Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl al-ʿAllāf

(1,691 words)

, Muḥammad b. al-Hud̲ h̲ ayl b. ʿUbayd Allāh b. Makḥūl

, with the nisba of al-ʿAbdī
(being a mawlā
of ʿAbd al-Ḳays), the
first speculative theologian of the Muʿtazila. He was born in Baṣra, where he lived in the quarter of the ʿallāfūn
, or foragers.
(whence his surname); the date of his birth is uncertain: 135/752-3 or 134/751-2 or even 131/748-9. In 203/818-9 he settled in
Bag̲h̲dād and died, at a great age, in 226/840-1, or according to another tradition, in the reign of al-Wāt̲h̲iḳ (227-32/842-7), or,
on the authority of others, in 235/849-50, under al-Mutawakkil. He was indirectly a disciple of Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ, through the
intermediary of one of Wāṣil’s companions, ʿUt̲h̲mān al-Ṭawīl. Like Wāṣil, he was lettered; his profound knowledge of poetry
was especially celebrated. Some ḥadīt̲h̲s
also are quoted under his name.

The theology which he inherited from the school of Wāṣil was still rudimentary. Essentially polemical, it opposed—in a
rather unsystematic fashion, it seems—the anthropomorphism of popular Islam and of the traditionists, the doctrine of
determinism favoured for political reasons by the Umayyads, and the divinization of ʿAlī preached by the extreme S̲h̲īʿites.
While continuing this polemic, Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl was the first to engage in the speculative struggles of the epoch, a task for
which he was exceptionally well equipped by his philosophical mind, his sagacity and his eloquence. He became the
apologist of Islam against other religions and against the great currents of thought of the preceding epoch; ¶ the dualists,
represented by the Zoroastrians, the Manichaeans and other Gnostics; the philosophers of Greek inspiration, the dahriyya
,
mainly represented by the champions of the natural sciences; finally against the increasingly numerous Muslims who were
influenced by these foreign ideas: crypto-Manichaean poets like Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Ḳuddūs, the theologians of the "modern"
type who had adopted certain gnostic and philosophical doctrines, etc. It seems that it was only at a mature age that he
made himself acquainted with philosophy. On the occasion of his pilgrimage (the date of which is unknown) he met in
Mecca the S̲h̲īʿite theologian His̲h̲ām b. al-Ḥakam and disputed with him concerning his anthropomorphist doctrines,
which show a gnostic influence; and it was only then that he began to study the books of the dahriyya. Later historians
observe certain similarities between his doctrine of the divine attributes and the philosophy of Pseudo-Empedocles, forged
by the Neo-Platonists and natural scientists of late antiquity; in effect his philosophical sources must have been of such a
kind, which are represented in general by medieval Aristotelianism. These philosophers attracted, as well as repelled, him;
while combatting them, he adopted their methods and their manner of looking at problems. Naive as a thinker, and having
no scholastic tradition, he approached speculative problems with a daring which did not even recoil from the absurd.
Hence all the prematurity and the lack of balance which characterize his theology, but also the freshness of his attempts. He
was the first to set many of the fundamental problems at which the whole of the later Muʿtazila was to labour.

The unity, the spirituality and the transcendence of God are carried in the theology of Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl to the highest degree
of abstraction. God is one; he does not resemble his creatures in any respect; he is not a body (against His̲h̲ām b. al-Ḥakam);
has no figure (
hayʾa
), form (
ṣūra
) or limit. God is knowing with a knowledge, is powerful with a power, alive with a life,
eternal with an eternality, seeing with a faculty of sight, etc. (against the S̲h̲īʿites who asserted that God is knowledge, etc.),
but this knowledge, power, etc. are identical with himself (against popular theology which regarded the divine attributes as
entities added to essence): provisional formulas of compromise which did not satisfy later generations. God is omnipresent
in the sense that he directs everything and his direction is exercised in every place. God is invisible in the other world; the
believers will see him with their hearts. The knowledge of God is unlimited, as to what concerns his knowledge of himself;
as for his knowledge of the world, it is circumscribed by the limits of his creation, which forms a limited totality (if it were
not limited, it would not be totality). The same applies to the divine power. Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl strove to reconcile the Ḳurʾānic
doctrine of creation ex nihilo with the Aristotelian cosmology according to which the world set in motion by God is
doctrine of creation ex nihilo with the Aristotelian cosmology, according to which the world, set in motion by God, is
eternal, movement being co-eternal with the prime mover himself. While accepting movement as the principle of the
universal process, he declared it to be created in the Ḳurʾānic sense; in consequence, movement also will reach its end and
will cease. This end is placed by him in the other world, after the last day: movement having ceased, paradise and hell will
come to a standstill and their inhabitants will be fixed in a state of immobility, the blessed enjoying for eternity the highest
pleasures and the damned enduring the most cruel torments. This bizarre ¶ doctrine, which, according to tradition, he
himself revoked, is unanimously rejected by all the Muslim theologians, Muʿtazilites or not; nor have its grave consequences
for the doctrine of God’s omniscience and omnipotence escaped them. In regard to theodicy, Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl taught that
God has the power to do evil and injustice, but he does not do it, because of his goodness and wisdom. God admits the evil
actions of man, but he is not their author. Man has the power to commit them, he is responsible for them, and responsible
even for the involuntary consequences resulting from his actions (theory of tawallud
, first developed by Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl).
The responsible being is man in his entirety, his rūḥ
together with his visible body. It was Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl who introduced
into Muʿtazilite speculation the concept of the accidents (
aʿrāḍ
) of bodies, and that of the atom, which he called d̲j̲awhar
.
These concepts, which originally had a purely physical relevance, were made by him to serve as the basis for theology
proper, cosmology, anthropology and ethics. This is his most original innovation, as well as the most heavy with
consequences; it was this which gave to Muʿtazili theology its mechanical character. Life, soul, spirit, the five senses, are
accidents and. therefore not enduring; even spirit (rūḥ) will not endure. Human actions can be divided into two phases,
both of them movements: the first is the approach ("I shall do"), the second the accomplished action ("I have done"). Man
having free will, the first movement can be suspended in the second phase, so that the action remains unaccomplished; it is
only the accomplished action which counts. Divine activity is interpreted in the light or the doctrine of accidents: the whole
process of the world consists in an incessant creation of accidents, which descend into the bodies. Some accidents, however,
are not be found in a place or in a body; e.g. time and divine will (
irāda
). The latter is identical with the eternal creating
word kun; it is distinct from its object (
al-murād
) and also from the divine order (
amr
), which man can either obey or
disobey (while the effect of the creating word kun
is absolute: kun fa-yakūnu
, Ḳurʾān ii, 111, etc.). Those who are not
acquainted with the Ḳurʾānic revelation, but have nevertheless accomplished laudable acts prescribed by the Ḳurʾān, have
obeyed God without having the intention to do so (theory of ṭāʿa la yurādu’llāhu bihā
, otherwise attributed to the
Ḵh̲ārid̲j̲ites). The Ḳurʾān is an accident created by God; being written, recited or committed to memory, it is at the same time
in various places.—In the question of the manzila bayn al-manzilatayn Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl took up a position which was in
conformity with the political situation of his time: he did not reject any of the combatants round ʿAlī, yet preferred ʿAlī to
ʿUt̲h̲mān. He enjoyed the favour of al-Maʾmun, who often invited him to the court for theological disputes.— All the
writings of Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl are lost.

During his long life, Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl had an enormous influence on the development of theology and he collected round
him a large number of disciples of different generations. The best known amongst them is al-Naẓẓām, though he quarrelled
with his master because of his destructive theories concerning the atom; Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl condemned him and composed
several treatises against him. Among his disciples are named Yaḥyā b. Bis̲h̲r al-Arrad̲j̲ānī, al-S̲h̲aḥḥām. and others. His school
continued to exist for a long time; even al-Ḏj̲ubbāʾī still avowed his indebtedness to Abū ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl’s ¶ theology, in spite of
the numerous points on which he differed from him.—Unfortunately, the theology of Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl was exposed to the
malevolence of a renegade from Muʿtazilism, the famous Ibn al-Rāwandī, who, in his Faḍīḥat al-Muʿtazila
grossly
misrepresented it, by submitting it to an often too cheap criticism; this caricature has been faithfully reproduced by al-
Bag̲h̲dādī in his Farḳ
and often recurs in the résumés of the Muʿtazila. It is only with the help of al-Intiṣār
, by al-Ḵh̲ayyāṭ.
the severe critic of Ibn al-Rāwandi, that we are able to unmask the latter’s procedure and gain an exact idea of the true
motives of Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl’s speculation. Al-As̲h̲ʿarī, in his Maḳālāt
, reproduced his theses with admirable impartiality, after
the school tradition of the Muʿtazila. Al-S̲h̲ahrastānī based his exposé on the later Muʿtazilite tradition, especially, it seems,
on al-Kaʿbī.

(H.S. Nyberg)

Bibliography

al-Ḵh̲aṭīb al-Bag̲h̲dādī, Taʾrīk̲h̲ Bag̲h̲dād, iii, 366-70

Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲, index

Ibn Ḵh̲allikān, no. 617

Ibn al-Murtaḍā (T. W. Arnold, The Muʿtazila), index

Ibn Ḳutayba, Taʾwil Muk̲h̲talaf al-Ḥadīt̲h̲, Cairo 1326, 53-5

Ḵh̲ayyāṭ, Intiṣār (Nyberg), index

As̲h̲ʿarī, Maḳālāt (Ritter), index

Bag̲h̲dādī, Farḳ, index

Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal, ii, 193, 487, iv, 83 ff., 192 ff., etc.

Muṭahhar al-Maḳdisī, al-Badʾ wa ’l-Taʾrīk̲h̲ (Huart), index of transl.

S̲h̲ahrastānī, 34-7

Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī, Ṭabaḳāt al-Umam (Cheikho), 21 f.

Maḳrīzī, Ḵh̲iṭaṭ. ii, 346

S. Pines, Beiträge zur islamischen Atomlehre, Berlin 1936

A. S. Tritton, Muslim Theology, London 1947

L. Gardet and M. M. Anawati, Introduction à la théologie musulmane, Paris 1948

A. N. Nādir, Falsafat al-Muʿtazila, Alexandria 1950-1.

Cite this page

Nyberg, H.S.,
“Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl al-ʿAllāf”, in:
Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs.
Consulted online on 12
September 2022 <http://dx.doi.org.nottingham.idm.oclc.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_0203>
First published online: 2012
First print edition: ISBN: 9789004161214, 1960-2007