CHAPTER 3. WHAT IS “NEGATIVE THEOLOGY:” A CONCEPTUAL GUIDE
B. Mu‘tazilites, Sufis and “Negative Theology” Unqualified
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forms,”270 and this part of the dissertation explores the Sufi varieties of discourse on God’s nature. Thus apophatic theologies are all forms of negating speech formations on the divine ipseity by employing the tools and discursive methods of theology. It is these paths that I will explore in what follows with a focus on thirteenth century Sufism.
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theologians.274 John Mühleisen Arnold mentioned of the Mu‘tazilites, and its sects, all of whom, accordingly, “denied the divine attributes, asserting that to ascribe eternal attributes to Allāh, is to assume so many personalities. … Thus the Koranic dogma of the abstract Unity led to an utter negation of the Divine perfections!”275 In more friendly terms, I. Goldziher’s Vorlesungen (pbl.1910) also discussed the “rigid negation” of the rationalist Mu‘tazilites,276 who followed a monotheistic purism, and saw in the addition of attributes to God “nothing less than the negation of the unity of the divine being.”277 Similar views on the Mu‘tazilites were widely shared by Muslim intellectuals of the time. In his monumental lectures Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (pbl.1930), the great Muslim intellectual Muḥammad Iqbal (d.1938) complained that the Mu‘tazilites followed a “purely negative attitude” in theology.278 The western inclination to see Mu‘tazilites as the foremost negators mirrored a dominant view that was not only represented in pre-modern Muslim sources, but also circulated among Muslim intellectuals.
After 1970s, the concept of “apophasis” as a marker of modernity began to be attributed to Sufism. On the other hand “negative theology,” as long as it does not entail a specifically modernizing, i.e., critical, self-reflective, non-dogmatic or moral gesture, has kept being associated with Muslim mutakallimūn, specifically Mu‘tazilites. Indeed, many recent studies employ “negative theology” in Islam exclusively with reference to the Mu‘tazilites. Stepaniants, for example, devotes a section to “the Mu‘tazilite negative theology,” as presenting a distinct cosmology separate from the peripatetic and atomist cosmological views.279
274 E.g. Hughes 1885, p.425, p.428; Sell 1907, pp.194-198. Both Hughes and Sell use al- Shahrastānī’s al-Milal wa al-Niḥal, which was published in English in 1842 and 1846; the German translation of Haarbrücker appeared in 1850 and 1851. (Rudolph 2015, p.3.) “So little authentic Mu‘tazilite literature was available that until the publication of some significant texts in the 1960s, the Mu‘tazilite doctrine was mostly known through the works of its opponents.”
(Schmidtke 2008, p.21.) Schmidtke provides a succinct history of the western scholarship on the Mu‘tazilites.
275 Mühleisen Arnold 1874. pp.224-225; my emphasis. (“The Djamis” in the passage should be read “Jahmites,” a Mu‘tazilite sect for Mühleisen.)
276 Goldziher 1981, p.96.
277 Goldziher 1917, pp.119-120.
278 “The Mu‘tazilah, conceiving religion merely as a body of doctrines and ignoring it as a vital fact, took no notice of non-conceptual modes of approaching Reality and reduced religion to a mere system of logical concepts ending in a purely negative attitude.” (Iqbal 2013, p.4.) For similar statements of Iqbah on the Mu‘tazīlah, see Iqbal 1908, p.51, 66.
279 Stepaniants 2002, pp.22-23.
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Italian scholar D’Onofrio’s the History of Theology, which is used as a textbook in Theological Studies Departments in the United States and beyond, employs the term “negative theology” solely in reference to the Mu‘tazilites among Islamic theological intellectual currents.280 Another well-known textbook in theology, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition claims that the Mu‘tazilites “drew on Aristotle’s argument that God is radically one, with no distinction between His essence and His attributes. At the same time, they called on Neoplatonic negative theology to accent God’s transcendence.”281 More recent works in the field of Islamic Studies describe Mu‘tazilites as adopting a
“radical form of negative theology.”282 Examples are abundant. Briefly, the portrait of the Mu‘tazilites as the Muslim negative theologians par excellence is still a popular view in different branches of the study of religion. Hence the most suitable, commonsensical place to begin the analysis of negative theology in thirteenth century Sufism is arguably to ask whether Mu‘tazilism survived that time, and to elaborate on the direct and indirect connections between Mu‘tazilites and Sufis of the period.
The Debate of a Mu‘tazilite and a Literalist on Self-Subsistence: Thick Description of an Encounter of Two Sufis in Seville
Mu‘tazilism and Sufism were not two mutually exclusive categories from early on as the Mu‘tazilite Sufi theologians as well as the ninth century theological current Ṣūfiyyat al-Mu‘tazilah in ‘Iraq both indicate. The latter was an urban movement in Bishr ibn al-Mu‘tamir (d.825)’s Mu‘tazilite School that denied the worldly authorities so strongly that its only future would be among the antinomian itinerant Darvīshes, the Qalandars.283 But to go even further back, it is well-known that both theology and Sufism trace their origins as distinct fields to the figure of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d.728).284 Not only a phalanx of proto-Sufis such as Ibn Wāsi‘, Farqad, Abān, Yazīd al-Raqqāshī, Ibn Dīnār, Bunānī and Ḥabīb al-‘Ajamī, but also the two men held up as the founding figures of Mu‘tazilite theology, Wāṣil ibn ‘Aṭā’ (d.748) and Abū ‘Uthmān ‘Amr ibn ‘Ubayd ibn Bāb (d.769), were both associated with his circle.285
280 D’Onofrio 2008, p.259.
281 Colish 1997, p.138; emphasis mine.
282 Bahrawi 2013, p.55. Also see Fontaine 1990, p.100.
283 Van Ess 1993, Vol.5, pp.329-330; Van Ess 2006, pp.148-152; Sviri 2012, pp.23-28.
284 Mayer 2008, p.260. Mayer also introduces how key some Sufi concepts and practices emerged with al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.
285 Mayer 2008, p.260.
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While Sufism flourished after the ninth century, the school of Mu‘tazilism, outside the heterogeneous umbrella of Shī‘ism, had largely declined by the twelfth century, except in some small circles in Khuwārazm. Mu‘tazilism was reinvigorated in the region through Maḥmūd Jarīr Abū Muḍar al-Ḍabbī (d.1113), a scholar who had emigrated to Khuwārazm from Iṣfahān. Following al-Ḍabbī, prominent scholars like Ibn al-Malāḥimī (d.1141) and his student al-Zamakhsharī
(d.1144) kept Mu‘tazilism alive in Khuwārazm, where Ḥanafīs adhered to Mu‘tazilism at least until the beginning of the fifteenth century. The prominence of Mu‘tazilite material in Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d.1210)’s work, and his oral debates with the Mu‘tazilites that led to his exile from the region witness this reinvigoration.286 ‘Abd al-Jabbār al-Khuwārazmī (d.af.1401), who accompanied Timur (r.1370-1405) to Syria and acted as an interpreter between him and Ibn Khaldūn (d.1407), was a Mu‘tazilite scholar.287 The Najjāriyyah had a formidable presence in Rayy at least until the twelfth century, and unsurprisingly the Ḥanafī
theologians of Transoxania had a particular rivalry with the ideas of their master Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Najjār (d.ca.833-836). Ibn al-Dā’ī (fl.ca.13th CE) reports that al- Najjār’s followers still existed in the region of Bukhārā, among other places in central Transoxanian territories. However, even if he was among the early theologians to defend the negative interpretation of affirmative predicates, aI- Najjār did not belong to the Mu‘tazīlah as al-Māturīdī (d.944) had already indicated.288 Yet many doxographers depicted the Najjāriyyah as a Mu‘tazilite branch.289
Except such reported circles and the better known individual Khuwārazmian representatives such as al-Muṭarrizī (d.1213) and al-Sakkākī (d.1229), Mu‘tazilism dissolved into later Ash‘arī, Ḥanafī-Māturīdī, Mashshā’ī [Peripatetic], and most significantly, Shī‘ī approaches to theology. On the other hand, in terms of a negativist approach to God’s attributes, later schools or movements were not the only channels between the Mu‘tazilites and the Sufis of the thirteenth century. In the twelfth century, Sufis still had direct access to Mu‘tazilite works, at least in Eastern Iran. In a miraculous instance of mind-reading, Aḥmad-i Jām (d.1141) surprisingly said to his disciples that it is ethically forbidden [ḥarām] to
286 Ibn Taymīyyah (d.1328) already recognized the significant influence of Mu‘tazilism on al-Rāzī.
See Jaffer 2012, pp.511-512.
287 R. Martin et.al. 1997, pp.38-41.
288 Rudolph 2015, pp.164.
289 See e.g. al-Shahrastānī 2014, p.144.
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read books that vilify the Mu‘tazilites.290 Furthermore, it seems that Mu‘tazilism indeed survived into the thirteenth century and maintained direct contact with the Sufis of the time. The Ẓāhirī291 Sufi Ibn al-‘Arabī (d.1240)’s four parallel accounts on his encounter with the Mu‘tazilite Sufi master al-Qabrafīqī (fl.late 12th CE) of Andalusia provide a striking example. Ibn Ḥazm (d.1064) spoke of
“Andalusī Mu‘tazilīs” as a school,292 but the presence of Mu‘tazilism in Andalusia was rather meager. Especially after the fall of the Idrīsīs and the dominance of the theological literalism of the Mālikīs by the ninth century, they lost their footing in the region.293 Later, Ibn Rushd (d.1198) claimed that none of the Mu‘tazilite writings reached the Iberian Peninsula, thus he could not learn the methods they adopted in discussing the divine existence from their own sources.294 The founding figure of the Almohadī revolution, Ibn Tūmart (d.1130), criticized the Mu‘tazilites harshly but also so superficially that his case indeed supports Ibn Rushd’s claim.295
Ibn al-‘Arabī’s debate with a Mu‘tazilite Sufi master, before the death of Ibn Rushd, has important theological dimensions, which shed light on Mu‘tazilite ideas circulating in thirteenth century Andalusia, including negative theologies.
Ibn al-‘Arabī narrates the encounter as follows:
This is the station of Self-Subsistence [maqām al-qayyūmiyyah]. ...
Our companions disagreed on emulating this attribute [yatakhkhallaqu bihi]. I met Abū ‘Abd Allāh ibn Junayd al- Qabrafīqī among the masters of the [Sufi] order—originally from Ronda and of the Mu‘tazilite school [madhhab]. I saw that he denied [yamna‘] the emulation of Self-Subsistence, thus he rejected [raddada] this from his school. Instead, he was advising
290 Aḥmad-i Jām 2004, pp.293-294.
291 For an introduction to Ibn al-‘Arabī’s affiliation with the Ẓāhirī legal school, see Mayer 2008, p.282.
292 Casewit 2014, p.44.
293 Casewit 2014, p.44.
294 Stroumsa 2014, pp.80-81.
Stroumsa’s work on the Mu‘tazilites in the Andalusia misses the case of al-Qabrafīqī that I am introducing here.
295 Ibn Tūmart 1993, pp.15-17.
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for his devotees the emulation of the [divine] actions [kāna yaqūl bi-khalq al-af‘āl lil-‘ubbād].296
The three accounts in the Meccan Openings [al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīyyah] and the account in the Adornment of the Spiritually Transformed [Ḥilyat al-Abdāl]
strongly cohere with each other, and inform us of al-Qabrafīqī and his Mu‘tazilite Sufi circle in Cabrafigo, a town in a mountainous region of Andalusia to the south-east of Cordoba.297 Ibn al-‘Arabī describes him as “among the greatest Sufi masters of Andalusia” [min kubbār mashāyikh hadhihi al-ṭarīqah bil-Andalus].298 This honorific should be approached with caution because Ibn al-‘Arabī does not mention him somewhere else, including his biographical dictionary on the Sufis of Andalusia. We also know that Ibn al-‘Arabī, who did not take offense at visiting scholars, traveled long distances to meet known male and female Sufi masters, but it is al-Qabrafīqī who comes to Ishbīliyyah and finds the young Ibn al-‘Arabī in this case.299 Still, it is clear that al-Qabrafīqī had a good following, and for Ibn al-‘Arabī there was nothing particularly surprising in meeting a Mu‘tazilite Sufi.
Parallel to his Mu‘tazilite affiliation, al-Qabrafīqī’s preclusion of the divine attribute Self-Subsistence [al-Qayyūmiyyah]300 from human access is somewhat unusual among medieval Sufis, most of whom not only allowed access to the divine names, but also stipulated emulating them as pivotal to human perfection.
Ibn al-‘Arabī himself saw the divine names as veils in front of the divine essence,
296 Ibn al-‘Arabī 2004, Vol.3, p.212. Cf. Ibn al-‘Arabī 2004, Vol.5, p.53. Also see Ibn al-‘Arabī
1428/2007k, p.392. For an English translation of the account in the Adornment of the Spiritually Transformed, see Ibn al-‘Arabī 2008, p.38.
297
Qabra, in Spanish Cabra, a town in a mountainous region of Andalusia to the south-east of Cordoba, situated at an altitude of 448 m. on the slopes of the Sierra de Cabra; at present it is the centre of a partido judicial of the province of Cordoba and has a population of 20,000. … Conquered by Ferdinand III (the Saint) in 641/1244, the town belonged successively to the Council of Cordoba and to the Order of Calatrava. In 733/1333 the Naṣrid Muḥammad IV seized Qabra, destroyed the ramparts and part of the castle, and sent the inhabitants to captivity in Granada. Re-populated shortly afterwards by the Master of the Order of Calatrava, Qabra subsequently reverted to the Crown of Castile. (Arié 2012.)
298 Ibn al-‘Arabī 2004, Vol.5, p.53.
299 Ibn al-‘Arabī 2004, Vol.7, p204; Ibn al-‘Arabī 2004, Vol.3, p.212 [raja‘ ilayy].
300 For a discussion on various English translations of the divine name “al-Qayyūm,” see Hamza, Rizvi and Mayer 2008, pp.127-129.
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which remained utterly unknowable; yet the divine names were to be emulated in order to proceed on the endless path.301 Indeed, assuming the character traits of the divine names is the very definition of Sufism for Ibn al-‘Arabī.302 For
“Sufis,” i.e., those at the beginning level, emulating divine attributes is a duty in the path of becoming advanced “verifiers” [muḥaqqiqūn] who have no such concerns, and no attributes.303 In his very encounter with al-Qabrafīqī, Ibn al-
‘Arabī makes it clear again that for him “it is permissible to emulate Self- Subsistence like all divine names.”304 Indeed, in his book devoted to the divine names and attributes, Unveiling of the Meaning of the Secrets of the Beautiful Names [Kashf al-Ma‘nā ‘an Sirr Asmā’ al-Ḥusnā], he follows a tripartite structure for each name.305 Not just for the name “the Self-Subsistent,” but for each divine name he devotes three sections, which explore respectively how that name is connected [ta’alluq], realized [taḥaqquq], and emulated [takhalluq] by the wayfarers.306 This very tripartite approach, with the exact same titles, appears in the sayings attributed to Ibn al-‘Arabī’s master ‘Abd al-‘Azīz al-Mahdawī (d.1221), and in turn, his master, Abū Madyan (d.1198).307
301 See e.g. Chittick 1989, p.43.
302 Ibn al-‘Arabī 1428/2007l, p.417. Also see Chittick 1992, p.177.
303 See Addas 1994. On the idea of takhalluq in Ibn al-‘Arabī, see Chittick 1989, pp.21-22, 283- 288, 369-372. For takhalluq in medieval Sufism, see al-Suyūṭī 1934, p.78.
Ibn al-‘Arabī’s placement of takhalluq to a low rank of spirituality resonates with the Sijillian Questions of Ibn Sabʻīn (d.1269). Goldziher already intuited this dimension in Ibn Sabʻīn’s mysticism. See Goldziher 1981, p.138.
304 Ibn al-‘Arabī 2004, Vol.3, p.212; Ibn al-‘Arabī 1428/2007k, p.392.
305 The structure of Ibn al-‘Arabī’s book Unveiling of the Meaning of the Secrets is strikingly similar to that of the Andalusian mystic Ibn Barrajān (d.1141) in the same genre. Ibn Barrajān’s work on the divine names, Sharḥ Asmā’ Allāh al-Ḥusnā has three separate levels of commentary [fuṣūl] on each divine name. The first is a philological examination [istikhrāj lughawī], the second doctrinal [i‘tibār], and the third devotional [ta‘abbud]. While Ibn al-‘Arabī’s work does not have a philological analysis section, but i‘tibār and taḥaqquq on the one hand, ta‘abbud and takhalluq on the other, are very similar. Indeed, what Ibn Barrajān meant by ta‘abbud is identical with takhalluq, while he cautiously avoided the term in favor of the more neutral sounding phrase,
“practice of servanthood” [ta‘abbud], as Ibn Taymīyyah (d.1328) noted (see Casewit 2014, pp.214-215). On the other hand, Ibn al-‘Arabī explicitly cites Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d.1111)’s important piece in the field, the Furthest Goal [al-Maqṣad al-Asnā], while Ibn Barrajān was not familiar with it when he wrote his book (see Casewit 2014, pp.178-231). Also there are differences in terms of the names contained in the works of Ibn al-‘Arabī and Ibn Barrajān, and significant divergences in their interpretations.
306 For the takhalluq of the name al-Qayyūm, see Ibn al-‘Arabī in Beneito Arias 1996, Vol.2, p.140.
307 Abū Madyan 1996, pp.148-149; Elmore 2001, pp.608-609.
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In other occasions in the Meccan Openings, he indicates that when Sufis mention of “emulation” [takhalluq], they mean what the Philosophers308 mean when they speak of “attaining similarity to God” [tashabbuh bi Allāh], and identifies this process with attaining to human perfection.309 An aphorism from the Intimacy of the Recluse [Uns al-wāhid] of Abū Madyan, whom Ibn al-‘Arabī calls “the voice of this Way and its reviver in the lands of the West” and “one of the Poles,”
indicates that Abū Madyan affirmed that all names can be emulated by the wayfarer. Accordingly, the meaning of a divine name can even subsist in the wayfarer until she reaches the next step, in which she will be annihilated in the meaning of the name.310 Ibn Ṭufayl (d.1185) went even further and argued that not only all divine attributes, but even the divine essence can be emulated. In the same vein, another Andalusian Sufi Shushtarī (d.1269) claimed that
“attributes” [ṣifāt] in Sufi terminology mean the qualities of the Self-Subsistent God [nu’ut al-Qayyūm],311 while all of them are open to emulation through Sufi practices.312 Only “Allāh” is exclusively “the interpreter of the divine ipseity” [al- mutarjim ‘an al-dhāt] that is the gatherer of the meanings of all names.313 Indeed, this follows the position that Ibn al-‘Arabī laid in his Unveiling of the Meaning of the Secrets of the Beautiful Names.314 Another western Sufi ‘Afīf al- Dīn al-Tilimsānī (d.1291), in his commentary on ‘Abd Allāh al-Anṣārī (d.1089)’s Stations of the Wayfarer, claims that the divine name “Self-Subsistence”
indicates the transcendence of divine oneness and the unity of all divine
308 I am deliberately capitalizing the term “Philosophers,” in order to indicate that the reference is not “philosophers” or “philosophy” in general, but a certain strand of Islamic philosophy flourished in early ninth century and mainly melted away in other Islamic intellectual traditions after around thirteenth century. Falāsifāh, or the Philosophers, specifically refers to this classical Islamic speculative philosophy, which was genuinely influenced by peripatetic philosophy with a Neoplatonic flavor. Philosophical thinking in the Islamic history was reduced by early orientalists to this peripatetic philosophical stream, insofar as the dialogical contact between Western and Islamic intellectual traditions was substantially cut after this period (until the emerging pseudo- dialogue in the colonial period with the eighteenth century). See H. Corbin 1993, pp.xiii-xvii;
p.153.
309 Chittick 1989, p.283.
310 Abū Madyan 1996, pp.109.
311 al-Shushtarī 2004, p.167.
312 al-Shushtarī 2004, p.162 [jalwah: khurūj al-‘abd min al-khalwah bi-al-nu‘ūt al-ilāhiyyah].
313 al-Shushtarī 2004, p.157.
314 Ibn al-‘Arabī in Beneito Aris 1996, Vol.2, pp.18-20.
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names. 315 Yet, as the discussion on “Self-Sufficiency” in al-Tilimsānī’s commentary on al-Niffarī (d.af.977)’s Stations indicates, he shares the theological approach of Ibn al-‘Arabī that makes the emulation of all names possible.316
Sufis of earlier periods, and non-western Sufis of the same period adopt similar positions on emulating divine Self-Sufficiency. “The view was that the saint was
‘invested’ with one or another divine name or attribute;” Mayer calls it “ṣifātī mysticism,” which he traces back to al-Ḥallāj (d.922) and his student Abū Bakr al- Wāsiṭī (d.932).317 According to al-Sarrāj (d.977)’s report, al-Wāsiṭī argued that all attributes of God could be emulated, except “Allāh” and the “All-Merciful.”318 But even earlier than al-Wāsiṭī, the wife of Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (d.ca.892) as far away as Transoxania had already a vision in which all the names of God “become adorned” for her.319 Al-Sulamī of Nīsabūr (d.1021) also claims that the wayfarer should traverse all of the ninety-nine stations, all of which are associated with a divine name, in order to attain subsistence with God.320 In the south, Persian Sufi Rūzbihān Baqlī (d.1209) similarly suggests that all names of God, except “Allāh,”
are associated with an attribute, which is known by the believer who possesses it.321 He criticizes “the people of negation,” who deny the attributes of God
315 ‘Afīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī in ‘Afīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī and ‘Abd Allāh al-Anṣārī 1989, pp.47-48.
316 ‘Afīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī in ‘Afīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī and al-Niffarī 1997, p.58.
317 Mayer 2008, p.267.
318 al-Sarrāj 1914, pp.88-89 (Arabic text). Indeed, this is exactly the position that Ibn al-‘Arabī
adopts in his Unveiling of the Meaning of the Secrets of the Beautiful Names. (Ibn al-‘Arabī in Beneito Aris 1996, Vol.2, pp.18-24.) Still, Ibn al-‘Arabī does not remove the possibility of takhalluq from these names, indicating that their takhalluq is not realized in positive terms, but as the affirmation of human incapacity and dependency on God.
This special approach to the names “Allāh” and “al-Raḥmān” can be traced to ʻAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī
(d.1089)’s reading of Q.17:110. See al-Anṣārī in Farhadi 1996, p.67.
319 Al-Tirmidhī 1996, p.35.
Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī himself, though he does not explicitly mention of emulation, speaks of the mystical experience of all divine attributes as available to all seekers. (See al-Tirmidhī 1996, pp.96-98.) The saintly elect even go further and “attain the illumination of knowledge of these attributes in their breasts, … the light of these attributes shining upon their hearts within their breasts.” (Al-Tirmidhī 1996, p.98.)
320 al-Sulamī 2009a, pp.129-130.
321 Baqlī 2008, Vol.1, p.16.
Kazuyo Murata translates Baqlī’s sentence as “none knows these two attributes except the Possessor of the attributes,” capitalizing the possessor, indicating that only God knows these attributes (K. Murata 2012, p.102). However, Baqlī considers the divine attributes, including the