, the tribes are
not greatly interested in Ṣanʿāʾ politics to this day. For a time, the abnāʾ were the
mainstay of Islam in the area surrounding the city.2
Under Dhū Nuwās, whose anti-Christian measures had caused the Ethiopian
intervention, the Hamdān living in the area around Ṣanʿāʾ had converted to
Judaism. This was the religious group with whom Islam had to come to terms
above all. When an opposition movement emerged in Yemen during ʿAlī’s ca-
liphate, the Hamdān renounced Islam; their leaders were killed and burnt as
a consequence.3 Some converts became a significant influence on emerging
religious ideas. Kaʿb al-aḥbār was only one example; he probably died in Ḥimṣ.4
The influence of midrashic tradition is also unmistakeable in the case of an-
other eminent Yemeni of the first century,

2 Cf. Caetani, Annali dell’Islam IV 415f.; Chelhod, Arabie du Sud II 17ff.; Shoufany, Al-Ridda 35ff.;
M. Fayda, Islâmiyetin Güney Arabistanʾa Yayılışı 66ff.; ʿAbd al-Muhsin Madʾaj M. al-Madʾaj,
The Yemen in early Islam 8ff.; Serjeant in: CHAL I 130; Bosworth in: EIran I 226ff. s. v. Abnāʾ.
Regarding preceding events see Crone, Meccan Trade 46ff.; regarding Ṣanʿāʾ in the early
Islamic period cf. G. R. Smith in: Serjeant/Lewcock, Ṣanʿāʾ 51f.
3 Ibn al-Kalbī, Aṣnām 10, pu. f.; Serjeant/Lewcock 391.
4 Regarding him EI2 IV 316f.
788 CHAPTER 4
Abū ʿAbdallāh Wahb b. Munabbih b. Kāmil,
d. early 114/732.5 He was a member of the abnāʾ and combined Isrāʾīliyyāt with
accounts of the ancient south Arabian past;6 he has been called the “Manetho
of the Southern Arabs”.7 He was a Qadarite, but probably on the basis of a sim-
ple practical piety that had not learnt to see this as a problem. His views would
still be known later, although orthodox tradition spared no effort to remove
their every trace. I have collated and examined the relevant material elsewhere.
Cf. Anfänge 221f.; also regarding relevant biographies. I regret having re-
lied too much on later sources; the accounts I found in Dhahabī’s Taʾrīkh
al-Islām are already documented in Fasawī (including a separate, albeit
brief, biography at II 29f.). This might also be said of the deliberations
in Khoury, Wahb ibn Munabbih I 189ff. and 270ff.; the author approaches
the subject matter with not enough method. Regarding the family tree
cf. Khoury 201 and Faruqi, Historiography 94; also the family tradition in
Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 400 no. 2680, and the material in Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh al-
Ṣanʿānī al-Rāzī’s (ca. 460/1068) Taʾrīkh Ṣanʿāʾ (p. 369ff., although it has to
be said that Rāzī has barely any old and independent information). To
the anecdotes I mentioned which were spread in an attempt to temper
Wahb’s Qadarite activity we must add Fasawī I 524, –6ff., where he re-
ports that Ibn ʿAbbās advised a group of debating men in Mecca to steer
clear of qadar (regarding Ibn ʿAbbās cf. also HT 116f., and Index s. n.). It
is not, in fact, certain that Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s companion in one of the sto-
ries I adduced Anfänge 221f. was indeed the Medinan ʿAṭāʾ b. Yasār as I
simply assumed there; the sources only call him ʿAṭāʾ, without giving the
full name. For the parallel passage in Fasawī II 29, 5ff., the editor suggests
ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ, which is more likely considering the area: the story
takes place during the hajj, and Ibn Abī Rabāḥ was a Meccan (see p. 718f.
above). Wahb has also been linked to ʿAṭāʾ al-Khurāsānī (see vol. I 113
above; cf. Khoury 270).
5 The date of his death is given thus precisely by Bukhārī IV2 164 no. 2565. Wahb was believed
to have lived to eighty. Regarding his grave in Ṣanʿāʾ cf. Serjeant/Lewcock 311.
6 These are extant in K. al-tījān; cf. Nagel, Alexander der Große 9ff. and 40ff. Cf. also Duri, Rise
of Historical Writing 30ff. and 122ff.; Faruqi, Early Muslim Historiography 92ff.
7 Cf. CHAL I 385.
His prestige as a scholar appears to have suffered from the abnāʾ’s precari-
ous social position. When ʿUrwa b. Muḥammad al-Saʿdī, governor of Yemen
since Sulaymān’s caliphate,8 appointed him qāḍī of Ṣanʿāʾ,9 he was not well-
received by the people. He was in a similar situation to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, and
the phrase used to express his lack of success is indeed the same: he “won no
praise” (lam yuḥmad).10 Soon afterwards, in 103/721–2, he was dismissed again.11
Later generations, however, focussed on the fact that he had held the office
during ʿUmar II’s time; they even had him correspond with the caliph.12 It was
also reported that he had already been a qāṣṣ in an official capacity for a few
years until 75/696 under ʿAbd al-Malik, while Ḥajjāj’s brother Muḥammad was
governor.13 It might have been during this time that al-Mughīra b. Ḥakīm, a
member of the abnāʾ,14 forbade him to take action against the Khārijites15 –
presumably in 71/690–91, when the latter were invading Ṣanʿāʾ under Qudāma
b. al-Mundhir.16 Towards the end of his life he appears to have been sent to
prison;17 the governor at the time, Yūsuf b. ʿUmar al-Thaqafī, unlike ʿUrwa
b. Muḥammad al-Saʿdī a foreigner, was said to have had him beaten to death.18
At his funeral, the thronging masses had to be pushed back with whips.19
If we are to believe Ibn Ḥanbal, Wahb’s Qadarite statements were found in
his ‘K. al-ḥikma’ in which he spoke of the sins of humans and denied that God
8 Cf. Khalīfa, Taʾrīkh 428, 11; 464, 14 regarding ʿUmar II’s time; 482, 13 regarding Yazīd II’s
time. In more detail Eisener, Zwischen Faktum und Fiktion 50.
9 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 400, –4f., after an account by Wahb’s great-nephew. The event mentioned
in Khoury 197 belongs in this context; Khoury, following Horovitz, assumes it much too
early.
10 Ibn Ḥanbal 142 no. 881; similarly Wakīʿ III 303, pu. ff. = Fasawī II 49, 6ff.; cf. p. 49 above.
We have no further information; the short passage in Ibn Samura, Ṭabaqāt fuqahāʾ al-
Yaman 57, 1ff., depends entirely on older sources.
11 Taʾrīkh Ṣanʿāʾ 377, 2f. It is altogether improbable that he should have held his office until
his death, as Yāqūt claimed (Irshād VII 232, 16).
12 Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 348, ult. ff.; cf. Khoury 196.
13 Taʾrīkh Ṣanʿāʾ 375, 2ff.
14 Regarding him Khalīfa, Ṭab. 732 no. 2651; IS V 396, 19f.
15 Taʾrīkh Ṣanʿāʾ 440, 2f.
16 Cf. Ibn Samura, Ṭabaqāt fuqahāʾ al-Yaman 53, 2f. with n.
17 Abū l-ʿArab, Miḥan 309, 5ff.
18 Khoury 198.
19 Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 137 no. 846 after the eyewitness account of a certain Abū Yūsuf
Muḥammad b. Wahb of the abnāʾ provided when he was 91 years of age. The detail is
intended to illustrate Wahb’s popularity, rather than recall troubles with sympathising
Qadarites.
790 CHAPTER 4
was responsible for them.20 A passage quoted by Abū Muṭīʿ Makḥūl al-Nasafī
tells us how this would have sounded: ‘Abraham, the friend of the compas-
sionate one, said: O Lord, I have read a passage (ḥarf) on the “sheets” (ṣuḥuf)
the meaning of which I do not know. God revealed: O Abraham, at the end of
time there will be people who will say that God predestined the sins of hu-
mans in such a way that they are forced to commit them. God says: They lie.
Woe to him who inquires into my secret!’21 On the other hand there are some
plainly predestinarian phrases attributed to him as well, for instance in Abū
ʿAmmār ʿAbd al-Kāfī’s Mūjaz.22 It is possible that the two positions merely re-
flect a later difference of opinion,23 but just as possible that Wahb simply did
not yet perceive the contradiction; after all, the “Qadarite” passage calls the
problem “God’s secret”.24 It is probably pure legend when Wahb is said to have
composed a separate text on the issue of qadar entitled K. al-qadar; it may
have been inferred from an (apocryphal) anecdote in which ʿAmr b. Dīnār is
talking to Wahb about something the latter “wrote about qadar”.25
Regarding Wahb’s works cf. Khoury 203ff. and GAS 1/306f. with second-
ary sources; also Abbott in: JNES 36/1977/103ff. Wahb’s “Ḥikma” is quot-
ed frequently, but it is difficult to grasp and presumably impossible to
reconstruct (regarding the problem cf. Khoury 263ff.). Only a thorough
analysis of its contents would be able to discover whether the material
traced back to it differs from that in Wahb’s alleged history of the pre-
Islamic prophets (K. al-mubtadaʾ) or not. – Concerning Wahb’s Tafsīr
(Khoury 205 and 272f.) it is advisable to consult MS Ankara, Saib 4216, to
which Ḥibshī, Maṣādir 14 refers; according to Ḥibshī the entire work was
incorporated into Ṭabarī’s commentary. Concerning the K. al-mubtadaʾ
(Khoury 222f.) Hermosilla (in: al-Qanṭara 6/1985/43ff.) refers to a diverg-
ing version in a Madrid MS. A passage on the prophet’s biography several
pages long appears to be extant in Ṭabarānī’s (d. 360/971) Muʿjam al-kabīr
(thus Azmi, Studies 104f.). This must be compared to the Risāla fī sīrat
al-nabī which Khoury edited in: Mashriq 64/1970/591ff. Cf. also Kister in
CHAL I 356f.
20 Khoury 271 after Abū Bakr al-Khallāl’s (d. 311/923) K. al-jāmiʿ lil-ʿulūm; cf. GAS 1/511f. Thus
also Laoust in: Mélanges Massignon III 20.
21 Al-radd ʿalā l-bidaʿ in: Ann. Isl. 16/1980/105, 4ff.
22 II 64, pu. ff.; once again as a ḥadīth qudsī.
23 In the Taʾrīkh Ṣanʿāʾ, for instance, all hints at Qadarite tendencies have been deleted.
24 Cf. HT 153f.
25 Fasawī II 281, 9ff.; also Khoury 271. Khoury’s remarks concerning the K. al-qadar on 270ff.
and 314f. are far too amorphous; and the references in GAS 1/935 are not helpful either.
One of Wahb’s pupils named Abū l-Ḥasan Muḥammad b. al-Hayṣam

b. Muḥammad al-Baghdādī composed a K. al-mustaḍīʾ one chapter of
which is extant in the MS Selimağa 587, fol. 176a–177b; it concerns ʿUzayr.
Kaʿbī’s counting Wahb among the Qadarites was based on Jāḥiẓ;
presumably his K. al-amṣār. Besides Wahb Jāḥiẓ also listed his brother
Hammām b. Munabbih (Maq. 85, 4f. > Faḍl 338, 16ff. > IM 135, 12ff.).
However, it is not possible to put this information in more concrete terms.
Some of the hadiths found in his extant ṣaḥīfa would later be drawn into
the qadar debate (cf. HT 57f.), but this does not mean that he himself
occupied a firm standpoint. The hadiths under discussion allowed differ-
ent interpretations (e.g. the examples ibid. p. 101ff., p. 163, p. 99, and even
p. 90), and the fundamental question to be asked would be whether ma-
terial someone transmitted always had to reflect that person’s own posi-
tion. As we know, several divergent dates were transmitted for Hammām’s
death (GAS 1/86). However, the records of a later date, between 131/749
and 133/751, are more probable; according to a remark by Wahb’s great-
nephew Ghawth b. Jābir b. Ghaylān b. Munabbih Wahb was the eldest of
four brothers, and thus not younger than Hammām, as claimed by Ibn
Saʿd (cf. Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 400, –5, and IS V 396, 8ff.; also Fasawī II 30, 2f.;
Marzubānī, Nūr al-qabas 351, 8ff., according to which Hammām was the
last of the brothers to die). The first Abbasid governor in Ṣanʿāʾ was said to
have said the prayer of the dead over him (Taʾrīkh Ṣanʿāʾ 421, 2ff.).

The fundamental question to be asked when Wahb is described as a Qadarite is
of course whether this is indeed a judgment on his person, or whether it relies
mainly on the texts and traditions attributed to him. It is more than probable
that, similar to the circle around Ibn Abī Najīḥ in Mecca, it is inferred mostly
from this material, and consequently depends on its authenticity which, in fact,
is anything but assured. The majority of Khoury’s studies ran aground amid
uncritical collector’s zeal. The counter-traditions mentioned initially may well
be directed against a personality who could already be a purely literary image.
In that case they might have to be dated slightly later; they are probably not
authentic in any case. Even so there are reasons why we should not embark
on radical scepticism. We hear that according to Muʿtazilite tradition Wāṣil’s
messenger to Yemen met with interest among certain of Wahb b. Munabbih’s
followers, who recruited themselves from among the abnāʾ.1 The movement
appears to have collapsed even before the Abbasid revolution; thus this is un-
likely to be an image of history thought up by later Yemeni Muʿtazilites. Much

792 CHAPTER 4
more likely is that Wahb had pupils who carried on his Qadarite convictions
after his death. Their origin among the abnāʾ may indicate that they were dis-
satisfied with the existing social order: Qadarite vocabulary would have been a
suitable means of expression in that case. Interestingly they were then drawn
into Ṭālib al-ḥaqq’s uprising.2
Some confirmation comes from the biographical sources. They mention a
few more Yemeni Qadarites, among them an alleged pupil of Wahb’s. This is
not very much, but we must bear in mind that our information on the intel-
lectual history of Yemen at that time is incomplete anyway. In the present case
this is illustrated by the different versions of the name. In a remark preserved
by Fasawī3 ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī lists three Qadarites known to him: the
Syrian Makḥūl, the Meccan Ibn Abī Dhiʾb and a certain Bakkār al-Yamāmī.
Now we do know that a certain Bakkār transmitted from Wahb;4 a compari-
son of the texts tells us that he was called Bakkār b. ʿAbdallāh,5 and Dhahabī
does indeed call him Bakkār b. ʿAbdallāh al-Yamāmī.6 If the isnāds are correct,
he can only have met Wahb in his youth, as the quotations in Abū Nuʿaym
show us that he transmitted to Ibn al-Mubārak (d. 181/797) and even to ʿAbd
al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/827). Of course the local scholars noticed this as
well; Bukhārī7 as well as Ibn Abī Ḥātim8 noted it. Ibn Saʿd completed the name,
speaking of
Bakkār b. ʿAbdallāh b. Sahūk,
a member of the abnāʾ living in Janad. Ibn Saʿd has him after Wahb in the
ṭabaqa.9 However, this more precise information presents us with a further
problem, for elsewhere we come across a Yemeni named
2 In more detail ch. C 7.2 below.

3 II 400, 2.
4 IAH IV2 24 no. 110.
5 Cf. e.g. Ḥilya IV 33, 5ff.; 48, 7ff.; 51, –6ff. and pu. ff.; 52, –9ff. etc.; Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifa II 165, 13
and 20.
6 Mīzān no. 1259.
7 Taʾrīkh I2 121 no. 1901.
8 IAH I1 408f. no. 1608. His nisba being al-Yamāmī rather than al-Yamānī in both these sources
should not present a problem; it may even be the correct form.
9 IS V 398, 6ff.
Bakr b. (al-)Sharūd al-Ṣanʿānī,
who was a Qadarite according to Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 277/890);10 Qāḍī ʿAbd
al-Jabbār took note of this and added his name to Kaʿbī’s list.11 He lived around
the same time, transmitting from Mujāhid’s son ʿAbd al-Wahhāb12 and from
Sufyān al-Thawrī (d. 161/778), from Mālik b. Anas and from ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s
teacher Maʿmar b. Rāshid.13 The reading of the name is not always consistent,
with Sharwas being used instead of (al-)Sharūd occasionally.14 More impor-
tant, however, is this: Ibn Abī Ḥātim emends the name to read Bakr b. ʿAbdallāh
b. Sharwas or Sharūd; Rāzī’s Taʾrīkh Ṣanʿāʾ clearly has Bakr b. ʿAbdallāh b. al-
Sharūd;15 which leads us to the question of whether we are simply looking at
a doublet. In that case Bakr would have been the defective spelling of Bakkār;
and the transition between Sahūk and Sharūd does not really pose any prob-
lems considering the duct of the papyri.16 It is not said anywhere that Bakr
heard hadith from Wahb; we must be prepared for the possibility that the in-
formation about him was inferred from reliable isnāds and that Bakkār = Bakr
was assumed to have been a pupil of Wahb’s based on an incomplete chain of
transmitters.
The mistake would not be so easy to explain if we had to read Sharwas

instead of al-Sharūd, but it is possible that this variant only emerged be-
cause one of Wahb’s pupils was a certain Abū l-Miqdām Ismāʿīl b. Sharwas
al-Ṣanʿānī (IS V 397, 10ff.; Bukhārī I1 359 no. 1138; IAH I1 177 no. 597; Mīzān
no. 895). One of his traditions is preserved in Ṭabarī I 778, pu. ff. (where
Sharwas is once again written incorrectly as Sadūs).
Ibn al-Sharūd was a Quran reciter; he had studied under Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbdallāh
b. Qusṭanṭīn (ca. 100/718–170/786) in Mecca, and probably also under Shibl
10 Mīzān no. 1286.

11 Faḍl 339, 1ff. > IM 135, 15 (incorrectly al-Sharīd instead of al-Sharūd, as also in Ḥākim
al-Jushamī).
12 Wakīʿ I 54, 9ff., where we also learn that he had a son named Ḥasan and a grandson
named ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.
13 Bukhārī I2 90 no. 1794; IAH I1 388 no. 1510; Mīzān no. 1286. Cf. also Qāḍī, Bishr b. Abī Kubār
al-Balawī 42.
14 Fasawī III 41, 5, and 53, apu. > Mīzān no. 1285 as well as 1286.
15 P. 303, 11, and 307, 11; thus also ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ I 149 no. 185. A brother of his named ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān is presumably mentioned in Sahmī, Taʾrīkh Jurjān 377, 9f.
16 Cf. Abbott, Rise of the North-Arabic Script, plate V.
794 CHAPTER 4
b. ʿUbād,17 and in Medina under ʿĪsā b. Wardān (d. probably around 160/777).18
He was a recognised authority in his field in Ṣanʿāʾ; we are told of a pupil he
had there.19 He might have adopted his Qadarite ideas from Shibl b. ʿUbād, but
then they were presumably still so widely held at that time that there was no
need to adopt them.
Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan b. Ātash
is mentioned as well. He transmitted from Hammām b. Munabbih among

others, and was a member of the abnāʾ; his grandfather still bore a Persian
name.20 Other Yemeni Qadarites were active in Syria, apparently working
closely with Ghaylān. The most important one was al-Waḍīn b. ʿAṭāʾ.21
4.2.2.1 Other Trends

Just how strong the Qadariyya was in Yemen, and how much remained of it by
the second century is difficult to say. If we are to believe Jāḥiẓ, Maʿmar b. Rāshid
al-Azdī, who died in Ṣanʿāʾ in 154/770, was a Qadarite, too.1 He had moved there
from Basra six or seven years before his death and transmitted Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s
Qadarite creed among other things in his K. al-jāmiʿ.2 However, the material
he collected survives only in his pupil ʿAbd al-Razzāq b. Hammām al-Ṣanʿānī’s
(d. 211/827) redaction,3 which shows him in a different light. The extensive Bāb
al-Qadar ʿAbd al-Razzāq included in his Muṣannaf 4 contains hadiths in sup-
port of the belief in predestination as well as others that qualify or even negate
17 Cf. Taʾrīkh Ṣanʿāʾ 303, 6ff., where Suhayl should probably be corrected to read Shibl.
Regarding Shibl see p. 726 above; regarding Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbdallāh b. Qusṭanṭīn cf. Ibn
al-Jazarī, Ṭabaqāt I 165f. no. 771.
18 Taʾrīkh Ṣanʿāʾ 307, 4; regarding him Ibn al-Jazarī I 616 no. 2510.
19 Taʾrīkh Ṣanʿāʾ 306, pu. ff.
20 A Qadarite according to ʿUqaylī IV 57 no. 1608; Mīzān no. 7386; Mizzī, Tahdhīb al-kamāl
no. 1187; TT IX 113f. no. 155. Nothing in Bukhārī I1 68 no. 156, and IAH III2 226f. no. 1252.
1 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Faḍl 344, 1> IM 139, 8f.

2 See p. 54f. above. Regarding him Faruqi, Historiography 271ff.; Qāḍī, Balawī 48ff.; Schoeler
in: Der Islam 66/1989/219; Motzki in: Der Islam 68/1991/9f. and earlier.
3 In vols. X–XI of his Muṣannaf, but elsewhere, too; cf. GAS 1/290f. and 99, as well as Ḥibshī,
Maṣādir 37ff.
4 Vol. XI 111ff.
it.5 Presumably Qadarite doctrine was not as controversial in Yemen as it was

in Iraq at the time. Consequently when it comes to ʿAbd al-Razzāq, people
did not note his views in this matter, but rather that he was a Shīʿite. He was
thought to have been converted by the Basran Jaʿfar b. Sulaymān al-Ḍubaʿī to
this denomination;6 later, he would himself convert others.7 His brother ʿAbd
al-Wahhāb had the same convictions; but as he was rather less well-known,
people did not look for reasons, nor did they have qualms about calling him an
“extremist”. He was also a predestinarian.8
All of this shows that the ties between Yemen and Iraq were comparatively
close, closer maybe than with the Hijaz. Among the scholars who travelled to
Yemen were Shāfiʿī from Medina, as well as the Iraqis Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn, ʿAlī b. al-
Madīnī and Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal and the Persian Isḥāq b. Rāhōya.9 Shāfiʿī’s school
was unable to take root for a long time; when Muqaddasī visited Yemen to-
wards the end of the fourth century, the Ḥanafites ruled the mosques in Ṣanʿāʾ
as well as Ṣaʿda.10 A century earlier the Zaydites under al-Hādī ilā l-ḥaqq had
gained a foothold in the north of the country, bringing Muʿtazilite ideas with
them. We do not know whether they could build on the ancient Qadarite tradi-
tion, nor whether ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī’s Shīʿism paved the way for them,
but as far as we can see, al-Hādī was not opposed because he was a Qadarite
or a Shīʿite, but for political reasons and because of his merciless implementa-
tion of religious law.11 Over time, Shāfiʿites and Zaydites would become the
two main influences within the world of Yemeni scholarship.
5 E.g. XI 113 no. 20070; 114 no. 20072, and especially 119 no. 10086.
6 Mīzān I 409, 8ff, and II 611, –7ff.; regarding him see p. 480 above. Regarding ʿAbd
al-Razzāq’s dislike of Muʿāwiya cf. Mīzān II 610, –4f.
7 Kohlberg in: JSAI 7/1986/146f. He allegedly transmitted Qays al-Hilālī’s aṣl from Maʿmar
b. Rāshid (Nuʿmānī, Ghayba 68ff. no. 8–12/245ff.; cf. GAS 1/525f.). Regarding his legal
sources cf. esp. H. Motzki, Die Anfänge der islamischen Jurisprudenz, p. 56ff.; a preliminary
summary in: JNES 50/1991/1ff.
8 Regarding him cf. ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 74f. no. 1039; Mīzān no. 5329; Lisān al-Mīzān IV 93f.
no. 174.
9 Qāḍī, Balawī 45ff.; regarding Shāfiʿī cf. ead., Riḥlat al-Shāfiʿī ilā l-Yaman bayna l-usṭūra wal-
wāqiʿ, in: Festschrift Ghul 127ff.
10 Aḥsan al-taqāsīm 96, 6; in more detail Halm, Ausbreitung 270ff.
11 Cf. D. Th. Gochenour, The Penetration of Zaidi Islam into Early Medieval Yemen (PhD
Harvard 1984). The author explains the Zaydites’ success as being mainly due to their
being able to transcend the traditional tribal structures. Interestingly, besides numerous
coins al-Hādī ilā l-ḥaqq had minted in Ṣaʿda, there is also one from Ṣanʿāʾ; it is being kept
in the Tübingen coin collection.
796 CHAPTER 4
4.2.2 Oman and Ḥaḍramawt

The intellectual history of the regions of Oman and Ḥaḍramawt would be even
more difficult to write than that of the Yemen. However, with regard to the
time under discussion here, at least we now have access to texts on which we
can draw.1 Initial studies have also been undertaken.2 The texts are of Ibāḍite
origin; they are our only source for the information that there were at times
members of other “denominations” in this corner of the Islamic world as well.3
Their focus is entirely on political theory, the question of imāma; there is not
much information on theology as such. It is also noticeable that they include
barely any quotations from the early Basran period; it seems that in Oman the
Ibāḍiyya felt much less culturally dependent than in the Maghreb.
The reason for this was that the Basran community had originally come from
Oman, and later merely returned to its homeland.4 Furthermore the Southern
Arabian Ibāḍiyya had achieved political independence early on under the pre-
tender Ṭālib al-ḥaqq, a member of the Kinda, who moved against Ṣanʿāʾ from
Ḥaḍramawt and finally captured the holy places in the Hijaz.5 In Yemen, there
had been a split at the very beginning, when Ṭālib al-ḥaqq was reluctant to let a
certain ʿAbdallāh b. Ṭarīf, who served in his army, marry his daughter, because
he was only a mawlā. This was not only a personal insult, but also in clear con-
tradiction to the officially proclaimed egalitarian principles.6 The dissension
was apparently fuelled by the fact that the Ṣufrites had earlier spread through
Yemen; the tribes who adhered to their doctrine would only later convert to
the Ibāḍiyya.7 A Nukkārite, a certain Hārūn b. al-Yamān, also found followers
1 Al-siyar wal-jawābāt li-ʿulamāʾ wa-aʾimmat ʿUmān, ed. Sayyida Ismāʿīl Kāshif, I (Cairo
1406/1986).
2 Especially J. C. Wilkinson’s studies, e.g. his book The Imamate Tradition of Oman
(Cambridge 1987); cf. also W. Rotholz’ essay in: Orient 27/2986/206ff., and S. I. Kāshif’s book-
let ʿUmān fī fajr al-Islām (Cairo [1399/1979]). A traditional interpretation may be found in
Sālim b. Ḥammūd al-Sayyābī, Al-ḥaqīqa wal-majāz fī taʾrīkh al-Ibāḍiyya bil-Yaman wal-Ḥijāz
(Oman 1980).
3 See p. 237 above. Lewicki studied the geographical distribution of the Ibāḍiyya in Southern
Arabia in: FO 1/1959/12ff.
4 See p. 2 and 231f. above.
5 See p. 736f. above; also Wellhausen, Oppositionsparteien 51ff., and Madʾaj, The Yemen in early
Islam 164ff.
6 Al-siyar wal-jawābāt I 209, apu. ff. Wilkinson, Imamate Tradition 342, n. 13, stood the facts on
their head; in addition Wilkinson reads Ṭurayf instead of Ṭarīf for reasons unknown to me.
Cf. also Lewicki, loc. cit. 15.
7 Al-Nāṣir li-dīn Allāh, Najāt 56, 2ff.; also Madelung in the introduction 5, n. 10a.
here;8 while ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd, who was believed to follow the same doctrine,
retired in the region.9 Ibāḍites who were determinists like him ruled the region
around Ḥajja until the beginning of the fourth/tenth century.10 These early
interdenominational quarrels do not appear to have played a part in Oman
and Ḥaḍramawt, where it was the political disagreements that were incisive;
at every change of power, letters containing recriminations and justifications
travelled back and forth.11
It was admitted that the theological impulses originated in Basra. The
ḥamalat al-ʿilm who had swarmed forth from there at the time of Abū ʿUbayda
al-Tamīmī had also gone to Oman; ʿAwtabī was still able to list their names.12
They do not tell us much; the only one with whom we are acquainted more
closely is Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb. As we have seen,13 he moved back to Oman for good at
the end of his life. A close friend of his, Abū Ayyūb Wāʾil b. Ayyūb al-Ḥaḍramī,
took the same step,14 “debating” with a Muʿtazilite in Oman15 and joining in
the public debate with his Sīra.16 Another Sīra was composed by one of Rabīʿ’s
pupils named Munīr b. al-Nayyir al-Jaʿlānī; it was a missive dealing with mat-
ters of history and political philosophy for the imam Ghassān b. ʿAbdallāh al-
Yaḥmūdī who reigned from 192/808–207/822–23.17 The most influential man
among those following Rabīʿ was Abū Sufyān Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl.18 He lived
in Basra, and raised his voice when Hārūn b. al-Yamān and his Nukkārite
views came to the fore in Southern Arabia; two letters he sent to Oman and
to Ḥaḍramawt are still extant today.19 Hārūn in his turn complained about
him, also in writing, to the imam al-Muhannā b. Jayfar (r. 226/840–237/851).20
Maḥbūb’s son Muḥammad (d. 260/874)21 also commented on theological
8 See p. 244 above.

10 Lahjī, Sīrat al-Nāṣir li-dīn Allāh 9, 12ff. Madelung. It seems that they wrote in a particular
duct (ibid. 10, –5f.).
11 Regarding the tribal organisation in Oman cf. Wilkinson, Imamate Tradition 73ff.
12 F. ʿUmar, Al-khalīj al-ʿarabī 115; cf. also ibid. 181.
14 Regarding him see Darjīnī 278, 1ff., and Shammākhī 105, 7ff.
15 See p. 237 above. This designation might also refer to a Basran Murjiʾite; the ‘Ghaylāniyya’
may have taken roots in Oman (ibid. n. 38).
16 Noted by Wilkinson in: Arabian Studies 4/1978/193.
17 Al-siyar wal-jawābāt I 233ff. Regarding Munīr b. al-Nayyir cf. Sayyābī, Izālat al-waʿthāʾ 43f.
19 Siyar 276ff. and 308ff.; regarding the controversy see p. 244 above.
20 Ibid. 325ff.
21 Regarding the date cf. ibid. 268, n. 2.
798 CHAPTER 4
matters with great authority; he appears to have lived in Oman all the time,
where he transmitted Rabīʿ b. Ḥabīb’s Musnad from his father.22 However,
when he declared in a circle of scholars that the Quran was created, he met
with criticism and had to recant publicly;23 it is likely that he believed in the
createdness of the names of God and drew the until then customary conclu-
sion.24 The majority of scholars believed that it was better not to touch on this
topic, as it had no basis in the Quran.25 Of his two sons Abū l-Mundhir Bashīr
and Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh, the former wrote a K. al-muḥāraba which
was seventy “volumes” long.26 Even at the end of the fourth/tenth century
Muqaddasī noted the influence of his teachings in the al-Maʿāfir area.27
In 237/851, Muḥammad b. Maḥbūb had paid homage to al-Ṣalt b. Mālik
al-Kharūṣī28 who had taken over the imamate as Muhannā b. Jayfar’s succes-
sor. He lived to a high old age and lost the position only in 272/886, possibly
because the duties of office became too much for him.29 This event caused
uproar in the community; people had to come to terms with the question
of whether an oath of allegiance, and with it the walāya, could be annulled
at all.30 Abū l-Muʾaththir al-Ṣalt b. Khamīs discussed this issue in two lengthy
treatises, one K. al-aḥdāth wal-ṣifāt and one K. al-bayān wal-burhān;31 a certain
Abū Qaḥṭān Khālid b. Qaḥṭān argued against him.32 The latter in particular
adduced numerous examples from history. Abū l-Muʾaththir also wrote on
22 Bishr b. Ghānim, Al-mudawwana al-kubrā II 306, 2.

23 Khamīs b. Saʿīd al-Shaqaṣī, Manhaj al-ṭālibīn I 204, –4ff.; cf. Wilkinson in: Ar.
Stud. 4/1978/193f., and Imamate Tradition 165.
24 Regarding the view he held after his “conversion” cf. Khamīs b. Saʿīd, Manhaj 212, –5ff.;
regarding his image of God in general ibid. 337, pu. ff. He denied the vision of God in the
afterlife and considered the literal interpretation of anthropomorphist attributes to be
shirk (ibid. 348, 1f., and 393, –4ff.). Regarding the problem within the Ibāḍiyya see p. 213
above and p. 808 below.
25 Siyar I 383, –5ff.
26 Kashf al-ghumma 293, 10f., with n.
27 Aḥsan al-taqāsīm 96, 7 (read Abī l-Mundhir for Ibn al-Mundhir). Regarding al-Maʿāfir cf.
EI2 V 895.
28 Siyar 25, 4f.
29 Cf. Wilkinson, Imamate Tradition 166ff.
30 Regarding the dissent cf. Kashf al-ghumma 283ff.
31 Siyar 23ff. and 155ff. Regarding him in general Kashf al-ghumma 293, 1ff.; he was blind
(Khamīs b. Saʿīd, Manhaj I 622, apu. f.).
32 Regarding him see ʿUbaydilī in Kashf al-ghumma 263, n. 1; his edited treatise: Siyar 86ff.
This has the simple title Sīra; regarding criticism of Abū l-Muʾaththir cf. p. 148, –7ff.
other legal issues.33 He appears to have witnessed the Qarāmiṭa invade Oman
from Bahrain and drove the imam ʿUmar b. Muḥammad b. Muṭarrif out,34 for
he published a fatwā sanctioning burning down the houses of those who had
joined them.35 When it came to theology, he was a true determinist; he thought
that even a human’s “acquisition” (kasb) was created by God.36 We do not have
a biography of him, or of other Omani scholars of the period.37
His pupil Abū l-Ḥawārī Muḥammad b. al-Ḥawārī composed a Tafsīr

khamsmiʾat āya that was printed in facsimile in Beirut in 1394/1974, but
this work is structured more like a legal treatise in accordance with its ob-
jective (see p. 589f. above). It does not cite any sources. The Tafsīr by this
Abū l-Ḥawārī, who came from the Nazwā region, must not be confused
with that by Hūd b. Muḥkim al-Hawwārī, who lived in the Maghreb dur-
ing the same time (see p. 734f. above).
33 Siyar 254ff.

34 Cf. Kashf al-ghumma 278, 3ff.; this has probably no direct connection to Ibn Ḥawshab’s
daʿwa (cf. Halm in: WO 12/1981/107ff.).
35 Siyar I 360, –5ff.
36 Khamīs b. Saʿīd, Manhaj I 436, 10ff.
37 A list of names, including those of a younger date, may be found in Khamīs b. Saʿīd
I 621, 1ff.
CHAPTER 5
Egypt
5.0 General Preliminary Remarks
Egypt in the early Islamic period is of course a true paradise for historians of
economics and administrative matters. The numerous papyri, later the materi-
al from the Cairo Geniza, offer a foundation for research that is not equalled by
any other province of the Islamic ecumene.1 When it comes to the intellectual
history during the pre-Fatimid era, however, unfortunately the opposite is true.
The sources are scant; there is not even any poetry worth mentioning dating to
the time before the Ṭūlūnids.2 For a long time the Arabs were a minority. The
Islamisation of the Copts was extraordinarily slow and not without setbacks;3
it only got into its stride once several uprisings during the second century, in-
cluding the last, great one under al-Maʾmūn in 214–15/829–30, had failed.4 But
even if it had been as quick as the conversion of the Iranians, it would not have
had the same far-reaching consequences for the theological development of
Islam, for the Coptic Church did not have much to offer intellectually. Its roots
were less in the cities than with the anchorites in rural areas. This rustic foun-
dation made it particularly resilient as the fellahin were slow to relearn,5 not
least because there was no incentive, as unlike in Iran, a conversion was not
the surest way to social advancement. The administration continued firmly
1 Cf. G. Frantz-Murphy’s research report in: MESA Bulletin 19/1985/34ff.

2 Cf. GAS 2/651ff.; more detailed study of the surviving material by Muḥ. Kāmil Ḥusayn,
Adabunā l-ʿarabī fī ʿaṣr al-wulāt 116ff. The section in CHAL II 412ff. does not refer to the early
period at all.
3 For a general overview cf. Lapidus in: IOS 2/1972/248ff., and Atiya in EI2 V 90ff. s. v. Ḳibṭ; also
Anawati in: Gervers/Bikhazi, Christian Communities 237ff. with reference to Arabic second-
ary sources. In brief also Frantz-Murphy in: JNES 40/1981/205. Cf. the conversion curve in
Bulliet, Conversion 92ff. Private documents were still written in Coptic as late as the second
century (W. C. Till, Die koptischen Rechtsurkunden aus Theben; Wien 1964).
4 Regarding the revolts cf. Kosei Morimoto, The Fiscal Administration of Egypt in the Early
Islamic Period 145ff. Lapidus’ claim that the Copts converted en masse after 215 is due to a
textual misunderstanding (cf. Friedmann in: JSAI 3/1981–2/239f.).
5 As presented very well in Crone–Cook, Hagarism 112ff.; with further material concerning the
development.

Egypt 801
in Christian hands;6 when the Fatimid al-Ḥākim attempted to change this at

the beginning of the fifth century, people immediately started talking of a po-
grom.7 And a convert would not be admitted to the new religious establish-
ment, because he was not sufficiently prepared intellectually.8 This was the
domain of immigrants; not all of them Arabs,9 but also some neophytes from
other provinces. Iranians appear to have played a particularly important part.10
It remains for us to ask to what degree the scholarship of Christian
Alexandria impressed the Muslims. After all, ʿUmar al-Kindī included a chap-
ter on the philosophers of Antiquity in his K. faḍāʾil Miṣr, which mentions
names such as Hermes, Pythagoras and Plato, but also Aratus, Hipparchus,
Heron, Archimedes and Diophantus.11 This is unusual in this literary genre, and
proves that people were proud of the legacy of Antiquity. The K. al-jārūf, which
was included in the Corpus Ǧābirianum, is sometimes attributed to a certain
Abū Saʿīd al-Miṣrī.12 The K. sirr al-khalīqa, too, which presents a Hellenizing
cosmology in an old-fashioned model in Arabic,13 has been located in Egypt,
as it recalls Hermetic writings in some ways.14 However, although Antiquity
was refracted by a Christian medium in Egypt, it did retain very heathen traits.
6 Regarding the administration in general cf. Morimoto’s study; also Falih Hussein,
Das Steuersystem in Ägypten von der arabischen Eroberung bis zur Machtergreifung
der Ṭūlūniden (Heidelberg 1982). Regarding the Abbasid period see also Kennedy in:
BSOAS 44/1981/32ff.
7 Cf. my study Chiliastische Erwartungen und die Versuchung der Göttlichkeit 31; also Halm
in: Der Islam 63/1986/34f.
8 Bulliet, Conversion 131f.
9 Thus Bulliet, ibid. 133.
10 Cf. R. Guest in: Festschrift Browne 163ff. Regarding the development in general see
U. Haarmann in: Ägypten, ed. H. Schamp, p. 122ff.
11 P. 32ff. The author is the son of the famous historian.
12 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist 423, 3; also Kraus, Jābir I, p. xx.
13 Ed. by U. Weißer, Aleppo 1979; cf. the study by the same author, Das ‘Buch über das
Geheimnis der Schöpfung’ von Pseudo-Apollonios von Tyana (Berlin 1980). F. Zimmermann
states that this book represents an older stage of Hellenising cosmology than e.g. the
so-called Theology of Aristotle, in: Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages 135. He also states
that it was not a translation from the Greek but genuinely devised in Arabic, in: Medical
History 25/1981/439f., as does Biesterfeldt in: WI 23–24/1983–84/544.
14 Thus G. Strohmaier in: OLZ 77/1982/121. One sign of its Egyptian origin may be that the
author quotes “philosophers” from Fayyūm and Ḥulwān, among them a certain Plato
who bore the sobriquet ‘the Copt’ (p. 28, 1ff.). However, we must bear in mind that
north-eastern Persia and Syria have also been suggested as its place of origin (cf. Weißer,
Geheimnis 9). After all, the only other reference to Plato the Copt and his colleague is
by Ibn al-Dāʿī (Tabṣira 6, 1ff.); and this is clearly based on the K. al-sirr al-khalīqa, even
802 CHAPTER 5
We need only recall that the ivory sculptures of naked deities which today
adorn the chancel of the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich II in the cathedral
in Aachen are agreed to be the handiwork of Coptic artists of the seventh
century.15 ʿAlī’s governor found zanādiqa in Egypt some of whom openly wor-
shipped the sun and the moon, while others claimed to be Muslims; ʿAlī or-
dered him to have the latter executed, but to leave the former in peace.16 Even
if one regards the well-known account of the burning of the Alexandrine li-
brary as a legend, it does show that some groups considered the knowledge
collected in it to be useless.17 A further factor was that Alexandria was now
situated on the border and vulnerable to any attack from the sea, whether from
the Byzantines or from pirates.18 The Muslims who came to occupy the gar-
risons probably had no particular regard for the city’s illustrious past.19 Under
ʿUmar II, at the turn of the second century, the famous school of philosophy is
believed to have moved to Antioch.20
though it is not mentioned explicitly. U. Rudolph has spoken in favour of its origin within
“Jahmite” theology, in: Akten XIV. Kongreß UEAI Budapest.
15 Cf. H. Stern in: Ars Orientalis 1/1954/128f.
16 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf XII 268 no. 12787.
17 Regarding the literary form of the legend cf. Goodman in CHAL I 468f.; it is documented
only later. In general Furlani in: Aegyptus 5/1924/205ff.; F. Altheim, Die Araber in der Alten
Welt II 27ff.; Wendel in: RAC II 241.
18 Regarding an attack of Spanish–Arab pirates on Alexandria around the turn of the third
century, which led to a 13-year occupation (199/815–212/827) cf. J. Aguadé in: Boletín
Asociación Esp. de Orientalistas 12/1976/159ff.; also Christides, Conquest of Crete 83ff.
These “Maghrebines” are probably the perpetrators of the burning of the Alexandrine
library accused by Bar Hebraeus, not the Venetians as Altheim, loc. cit., assumes.
Regarding the geopolitical significance of Egypt in the early Islamic period cf. Ayalon in:
Egypt and Palestine (Jerusalem 1984), p. 17ff.
19 Regarding the murābaṭa in Alexandria during the Umayyad era cf. Kindī, Quḍāt
Miṣr 326, 13.
20 Thus according to Masʿūdī and the physician ʿAlī b. Riḍwān (d. 453/1061), who thus add to
Fārābī’s account mentioned on p. 504, n. 17 above.
Egypt 803
5.1 Shīʿite Tendencies
The administrative centre was in any case in newly founded Fusṭāṭ, whose
inhabitants were not only Copts but also other Christians and Jews who had
accompanied the conquering army from Syria. The Muslims to whom lots of
land (khiṭaṭ) were allocated there were initially mainly from Southern Arab
tribes.1 This explains the early spread of Shīʿite ideas; there were probably links
to Kufa. Sayf b. ʿUmar claimed that the Syrians did not like ʿAbdallāh b. Sabaʾ’s
ideas and deported him to Egypt, where he captivated people by asking why
Muḥammad should not return, when, after all, Jesus was going to come back
to earth.2 This report is problematic for several reasons. The doctrine present-
ed as Ibn Sabaʾs is not the one usually linked to him: Muḥammad has taken
ʿAlī’s place.3 Early Egyptian historical tradition is not aware of these events
at all,4 and Sayf b. ʿUmar appears to narrate it only to provide a reason why
the Egyptians murdered ʿUthmān in the end. There is, however, Abū Zurʿa
ʿAmr b. Jābir al-Ḥaḍramī whose death the Egyptian historian Ibn Yūnus dated
to after 120/738, and of whom ʿAbdallāh b. Lahīʿa (ca. 96/715–174/790) was fond
of saying: “He would often sit with us, and then he observed a cloud and said:
That was ʿAlī who just passed us in the clouds”.5
Ibn Lahīʿa’s interpretation was apparently that Abū Zurʿa “was not quite
right in the head” (ghayr ḥaṣīf), which may be merely a way of saying that Ibn
Lahīʿa observed certain boundaries, as he was in fact intellectually rather close
to Abū Zurʿa. He was the latter’s pupil, and like him came from a family in
Ḥaḍramawt;6 if he really made this remark, it would have been most tactless
of him. It is possible that Ibn Lahīʿa started circulating apocalyptic hadiths to-
wards the end of the Umayyad era.7 He expected a mahdī of Ḥusaynid descent
1 Cf. Jomier in EI2 II 958 s. v. Fusṭāṭ, and Goitein, Mediterranean Society IV 12ff.; also Nagel,
Alexander in der frühislamischen Volksliteratur 77ff., and Kubiak, Al-Fusṭāṭ. Its Foundation
and Early Urban Development 93ff.
2 Ṭabarī I 2942, 1ff. This is probably not a reference to the resurrection, but to Jesus’ return
before the Last Judgment; the text says yarjiʿu rather than rajaʿa, thus locating the event in
the future.
4 Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 334, 25ff., is probably dependent on Ṭabarī.
5 TT VIII 11 no. 13; ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ III 263 no. 1269; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh V 113, –4ff., and Mīzān
no. 6341. Regarding him also Khalīfa, Ṭab. 760 no. 2788; Bukhārī III2 319 no. 2515; IAH III1 223f.
no. 1240.
6 ʿUqaylī, Ḍuʿafāʾ II 293ff. no. 867.
7 Cf. the material collected by Madelung in SI 63/1986/30ff.
804 CHAPTER 5
to unfurl the black banners in the east;8 he claimed to have heard similar words
from Abū Zurʿa.9 This does not seem to have caused any outrage, as he was
appointed qāḍī of Egypt in 155/770, on the order of al-Manṣūr from Baghdad.10
His tashayyuʿ was well-known;11 he was said to have expressed regret at never
having made the pilgrimage to Ḥusayn’s grave.12 The Heidelberg papyrus scroll
in which his hadith is written down without any attempt at arranging the con-
tents according to subject matter, contains only general fitna traditions, albeit
in comparatively large numbers.
Cf. R. G. Khoury, ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Lahīʿa (97–174/715–790): juge et grand

maître de l’école égyptienne (Wiesbaden 1986); esp. p. 50f. regarding his
tashayyuʿ. Later Egyptian historians such as Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Kindī
etc. quoted him frequently (cf. the references ibid. 72ff.). His grave-
stone is still preserved (cf. RCEA I 42f. no. 55). Regarding him in general
see also GAS 1/94, Khoury in: Arabica 22/1975/6ff., and Boiko, Arabskaja
istoričeskaja literatura v Egipte 86ff.
In the 1980s the hypothesis was advanced that the caliph found him a good
candidate because among his apocalyptic hadiths were some traditions ex-
pressing an Abbasid tendency,13 but it is not necessary to suspect him of quite
so much inconsistency or opportunism; all Manṣūr required may have been
that Ibn Lahīʿa, being a follower of the Ḥusaynids, should have no sympathy
for al-Nafs al-zakiyya. One of Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh’s son’s had travelled to
Egypt together with a dāʿī named Khālid b. Saʿīd al-Ṣadafī in order to drum up
support for his cause, but the governor had quickly suppressed the trouble-
makers. In order to prevent a relapse, al-Manṣūr had had the head of al-Nafs
al-zakiyya’s brother Ibrāhīm sent by post from Basra to Egypt, where it was
displayed on the walls of the ʿAmr mosque in Fusṭāṭ.14 Even so, the support
8 Madelung in EI2 V 1234a. I believe Madelung’s chronology to be rather too late.

10 IKh III 38, 9ff.; Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr 288, –7ff. It is not entirely true that he was the first
qāḍī appointed from the outside, i.e. directly by the caliph, as both texts claim (cf. Abbott,
Papyri II 123, n. 19; Khoury in: JNES 40/1981/201, n. 66).
11 Cf. Mīzān II 483, 3f. (after Ibn ʿAdī); F. Rosenthal in EI2 III 853. Cf. the hadiths given in
Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 375, –8ff., and 388, –6ff.
12 Shajarī, Faḍl ziyārat al-Ḥusayn 73, 7ff.
13 M. Q. Zaman in: Isl. Quarterly 32/1988/236ff.
14 Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 338, 25ff.; cf. also Muḥ. Kāmil Ḥusayn in: Isl. Res. Ass. Misc. 1/1948/78.
Egypt 805
of the population remained quite strong. Shāfiʿī paid homage to the imam
Yaḥyā b. ʿAbdallāh;15 some verses from his pen praising the ahl al-bayt survive
to this day.16 He was said to have been imprisoned in Iraq once because of his
Shīʿite ideas; after all, he came from a Hāshimid family. When, one generation
later, the preacher Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm al-Rassī travelled around the country he
gained so much respect that al-Maʾmūn sent a spy to ʿAbdallāh b. Ṭāhir’s house
when the latter visited Egypt in 211/826. The spy’s task was to test ʿAbdallāh
by inviting him to pay homage to Qāsim.17 The Zaydite image of history also
seems to have informed the works of Yaḥyā b. ʿUthmān al-Sahmī (d. 282/895),
an early local historian on whom Kindī relied frequently as well as on ʿAbdallāh
b. Lahīʿa.18 Traces of Shīʿite reimagining are finally found in the stories around
Alexander the Great which, despite now being linked to the Quranic Dhū
l-qarnayn, probably still awakened feelings of local patriotism; at the same
time they acquired a clearly Southern Arabian style.19
The veneration of Sayyida Nafīsa, the daughter of Ḥasan b. Zayd and wife
of Isḥāq b. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, who died in 208/823, should have been a clear
sign of Shīʿite popular piety. The population appears to have called for
her body not to be transferred to Medina (Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 441, –10ff.;
after him M. K. Ḥusayn in: IRA Misc. 91). However, legend must be sepa-
rated from reality first. Her tomb was not erected until the Fāṭimid era
(D. Russell in: Ars Islamica 6/1939/168ff.). Regarding her cf. EI1 III 893;
regarding her father Ḥasan b. Zayd see p. 746 and 765f. above.
15 HW 660a s. n. S̲h̲āfiʿī; cf. Muḥ. Kāmil Ḥusayn, Fī adab Miṣr al-Fāṭimiyya 12ff. Regarding
Yaḥyā b. ʿAbdallāh see p. 534f. and ch. C 1.4.1 above.
16 Cf. Muḥ. Kāmil Ḥusayn in: IRA Misc. 1/1948/81f.
17 Ṭabarī III 1094, 8ff./transl. Bosworth 169ff.; cf. also Ṭayfūr, K. Baghdād 146, 1ff./79, 11ff.
18 Regarding him see GAS 1/356, and Boiko, Arabskaja istoričeskaja literatura 28ff.
19 Nagel, Alexander der Große 77ff. and 101ff. Information on the founding of Alexandria may
be found in Masʿūdī, Ṭabarī, and other authors (cf. Shboul, Al-Masʿūdī and his World 116f.
and the literature cited there).
806 CHAPTER 5
5.2 Counter-Trends. The Ibāḍiyya
There had been counter-forces from the very first. From the governorship of
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Marwān (66/685–85/704), who governed the country on be-
half of his brother ʿAbd al-Malik, onwards the Umayyads had tried to keep the
Southern Arabs in check by settling Qaysites in Egypt; these newcomers spread
mainly in the countryside.1 Abū Sālim al-Jayshānī, a contemporary of Abū Zurʿa
al-Ḥaḍramī’s and a Shīʿite, too, lamented the fact that most Egyptians were
ʿUthmānites;2 he circulated a hadith in which the prophet warned that the “set-
tlers” (ahl al-ḥaḍar) might “devour” the Copts.3 Yazīd b. Abī Ḥabīb (d. 128/745), a
Nubian from Dongola, reported that he had to talk his parents, who worshipped
ʿAlī, out of these beliefs,4 boasting furthermore of having converted the entire
country – which had been ʿAlid in his youth – to the ʿUthmāniyya.5 He nar-
rated a fantastic story of an apple given to the prophet in paradise from which
a houri emerged claiming to be destined for the “martyr” ʿUthmān.6 Yazīd was
an influential man. He was said to have been the first to introduce the study
of legal traditions, the knowledge of “permitted and prohibited” in Egypt.7 He
was also a historian; Ibn Isḥāq was one of his pupils.8 The jurist Layth b. Saʿd
(94/713–175/791), who also studied under him, continued the ʿUthmānite cam-
paign.9 We would, however, like to know for how long, because when he was
in his late thirties the Umayyads abdicated, and ʿUthmānite slogans were not
suited to win their authors any laurels, or indeed favour with the authorities.
Regarding Layth b. Saʿd cf. GAS 1/520, and EI2 V 711f. with further referenc-
es; also Ḥusayn, Adabunā l-ʿarabī 47ff., Makki in: RIEIM 5/1957/174ff., and
Boiko 95ff. Ibn Ḥajar wrote a monograph about him (Majmūʿat al-rasāʾil
al-Munīriyya III 40ff.). He was of Iranian origin. His controversy with
Mālik b. Anas is of particular interest. Mālik had emphasised the Medinan
claim to leadership in the field of law in a letter; Layth rejected this and
stressed his own independence. The oldest source for this we have so far
is Fasawī I 687ff.; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya adopted the correspondence
1 Yūsuf Faḍl Ḥasan, The Arabs and the Sudan 33f.

2 Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh III 318, 6f. Regarding him cf. Dawlābī, Kunā I 184, ult., and Fasawī II 464, 1.
3 Dawlābī I 185, 11ff.
4 Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh V 184, apu.; TH 129, –4ff.
5 Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 334, 23ff.
6 Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 312, –7ff., and 314, 10ff.; cf. also p. 430, n. 33 above.
7 Khiṭaṭ II 332, –10f.; Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh V 185, 3f.
8 Cf. GAS 1/341f.; Khoury in: La vie du Prophète 14f.
9 TB XIII 7, 12f.
Egypt 807
from him. Cf. in detail Brunschvig in: Andalus 15/1950/379ff. = Etudes

d’Islamologie II 67ff., and also Khoury in: JNES 40/1981/194ff. Regarding
his continued activity in Spain cf. Makki, Ensayo 124ff. and 163ff.
The ʿUthmānite opposition was dealing not only with Shīʿites. Many from
among those who left Egypt in order to call ʿUthmān to reason, and ultimately
murder him, probably became Khārijites later; especially those Arabs who felt
socially disadvantaged would later be inclined to reject the establishment al-
together. When Sufyānid rule collapsed after Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya’s death, some
Khārijites from Egypt – whose names were not considered worth transmitting –
turned to ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr and asked him to appoint a new governor.10
This core group probably found support under ʿAbd al-Malik, when Ziyād ex-
iled numerous Azd families from Basra to the Nile in 53/673, because they were
suspected of having collaborated with Iraqi rebels.11 Not quite forty years later,
in 91/710, a group of malcontents gathered by the “lighthouse of Alexandria”
around a certain Muhājir b. Abī l-Muthannā al-Tujībī; the governor Qurra
b. Sharīk acted quickly and had around a hundred of them imprisoned.12 They
are occasionally described as Ibāḍites;13 it would be a very early record, con-
temporaneous with Jābir b. Zayd al-Azdī’s letters in Basra. Kindī also preserved
the information that a judge was arrested in 144/761 because he correspond-
ed with Abū l-Khaṭṭāb al-Maʿāfirī who had established an Ibāḍite imamate
in Tripolitania.14 Ibāḍite tradition did not start until comparatively late; an
Egyptian community was recorded in the second half of the second century.15
Around 170/787 there are reports of a jurist named Muḥammad b. ʿAbbād al-
Miṣrī whom the Rustamid imam ʿAbd al-Wahhāb consulted;16 Bishr b. Ghānim
quoted him rather frequently.17 He was believed to have studied under Abū
10 Regarding this development cf. Hinds in: IJMES 3/1972/450ff., and Rotter, Zweiter
Bürgerkrieg 153f.
11 The suwayqat al-ʿIrāqiyyīn in Fusṭāṭ was named after them (Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ I 298, 4f.; Ibn
Duqmāq, Al-intiṣār li-wāsiṭat ʿiqd al-amṣār, Būlāq 1893, IV 34, 3f.).
12 Kindī, Wulāt Miṣr 64, 9ff. > Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 338, 13ff.; cf. also Bosworth in EI2 V 500b.
13 Thus Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh IV 47, 4ff.; although he adds that they meant to murder the gover-
nor because he drank wine and listened to music on the occasion of the topping-out cere-
mony for the ʿAmr mosque. This does not agree with the date given by Kindī (cf. Creswell,
Early Muslim Architecture I 149f.).
14 Quḍāt Miṣr 362, 5ff.; regarding Abū l-Khaṭṭāb cf. Rebstock, Ibāḍiten im Maġrib 82ff.
15 Abū Zakariyāʾ, Siyar al-aʾimma 60, 3/transl. Revue Africaine 104/1960/138; also Lewicki in
EI2 III 653b.
16 Kitāb Ibn Sallām 110, 8ff.
17 Cf. Al-Mudawwana al-ṣughrā II 203, –6; 221. apu.; 223, apu., etc.; Al-mudawwana al-kubrā
II 22, 10; 23, 16; 130, 6 etc.
808 CHAPTER 5
ʿUbayda al-Tamīmī in Basra.18 In the first half of the third century we find a
jurist named Abū Ibrāhīm Muwaffaq who lived in the Ḥaḍramite quarter in
Fusṭāṭ; Ibn Sallām (d. after 273/887) heard about him from his father.19 We also
learn about a theologian:
ʿĪsā b. ʿAlqama al-Miṣrī,
who composed a K. al-tawḥīd. He appears to have studied under Abū l-Ḥurr

al-ʿAnbarī in Mecca20 and may be identical with ʿĪsā b. Abī ʿAmr who told the
historian Abū Sufyān of Abū l-Ḥurr’s arrest during Mukhtār b. ʿAwf’s coup
in 139/747.21 Ṭabarī mentions one ʿĪsā b. ʿAlqama who transmitted an account
on the military expedition against Byzantium led by Muʿāwiya in 31/652 to Sayf
b. ʿUmar (d. during Hārūn al-Rashīd’s caliphate, i.e. before 192/809).22 This, too,
might be the same man; in that case he would probably have lived in Alexandria.
Shammākhī devoted a very positive, but entirely derivative, entry to him.23
Abū Sufyān’s informant, we hear, was advanced in years. ʿĪsā b. ʿAlqama
would consequently have lived approximately between 100/719 and 180/796.
Cuperly, however, tried to date him a century later,24 prompted in particular
by everything the Ibāḍite sources said about the K. al-tawḥīd: that in this work
ʿĪsā b. ʿAlqama turned on those who had denied the eternal nature of God’s
attributes, comparing them to the heathen Aristotelians who also presumed
a materia prima originally devoid of attributes.25 Still, this would fit in rather
well with the last third of the second century. The opponents are the “Jahmites”,
who are documented in Basra and Medina at least at that time,26 and the ref-
erence to Aristotle’s “Dahrite” doctrine is not really surprising in the region
around Alexandria. Tawḥīd was already used in Ṭālib al-ḥaqq’s address as a
18 Shammākhī, Commentary on ʿAmr b. Jumayʿ’s ʿaqīda 72, ult. f.; regarding him cf. also
Ennami in: Ibn Khalfūn, Ajwiba 108f.
19 Kitāb 115, 9ff. The same section mentions a few more names; also Shammākhī, Siyar 122,
3ff.
20 Shammākhī 102, 4ff. < Darjīnī 271, 6ff. (where ʿĪsā is misspelt as ʿAlī); cf. also Shammākhī 101,
5ff. < Darjīnī 269, –7ff.
21 Thus according to an idea of Shammākhī’s (Siyar 113, 2f.). In this case the variant ʿĪsā
b. ʿUmar, transmitted for the latter (see p. 738 above), would then be incorrect.
22 Taʾrīkh I 2867, 18ff.
23 SIyar 122, –6ff., entirely after Abū ʿAmmār.
24 Introduction 70.
25 Abū ʿAmmār, Mūjaz II 189, 1ff.; quoted in brief by Shammākhī 122, pu. ff.
26 See p. 211ff. and 785 above. Regarding the discussion of asmāʾ al-ḥusnā and ṣifāt Allāh in
Ibāḍite theory cf. in general Khamīs b. Saʿīd al-Shaqaṣī, Manhaj al-ṭālibīn I 205, ult. ff.
Egypt 809
political–religious slogan and symbol of Ibāḍite identity; ʿĪsā b. ʿAlqama may

have been acquainted with him in his youth.27 Despite the attack on the Jahmites
this certainly does not refer, as it would have done among the Shīʿites in Kufa,
to the adoption of anthropomorphic ideas;28 ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd al-Fazārī, too,
had polemicised against those in the same place, in a book of the same title.29
Cuperly advances a second argument: Shammākhī himself wished to dis-

tinguish the early Meccan ʿĪsā b. ʿAlqama from the Egyptian of that name
(Siyar 122, ult. ff.). However, he himself came to a halt halfway, having first
considered identifying ʿĪsā b. ʿAlqama and ʿĪsā b. ʿAmr; he was probably
simply disconcerted by the Egyptian’s nisba. And it is true that nothing
else was known about the latter (cf. also Cuperly 183, n. 20); but it is by
no means improbable that he would have left the Hijaz after the coup
had failed.
The uprisings that erupted under the Abbasids repeatedly found the Arabian
tribes in opposition to the central power.30 Their influence was broken by al-
Muʿtaṣim and his successors’ decision to station Turkish troops in Egypt. This
put an end to the “pensions” on which the Arabs had lived, and the distinction
between Shīʿites and ʿUthmānites lost its fundamentum in re. The Southern
Arabs fought against these plans. We learn of incidents; as late as 256/870 an
ʿAlid in Upper Egypt expressed his displeasure.31 Of course, it was all to no avail.
Al-Mutawakkil had ruled in 235/849–50 that the ʿAlids living in Fusṭāṭ were to
be deported to Baghdad.32 At the time the governor had mitigated the measures,
but later, pressure would increase and ended in sheer discrimination: no ʿAlid
was permitted to ride a horse or to own more than one slave; he could not bear
witness any more: restrictions suffered only by ahl al-dhimma elsewhere.33
27 Agh. XXIII 227, 1; cf. p. 736f. above.

28 Cf. vol. I 409 and 423f. above.
29 Ibid. 477f. While Ennami assumes tha ʿĪsā b. ʿAlqama intended to refute him in turn
(Studies in Ibāḍism 286), I do not consider this particularly likely despite the fact that
ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd was a Nukkārite.
30 Regarding the following cf. Ḥasan, Arabs and the Sudan 35ff. and n. 93; also Ḥusayn in: IRA
Misc. 78ff., and Morimoto, Fiscal Administration 151ff.
31 Balawī, Sīrat Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn 62, apu. ff.
32 Kindī, Wulāt Miṣr 198, 7ff.
33 Khiṭaṭ II 339, 12ff. Ḥusayn points out that the Sudanese troops were anything but well-
disposed towards the Shīʿites (IRA Misc. 80f.). Regarding this period in general cf. S. I.
Gellens’ dissertation Scholars and Travellers. The Social History of Early Muslim Egypt 217–
487/832–1094 (Columbia University 1986).
810 CHAPTER 5
5.3 Implicit Theology. Hadith
There were barely any indigenous theological movements; nearly everything

was imported in one form or another. This led to some issues, which were pas-
sionately fought over elsewhere, losing a large degree of their virulence. One
of these was the question of qadar. While ʿUmar al-Kindī named Ghaylān in
his Faḍāʾil Miṣr as a native mutakallim,1 and the governor ʿAlī b. Sulaymān
once released two Qadarites, who were members of the Quraysh, from prison,2
these two reports are isolated and difficult to interpret. The population does
not seem to have shown any serious commitment. The inscription on a tomb-
stone of the year 179/795 emphasises the predestination of good and evil;3
al-Layth b. Saʿd, Shāfiʿī, and Abū Bakr al-Ḥumaydī (d. 219/834), the author of a
Musnad who accompanied Shāfiʿī to Egypt and remained there until the latter’s
death,4 were of the same opinion. On the other hand, ʿUmāra b. Wathīma
(d. 289/902) who, like Layth, came from an Iranian family, was able to quote
obviously Qadarite traditions of Basran origin in his K. badʾ al-khalq without
incurring criticism, even though he was writing at a time after the miḥna had
honed the sensitivity for dogmatic issues.5
The Jahmites with whom ʿĪsā b. ʿAlqama appears to have argued cannot be
grasped either. The image of God was probably strongly informed by hadiths
conveying popular concepts. The quṣṣāṣ lasted longest in Egypt;6 although this
trend, too, was reinforced by immigrants who brought the controversies of
other provinces with them. A central part was played by the traditionist
Abū ʿAbdallāh Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād al-Khuzāʿī
(d. 13 Jumādā I 228/17 Feb. 843). He came from eastern Iran; we have already
mentioned him briefly in that context.7 He had originally been a Jahmite, but
the qāḍī Abū ʿIṣma Nūḥ b. Abī Maryam, whose secretary he was in Marv, had
dissuaded him from such nonsense. He did not teach anthropomorphism by
any means; he was no theologian, and in Baghdad where he spent some time
1 P. 42, 7. Was this due to the fact that Ghaylān came from a Coptic family? (See vol. I 84 above).
2 Kindī, Wulāt Miṣr 131, 13ff.
3 RCEA I 43 no. 56; thus also ibid. 1 180 no. 237 regarding the year 219/834.
4 Regarding him cf. GAS 1/101.
5 Cf. E. Khoury’s edition, Wiesbaden 1978; examples see p. 71f. above. Regarding him cf. also
Nagel, Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ 157ff.; regarding the miḥna in Egypt see ch. C 3.3.4 below.
6 Cf. Pedersen in: Goldziher Memorial Volume I 233f.
Egypt 811
on his way from Marv to Egypt he was noted for his thorough knowledge of in-
heritance law.8 The sources that list him as a mushabbih together with Muqātil
b. Sulaymān or Dāwūd al-Jawāribī9 are probably generalising unduly. Still, he
was altogether unrestrained when it came to hadith. Dārimī used some of this
material in his Radd ʿalā l-Jahmiyya; Nuʿaym had heard the majority of the
traditions from ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak in Marv.10 He rejected divergent testi-
mony: when Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Abī Yaḥyā in Medina gave him a “book”
that showed his “Jahmite” conviction (presumably a booklet of hadiths some of
which were inferior), Nuʿaym did not use it, although he had spent a consider-
able sum of money on different notes by the same author in the past.11
Later, people would be greatly offended by his having spread the hadith ac-
cording to which the prophet saw God in the form of a youth wearing golden
sandals and sitting on the grass; they forgot that his version had at least pre-
sented it as a vision in a dream. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī devoted much time to
the matter.12 They were probably right; after all, Nuʿaym was believed to have
interpreted another hadith he transmitted to mean that God “as such”, in his es-
sence (bi-dhātihī) descended onto his throne.13 The Egyptians, however, do not
seem to have minded this. Nuʿaym met them halfway, with a K. al-fitan: they
had always been fond of this genre and now, after the great Coptic uprising in
the delta – at which time Nuʿaym was probably already in Egypt – these escha-
tological prophecies spoke even more directly to them than before.14 Nuʿaym
could venture to include in his book hadiths that expressed the anticipation
of an end to Abbasid rule, and thus spread them freely in his lectures. The
dynasty had disappointed many a hope; it was, or so a number of these apocry-
phal prophetic dicta pointed out, fettered by error and unbelief.15 People had
8 TB XIII 307, 4f.

9 Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs Iblīs 84, 5; ShNB III 224, 7 (with Text XIV 21, commentary); Shahrastānī
143, 5/405, 2ff.
10 Cf. Dārimī, Index s. n.; also TB XIII 307, 6ff.
11 Azmi, Studies 137; cf. p. 772 and 786 above.
12 TB XIII 311, 10ff.; also Ibn al-Jawzī, Dafʿ shubhat al-tashbīh 31, –6ff.; Suyūṭī, Laʾālī I 28, –4ff.
13 Dhahabī, ʿUlūw 116, 2ff. after Ibn Manda; Dhahabī could hardly believe it possible.
14 Cf. J. Aguadé, Messianismus zur Zeit der frühen Abbasiden (PhD Tübingen 1979); also id.,
La importancia del ‘Kitab al-Fitan’ de Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād para el studio del mesianismo
musulmán, in: Actas de las Jornadas de Cultura Arabe e Islámica, 1978, p. 349ff.; Nagel,
Rechtleitung 253ff.; Madelung in: SI 63/1986/8ff. Ibn Ṭāwūs made good use of this book in
his K. al-malāḥim wal-fitan. Nuʿaym was also the author of a K. al-ʿibāra on the interpreta-
tion of dreams, that made its way to Spain (Ibn Khayr, Fahrasa 267, 11ff.; also Aguadé in:
Navicula Tubingensis, Festschrift Tovar 1ff.).
15 Aguadé 113 and 118ff.
812 CHAPTER 5
observed the civil war between Hārūn al-Rashīd’s two sons,16 and expected that
someone would stand up to the distant Iraqi rulers: the Spanish Umayyads,17 a
Marwānid,18 the Sufyānī.19 It was not that they had great hopes of the change;
they had no illusions left. But it will have been noted with interest that it was a
man from Khorasan in particular who collected this material.
Consequently there is a certain consistency in Nuʿaym’s having fallen victim
to the miḥna towards the end of his life, although circumstances were not as
simple as they might seem. His doctrine was by no means as orthodox as one
might expect: “In his view there were two Qurans. That which is on the tablet
is the speech of God, but that which humans hold in hand is created”, we are
told by Maslama b. al-Qāsim al-Qurṭubī (293/905–353/964), a Spanish histo-
rian who had studied in Egypt under Ṭaḥāwī and was probably well-informed.20
This was a long way from the ideas attributed to Ibn Ḥanbal; in Iraq, Ibn Kullāb
and his circle came out of the miḥna reasonably well.21
Nuʿaym was simply not thinking in Iraqi categories, and to a Jahmite or
Muʿtazilite it was sufficient not to believe God’s speech to be created. Nuʿaym,
as we have seen, proved this e contrario: one would never, in a spontaneous
prayer (istiʿādha), call upon God by his speech, if this were created; after all,
one does not say “I take refuge with God by the speech of the jinn” or “of
humans”.22 Also: God would not be living if he did not speak, as the living are
distinguished from the dead by their actions. And as God is not created, his
speech is not created – as opposed to humans, whose actions are created, be-
cause the humans themselves are created.23
We do not know whether there were further reasons for his arrest. He came
from the same city as Ibn Ḥanbal’s family, from Marv, and he was a member of
the same tribe as Aḥmad b. Naṣr al-Khuzāʿī who was executed under Wāthiq.24
No entanglements can be proved, and when Aḥmad b. Naṣr had himself pro-
claimed the leader of a coup, Nuʿaym was already dead. It is possible that he
had personally angered the qāḍī who had him arrested, as the latter was a
Ḥanafite, appointed by Baghdad over the heads of the Egyptians.25 Nuʿaym,
16 Ibid. 125f.

17 Ibid. 139 and 144ff.
18 Ibid. 135.
19 Ibid. 136ff. and 149ff.; cf. esp. Madelung, loc. cit.
20 TT X 462, apu. f. Regarding Maslama cf. Mīzān nor. 8528; Ziriklī, Aʿlām VIII 122.
22 Bukhārī, Khalq al-afʿāl, in: ʿAqāʾid al-salaf 190, 3ff.
23 Ibid. 177, 11ff. This appears to me, at least, to be the sense of this abbreviated passage.
24 Cf. ch. C 3.3.2 and 3.3.3 below; regarding Nuʿaym’s genealogy cf. TB XIII 306, 4f.
25 In more detail ch. C 3.3.4 below.
Egypt 813
on the other hand, campaigned against Abū Ḥanīfa and his school, employing
a hadith26 and some dicta by Sufyān al-Thawrī;27 this was more than unusual
to anyone who came from eastern Iran. He was sent to Iraq to stand trial; he
died in prison there.
The chronology is not entirely free from contradictions. It was believed

that Nuʿaym was arrested in 223 or 224 (TB XIII 313, 16f.). The qāḍī who
arranged the arrest, on the other hand, Muḥammad b. Abī l-Layth al-
Khwārizmī, was not appointed until 226: the miḥna in Egypt only start-
ed with him. Furthermore Nuʿaym was said to have been imprisoned in
Samarra (TB 314, 1), and Samarra, too, was founded only around 223. There
are reports of people having heard hadith from him there (ibid. 306, 13).
An entirely traditionist spirit, and consequently implicitly anti-Jahmite, was

expressed by the K. al-zuhd composed by the “lion of the Sunna”
Abū Ibrāhīm28 Asad b. Mūsā b. Ibrāhīm al-Umawī
(132/749–212/827). He was the grandson of Ibrāhīm b. al-Walīd who was caliph

for a brief time after Yazīd III, born in the year of the Abbasid revolution and
one of the few Umayyads who escaped the massacre. He, too, was a stranger,
said to have come to Egypt while fleeing the Abbasids; when he showed up in
rags in Layth b. Saʿd’s lectures, the latter first of all helped him financially.29 The
extant form of the book presents us with some puzzles, as it does not primar-
ily discuss renunciation of the world (zuhd), but is a collection of traditions
leading to it: descriptions of hell and of the Judgment,30 which illustrate his
theological attitude. In the afterlife, humans will see God like the full moon in
the night, and already during the Judgment when one faces God on one’s own.31
The scales are as real as the prophet’s intercession;32 the latter resulting in the
26 TB 307, 12ff.; also TT X 460, 11ff. Nagel, Rechtleitung 274f., attributes it differently.
27 Fasawī II 783, ult. ff., and 785, apu. ff.; also 791, 5ff.
28 Regarding the kunya cf. Ibn al-Zayyāt, Al-kawākib al-sayyāra 166, –4; also regarding his
grave.
29 Cf. R. g. Khoury in: JNES 40/1981/193, and in EI2, Suppl. I 87f. His flight would later be
embellished with legends; he was in fact too young to have been aware of the worst per-
secutions (cf. WI 18/1978/231f.).
30 New edition by R. G. Khoury, Wiesbaden 1976, p. 39ff. regarding the title and the
transmission.
31 P. 72 no. 56ff.; cf. also 87 no. 96. Also p. 127 above.
32 P. 76ff. and 73ff.
814 CHAPTER 5
believers spending only a brief time in hell and then being rescued.33 However,
before they can enter into paradise, they must make restitution for all their
transgressions (qiṣāṣ). This even applies to the animals: a sheep that butted an-
other one will be held accountable.34 The idea sounds Basran, and indeed two
of these hadiths go back to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī via the Basran Qadarite Mubārak
b. Faḍāla.35 Asad was also able to refer to Ibn Lahīʿa.35a His collection shows
the degree to which even at that time hadith was imported into Egypt.36 It is
all the more noticeable that he does not refer to Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād, who after
all revised and emended Ibn al-Mubārak’s K. al-zuhd.37 He probably composed
his work at a time when Nuʿaym had not yet arrived in Egypt. As the numerous
samāʿ notes show, it was influential for centuries and widely studied among
the Ḥanbalites of Damascus during the Ayyūbid era.
A list of authorities and a detailed examination of the samāʿ notes may be

found in Khoury, ʿAbdallāh ibn Lahīʿa 134ff. The question of how complete
the text, which survives in two MSS, actually is, cannot be resolved as yet.
Ibn Khayr, who refers to it in his Fahrasa, appears to be familiar with
other sections as well (Khoury 40f.). Many hadiths Abū Nuʿaym quoted
in his Ḥilya on Asad b. Mūsā are not found in the extant text (cf. Khoury
in: SI 46/1977/95f/, and the list p. 96, n. 2). Regarding his oeuvre in general
see Boiko, Arabskaja istoričeskaja literatura 123ff.
Another document of significance for us is a missive Asad b. Mūsā addressed

to the Mālikite jurist Asad b. al-Furāt (142/759–213/828). It shows the extent
of his influence; Asad b. al-Furāt may well have been qāḍī of Qayrawān at the
time.38 It also shows the line to which he adhered: he warns of “innovations”
33 P. 89 no. 100.

34 P. 88ff. no. 99–103.
35a Cf. p. 596f. above, also regarding Muqātil b. Sulaymān.
36 Cf. Juynboll’s review in: BO 36/1979/242ff.
37 See p. 621 above. He did quote Ibn al-Mubārak himself, as is clear from Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam’s
Futūḥ Miṣr (cf. Khoury, Introduction p. 41), but maybe not until later and not after his
K. al-zuhd.
38 Regarding him cf. EI2 I 685, and GAS 1/467; also Khoury, Asad b. Mūsā 35f. and Muranyi,
Materialien zur mālikitischen Rechtsliteratur, Index s. n. Like Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād, he
came from Khorasan; he was one of the abnāʾ al-dawla (Dabbāgh, Maʿālim al-īmān II 3,
pu. after Abū l-ʿArab).
Egypt 815
and recommends following the Sunna,39 striking a tone that would be frequently
echoed in Egypt later. Khushaysh b. Aṣram, the author of K. al-istiqāma fī l-sun-
na which Malaṭī incorporated into his K. al-tanbīh wal-radd ʿalā ahl al-ahwāʾ
wal-bidaʿ, died here in 253/867.40 Ismāʿīl b. Yaḥyā al-Muzanī (175/792–264/877),
Shāfiʿī’s most eminent pupil, wrote a Risāla fī l-sunna in which he defended
the vision of God, and described the Quran as God’s uncreated word.41 Ṭaḥāwī’s
(239/853–321/933) well-known ʿaqīda continued the trend; he was a nephew of
Muzanī’s and had had his earliest instruction from him.42
An intellectual history of the first Islamic centuries must mention the

mystic Dhū l-Nūn (d. 245/860) in the chapter on Egypt. He, too, was a
victim of the miḥna and during its later stages was sent to Iraq, where
al-Mutawakkil received him in an audience in Samarra. Long before this,
the Mālikite ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Ḥakam (155/772–214/829) had criticised
him for openly circulating his mysticism. All the same, we know but little
about it, as he did not live in the delta but in Akhmīm in Upper Egypt,
where he had his own circle. By pure coincidence some of the names
are still known to us (cf. my essay in: WO 12/1981/99ff.), although we do
not know what happened there, as the material that found its way into
eastern sources – the only ones reporting on his teachings – has yet to be
examined. Cf. Massignon, Essai 2206ff.; M. Smith in: EI2 II 242 s. n. Dhū
ʼl-Nūn; A. S. Furat in: IA XIII 655f. s. n. Zünnun; Ayyad in: CHAL II 415;
GAS 1/643f. His tombstone has been preserved (RCEA II 28f. no. 440). The
date of his death usually given in the sources, 246/861, should be cor-
rected in accordance with it.
39 The text is found in Ibn Waḍḍāḥ, Bidaʿ I 7 = p. 159; cf. also the introduction, p. 86 and 90.
40 Cf. Malaṭī, Intro. yāʾ; general information in GAS 1/600.
41 Copied in its entirety in Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Ijtimāʿ al-juyūsh 72, 16ff.; not apparently
noted in GAS 1/492f. We know a supporter of the khalq al-Qurʾān from that time by name,
a certain Ibn al-Aṣbagh, the “leader of the Jahmiyya” in Egypt (Bayhaqī, Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī
I 466, 11).
42 GAS 1/439ff.
816 CHAPTER 5
5.4 Explicit Theology. Kalām
Records of theological debates are rare; we do not even hear much about dis-
putations with Christians.1 This may once again be due to the unsatisfactory
number of available sources; we do not learn much about juristic controver-
sies either, although Shāfiʿī began as nothing more than a dissenting Mālikite
and by no means met with unanimous agreement.2 Egypt had a theological
tradition; the name of ʿĪsā b. ʿAlqama stands for it, as does the fact that the
Gaon Saʿadya, born in Fayyūm in 270/882, had not left Egypt by the age of 23
when he began to publish his writings.3 His theological magnum opus, the
K. al-amānāt wal-iʿtiqādāt which he originally wrote in Arabic, was greatly in-
fluenced by Muʿtazilite ideas.4 It has to be admitted, on the other hand, that
the number of theologians we can locate in Egypt is not large; most of those
mentioned in the following are impossible to pinpoint with any certainty at
all. Only one of them is documented to have spent a considerable time in the
country:
Ḥafṣ al-Fard.
Ibn al-Nadīm seems to assume that he was Egyptian by birth,5 but the Egyptian
sources do not support this. They see him as a jurist (faqīh) who immigrated –
during the generation of Ibn ʿUlayya (d. 218/832), as Ibn al-Zayyāt adds in his
Kawākib al-sayyāra.6 Surprisingly, they do not know anything about his name
and his tribal affiliation. Ibn al-Nadīm mentions a kunya, Abū ʿAmr, but soon
adds a second one, Abū Yaḥyā;7 the Egyptians do not even note this much.
1 The “amīr ʿAmr” who conducted a conversation with the Jacobite patriarch John is not in
fact ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ, as Nau assumed (in: JA, 11e série, 5/1915/225ff.), but a governor from Syria
(cf. Graf, CGAL I 35f., and in more detail Suermann in: Zs. für Missionswissenschaft und
Religionswissenschaft 67/1983/122ff.).
2 See p. 820f. below. In general Brunschvig in: Andalus 15/1950/383ff. = Etudes d’Islamologie
II 75ff.
3 Sirat, History of Jewish Philosophy 18f.
4 Cf. the information in Sirat 22f. and 416ff.; the book was composed in Iraq. What little infor-
mation we have on Saʿadya’s Egyptian phase is collected in H. Malter, Saadia Gaon. His Life
and Works 32ff.
5 Fihrist 229, pu. f.
6 167, 7f.; also Kindī, Faḍāʾil Miṣr 43, 1. Ibn al-Nadīm’s saying that he “was an Egyptian” (kāna
min ahl Miṣr) may refer to the later years only, when Ḥafṣ did settle in Egypt.
7 Fihrist 229, pu., and 230, 1; the latter also in Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal III 54, 7f. In a story by Qāḍī ʿAbd
al-Jabbār (Faḍl 262, 4 and 8) we even find Abū ʿUthmān.
Egypt 817
His non-Egyptian origin is supported by his studying under Abū Yūsuf:8 as an

Egyptian he would not have got very far in his country with Ḥanafite law. As
regards theology he fell under the influence of Ḍirār b. ʿAmr; he was his most
prominent pupil and appears to have adopted large parts of his system.9 Due
to the chronology it is unlikely that he was Bishr al-Marīsī’s pupil (ghulām) as
well, as Suyūṭī claimed;10 Ḥafṣ may even have been the older of the two.
His years of studying were probably spent in Kufa, maybe also in Baghdad,
but then he came to Basra where, Ibn al-Nadīm tells us, he heard of Abū l-
Hudhayl, met him, and debated with him. Abū l-Hudhayl emerged victorious.11
This is straightforward Muʿtazilite school tradition, stating succinctly who
ruled the roost. It was not really as simple as all that. Of course Abū l-Hudhayl
disapproved of everything that came from Ḍirār’s school, as it was not inde-
terminist enough for his liking. The debate, however, did not finish with one
public discussion. Abū l-Hudhayl wrote a K. al-makhlūq ʿalā Ḥafṣ al-Fard and
later a K. ʿalā Ḍirār wa-Jahm wa-Abī Ḥanīfa wa-Ḥafṣ fī-makhlūq in which he
placed Ḥafṣ in a line of his spiritual forebears.12 Ḥafṣ replied – or had chal-
lenged him – with a K. al-makhlūq ʿalā Abī l-Hudhayl; he also composed Abwāb
fī l-makhlūq.13 The subject was the same every time: the question of whether
human actions could be created; maybe all these texts merely summarised the
results of the debates in a systematic form from different points of view.
Abū l-Hudhayl then went into detail concerning one particular question: he
criticised Ḥafṣ because of the latter’s ideas on the past and present aspects of
an action, on “he did” and “he does” (faʿala wa-yafʿalu), as he put it.14 This was
probably aimed at a K. al-istiṭāʿa composed by Ḥafṣ.15 According to Muʿtazilite
doctrine the faculty of action was always present in the moment before the
specific action; Ḥafṣ, because of his theory of makhlūq, which was probably
just as synergistic as Ḍirār’s, did not see this preparatory moment as quite so
important. However, we have no information on the detail of the debate; we
cannot even be entirely certain concerning the interpretation of the “gram-
matical” terms used in the title.
8 IAW I 223, 8.
9 Ashʿarī as well as other sources mention the two of them together a number of times
(cf. Text XV 3, 19, 35, 39, 41–42, 44–45; also Khayyāṭ, Intiṣār 98, 2, and Baghdādī, Farq 202,
1f./214, pu.).
10 Laʾālī I 5, 4.
11 Fihrist 229, ult.; cf. p. 479 above, also 455f.
12 Cf. Catalogue of Works XXI, no. 19–20.
13 Cf. Catalogue of Works XVb, no. 3–4. Regarding the terminology see ch. C 1.3.1.3 below.
14 Catalogue of Works XXI, no. 25; cf. also Text XXI 130.
15 Catalogue of Works XVb, no. 2.
818 CHAPTER 5
We are slightly better prepared for an examination of the argument over the
issue of makhlūq. While no original texts are extant in this area, either, Abū
l-Hudhayl’s eight arguments were briefly noted by Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār in a pas-
sage of his Mughnī, presumably referring to one of the two books mentioned
(probably the first one). The argument believed to be the most compelling one
consolidated into an anecdote surviving in at least two interdependent ver-
sions.16 It is Ibn al-Nadīm’s source; his historical note is thus inferred from pre-
viously de-historicised material. The anecdote does not, of course, tell us how
Ḥafṣ defended himself; he is simply playing the part of the fool. All the same,
the structure of one of his opponent’s arguments seems to suggest that he tried
to attack Abū l-Hudhayl’s theory that one and the same action might be good
under one aspect, but evil under another;17 his own approach was similar in
that human action was “created” by the human under one aspect and by God
under another,18 attempting a muʿāraḍa.
Another argument he may have discussed in a separate text probably

belongs here, too, in some form or other: that if faith is created by hu-
mans, they appear in a more favourable light, on balance, than God, who
also created pigs and monkeys (cf. Text XV 36 and Catalogue of Works
XVb). We do not, however, know whether Ḥafṣ embraced this idea, which
was really Ḍirār’s, unreservedly (see ch. C 1.3.1.5.1 below). Text XXI 86, r–s
seems to suggest that he believed only the commandment to be created
(cf. the commentary).
Ḥafṣ certainly spent some time in Basra. At times he was the pupil (ghulām) of
the natural philosopher Abū l-Ashʿath together with Abū Shamir, Muʿammar,
and others.19 Abū l-Ashʿath probably helped him financially, too. Ḥafṣ would
have been still quite young at the time. We should not date the controversy
with Abū l-Hudhayl too late, either, as the latter left Basra in 204/820;20 Shāfiʿī,
on the other hand, whom Ḥafṣ met in Egypt, died in that same year. As we
know, he had returned to Egypt for good in 198/814.21 Consequently Ḥafṣ’ and
16 Cf. my deliberations in ZDMG 135/1984/37ff.; also Text XXI 86. Further confirmation is
found in Ḥākim al-Jushamī, Risālat Iblīs 69, ult. ff.
17 Cf. ch. C 3.2.3.1.2.3 below.
18 Regarding Ḍirār see ch. C 1.3.1.3 below; in detail ZDMG, ibid. 42.
19 Fihrist 113, 18; regarding this circle see p. 42f. above.
21 Regarding the chronology cf. Schacht in: Studia Orientalia J. Pedersen dicata 319.
Egypt 819
Abū l-Hudhayl’s scholarly argument would have taken place early in the 90s.22
This was the time when Jāḥiẓ met him, too; he quotes him in his K. al-ḥayawān,
clearly without any dislike.23 When Ḥafṣ believed transforming humans into
animals (maskh) possible, Jāḥiẓ recalled that his teacher al-Naẓẓām had not
rejected the possibility outright, either.24 If we interpret the slightly obscure
passage correctly, Ḥafṣ simply interpreted maskh as qalb, transformation; in-
terestingly, Ashʿarī’s only text reporting an independent concept of Ḥafṣ’ deals
with his theory that God even had power to transform attributes into bodies
or, conversely, bodies into attributes.25 With all this in mind it is quite improb-
able that he “was a Muʿtazilite at first, and then embraced the createdness of
actions”, as Ibn al-Nadīm has it;26 Ḥafṣ was a Ḍirārite from the first.
Ibrāhīm b. Ismāʿīl b. ʿUlayya, in whose ṭabaqa Ḥafṣ arrived in Egypt, had left
Iraq in 198/813–14, apparently in connection with the purge of the supporters
of the khalq al-Qurʾān.27 Maybe Ḥafṣ left Basra for the same reason; maybe
he left earlier in order to avoid the arguments with Abū l-Hudhayl, the local
celebrity. He certainly does not seem to have played the part of the despised
refugee in Egypt. Shāfiʿī received him in his house.28 His grave would be vis-
ited for centuries to come; it was near Asad b. Mūsā’s in the cemetery of the
Banū Maʿāfir – a family known for their untold wealth.29 Abū Bakr al-Sijistānī
(230/845–316/928), son of Abū Dāwūd and a widely travelled traditionist
who had met Layth b. Saʿd’s pupils in Egypt,30 believed him to be the best
mutakallim of his time – he probably meant: of the non-Muʿtazilites – honouring
22 If we assume that the encounter with Shāfiʿī took place during the latter’s first visit to
Egypt between 188/804 and 195/810, we would have to push the date even further back.
However, Abū l-Hudhayl was probably not yet such an important man at that time; there
was also Aṣamm. Furthermore, Shāfiʿī’s first visit to Egypt is not very well documented
(Schacht, ibid. 319f.). For more information see below.
24 Ibid. IV 74, 4f. and earlier; cf. Text XXII 234.
25 Text XV 49. Later this would be interpreted as meaning that human actions, which are
in fact attributes, will be transformed into physical bodies at the Last Judgment in order
that they may be weighed (cf. Gimaret, Ashʿarī 512 with reference to Ibn Fūrak, Mujarrad
maqālāt al-Ashʿarī 172, 6ff.
26 Fihrist 229, ult.
27 See p. 476 above and ch. C 2.4 below.
28 Subkī, Ṭab. II 98, 7ff.; see below.
29 Ibn al-Zayyāt, Al-kawākib al-sayyāra 166, 17ff. Ḥafṣ’ grandson Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Ḥafṣ
was buried there as well.
30 Mīzān no. 4368, esp. II 435, 13f. Named especially is ʿĪsā b. Ḥammūd al-Miṣrī (d. 248/862),
who became an authority for Abū Bakr’s father and his Sunan (GAS 1/112f.).
820 CHAPTER 5
him above Walīd b. Abān al-Karābīsī (d. 214/829).31 Ḥafṣ probably was a suc-
cess in Egypt because he had studied natural philosophy in Basra, which was
the height of fashion at the time, together with Ḍirār’s atomism.
We do not know if it was only now that he acquired his sobriquet al-Fard. It is
more likely that he had had it from birth; it probably meant that he was the only
child. Now, however, it might also be interpreted as “Ḥafṣ the unique”. Shāfiʿī
seems to have been unimpressed, preferring to call him Ḥafṣ al-Munfarid – out
of awe, as only God seemed to him to deserve the description “unique”.32 Later,
when Ḥafṣ’ fame had paled in comparison with Shāfiʿī’s, the remark continued
to be transmitted, turning him into “Ḥafṣ the loner”. Copyists of the name –
and modern editors – thought nothing of according him a further dot and pre-
serving him for eternity as Ḥafṣ al-Qird “Ḥafṣ the monkey”.33
The anecdotes concerning his relationship with Shāfiʿī, too, always shifted
the emphasis in the latter’s favour, although the narrators were not always
entirely sure how best to go about it. Shāfiʿī might be presented as the bet-
ter mutakallim: in the “house of Jarawī”,34 Ḥafṣ’ remark that “faith” is merely
a word – i.e. the creed – “defeats” an Ibāḍite named Miṣlāq who claimed that
faith could increase and decrease. Shāfiʿī, who is present, suddenly realises that
he is closer to the Ibāḍite than he previously thought, takes up the thread of
the debate, and overcomes Ḥafṣ in his turn.35 Or: Ḥafṣ asks ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd
al-Ḥakam (155/772–214/829), the father of the author of Futūḥ Miṣr, and Yūsuf
b. ʿAmr b. Yazīd al-Fārisī (d. 204/819 or 205/820), both Mālikites, about their
views on the Quran. They evade the answer; Shāfiʿī, on the other hand, answers
bluntly: the Quran is the word of God, uncreated, and Ḥafṣ is an unbeliever.36

32 This interpretation is suggested by ʿAbbādī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya 55, ult. ff., who was the
only one to go into the matter (cf. Der Islam 44/1968/27f.); cf. also Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Ādāb
al-Shāfiʿī 194, ult. f. Regarding fard as one of God’s names cf. Gimaret, Noms divins 197ff.
33 Thus Ājurrī, Sharīʿa 81, apu.; Ibn Mattōya, Muḥīṭ in both editions (I 415, 7 ʿAzmī/I 435, 3f.
Houben); Mīzān no. 2143; Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya II 98, 7.
34 The Jarawī were members of a Southern Arabian clan at home, among other places, in
Egypt (Samʿānī, Ansāb III 257ff. no. 882). The one in question is in all probability ʿAlī
b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Jarawī, a high-ranking official whose name we know because his fortune
was embezzled by the Banū ʿAbd al-Ḥakam (Kindī, Wulāt Miṣr 455, 13ff., and 462, 15ff.).
Regarding this case cf. also ch. C 3.3.4 below.
35 Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Ādāb al-Shāfiʿī 192, 2ff.; Bayhaqī, Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī I 387, 5ff.; Abū Nuʿaym,
Ḥilya IX 115, –9ff.
36 Ibn Abī Ḥātim 194, 4ff.; Bayhaqī I 455, 6ff.; Dhahabī, Siyar X 32, 7ff. Slightly divergent in
Ājurrī, Sharīʿa 81, –5ff. A brief version in Bayhaqī I 407, 6f.; Dhahabī X 30, 12ff.; Suyūṭī,
Laʾālī I 5, 3ff.; Lālakāʾī, Sharḥ 252f. no. 418 and 421–3.
Egypt 821
The point here is the difference between the schools, as another son of
ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Ḥakam had refuted Shāfiʿī in writing “concerning the is-
sues on which he disagrees with the Quran and the sunna”;37 the anecdote
aims to demonstrate the mediocrity of this party explicitly.
Afterwards, however, the narrators remembered that kalām was not really
proper, and introduced Shāfiʿī’s mother to ask the jurist Yūnus b. ʿAbd al-Aʿlā –
who was considerably younger than Shāfiʿī38 – to keep her son away from
Ḥafṣ.39 Shāfiʿī himself, when someone approached him concerning a theologi-
cal topic, said: “Go ask Ḥafṣ al-Fard and his pupils, may God humiliate them!”40
or, still with regard to the same group: “Humans may be visited with anything
God has forbidden – it is still better than kalām”.41 An intermediate version is
found in an account alleged to be by Shāfiʿī’s Egyptian pupil al-Muzanī: Ḥafṣ
visits Shāfiʿī, and a lively conversation ensues. Muzanī finds he does not under-
stand anything, but Shāfiʿī tells him, it is better that way.42
The two also debated concerning legal issues,43 but above all their views
of history were entirely different. Unlike Shāfiʿī, Ḥafṣ had no sympathy with
ʿAlī, believing Abū Bakr to be the better man, and refusing to take sides with
either party in the battle of the camel. His preference, under certain condi-
tions, for a “Nabataean” over a Quraysh in the position of caliph was probably
also disagreeable to Shāfiʿī who was a member of the latter family.44 Ḥafṣ had
honed his skills in arguments with non-Muslims as well; he composed a pam-
phlet against the Christians (Radd ʿalā l-Naṣārā).45 There is also an account by
the Zaydite al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm concerning a religious debate with a Copt in
which Ḥafṣ played a part.46 It probably took place shortly after the turn of the
century. Qāsim visited Egypt between 199/815 (or slightly earlier) and 211/826.47
37 Cf. EI2 III 674b s. n. Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam.

38 TH 527f. no. 545.
39 Bayhaqī, Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī I 204, ult.
40 Suyūṭī, Ṣawn al-manṭiq 64, 14f.; Dhahabī, Siyar X 28, ult. f.
41 Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Ādāb al-Shāfiʿī 182, 3f. and n. 2.
42 Subkī, Ṭab. II 98, 7ff.
43 ʿAbbādī, Ṭab. 28, 6ff.
44 Text XV 42; cf. also ch. C 1.3.1.6 with regard to Ḍirār.
45 Catalogue of Works XV b, no. 6.
46 Cf. the text quoted by Abrahamov in: JSAI 11/1988/32, summarised by Madelung in
Qāsim 89f.; earlier referred to by Schreiner in: 18. Bericht über die Lehranstalt für die Wiss.
d. Jud., p. 5, n. 3, and Strothmann in: Der Islam 19/1931/233. Interestingly, the Copt denied
Christ’s godhead. Were there Judeo-Christians in Egypt?
47 Madelung 88ff.
822 CHAPTER 5
Ḥafṣ, on the other hand, probably died shortly after Shāfiʿī, as the remark by
Abū Bakr al-Sijistānī quoted above confirms.
Could the Egyptian tombstone listed in RCEA I 139 dated 205/820 be

linked to him? In that case we would know his full name: Ḥafṣ b. Sulaymān
b. Surayj al-Qurashī. He might then be identical with the Ḥafṣ b. Sulaymān
named as a transmitter by Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam once (Futūḥ Miṣr 50, 12).
Ḥafṣ was a Murjiʾite, as we can see from the definition of faith he maintained
in conversation with the Ibāḍite Miṣlāq.48 That may have been the reason why
he went to Kufa; and also why the heresiographers sometimes link him with
Bishr al-Marīsī49 or with Najjār.50 In Basra he may have joined Abū Shamir
and his school; his text against the Muʿtazila which Ibn al-Nadīm mentions
may have been composed there.51 Like Abū Shamir he did, of course, have
much in common with the Muʿtazilites. His. K. al-tawḥīd52 probably showed
quite clearly that anthropomorphism was not to his liking. Even so, their re-
lations were fundamentally disrupted. When Ibn al-Rēwandī tried to make
out that he was a Muʿtazilite, he indignantly rejected the accusation, pointing
out that Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir had described him as well as Ḍirār as Jahmites;53
even Jāḥiẓ, who appears to have held him in some esteem, left no doubt as
to his “Jahmite” background.54 Iskāfī, too, felt the need to criticise him.55 He
would seem to have had a specific reason: one of his nephews copied sever-
al of Ḥafṣ’ books.56 Clearly, they were still relevant in the second third of the
third century.
5.4.1 Theologians of Uncertain Affiliation

We have more than one reason to believe that Ḥafṣ was not the only Murjiʾite
theologian with ties to Egypt. If we are to accept Yāqūt’s account, Bishr al-
Marīsī’s nisba was linked to a region of Upper Egypt; marīs being the “southern

49 Ashʿarī, Maq. 515, 5ff.; cf. p. 817 above.
50 Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mughnī VIII 273, 4f.
51 Catalogue of Works XVb, no. 5.
52 Ibid., no. 1.
53 Intiṣār 98, 2ff.
54 Ḥayawān IV 74, 4f.
55 Catalogue of Works XXIX, no. 10.
56 Fihrist 230, 1.
Egypt 823
district” from Coptic ma “place” and rēs “south”.1 His origins were obscured
slightly by his having spent most of his time in Iraq, and by the heresiographers
applying systematic rather than geographical aspects. There was, however, also
a certain Abū Muʿādh al-Tūmanī to whom another sub-group of the Murjiʾa
owed its existence. Ashʿarī regarded him as a Basran,2 but Samʿānī believed
Tūman was a village in Egypt.3 Another group was linked to a similarly enig-
matic Abū Thawbān: but the only Abū Thawbān mentioned by Dawlābī was
Ḥasan b. Thawbān who was acquainted with Mufaḍḍal b. Faḍāla b. ʿUbayd al-
Qitbānī (107/725–181/797), a pupil of the jurist Yazīd b. Abī Ḥabīb, who was qāḍī
in Egypt twice for some time after 168/784–5.4 This might have been Ḥasan
b. Thawbān al-Hamdānī al-Hawzanī, a Southern Arab whom Marwān II had
appointed commander of the coastguard in Rosetta (thaghr Rashīd) and who
died in Ramadan 145/Dec. 762.5
Abū Muʿādh al-Tūmanī and Abū Thawbān left few traces. All we know about
the latter is thanks to Ashʿarī; eastern heresiographical tradition knows noth-
ing of him, not even Kaʿbī.6 Shahrastānī’s linking a number of Iraqi Murjiʾites –
and Ghaylān al-Dimashqī! – to his doctrine is simply his personal history of
dogmas.7 Circumstances are similar in the case of Abū Muʿādh al-Tūmanī;
once again Ashʿarī is the only one to provide independent information – more
than for Abū Thawbān, in fact. Listing him among the Murjiʾites is probably
copied from an earlier heresiographer; after looking at the separate families
of sects, he discusses him again as the head of a separate school he cannot
1 Muʿjam al-buldān V 118a s. v. Marrīsa; also Thaʿālibī, Thimār al-qulūb 531, 9; Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya
X 281,–6; IAW I 165, 9ff.; further evidence in Faḍl b. Shādhān, Īḍāḥ 309f., n. 2. Cf. also Miquel,
Géographie humaine II 157f., and Munro-Hay in EI2 VI 574f. s. v. Marīs.
2 Cf. Gimaret in: JA 173/1985/243.
3 Ansāb III 111, 6; quoted by Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān II 60 s. v. Samʿānī has no documentary
evidence for his assumption.
4 Dawlābī, Kunā I 133, 6ff. Regarding Mufaḍḍal b. Faḍāla cf. Mīzān no. 8733; Wakīʿ, Akhbār
III 237, 8ff. (regarding the date on which he took office p. 236, pu. f.); Kindī, Quḍāt Miṣr 377ff.;
Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Futūḥ Miṣr 244, 16ff. Regarding Yazīd b. Abī Ḥabīb see p. 806 above.
5 TT II 259 no. 479; named in Kindī 13, 10f., and 307, 14; also Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik I 424,
3f., with an opinion of ʿAbdallāh b. Wahb. Frequently quoted in Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Futūḥ
Miṣr (cf. Index s. n.).
6 Regarding the interdependences cf. Text II 23, commentary. Pessagno did not see the connec-
tions in his article in: JAOS 95/1975/388ff. and consequently translates differently, arriving at
a discrepancy between Ashʿarī and the later sources. In order to deal with this he then has to
evolve a complicated hypothesis of the course of development.
7 P. 105, apu. ff./267, 1ff.; cf. also Gimaret, Livre des Religions 425, n. 50.
824 CHAPTER 5
subsume under any of the larger groups.8 In this context he links him to a cer-
tain Zuhayr al-Atharī whom he also discusses separately, and about whom we
know just as little.9 Still, there appears to be more to this connection than just
the necessity of classification. The two theologians had some genuine points of
contact. Zuhayr, too, was a Basran in Ashʿarī’s eyes;10 Abū Muʿādh’s ideas went
beyond his, but cautiously. Zuhayr was ignored by authors such as Baghdādī
and Shahrastānī. While they included the two Murjiʾites in their works, they
did not know what to make of him. Ibn Taymiyya mentioned him once togeth-
er with Abū Muʿādh,11 as did Pazdawī.12 The latter did not have any new infor-
mation, having condensed the material to fill a mere three lines. On the other
hand he was not dependent on Ashʿarī as he knew that the name of Zuhayr’s
father was ʿAbdallāh, and listed him and Abū Muʿādh together as Qadarites.
They are probably based on a common source.
In spite of some uncertainty this allows us to gather some evidence for the
relative chronology. Abū Thawbān was certainly the oldest of the three; all we
know of him is his definition of faith. Zuhayr appears to have been a much
more comprehensive thinker; we shall see him amalgamating several trends.
Abū Muʿādh reacted to him; he would have been either his pupil or a colleague
debating with him. Both of them were probably only slightly younger than Ḥafṣ
al-Fard, as it seems that Jaʿfar b. Mubashshir (d. 234/849) quoted their views.13
Whether Zuhayr could be located in Egypt as well cannot be determined. Abū
Muʿādh might just as easily have met him somewhere in the east; Zuhayr’s
teachings would fit in quite well there, and after all it was the Transoxianian
Pazdawī who, besides Ashʿarī, remembered him in his work. The nisba does
not help, as al-Atharī is not derived from a place but primarily tells us that its
bearer attached particular importance to tradition (athar).14
8 Maq. 300, 1ff.

9 Ibid. 300, 2, and 299, 3ff.
10 Gimaret in: JA 173/1985/243.
11 Sharḥ ḥadīth al-nuzūl 154, 2f.
12 Uṣūl al-dīn 242, 4f., and 251, apu. ff.
13 In the section concerning the Quran which Ashʿarī quoted Maq. 589, 14ff. and 595, 5ff.;
cf. ibid. 593, 8ff. (also Catalogue of Works XXVII, no. 12). These might, on the other hand,
be insertions, as all other references in Jaʿfar are anonymous.
14 Samʿānī, Ansāb I 114, 10ff. Cf. p. 826f. and 830 below. I do not know why Daiber consistently
reads Athrī (Muʿammar 177 and 239).
Egypt 825
Abū Thawbān (Ḥasan b. Thawbān al Hamdānī al-Hawzanī?)
thought, like Faḍl al-Raqāshī, about the tension between rational knowledge
and faith. He did not, however, attempt to resolve it into a chronological se-
quence. He did not distinguish between knowledge before the revelation and
knowledge following the revelation, and he did not presuppose an a priori con-
cept of God. He appears to have been interested in the law only. There are,
he recognised, natural commandments comprehensible to the human mind.
They are not part of faith; every human must observe them.15 This does not
make him a believer, either; actions do not have any bearing on faith.16
Abū Muʿādh al-Tūmanī,
on the other hand, regarded faith, as did Abū Shamir, as a complex structure
which may be broken down into several elements (khiṣāl). His list of the ele-
ments differed slightly from Abū Shamir’s: he included ikhlāṣ, devoting oneself
exclusively to God, elevated to an ideal by the mystics; it was a step further
from tawḥīd which Abū Shamir valued so highly.17 Like the latter, he regarded
the components mentioned as pure abstractions. It was impossible to separate
them: by rejecting a single one, one would lose one’s faith. Consequently such
an element must not even be called “part” of the faith.18 The act of faith is
something indissoluble, “that which protects from unbelief”.19 Further corre-
spondences abound. Like Abū Shamir Abū Muʿādh was a Qadarite,20 and was
using Muʿtazilite terminology as well when he described the status of a grave
sinner using the verb fasaqa. Both also tried to follow their own line that was
distinct from the Muʿtazila’s: while Abū Shamir was reluctant to apply the label
fāsiq to a mortal sinner in general, preferring to use it hic et nunc with reference
to the respective sin,21 Abū Muʿādh wanted to use only the finite verb but not
15 Text II 23.

16 Shahrastānī 105, pu./266, 6f.
17 Thus at least according to the passage in Shahrastānī 107, 5f./271, 1ff., that has no other
parallel. Gimaret points out in his translation (Livre des Religions 429) that ikhlāṣ does
not occur elsewhere in Murjiʾite definitions of the faith. Regarding Abū Shamir see p. 201
above.
18 Text II 24, b–c; cf. Text II 17, d–e.
19 Text II 24, a.
20 Text II 30, k (regarding Zuhayr al-Atharī, but after what we have said above, it should
apply to Abū Muʿādh). Confirmed by Pazdawī, Uṣūl al-dīn 242, 4f.
21 Text II 17, h; cf. p. 202 above.
826 CHAPTER 5
the participle, as the latter could too easily be understood as referring to a per-
manent quality. Ultimately both these positions amounted to the same thing;
the believer’s status is not affected by the mortal sin. The believer remains a
believer, but he has “transgressed”.22 He cannot be called “God’s friend” (walī
Allāh) any more, as he is neither God’s friend nor his enemy.23 We can say that
in this respect Abū Muʿādh’s view was akin to the manzila bayna l-manzilatayn.
Consequently God may punish the believers for their sins, but he does observe
clear guidelines. He weighs the good and the evil actions against each other,
and the believers whose good deeds outweigh the evil will be rewarded with
paradise, as will those whose good and evil actions are evenly balanced. In the
case of those who committed too many sins God is free to decide whether he
punishes them or whether he will temper justice with mercy.24
Abū Muʿādh thus committed himself more firmly than Abū Shamir,25 think-
ing in categories of the ethics of reward like the Muʿtazila, but the Murjiʾite
influence is still present, as the punishment is eternal only for the unbelievers.
Unjust actions will lead to unbelief in two sets of circumstances only: if one
omits something concerning which all Muslims are agreed that the omission
is evidence of unbelief,26 and if one deliberately denies rules (sharāʾiʿ). In the
latter case the unbelief does not manifest itself in the actual action, which is
nothing more than a simple sin, but in the consciousness of the denial which
is incompatible with the act of faith. This applies even to extreme cases, if one
murders or insults a prophet: the murder itself is not unbelief, but the con-
tempt for the prophetic message it expresses.27 Someone who does not abide
by a commandment merely because he thinks he does not have enough time,
remains a believer; after all, he intends to fulfil his duty at some point.28
Zuhayr b. ʿAbdallāh al-Atharī
had very similar views. While he did use the term fāsiq, he, too, refused to draw
Muʿtazilite consequences. A grave sin will make the perpetrator fāsiq, but he
22 Text II 24, d–e.

23 Ibid., i.
24 Text II 25.
25 Regarding him cf. Text II 18.
26 He is probably referring to omitting the shahāda or the tawḥīd; cf. 24, d.
27 Text II 24, f and h. Ashʿarī later adopted this example as well as the term sharāʾiʿ (al-īmān)
from him (cf. Gimaret, Ashʿarī 477); cf. ch. D 0.
28 Ibid., g.
Egypt 827
will remain a believer. God can punish the fāsiq, or he can forgive him,29 for
while the Quran says several times that God will let certain transgressors burn
in hell for eternity, he is able to “make exceptions” – and Zubayr in his Murjiʾite
generosity probably assumed that he would indeed make these exceptions.30
The Quranic statements mentioned certainly do not have universal applicabil-
ity, or if they do, it is impossible to verify it definitively.31
Zuhayr also developed ideas concerning the image of God. They all bear
the signs of compromise. Like the Jahmites and the Muʿtazilites, he believed
in God’s omnipresence, but he did not want to reject all the seemingly con-
tradictory statements in the Quran and the prophetic tradition. God sits on
his throne all the same;32 he descends to the lowest of the heavens in order to
receive humans’ prayer,33 and on the latter day he “will come” in order to sit
in judgment.34 Thus while he clearly moves, the place to which he moves was
not devoid of God previously, either.35 It is not possible to say how this can be
reconciled; Zuhayr appears to have used the bilā kayfin formula.36 It also helps
in other cases, such as for instance the visio beatifica, as in the afterlife the
believers will see God sitting on his throne, even though he is everywhere.37
They can see him, but do not perceive him; consequently lā tudrikuhū l-abṣār
(sura 6:103) still applies.38 God is sitting on his throne, but through his dhāt
he is everywhere.39 Unfortunately we do not know precisely what Zuhayr be-
lieved dhāt to be. Certainly something not as concrete as the person one sees
on the throne. Even so, this person one sees but does not perceive is not a body.
God cannot be delimited; he does not live in one place or touch it – not even
the throne on which he sits.40
29 Text II 30, l–m.

30 Ibid., i with commentary.
31 Cf. Gimaret, Ashʿarī 524, n. 18 after Baghdādī. Abū Muʿādh was believed to share this
view, but Baghdādī’s statement is rather too general. Regarding the issue see ch. C 2.5.1
and 3.2.1.3.3.1 below.
32 Ibid., a.
33 Text II 31, d; cf. the hadith al-nuzūl (p. 682 above).
34 Text II 30, e, and 31, c; cf. sura 89:22.
35 Text 31, c–d.
36 Text 30, e.
37 Text 30, b, and 31, b.
38 Cf. Gimaret, Ashʿarī 335. Abū Muʿādh agreed with this view. We must probably bear in
mind that to an Arab the word adraka “to perceive” would have included the meaning of
“to grasp, to get hold of”.
39 Text 30, c, and 31, a.
40 Text 30, d.
828 CHAPTER 5
We learn from an aside that Abū Muʿādh did not find movement offensive
when postulated about God; he only insisted that it was not something affect-
ing God from outside him, but rather subsisting within him.41 Ashʿarī’s stating
overall agreement between these two thinkers42 probably referred to the en-
tire context of ideas discussed in the previous section. And it seems that this
common ground went further still. What Abū Muʿādh said of movement, he
applied to God’s other attributes as well: they, too, have no separate existence
but inhere in God himself. He does not, however, seem to have developed a
universal doctrine of the attributes, as besides God’s movement the source
speaks of his words, his volition, his love, and his hatred.43 All these are activi-
ties, his ways of intervening in or relating to the world. “Love” (maḥabba) and
“hatred” (bughḍ) clearly mean only that God delights in some things, such as
good deeds, and abhors others, such as sin; or that he loves the ones, i.e. the
believers, for their actions’ sake, and hates the others, the unbelievers; as Abū
Muʿādh was not a predestinarian, these would not have been predetermined
since the beginning of time. He presumes qualities that develop and change,
but still inhere in God; ḥawādith, as the Karrāmites would later say.44 Zuhayr
al-Atharī was once again involved in this model, which is confirmed by the fact
that in the end the two of them fell out over certain details.
First there was the question of how one should imagine the creation of
things. They both agreed that this was an act of volition on God’s part, affirmed
by him with the word of creation “be”.45 Neither the act of volition nor the word
of creation are created; they both inhere in God – but the “creation” that results
from them is created. How can this be reconciled? Both theologians exposed
this as a conceptual misapprehension. While khalq in Quranic as well as every-
day usage frequently means “that which is created”, the creation before our eyes,
theologically creation must be understood to possess an infinitive aspect in the
sense of “creating”; consequently it is not “created”.46 What, then, is it? Zuhayr
al-Atharī thought it had been “made to happen” (muḥdath),47 something that
had been inherent in God since the beginning of time and consequently not
41 Text 28, d.

42 Maq. 300, 2; thus also Pazdawī 252, 1f.
43 Text 28 and 29.
44 Cf. the deliberations in Ibn Taymiyya, Sharḥ ḥadīth al-nuzūl 153, pu. ff.; also my Ungenützte
Texte zur Karrāmiyya 21 with n. 61.
45 Text 27 and 33, b.
46 Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal V 40, 4ff., shows that khalq is used in the Quran with either meaning; a
comparison between Ashʿarī, Maq. 512, 5 and ibid. 585, 7, proves that even in theological
phrases khalq may be used to mean makhlūq.
47 Text 33, c.
Egypt 829
created, but that enters into existence only at a particular point in time.48 Abū
Muʿādh believed this term to be too precarious, presumably because the pas-
sive participle muḥdath recalled makhlūq rather too strongly, preferring to
refer to the creation as an “event” (ḥadath).49 He furthermore noted that God’s
volition does not end with creating things, but that there was also “willing”
in the sense of “commanding” as expressed in the commandments.50 If the
Quran says that God “wills” the faith, this does not mean that he creates it but
rather that he commands it.51 This distinction is once again based on Qadarite
reasoning.
The Quran was, in fact, the second point at which the two men were not
entirely of one mind, but the issue was once again the same terminological dis-
agreement. Both had no doubt that those who had tried in the past to delimit
the Quran with the conceptual pair “physical body – attribute” had chosen the
wrong way. “Physical body” or “attribute” apply to created things, but the Quran,
being the speech of God, cannot be created.52 It inheres in God, and when it
becomes manifest it is either “made to happen”, as Zuhayr would say, or “event”,
as Abū Muʿādh believed.53 The latter also examined to what degree it was pos-
sible to express this using other terms: the Quran is an “event” but not “made to
happen”, and also “action” (fiʿl) but not “brought about” (mafʿūl). It was not pos-
sible, however, to say that it was “(an act of) creating” (khalq) but not “created”
(makhlūq)54 – presumably because of the ambiguousness of khalq described
above, but maybe also because two divine actions, speech and volition, would
interfere with one another. His speech differed slightly from the other actions
in any case: in the Quran, it was materially existent everywhere in the Islamic
world. Consequently Zuhayr said that the Quran, while subsisting in God as
God’s speech, was at the same time present in many places;55 clearly he saw a
parallel with God’s omnipresence.
What do we take away from all this as regards the classification of these
two theologians? Besides the parallels with Abū Shamir, we also find some
with Abū l-Hudhayl, most clearly in dividing the process of creation into an
48 Is this linked to his refusing to interpret the word “world” (dunyā) as meaning creation,
but rather the air and the atmosphere within which things exist? (Cf. Text 32 and the
context in Ashʿarī). He seems to have been on his own with this view.
49 Text 26, a.
50 Ibid., b.
51 Text 28, f. Cf. also Text XVII 52, and ch. D 4.
52 Text 29; also Maq. 593, 8.
53 Text 30, f, and 28, a; cf. Wolfson, Philosophy of the Kalam 296ff.
54 Text 28, a–b.
55 Text 30, g.
830 CHAPTER 5
act of volition and a speech act,56 but maybe also in the distinction between
divine will as creation and as commandment. Thus it would seem that there
is no way round Basra as a common point of contact; the terminus post quem
being quite certainly the end of the second century. Beyond this, however, the
results are sparse. There is no further evidence in favour of Egypt. In the case
of Zuhayr al-Atharī, on the other hand, there is more than one indication of
Iran. Ḥākim al-Jushamī names a Zuhayriyya which combined tashbīh and ʿadl,
namely anthropomorphism and free will;57 they might have been followers of
“our” Zuhayr, in the eastern part of the Islamic ecumene, the region Ḥākim
al-Jushamī was most likely to know well. We have already mentioned points
of contact with the – certainly later – Karrāmiyya;58 this also applies to the
terminology. Abū Muʿādh and Zuhayr’s preferring to use the terms muḥdath
or ḥadath rather than khalq and makhlūq recalls Karrāmite distinctions59 as
well as the usage of Ibn Shujāʿ al-Thaljī (d. 266/880) and Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī
(d. 270/884).60
The latter name in particular points to significant clues, as according to east-
ern heresiographical tradition the Murjiʾa included a certain Athariyya, which
appears to be the same as the Ẓāhiriyya;61 Ibn al-Jawzī would later replace it
with this very name.62 Was Zuhayr al-Atharī someone, then, who not only gave
in to the data (athar) transmitted in Quran and sunna when it came to the
image of God, but who was in fact a true Ẓāhirite? This is at best true of his
methodological approach, but he is unlikely to have been Dāwūd b. Khalaf’s
pupil. In that case his dates would be so late that Abū Muʿādh al-Tūmanī, who
was clearly reacting to him, would almost be Ashʿarī’s contemporary. Should we
invert their relationship? Dāwūd b. Khalaf was originally a follower of Shāfiʿī:
if Zuhayr al-Atharī was a member of his wider circle as well, a connection to
Egypt might not be ruled out after all. The Ẓāhiriyya, too, appears to have had
a base there later; otherwise its continued existence in the Maghreb, especially
in Ibn Ḥazm’s works, would be hard to explain. Until further sources can be
found, we shall have to leave it at non liquet.
56 See ch. C 3.2.1.3.4.4 below; also Daiber, Muʿammar 239. Unlike later Muʿtazilites Abū
l-Hudhayl did not yet distinguish between attributes of act and attributes of essence (see
ch. C 3.2.1.3.4.2 below).
57 Sharḥ ʿuyūn al-masāʾil I, fol. 47 b.
58 P. 828 above.
59 Ungenützte Texte 24.
60 See ch. C 6.3.2 below; also Daiber 177.
61 Abū Muṭīʿ, Radd 122, 11ff.; Tadhkirat al-madhāhib 136, 1.
62 Talbīs Iblīs 21, 11ff.
Supplementary Remarks
p. 8: The owner of Bashshār b. Burd’s father, Khīra bt. Ḍamra al-Qushayriyya, was also
the addressee of one of Jābir b. Zayd’s missives (no. 14); thus like many Muhallabid
women she had ties to the Ibāḍiyya (cf. p. 220 and 223f. above).
p. 26f.: Ibn al-Muqaffaʿs relationship with ʿĪsā b. ʿAlī and the objective of the Risāla fī
l-ṣaḥāba have been studied from a new point of view by S. A. Arjomand in: Iranian
Studies 27/1994/9ff.; for general information cf. also ʿAbbās Zaryāb in: GIE IV 662–80,
and Urvoy, Les penseurs libres en Islam classique 29ff.
p. 31f.: Concerning the autobiographical account cf. in more detail, but with the same
results, F. de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage to India and the Origin of the Book of Kalīlah wa
Dimnah (London, Royal Asiatic Society 1990), p. 25ff.; regarding the trial of Dimna
ibid. 14.
p. 41, n. 3: The verse version of Kalīla wa-Dimna might be Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir’s

(cf. vol. V 285, no. 45). It should be compared to the two fragments of Abān’s version
quoted in Ṣūlī, Awrāq (Shuʿarāʾ) 46–50.
p. 43: Read “ʿAbdallāh b. Maslama b. Muḥārib” instead of “Maslama b. ʿAbdallāh

b. Muḥārib”; consequently the person referred to cannot be the grammarian and
Quran reciter but might be his son.
p. 46, n. 44: Concerning the fragment cf. also Kohlberg, Medieval Scholar 346.
p. 49: Ḥasan’s expert legal opinions, or those attributed to him, have been collected
by Muḥammad Rawwās Qalʿajī, Mawsūʿat fiqh al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, 1–2, Beirut 1409/1989.
p. 51f.: Quotations from Ḥasan’s sermons and the paraenetic material attributed to him
have been collected by Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Muḥammad, Al-zuhd lil-Ḥasan
al-Baṣrī, Cairo 1991 (especially after Ibn al-Mubārak, K. al-zuhd, and Abū Nuʿaym,
Ḥilya). The same author also collected Ḥasan’s exegetic dicta, but only following Sunni
sources (Tafsīr al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, 1–2, Cairo 1992). Regarding Ḥasan’s reading of the
Quran see Omar Hamdan’s detailed dissertation, Die Koranlesung des Ḥasan al-Baṣrī
(110/729). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Korantextes (Tübingen 1995). – ʿAbd al-Karīm,
Gilliot suggests (Arabica 40/1993/378f.), might be ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Mālik al-Jazarī who
died in 127/745 (regarding him vol. I 227, n. 31 above).
832 Supplementary Remarks
p. 52: The authority’s name is probably misspelt in ʿĀnī (11, pu. f., and 12, 4f.) and
should be read as Abū ʿUbayda al-Nājī al-Ḥaddād, namely Bakr b. al-Aswad al-Nājī,
a Qadarite and ascetic mentioned p. 111 above. Cf., in detail, Hamdan, Koranlesung
283f., n. 5.
p. 56: Interestingly, the alleged correspondence between Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Ḥasan
b. ʿAlī found its way, with some variants, into an Ibāḍite source as well; cf. Muḥammad
b. Ibrāhīm al-Kindī, Bayān al-sharʿ II 108f.
p. 58, n. 12: Cf. the Basran ascetic Muṭarrif b. ʿAbdallāh b. al-Shikhkhīr’s polemic against
“people here who claim that they would go to paradise or hell according to their own
wishes” (Ḥilya II 201, 12f.). This, however, was long before the Muʿtazila, as Muṭarrif
died in 95/713–14.
p. 63: Regarding ʿAwf al-Aʿrabī cf. Cook in: RO 51/1994/21ff.; also Hamdan,
Koranlesung 67ff.
p. 66: Regarding Abū Rajāʾ al-Ḥuddānī’s Tafsīr cf. Hamdan, Koranlesung 118ff.
p. 77: Besides the problematic brother al-Faraj b. Faḍāla there is another documented
reliably as such, namely Abū Umayya ʿUbayd al-Raḥmān b. Faḍāla (cf. Ibn Ḥanbal,
ʿIlal 2II 343 no. 2521; Muslim, Al-kunā wal-asmāʾ 83, –4; Ibn ʿAdī, Kāmil VI 2320, 15f.).
p. 88f.: Like Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd, Mūsā al-Uswārī read yustaʿtabūna and
muʿtibīna in sura 41:24 instead of the accepted yastaʿtibūna and muʿtabīna. The resul-
tant meaning (cf. Lane, Lexicon 1944b) emphasised the obduracy and innate sinfulness
of the unbelievers and thus hinted that they are responsible for their own damnation
(Ibn Jinnī, Al-muḥtasab fī tabyīn wujūh shawādhdh al-qirāʾāt, ed. ʿAlī al-Najdī Nāṣif et
al., Cairo 1966–69, II 245, 9f.).
p. 94f.: ʿAmr b. Fāʾid al-Uswārī read sura 7:156 as man asāʾa instead of man ashāʾu, once
again in agreement with Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd (Ibn Jinnī, Muḥtasab I 261,
1; regarding Ḥasan see p. 54 above). In sura 113:2 he vocalised min sharrin mā khalaq
instead of min sharri mā khalaq; with the result that God did “not create” evil (Abū
Ḥayyān al-Andalusī, Al-baḥr al-muḥīṭ fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān VIII 533, 9f.).
p. 101, n. 30: Unlike Beck I do not believe that the Maʿānī l-Qurʾān allow the conclusion
that Farrāʾ was no Qadarite (p. 189f.). Beck does not consider sufficiently whether the
“determinist” passages under discussion are interpreted based on the assumption of
previous human guilt.
Supplementary Remarks 833
p. 108: Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, Qūt al-qulūb, transl. Gramlich, Nahrung der Herzen
III 375 (not in the printed Arabic text), mentions a K. al-zuhd by Mālik b. Dīnār;
it had come down to him via Jaʿfar b. Sulaymān al-Ḍubaʿī (d. 178/784; cf. p. 480
and 795 above) and Sayyār b. Ḥātim al-ʿAnazī (d. 199/814–5 or 200/815–6; cf.
TT IV 290, Mīzān no. 3628), a well-known Basran ascetic and pupil of Abū ʿĀṣim
al-ʿAbbādānī’s (regarding him p. 123. above). Many quotations from this text are
found in Ibn Abī Dunyā’s K. dhamm al-dunyā (ed. E. Almagor, Jerusalem 1974).
While the title is not mentioned there at all, the material transmitted from Mālik
b. Dīnār in these instances usually comes via Jaʿfar al-Ḍubaʿī and often also Sayyār
al-ʿAnazī (cf. Index s. v. Mālik b. Dīnār). However, it does seem that Jaʿfar al-Ḍubaʿī
did not meet Mālik in person; he probably received the material from his pupils.
For general information cf. Gramlich, Alte Vorbilder des Sufitums I 59ff. Regarding
the Māppiḷa and the Muslims in Malabar cf. A. Wink, Al-Hind. The Making of the
Indo-Islamic World 70ff.
p. 111: Regarding Bakr b. Aswad see supplementary remark re p. 52 above.
p. 115, n. 47–48: Material concerning the ḥadīth al-ikhlāṣ may be found in Gramlich’s
translation of Adab al-mulūk, p. 74f.
p. 126, n. 1: Cf. the Damascus edition 1990–93, p. 757, 2f., and 887, 10f.
p. 138: Most of the hadiths found in Dāwūd b. al-Muḥabbar’s K. al-ʿaql appear to have
been included in the Musnad by al-Ḥārith b. Abī Usāma (d. 282/895) from Baghdad.
Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī copied 30 of these to his Maṭālib al-ʿāliya bi-fawāʾid al-Masānīd
al-thamāniya (ed. Ḥabīb al-Raḥmān al-Aʿẓamī, 1–4, Kuwait 1973, III 13–23); some
further ones may be found in Ibn ʿArrāq al-Kinānī, Tanzīh al-sharīʿa al-marfūʿa ʿan
al-akhbār al-shamīʿa al-mawḍūʿa (cf. GAL S 2/534; ed. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ʿAbd al-Laṭīf
and ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad al-Ṣiddīq, 1–2, Cairo 1378/1958) I 213ff. no. 84–117, and 225
no. 149, who agrees with Ibn Ḥajar on the whole, and quotes him. Quotations (some of
them going back to ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd via Ibn al-Muḥabbar) are also found in Ibn
Bashkuwāl’s K. al-mustaghīthīn (ed. M. Marín, Madrid 1991), p. 24, 8; 97, 3; 155, 13. His
works were clearly accepted among the ascetic tradition in Spain. Ibn Ḥanbal, too, ap-
proved of his K. al-ʿaql: while the isnāds were bad, the good intentions were clearly dis-
cernible (Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, Qūt al-qulūb, transl. Gramlich III 248; not in the printed
version).
p. 140: 21 hadiths from Sulaymān al-Sijzī’s K. tafḍīl al-ʿaql are also found in Ibn ʿArrāq,
Tanzīh al-sharīʿa I 219ff. no. 118–38.
p. 140ff.: Regarding the Basran school of law see, in brief, also Ḥumaydān b. ʿAbdallāh
al-Ḥumaydān, Al-ḥaraka al-fiqhiyya fī l-Baṣra, in: al-Dāra 14/1409, issue 4/34ff; but the
overview only reaches from Jābir b. Zayd to Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī.
p. 143: Cf. also I. Bligh-Abramski’s study The Judiciary (Qāḍīs) as a Governmental-

Administrative Tool in Early Islam, in: JESHO 35/1992/40ff., which corresponds in many
respects with Dannhauer’s dissertation, although it quotes the latter once only as it
focusses entirely on the primary sources.
p. 185f.: Apparently the Murjiʾite Jaḥdar b. Muḥammad al-Taymī/Tamīmī was an adher-

ent of the same doctrine (see vol. I 254 above).
p. 220: There are further MSS containing Jābir b. Zayd’s rasāʾil, one of them in Masqaṭ.
Based on this Aḥmad Darwīsh edited the “letter” no. 3 (Jābir b. Zayd. Ḥayāt min ajl al-ʿilm,
Cairo 1991, p. 183ff.). Text 4 has been discussed in M. Naggar’s MA thesis (Tübingen 1991).
Cf. also the detailed summary of the work in E. Francesca, Un contributo al problema
della formazione e dello sviluppo del diritto islamico (PhD Naples 1994), p. 39ff.
p. 223, n. 34: ʿUrwa b. Udayya was a brother of Mirdās b. Udayya who was indeed a
Tamīm (cf. EI2 VII 123).
p. 226: Ḥājib al-Ṭāʾī is mentioned as raʾs fī l-Ibāḍiyya in Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 2III 469
no. 5999; he transmitted from Jābir b. Zayd via ʿAmr b. Dīnār. Regarding this isnād cf.
Cook, Early Muslim Dogma 74f., and Motzki, Anfänge 179f.
p. 233f: The texts quoted by Darjīnī are corrupted and abridged in places; they will have
to be collated with the parallels in Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Kindī who also excerpted
from Abū Sufyān Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl. Thus if we compare Darjīnī 243, –4ff. n. 5 with
Bayān al-sharʿ II 81, 4ff., it becomes doubtful whether Ḥamza al-Kūfī really came from
Kufa. The parallel version suggests the conclusion that Ḥamza was one of those who
supported Ḥājib al-Ṭāʾī’s old Qadarite ideas in Basra, and that he sent to Kufa only once
people in Basra stopped speaking to him (cf. 82, –6ff.). Regarding Darjīnī 276, pu. ff. in
n. 15, Bayān al-sharʿ II 76, 5ff. provides the significant – and in all probability correct –
variant Ḥarrān instead of Najrān; on the one hand this documents the existence of a
further Ibāḍite community in the Jazīra, namely in Ḥarrān, while on the other it sug-
gests caution when assuming a Southern Arab origin for ʿAṭiyya.
p. 247: Regarding prayer “without trousers” cf. Lewinstein in: JAOS 114/1994/594, n. 99.
p. 251, n. 23: Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 2II 97 no. 1682, believed him to be more reliable than
ʿImrān al-Qaṭṭān, who was also a Khārijite (p. 250 above).
p. 252: Regarding a further Ibāḍite Quran reciter active at Hārūn al-Rashīd’s court see
vol. IV below, end of ch. C 5.3. As late as the sixth century Silafī was battling against the
qirāʾa bil-alḥān as being bidʿa (Dhahabī, Siyar XXI 25, –4ff.).
p. 253: Regarding Abū ʿUbayda and the question of whether he was a Khārijite cf.
Madelung in: Journal of Islamic Studies 3/1992/47ff. (a sceptical view); differently
Lecker in: SI 81/1995/71ff., esp. 94ff.
p. 254, n. 50: Cf. Rashed in EI2 VIII 553. – n. 60: V. Law has made the argument against
Indian influence on Arabic phonetics in: Studies in the History of Arabic Grammar
II 215ff.).
p. 256ff.: Khalīl was a determinist, but not an anthropomorphist; when explaining

the divine attribute ṣamad he quotes Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s anti-anthropomorphic inter-
pretations and only mentions the anthropomorphic alternative under yuqālu (cf.
Mohammad-Nauman Khan, Die exegetischen Teile des Kitāb al-ʿAyn, Berlin 1994, p. 215;
concerning the issue in general see vol. IV below, ch. D 1.1, n. 33).
p. 259: Khārijite ʿaqāʾid are also structured according to the criteria of walāya and
barāʾa. A characteristic example may be found in the supplementary remark re p. 657
below.
p. 270: A further monograph on the subject is Sulaymān al-Shawāyishī, Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ

wa-ārāʾuhū l-kalāmiyya (Libya, Al-dār al-ʿarabiyya lil-kitāb 1993). However, it is conven-
tional and hardly goes beyond Taftazānī’s study.
p. 272: The account of the discussion between Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ and Abū ʿUbayda al-
Tamīmī to which I referred on p. 308 locates events in Mecca where Wāṣil “and his
pupils” were sitting in the Masjid al-ḥarām (cf. the parallel in Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm
al-Kindī, Bayān al-sharʿ II 84, –8ff.). Consequently relations with the Banū Makhzūm
are less improbable.
p. 273f.: Isḥāq b. Suwayd’s poem is found, including a few additional verses, in Ibn
ʿAsākir, TD 46 (ʿUthmān), p. 511, 10ff. This passage also informs us that the poet tied
his criticism of the heretics to praise of the first three caliphs. The transmitter, inter-
estingly, is ʿAbd al-Wārith b. Saʿīd, who had once been ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s pupil (p. 367
above).
p. 295: According to a tradition, albeit a problematic and tendentious one, found in

al-Sharjī al-Zabīdī, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī is claimed to have been in Mecca in 100 (Ṭabaqāt al-
khawāṣṣ 360, 7ff.; see also supplementary remark re p. 789f. below).
p. 308: If a Muslim account of a religious debate with Christians mentions a certain

Wāṣil al-Dimashqī (cf. Griffith in: Le Muséon 103/1990/298ff.), this could only be linked
to Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ if the author fictitiously associated his name.
p. 326f.: Regarding the correspondence between ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd and Ibn Shubruma cf.
Cook in: BO 51/1994/25ff. His relations with Manṣūr are also discussed, albeit superfi-
cially, by Ṣāliḥ al-Ḥamārina in: Al-muʾarrikh al-ʿarabī 22/1982/205ff.
p. 338, n. 28: Regarding this motif cf. Marzolph, Arabia ridens II 35 no. 219. It was linked
not only to ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd.
p. 339f.: Concerning the readings of the Quran ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd adopted from Ḥasan
(which are also discussed in his Tafsīr) cf. Omar Hamdan’s dissertation (supplemen-
tary remark re p. 51f. above), p. 45ff. Hamdan also adduces further references for Sufyān
b. ʿUyayna having received Ḥasan’s Tafsīr via ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd (ibid. 54f.). ʿAbd al-Razzāq
al-Ṣanʿānī used this riwāya.
p. 342: ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd’s dividing the Quran into 360 sections followed the ḥizb practice
already in widespread use at the time (cf. EI2 III 513b), although the figure is unusually
high. It follows the 360 days that resulted as the mean number of solar and lunar year;
in this way it was possible to recite the entire Quran in one year. Apparently ʿAmr did
this in response to a request from the caliph Manṣūr who wished to learn the Quran by
heart, and was also said to have instructed his son al-Mahdī in the scripture in this way.
ʿAlam al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī preserved this information in his K. jamāl al-qurrāʾ, together
with a precise list of the 360 points of the caesuras between the respective sections
(ed. ʿAlī Ḥusayn al-Bawwāb, Mecca 1408/1987, I 163, 6ff.). It remains to be seen whether
this is supported by the Chester Beatty MS. If the surrounding circumstances are cor-
rect, this sheds new light on the relationship between ʿAmr and Manṣūr (cf. p. 327ff.
above).
p. 347: The case of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf’s wife was discussed by Zuhrī as well; he
makes clear where the problem lay (cf. Motzki in: Der Islam 68/1991/16).
p. 363: In his Risāla ʿAdhrāʾ Ibn al-Mudabbir (or, correctly: Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad al-
Shaybānī; cf. EI2 IX 396) transmits a definition of rhetoric from a certain Bishr b Khālid
(p. 46, 5f.).
p. 388: There is a text among the Qumran fragments according to which someone, pre-
sumably the “teacher of justice”, says: pārashnū mē-rōḇ ha-ʿām “we have separated from
the mass of the people” (4 QMMT, l. 7).
p. 388f.: If it is true that ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī already criticised Wāṣil’s
theology of compromise (regarding the fact that he accepted neither ʿAlī’s nor Ṭalḥa’s
testimony, see p. 100 and 311 above), this would have had to take place before 117/735 as
well, as Ibn Abī Isḥāq, like Qatāda, died in that year. However, the second grammar-
ian named together with him, ʿĪsā b. ʿUmar al-Thaqafī, was his pupil and a generation
younger.
p. 393 (top of page): I overlooked the fact that miṣr has an article here. Consequently it
probably does not refer to Egypt but to “the city”, i.e. Basra. O. Hamdan notes the paral-
lel in Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-Islām, Ṭabaqa XIV, p. 381, 11.
p. 398: Regarding ṣuḥufī cf. Azharī, Tahdhīb al-lugha I 33, –4; meaning someone who
does not pay attention to oral tradition. Those who considered plural nisbas inadmis-
sible would vocalise ṣaḥafī (cf. Lane 1655 s. v.).
p. 408, n. 37: We must bear in mind that criticism was directed exclusively at the
miḥrāb, not against private chapels as such. Maybe the miḥrāb had such great symbolic
value that it could not be tolerated outside a public mosque.
p. 456: “based some of his own ideas on Aṣamm’s” is saying rather too much. The only
point of contact between the two of them was that they restricted God’s prescience (cf.
p. 454 above and vol. IV below, ch. C 4.1.1.1), and we only know this thanks to a retro-
spective systematising remark by Shahrastānī (Text XIII 8).
p. 471: Basran tradition probably also explains why Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Kindī, an
Ibāḍite from Oman, quotes Aṣamm as a jurist (Bayān al-sharʿ I 39, 7ff.). Here, too, the
point at issue was a daring analogy: Aṣamm drew a parallel between a nosebleed and
menstruation.
p. 480f.: Regarding the Nāwūsiyya cf. Modarressi, Crisis and Consolidation 54ff., also
n. 9 concerning Abān b. ʿUthmān al-Aḥmar.
p. 487: Regarding the native Christian population (nabaṭ) of Kashkar/Wāsiṭ

cf. Fiey in: MUSJ 51/1990/51ff.
p. 488: Yazīd b. Hārūn had been the majordomo of Ḥasan b. Qaḥṭaba, the Abbasid gen-
eral who died 181/797 (Faḍl b. Shādhān, Īḍāḥ 92, 6ff.; cf. Crone, Slaves on Horses 188).
p. 494: We learn from Ibn Ḥanbal that Faḍl b. Dalham was also a poet (ʿIlal 2III 472f.
no. 6017), although he is not documented as one elsewhere.
p. 497, n. 93: The account was also quoted by Dhahabī, Siyar X 548 no. 179.
p. 501f.: Garth Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth (Princeton 1993), p. 62ff., writes about
the Ṣābians from the point of view of the ancient historian. Briefly also G. Strohmaier
in: Ibn an-Nadīm und die mittelalterliche arabische Literatur (Wiesbaden 1996),
p. 51ff. Concerning the relation between ṣābiʾa and ḥunafāʾ in the Quran cf. M. Gil in:
IOS 12/1992/12ff.
p. 505: Pingree assumes that some of the Ṣābian rituals involving celestial bodies
listed in Picatrix were recorded by the astrologer ʿUmar b. al-Farrukhān al-Ṭabarī (ca.
145/762–after 197/812), at a time when the Ḥarrānians did not yet call themselves
Ṣābians (BEO 44/1992/105ff.). The name is not used by Theodore Abū Qurra either;
in his Mīmar fī wujūd al-khāliq he calls them “the heathen followers of Hermes”
(cf. Monnot’s translation in: RHR 128/1991/49ff., esp. p. 53).
p. 511: There was also a group of Ṣābians in Ḥarrān who shaved their heads (Ibn al-
Nadīm, Fihrist 390, 9f.).
p. 518: It is worth noting that one of the bishops of Ḥarrān was named Gregory the
Alchemist. He held the position from 731 to 740, i.e. during Hishām’s rule (Fiey, Pour un
Oriens Christianus novus 88).
p. 535: Regarding the Nawfalī family cf. Pellat in EI2 VII 1045f.; regarding ʿAlī
b. Muḥammad al-Nawfalī also S. Günther, Quellenuntersuchungen zu den Maqātil al-
Ṭālibiyyīn 151f. Rosenthal’s suggestion that he was identical with another bearer of
the same name is probably not tenable (Beck, L’image d’Idrīs II, p. 22f.). Regarding
ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-ʿAlawī cf. Günther, ibid., 141ff. Concerning events as such one may
consult Aḥmad b. Sahl al-Rāzī’s (d. in the first quarter of the fourth/tenth century)
Akhbār Fakhkh in M. Jarrar’s edition (Beirut 1995); cf. esp. p. 170, 9ff., and 186, 3ff. This
is a Zaydite source based on a text used by Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī; consequently it re-
gards Shammākh al-Yamāmī as the murderer. The date may be inferred as 179/795, after
Harthama b. Aʿyan had become governor of the province of Ifrīqiyya (cf. the editor’s
introduction p. 67f.; also his deliberations in: AS 47/1993/288ff.).
p. 550: Al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad al-Minqarī al-Tamīmī was someone who “transmitted

much from Dāwūd al-Raqqī”; Ibn Abī ʿUmayr transmitted from him in turn, and he,
too, was considered “weak” (Najāshī 39, 11ff.; Ardabīlī I 233).
p. 553: Material on the question of reciting the Quran in Persian may also be found in
Qaffāl al-Shāshī, Ḥilyat al-ʿulamāʾ II 78, 11ff.
p. 566: Regarding Jahm’s discourse with the Sumaniyya cf. S. Pines’ detailed and much
more positive study in: JSAI 17/1994/183ff.
p. 574ff.: Cf. P. Crone’s response (in: Der Islam).
p. 589: There is an alleged dictum by Ibn ʿAbbās on the “500 verses concerning [what is]
permitted and prohibited” in Abū l-Ḥawārī, Tafsīr (see p. 799 above), fol. 1b, 6f.
p. 599, n. 9: ʿAbd al-Malik practised rafʿ al-yadayn; he ordered the quṣṣāṣ to do the
same, morning and evening (Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ II 254, 5f.). – Regarding the rejection
of the practice among the Ibāḍites (p. 600) cf. also Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Kindī,
Bayān al-sharʿ II 151ff.
p. 600ff.: Muḥammad Maḥrūs ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Mudarris, Mashāyikh Balkh min al-
Ḥanafiyya wa-mā nfaradū bihī min al-masāʾil al-fiqhiyya, 1–2. Baghdad 1397/1977. He
also mentions the early quḍāt in the city (I 76ff.) and the ascetics (79ff.).
p. 617ff.: Regarding Nūḥ b. Abī Maryam cf. Cook in: BO 51/1994/27ff. A brief ʿaqīda,
which he had allegedly heard directly from Abū Ḥanīfa, is quoted in Abū Layth al-
Samarqandī, Bustān al-ʿārifīn 187, –9ff.
p. 629: Cf. Najm al-Dīn ʿUmar al-Nasafī, Al-qand fī dhikr ʿulamāʾ Samarqand, ed. Naṣr
Muḥammad al-Fāryābī; Beirut 1412/1991.
p. 631ff.: Regarding Abū l-Ṣabbāḥ’s teachings cf. Abū Tammām, K. al-Shajara (ed. and
trs. Madelung/Walker), p. 54ff.
p. 632, n. 36: Regarding the question of whether it is permitted to eat meat slaughtered
by members of the ahl al-kitāb cf. also Cook in BSOAS 47/1984/451ff.
p. 633, n. 40: The passage is from E. Salamé’s edition, p. 356ff.
p. 636, n. 67: Cf. Kohlberg, Medieval Scholar 347f., and M. M. Bar-Asher’s dissertation
Studies in Early Imāmī-Shīʿī Qurʾān Exegesis (Jerusalem 1991). In the meantime the
same edition of the book has also been printed in Beirut (1–2, 1991). The text is impor-
tant because it frequently draws on old authorities such as Zurāra, Ḥumrān b. Aʿyān,
Hishām al-Jawālīqī, Jamīl b. Darrāj, Salama b. Kuhayl and others.
p. 642: F. Zimmermann’s article appeared in Fs. Beeston 163ff.

p. 642f.: Until the seventeenth century Farah was the Iranian customs point for
trade with India (cf. St. F. Dale, Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600–1750,
Cambridge 1994, p. 38 and 52).
p. 652: Cf. also vol. IV below, ch. C 4.2.1.3.
p. 657f.: It is possible that it was in Ḥamza b. Ādharak’s circle or the following gen-
eration that a singular document of eastern Iranian Khārijite theology was composed
which survives in Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Kindī’s Bayān al-sharʿ (III 277–93), a
certain Abū l-Faḍl ʿĪsā b. Furāk’s ʿaqīda. Muḥammad b. Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl used this
text, which can be located due to the characteristic loyalty and anathema formulae
that make up its second half. As it rejects the Jabriyya (p. 282, 14ff.) the author was
probably an advocate of free will; he also, however, attacks the Maymūniyya, who
went too far for his liking in this respect (ibid. 287, 2ff.; cf. p. 649f. above). Among
the people with whom he claims to be in agreement we interestingly find a certain
Shuʿayb al-Kirmānī (p. 279, –4f.), probably identical with Shuʿayb b. Muḥammad
(p. 649 above) who embraced the middle course. Khalaf, Ḥamza’s predecessor, a
clear determinist, is rejected (p. 293, 9; cf. p. 656f. above); whether Ḥamza him-
self is the Ḥamza al-Ṣādiq mentioned (p. 279, pu.) with the people with whom the
author agrees, is doubtful. Also rejected are the Akhnasiyya (p. 292, –5ff.; cf. p. 654
above), the Azraqiyya (p. 284, 5ff.; cf. p. 687f. above), the Shimrākhiyya (p. 291, pu. ff.;
cf. p. 698f. above); the Najdiyya (p. 285, 16ff.), the Bayhasiyya (p. 287, 11ff.; cf. 666ff.
above), and the Ibāḍiyya (p. 289, 10ff.). The caliph Maʾmūn is also mentioned. The text
is still awaiting a more detailed study. Cf. now my Der Eine und das Andere, Berlin 2011,
vol. 1, p. 113–118.
p. 664: Kindī, Bayān al-sharʿ III 423, 2ff., lists Ziyād b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān as Ziyād al-
Aʿsam, and includes some information about his teachings.
p. 684, n. 49.: The Ismaʿīlite heresiographer Abū Tammām states clearly in his K. al-
Shajara that Ibn Karrām went to Jerusalem with more than 5,000 of his followers (ahl
al-bayt, families?) as they believed to be closer to the resurrection there (cf. Walker in:
Daftary [ed.], Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought 169 and ed. Madelung/Walker,
p. 59).
p. 688: Usually Muhallab is regarded as the first person to have replaced the wooden
stirrups in use until then with iron ones (cf. Viré in: EI2 IV 1145b, and Crone in: EI2
VII 357b). The passage I quoted from Jāḥiẓ is not sufficiently unambiguous. In detail on
the question, with reference to circumstances in Byzantium, see I. Shahid, Byzantium
and the Arabs in the Sixth Century (Washington 1995) I 572ff.
p. 692: Regarding the ʿĪsawiyya cf., in brief, Lewinstein in: BSOAS 54/1991/263. Abū
Tammām discusses this group, as well as the Bid(a)ʿiyya compared to it on p. 696f., in
more detail but once again in different contexts (ed. Madelung/Walker 37f. and 51f.).
Occasionally two prayers are referred to instead of three, which is not an error (p. 697,
n. 20) but due to the fact that only daytime prayers are discussed; the night-time ṣalāt
al-ʿatama was separate.
p. 698f.: Regarding the Shimrākhiyya cf. Lewinstein in: JAOS 114/1994/596ff. – Ḥubbiyya
generally refers to the Ṣūfīs, as confirmed by the relevant chapter in Abū Tammām
(p. 66ff.).
p. 699f.: Regarding the so-called Kūziyya cf. Lewinstein in: JAOS 114/1994/593ff.
p. 700: Regarding the letters of ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya cf. W. al-Qāḍī in: The Byzantine
and Early Islamic Near East, ed. Cameron/Conrad, I 262f.
p. 706, n. 36: Regarding Abū Manṣūr al-Iṣfahānī see Pūrjawādī in several articles in:
Maʿārif 5/1989–8/1991 (German summary in: Spektrum Iran 4/1991, issue 4/26ff.), as
well as the addenda in Meier, Bausteine I 323.
p. 711: In: SI 72/1990/67f. S. Bashear interprets fārūq as a title adopted from Judaism
which was granted to ʿUmar as the anticipated Messiah.
p. 714: Regarding Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī cf. E. N. Dickinson’s dissertation The
Development of Early Muslim Hadith Criticism. The Taqdima of Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī
(Yale 1992).
p. 715, n. 51: H. Modarressi’s monograph has been published as Crisis and Consolidation
in the Formative Period of Shīʿite Islam. Abū Jaʿfar Ibn Qiba al-Rāzī and His Contribution
to Imāmite Shīʿite Thought (Princeton 1993). In accordance with native tradition
Modarressi prefers the reading Ibn Qiba (rather than Ibn Qibba as in my text); he
assumes an Iranian root of Qiba. Unfortunately he does not provide any details (cf.
p. 117, n. 58). He has personally told me that he is considering a dialect word meaning
“a cook”.
p. 718: Regarding the problem of accommodation during the pilgrimage and the rents
in the city cf. F. E. Peters, Jerusalem and Mecca 218 and earlier.
p. 722: In vol. I 272 I said that Layth b. Abī Sulaym (d. after 140/757) died in 143/760,
and vol. I 267, n. 41, that he died in 143/760 or 148/765. All three possibilities are
mentioned in TT VIII 468, 1ff., the first being the recommended one as being the most
general.
p. 730f.: Ibn Ḥanbal (ʿIlal 2III 260 no. 5148) tells us that all of Ibn Abī Najīḥ’s pupils were
Qadarites, but not aṣḥāb kalām. The only one about whom he was not sure was Shibl
b. ʿUbād. – An unreliably documented account insinuates that the Qadarite ideas were
implanted from outside: when on the hajj, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, Makḥūl and others went
to meet Ṭāwūs b. Kaysān in the masjid al-khayf in Minā and debated about free will
at the top of their voices; Ṭāwūs then advised them to keep quiet (Sharjī, Ṭabaqāt al-
khawāṣṣ 160, 6ff.). Regarding the mosque referred to cf. Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān s. v.
al-Khayf.
p. 732, n. 108: Thus also Ibn Bashkuwāl, K. al-Mustaghīthīn 108ff. no. 109.
p. 734: Hūd b. Muḥkim’s Tafsīr has now been printed (ed. Balḥājj Ibn Saʿīd, 1–4,
Beirut 1990). Concerning its contents see Gilliot in: Arabica 44/1997.
p. 737: Regarding ʿAmr b. al-Ḥusayn and his poem cf. W. al-Qāḍī in: Fs. Wagner II 162ff.;
168, n. 23 also on the question of identity.
p. 743, n. 46: Cf. also Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 2III 393 no. 5726.
p. 756f.: Concerning the origins of the Sīra and Ibn Isḥāq’s relationship with hadith see
Schoeler, Charakter und Authentie 37ff.; cf. also Muṭāʿ al-Ṭarābīshī, Ruwāt Muḥammad
b. Isḥāq b. Yasār fī l-Maghāzī wal-siyar wa-sāʾir al-marwiyyāt (Damascus 1414/1994).
p. 772: Regarding Ibn Dāb cf. also Pellat in EI2 III 742 s. v. Ibn Daʾb, and Mujtabā/Jāmī
in GIE III 475ff.
p. 777, n. 48: Cf. Muranyi, ʿAbdallāh b. Wahb. Leben und Werk I 97ff.
p. 782: A letter written by Ibn Abī Yaḥyā on behalf of Yaḥyā b. ʿAbdallāh has been pre-
served by Aḥmad b. Sahl al-Rāzī (Akhbār Fakhkh, ed. Jarrār 164, 4ff.) and by Muḥallī
(cf. Madelung, Texts concerning the History of the Zaydi Imams 175, 11ff.).
p. 785, n. 4: Cf. also Ibn al-Wazīr, ʿAwāṣim V 199, 12ff.
p. 789f.: Of Wahb b. Munabbih it was said in Yemen, similar to Ṭāwūs b. Kaysān (see
supplementary remark re p. 730f. above), that when Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, ʿIkrima and others
met during the hajj and debated about qadar at that time, he cut them short (Sharjī,
Ṭabaqāt al-khawāṣṣ 360, 7ff.). – The difficulties in the attribution of K. al-ḥikma are il-
lustrated by Abū ʿUbayd’s Khuṭab wal-mawāʿiẓ (ed. R. ʿAbd al-Tawwāb, Cairo 1406/1986),
which links quotations from the “wisdom” to a variety of isnāds (p. 179ff.); the same ap-
plies to the material concerning Abraham (p. 109ff.).
p. 795: Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Kūfī was another Shīʿite in Yemen. He
was qāḍī in Ṣaʿda in the third century and composed a K. manāqib al-imām amīr al-
muʾminīn ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib which contains more than 1,000 hadiths. It was edited by
Muḥammad Bāqir al-Maḥmūdī in Qom in 1412/1992.
p. 797: An ʿaqīda by Wāʾil b. Ayyūb was included in Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Azkawī’s Jāmiʿ
under the title ṣifat al-Islām (I 98, pu.–115, –5). – Omani sources agree that scholarship
in Oman only started when the Basran community came to an end. Among the first
authorities Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Kindī (late fifth/eleventh century) names Munīr
b. al-Nayyir (Bayān al-sharʿ I 13, 11ff.), Abū Saʿīd al-Kudamī (late fourth/tenth century)
and the slightly younger Muḥammad b. Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl (K. al-istiqāma I 226, –6ff.).
Kindī also includes an account of Muḥammad b. Maḥbūb b. al-Raḥīl’s recanting (Bayān
al-sharʿ I 154, 4ff.), which tells us that the latter thought of himself as an immigrant in
Oman. He was a Wāqifite. He may previously have spent some time not only in Basra
but also in Baghdad, as like Muḥammad b. Shujāʿ al-Thaljī he believed the Quran to be
muḥdath but not makhlaq (see vol. IV below, ch. 6.3.2 at the end). This distinction meant
nothing in Oman; consequently he was presumed to be a believer in the khalq al-Qurʾān
all the same. In his book he had in fact stated clearly that in his view the Quran was
neither created nor uncreated, but God’s speech and revelation (ibid. 150, 1f.). Two of his
sons inquired of Abū Ṣufra b. ʿAbd al-Malik b. Ṣufra (in Basra? regarding him cf. p. 231
above) concerning the truth of the matter (ibid. 153, 10ff.); these were sons different
from the two mentioned on p. 798 above. – Regarding Ibn Maḥbūb’s grandson named
Saʿīd b. ʿAbdallāh cf. Kudamī, Istiqāma I 210, 8ff. Kindī, Bayān al-sharʿ I 164ff., quotes a
text against the khalq al-Qurʾān by a certain ʿAzzān b. al-Ṣaqr (regarding him see also
ibid. 135, –7f., and 147, 4; as the last in a line of early Ibāḍite scholars: ibid. 297, –7).
p. 798: A detailed opinion by Abū l-Muʾaththir on the issue of qadar is found in Kindī,
Bayān al-sharʿ I 109, 9ff. – In the case of Abū l-Ḥawārī it is noticeable that he does not
quote Ibāḍite authorities; it seems that the Yemeni Ibāḍiyya did not have its own tafsīr
tradition.
p. 802: The Aachen ivories have been assigned an earlier date in the meantime, namely
the sixth century and consequently the pre-Islamic period (E. G. Grimme, Der Dom
zu Aachen. Architektur und Ausstattung, Aachen 1994, p. 114, but without further
references).
p. 805: Cf. also Y. Râgib, Al-Sayyida Nafīsa, sa légende, son culte et son cimetière in:
SU 44/1976/61ff., and 45/1977/27ff. (including references to many other Shīʿite monu-
ments and tombs).
p. 810: Nuʿaym had attended Ibn Ḥanbal’s hadith lectures in Baghdad “shortly before
the death of Hushaym”, probably Hushaym b. Bashīr al-Sulamī (d. 183/799; see p. 493f.
above); Ibn Ḥanbal, ʿIlal 2III 437 no. 5860. Ibn Ḥanbal, who was not yet twenty at the
time, regarded him as his first pupil.
p. 815: Ṭaḥāwī did, however, become a Ḥanafite later.

Theology and Society in The Second and Third Centuries of The Hijra

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Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra

Maribel Fierro (Madrid)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ho1

Josef van Ess

Translated from German by

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ess, Josef van, author. | O’Kane, John, 1940– translator.

Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

2.2 Basra ........................................................................................................................................................................... 1

2.2.3.4 Kullu mujtahid muṣīb .................................................................................... 177

2.2.6.2.3 The Image of ʿAmr’s Personality ........................... 336

2.2.8.4.1.3 The Consensus of Muslims ...... 461

3 Iran ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 551

3.1.2.4 Samarqand ................................................................................................................. 628

4 The Arabian Peninsula ...................................................................................................................................... 717

4.2 Southern Arabia .......................................................................................................................................... 787

5 Egypt .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 800

Supplementary Remarks ................................................................................................................................ 831

1 Cf. Morony in: The Islamic Middle East 161.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��17 | doi 1�.1163/97890043440�0_00�

Nestorian patriarch Timothy addressed a pastoral letter to his flock in Basra

2.2.1 The “Heretics”

2.2.1.1 Bashshār b. Burd

background distressing and made up a fantastic Iranian genealogy for himself

12 Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ṭab. 21, 15f.

ever been an “extremist”, he had by then outgrown such youthful foolishness.

until the uprising of 145. Of course we do know that Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh

Regarding the phenomenon of reusing a panegyric qaṣīda cf. Kilito,

Not the worst of the three, o Umm ʿAmr, /

41 See vol. I 465 above.

Earth is dark; fire, however, luminous. /

Satan is more excellent than your father Adam./

60 Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ṭab. 22, ult. ff.

2.2.1.2 Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs

8 Agh. XIV 177, 1ff.

2.2.1.3 The Sumaniyya

centuries.12 Basran Muʿtazilites such as Abū l-Hudhayl or al-Naẓẓām studied

The question is worth considering of whether the numerous instances

12 Ibid. III 27, 9ff.

18 Ḥayawān, IV 457, ult. ff.; also Goldziher, Vorlesungen 161f.

2.2.1.4 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ

1 Catalogue of Works IX, no. 13.

16 Ṣaḥāba 56f. para. 50 Pellat.

older, would be incomprehensible.18 Furthermore his son Muḥammad was

The stated objective would be entirely assured if the earliest surviving

importantly, he is mentioned in the colophon of every manuscript that is

It is anything but certain that Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was a Zoroastrian. If people

We could, however, interpret the passage in Bīrūnī as meaning that he

2.2.1.4.1 A Text against Islam

2 Text V 9 with commentary.

to two bows’-lengths away, or nearer,10 he feels sadness, sorrow and anger.11 At

10 Text 8, a. This is probably a reference to a miʿrāj narrative.

and it is impossible to imagine, too.23 On the contrary, something has always

23 Text 8, c and e.

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was characterised by the following doctrine: light rules

He claimed that movement (al-ḥarakāt) existed and was not identical

2.2.1.4.2 The Parody of the Quran

5 Festschrift ʿAbbās 159f.

The Quran itself may be furnishing an early instance of a parody of

2.2.1.5 The Context. “Natural Philosophers”

Maʿmar Abū l-Ashʿath7

whom Jāḥiẓ called “a philosopher among the mutakallimūn”, comparing him