Kalam


Ilm al-kalam or ilm al-lahut, often shortened to kalam, is the scholastic, speculative, or rational study of Islamic theology. It can also be defined as the science that studies the fundamental doctrines of Islamic faith, proving their validity, or refuting doubts regarding them rationally via logic. Kalām was born out of the need to establish and defend the tenets of Islam against philosophical doubters and non-Muslims, and also to defend against heretical and religious innovations. A scholar of kalam is referred to as a mutakallim, a role distinguished from those of Islamic philosophers and jurists.
After its first beginnings in the late Umayyad period, the Kalām experienced its rise in the early Abbasid period, when the Caliph al-Mahdi commissioned Mutakallimūn to write books against the followers of Iranian religions, and the Barmakid vizier Yahya ibn Khalid held Kalām discussions with members of various religions and confessional groups in his house. By the 10th century, the Muʿtazilites were main pioneers of 'Kalam' during the early formative period of Islam. However, due to increased criticism by traditionalist Muslim scholars that the Mu'tazilites started departing from mainstream Sunni orthodoxy, they were refuted heavily. Soon after, two new important Sunni Kalām schools emerged: the Ashʿaris and the Maturidis. They positioned themselves against the growing Neoplatonic and Aristotelian philosophy within the Mu'tazilites and elevated the "Kalām science" as an acceptable ranking science in mainstream Sunni discourse. Some of the arguments of these Mutakallimūn also found their way into Jewish and Christian theological discussions in the Middle Ages. Kalām science by the early modern period was essentially limited to the study of manuals and commentaries, from the late 19th century onwards various reform thinkers appeared in British India and the Ottoman Empire who called for the founding of a "new Kalām".

Definition

Definitions of Kalām in chronological order

Kalām as apologetics

According to several of the definitions given above, kalām has an apologetic function: it serves to defend one's own religious views. This apologetic function is particularly evident in the philosophers al-Farabi and Abu al-Hassan al-Amiri. The former sees it as a mental ability through which man can refute everything that contradicts the views and actions established by the founder of the religion, the latter as "the defence of religion with the tongue". In the definitions of the Ashʿarite scholar Adud al-Din al-Iji, the Ottoman scholar Taşköprüzade and the Indian scholar at-Tahānawī, who worked in Iran, kalām has the task of averting doubts from religious dogmas or truths. Against the background of such definitions, the French orientalist Louis Gardet judged that the function of kalām as a defensive "apology" could not be overestimated. The view that the "fundamental character" of the Kalām consists of "defensive apology" is also the declared leitmotif of the French handbook Introduction à la théologie musulmane, co-authored by Gardet and M.M Anawati in 1948.
The Indian scholar ʿAbd an-Nabī al-Ahmadnagarī even believed that the value of the Kalam was limited to this apologetic function alone. The great Mutakallimūn, he explains in his encyclopedia Dustūr al-ʿulamā, never justified or authenticated their doctrines with arguments from the Kalam, since the sole purpose of the Kalam was to silence the adversary and bring the stubborn to their knees. The great Mutakallimūn, on the other hand, drew their doctrines solely from the "lamp of prophethood". Such statements can also be found in al-Ghazali. Thus, in his work Jawahir al-Qur'an, he judged that the purpose of the science of kalam was "to protect the beliefs of the masses from disruption by innovators". On the other hand, this science was never about "revealing the truths".

Kalām as the science of religious foundations or dogmas

Several Muslim authors defined kalām by its relationship to the "fundamentals of religion". For example, Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi described the science of kalām as "a way of contemplating the fundamentals of religion in which deliberation is based on reason alone." Abu al-Yusr al-Bazdawi defined it as "the explanation of those questions which constitute the fundamentals of religion, which it is an individual duty to learn."
Ibn al-Athir in his book al-Lubāb fī Tahḏīb al-Ansāb was the first to define kalām science as "the science of the foundations of religion". Ibn Khallikan and Siraj al-Din Urmavi even equated kalām science with the foundations of religion itself. The equation of ʿilm al-kalām and ʿilm uṣūl al-dīn is also found in the catalogue of the Ottoman Palace Library from the beginning of the 16th century, where the section containing the books on kalām was entitled "Section of the Books of the Science of the Foundations of Religion, i.e. the Science of Kalām". This classification probably also influenced the Ottoman scholars Taşköprüzade and Saçaklızāde, who also equated kalām science and the "science of the foundations of religion" in their Arabic scientific encyclopedias. At-Tahānawī explains this equation by saying that the Kalām is the basis of the religious legal sciences and that they are based on it.
Some later scholars defined the kalām science of dogmas. For Adud al-Din al-Iji, kalām is "the science of proving religious dogmas by citing arguments and removing doubts." In a slightly modified form, this definition was also adopted by the Ottoman scholar Tashköprüzāde and the Indian scholar at-Tahānawī. For al-Taftazani, Kalām is "the knowledge of religious dogmas based on certain evidence", for Ibn Khaldun "a science that includes the disputation of the dogmas of faith with rational arguments" and for Morteza Motahhari "a science that discusses the Islamic dogmas in such a way that it explains, proves and defends them".

Theories about the origin of the term

In Arabic, the term Kalām generally means "speech, conversation, debate." There are different theories as to why this term came to be used to describe the discipline that deals with the rational justification of one's own religious doctrines:
  • Al-Shahrastani suggested that the name was coined by the Mu'tazila. They called this science by this name either because the speech of God was the main question around which their disputations and controversies revolved, so that the whole science was called by it.
  • Ibn at-Tilimsanī considered three different possibilities: 1. the name Kalām comes from the fact that the Mutakallimūn began the chapters in their books with the phrase: "Chapter of speech about..." ; 2. When the Zahirites were asked about one of the problems of this science, they replied: "That is that about which we are forbidden to speak". This happened repeatedly, so that after a time it was called "the science of speech", with the expression "forbidden" eventually being dropped; 3. Science was called ʿilm al-kalām because its learning is one of the most important means of bringing out the intellectual power of speech by which man is distinguished from other living beings.
  • Al-Taftazani gives a total of eight explanations for the name Kalām in his commentary on the confession of an-Nasafī, including the one that this science takes place solely in discussion and exchange of speech and thus differs from other sciences that can also be practiced in the form of reflection and reading of books. Another possibility that he discusses is that this science was considered to be speech par excellence because of the strength of its evidence, just as one says of the stronger of two statements: "This is the speech".
  • Ibn Khaldun suggested that the science of kalām was so called either because the fight against innovations did not require action, but was achieved solely through "speech".
  • Morteza Motahhari stated the reason why the name originated from the habit of its scholars speaking, which is the opposite of silence and the Kalām scholars made statements on questions of faith where silence would have been necessary, imitating the Companions of the Prophet and the Muslims of the second generation, who had also remained silent on the matter.
According to Josef van Ess, the many explanations given by Arab scholars "clearly demonstrate the perplexity of native philologists and theologians when faced with the term kalām". As for Western scholarship, Tjitze de Boer and Duncan Black MacDonald suggested that the term kalām was derived from the Greek word logos. Arent Jan Wensinck, on the other hand, rejected the view that the term kalām could have anything to do with logos or its derivatives in 1932, and argued that it had arisen "through the development of Arabic terminology itself". Louis Gardet and M.-M. Anawati considered the first possibility of derivation mentioned by Ibn at-Tilimsānī to be the most likely and suspected that kalām initially meant "speech about..." and then, through antonomasia, became "discourse" per se. W. Montgomery Watt took a similar path of explanation to Ibn Taymiyyah when he wrote about the term mutakalli: "Undoubtedly this was once a derisive name, perhaps creating the image of people 'who talk forever.' Eventually, however, it became accepted as a neutral term."

History

The question of origin

  1. Maimonides believed that the Kalām was actually of Christian origin and only later became known to Muslims through translations. Franz August Schmölders rejected this theory as implausible as early as 1840 in his Essai sur les écoles philosophiques chez les Arabes.
  2. According to Ibn Khaldūn, the science of kalam arose from the fact that disagreements about the details of the doctrines of faith arose in the period after the first Muslims. Most of these disagreements were, in his opinion, caused by ambiguous Quranic verses. They led to dispute, disputation and rational argumentation.
  3. Mohammed Abed al-Jabri assumes that the Kalam arose in the middle of the 7th century, immediately after the arbitration that ended the war between Ali ibn Abi Talib and Mu'awiya. During this period, Arab political discourse began to use religion as a mediator. The various parties sought religious legitimacy for their positions, which was the first step in the theoretical formation of what was later called the science of Kalam. Thus, in its historical reality, this science is not just a discourse on the doctrine of faith, but a "practice of politics in religion".
In fact, the origins of the kalām are obscure. This is also due to the fact that the specifically theological meaning of the words kalām and mutakallim was very slow to gain acceptance. Mutakallim initially only referred to a "speaker with a specific function".
In the anonymous Aḫbār al-ʿAbbās wa-waladihī, which dates from the eighth century, it is reported that when Abu Muslim wanted to establish himself in Merv, he sent mutakallimūn from his followers into the city to win the population over to their cause and make it clear to them that they were following the Sunnah and acting according to the truth. Shlomo Pines has concluded that the term originally arose in Abū Muslim's army and referred to political and religious propagandists such as the Dawah.
However, there are reports that indicate that the culture of kalām existed before this. The Arab historian Abu Zakariya al-Azdi cites a report according to which the Umayyad caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz is said to have said: "I have argued and spoken with the people. Indeed, I love to speak with the Shia." The fact that the verb kallama is used here for "to speak with", from which the word kalām is derived, is seen by Josef van Ess as an indication that the specifically theological meaning of the kalām concept may have already developed at this time.
According to a report quoted in the Kitab al-Aghani by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, there were six representatives of the Kalam in Basra: the two Muʿtazilites Amr ibn Ubayd and Wasil ibn Ata, the poet Bashshar ibn Burd, Salih ibn Abd al-Quddus and Abdul Karim bin Abi Al-Awja', and a man from the tribe of Azd who was inclined towards Sumanīya, an Indian doctrine, and who made his house available to the group for their meetings. Since Wāsil died around 748, the Kalām must have existed in the late Umayyad period if this report is authentic.
In two narrations cited by Abdullah Ansari, Amr ibn Ubayd is identified as the one who "invented these innovations of kalām". Abu Hanifa is said to have cursed ʿAmr ibn ʿUbaid for "opening the way for people to speak about what it is not their business to speak about." Ibn Taymiyya, on the other hand, believed that the special type of argumentation that characterizes the Kalam first appeared at the beginning of the second Islamic century with Jaʿd ibn Dirham and Jahm bin Safwan. From them it then reached Amr ibn Ubayd and Wasil ibn Ata. According to the Ottoman scholar Taşköprüzade, the spread of the Kalam began as early as the year 100 of the Hijra through the Muʿtazila and the Qadariya, with Wasil ibn Ata again playing the decisive role. However, neither Wasil ibn Ata nor any other persons mentioned here have recorded book titles or sayings that indicate that they themselves used the term kalām as a name for a particular science or knowledge culture.
According to a report quoted by al-Masudi in his work The Meadows of Gold, the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi was the first ruler to commission Mutakallimūn representing Islam to write books against Mulhid from the circle of the Manichaeans, Bardesanites and Marcionites and to refute their arguments. The reason for this was that at that time writings of these groups had spread and were being translated from New Persian and Middle Persian into Arabic.