The Problem of Free Will in the Post-Classical Period of the Hanafī Tradition: Samarqandī’s and Sadr al-Sharī‘a’s Criticisms of al-Rāzī
Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210), who reconstructed Ashʿarite theology using the language and concepts of Avicennian philosophy, argued that the actions of the people were under compulsion (jabr). His argument to prove this view set the agenda of Hanafī theologians and jurists in thepost-classical...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | Arabic |
| Published: |
Istanbul University Press
2024-09-01
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| Series: | İslam Tetkikleri Dergisi |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://cdn.istanbul.edu.tr/file/JTA6CLJ8T5/3CD8DE16D83C4F7998BB3A4EFA46BB91 |
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| Summary: | Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210), who reconstructed Ashʿarite theology using the language and concepts of Avicennian philosophy, argued that the actions of the people were under compulsion (jabr). His argument to prove this view set the agenda of Hanafī theologians and jurists in thepost-classical period. Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī (d. 702/1303) and al-Sadr al-Sharīʿa (d. 747/1346), who were among the first thinkers in Transoxiana to reexamine the scholarly legacy of the Hanafī tradition accumulation in theology and legal theory with the concepts and issues of Avicennian philosophy and classical logic, criticised al-Rāzī’s argument in their works. Although there are studies in the modern literature dealing with al-Rāzī’s and Sadr al-Sharīʿa’s approaches to the acts of people, there is a need for a study that deals with al-Samarqandī’s views on this issue in connection with these two thinkers’ ideas. This article aims to address a gap in the literature by examining the continuity and change in the criticism of al-Rāzī’s argument within Hanafī circles. It will also demonstrate how the Hanafī tradition in Transoxiana engaged with the Ashʿarite tradition during the post-classical period through discussions on free will. This article demonstrates that al-Samarqandī’s criticism does not differ from al-Rāzī’s argument of jabr in terms of cause because he also uses the hierarchical chain of causality. However, Sadr al-Sharīʿa’s conception of “the complete cause” differs from al-Rāzī’s conception of “hierarchical causality” and he integrates “the ontological category of state (al-ahwāl)” into “the complete cause”. In his criticism, Sadr al-Sharī’a went one step further than his predecessor and tried to refute the premises of the jabr argument. |
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| ISSN: | 2717-6967 |