Tajrīd and the theological traditions: How best to define the science of ʿilm al-kalām

 Over the years, I have written a few posts about the Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād or Tajrīd al-ʿaqāʾid of the famous Imāmī philosopher-scientist-theologian Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī [d. 1274], which, as I discussed, became one of the major source texts (mutūn) for the discussion of theology (ʿilm al-kalām) in the late classical (for want of a better term) period in Islam. The first of this series of four blogposts is here.

The interesting question about the title is not just whether doctrines are pluralised or whether it is about the totality of (sound) belief but rather what does he intend by Tajrīd? As he himself says, the text is an exposition of the major questions of theology (taḥrīr masāʾil al-kalām) that select the unique pearls of belief (ghurar farāʾid al-iʿtiqād)  Is it the pithy and rather dense form of expression that, as he himself says, is complete and eloquent? Is it that he presents a succinct (and at times seemingly incomplete) version of the arguments? And these arguments are much more than most (early) creedal works that tend to focus on the results of theological arguments and statements of belief. Anyway, this post is inspired by the fact that I am currently running a small reading group in which the text is al-Sharīf ʿAlī al-Jurjānī [d. 1413] and his ḥāshiya on the Tasdīd al-qawāʿid fī Sharḥ Tajrīd al-ʿaqāʾid of Shams al-Dīn Iṣfahānī (d. 1348, using the text established by Eșref Altaș and his colleagues and published by ISAM in Istanbul). 

But here I want to discuss something else pertaining to the definition of the science or humanity of ʿilm al-kalām. This is a question of great interest these days because of the ways in which the study of kalām has become implicated in philosophy or rather Islamic philosophy, raising the fundamental question about the distinction between ḥikma and kalām. The Sharḥ al-hidāya of Maybudī [d. c. 1502] is a good place to find this (often with the gloss of Mīr Fakhr al-Dīn Sammākī [d. 1576]) as well but so are the glosses and commentaries on this opening of the Tajrīd. 

Consistent with other humanities, kalām has a technical definition, a certain subject matter, certain essential properties of that subject which are investigated in that humanity, a scope, a telos, and so forth like all the other humanities did in the Islamicate contexts, extending the late antique models of how one might define a science. Ṭūsī says that ʿilm al-kalām studies matters from which one may know the nature of the afterlife (al-maʿād). As Jurjānī says in his ḥāshiya, this does not mean that he is identifying the subject matter of kalām to be the afterlife (even though that is indeed part of what is studied) since it is commonly held that the subject matter of kalām is al-mabdaʾ waʾl-maʿād, or the origins and first principles of what exists (and existence as such) and its culmination in the afterlife (and everything in between). Ṭūsī explains this by saying that in order to understand the afterlife requires a prior foundation in the study of the acts of grace and commission that God provides through the prophets and the Imams, and those commissions makes sense only if we establish the existence of God (ithbāt al-ṣāniʿ) and understand the nature of his attributes, and those issues only make sense if we have a prior understanding of the metaphysics and the language that we use to discuss such matters through Aristotelian category theory (of substances and accidents) and the general properties (umūr ʿāmma) of existence. This line of reasoning therefore renders the order of the discussion in the six chapters (maqāṣid): 

1. general properties of existence
2. substances and accidents
3. proof for the existence of God
4. prophecy
5. imamate
6. the afterlife. 

Qūshjī [d. 1474] in his Sharḥ jadīd, as it was later called, asserts that once we raise the issue of the centrality of the afterlife in kalām, then one must admit that those issues cannot be fruitfully discussed on the basis of reason alone but rather require recourse to revelation and doctrines transmitted from prophets (and Imams according to some as he puts it). 

Dawānī [d. 1502] in his gloss says that of course while many details of the afterlife cannot be discerned purely by reason perhaps the one most important issue which can relates to the nature and immortality of the rational soul (nafs). In fact, Dawānī suggests that by this focus on the afterlife, Ṭūsī wants to indicates that a central, distinguishing feature of theological discourse pertains to the problem of the soul but also corporeal resurrection (al-maʿād al-jismānī) that posed a irresolvable problem for the philosophers (at least famously since Ghazālī [d. 1111] and his famous anathemisation of the philosophers on this point.

One of the most interesting commentaries on what constitutes kalām comes from the 19th century work of Shaykh Muḥammad Jaʿfar Sharīʿatmadār Astarābādī Ṭihrānī [d. 1847] entitled al-Barāhīn al-qāṭiʿa fī sharḥ Tajrīd al-ʿaqāʾid al-sāṭiʿa. This commentary is a really helpful and didactic one that sets out the issues, the arguments, the lemmata, and the positions with great clarity. 

In this commentary, he considers the subject matter and the method of kalām. Sufi approaches to theology that involve some inspired experience arising from spiritual exercises that might involve modes of theurgy (al-kashf waʾl-riyāḍa) are considered but dismissed because of a language of discernment about the veracity of the claims. He opts for a definition and a method as such: the discipline of theology is one that studies the states of the first cause and principles (al-mabdaʾ) and that of the afterlife (al-maʿād) through the method of rational consideration (al-naẓar) and reflection (al-fikr). In fact, he states that the discursive element of this discipline is indicated by the fact that it is called kalām (discourse). He then quotes the definitions given by the two major authors of the late classical school-texts in kalām: 

1) al-Ījī [d. 1355] in al-Mawāqif (which became popular in the commentary of al-Jurjānī and then especially the section on the general properties of existence in the gloss of Mīr Zāhid): a discipline through which one can establish (ithbāt) the doctrines of the dīn (ʿaqāʾid dīnīya) through proofs and can refute doubts (bi-īrād al-ḥujaj wa-dafʿ al-shubah). Hence it constitutes an ability or the acquisition of a critical skill. ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī [d. 1666], the son-in-law of Mullā Ṣadrā and eminent Avicennian philosopher who himself wrote an important commentary entitled Shawāriq al-ilhām, says precisely this: it is a science in the sense that one acquires a skill through the rehearsal of arguments in the field in normative terms and not whether one has to verify and ascertain the truth of every claim. However, he rejects that idea that the establishment of the doctrines is merely acquiring them and being able to rehearse them; one still has to understand them as they are in nafs al-amr (in their objective mind-independent status). 

2) al-Taftazānī [d. 1390] in Sharḥ al-maqāṣid: a discipline that sets out the doctrinal principles of beliefs and of the religious dispensation (ʿaqāʾid sharʿīya wa-iʿtiqādīya) acquired from indicators that are certain (and rational); he also provides another definition: a rational art by which one may become skilled in establishing the doctrines of the dīn.

Astarābādī then sets out to consider the definition on his own terms. The first position - which he ascribes to the early mutakallimīn - is that the subject matter (whose essential properties are studied) is being qua being (al-mawjūd bi-mā huwa mawjūdun), the most general of things which is then divided through the following diairesis:

Being

Eternal [God] or 

Originated - either substance or accident

Substances - Animals, minerals, or vegetables

Accidents - conditioned by life such as knowledge or unconditioned such as taste 

There is here an argument about whether existence is the ultimate 'summum genera' - some of the early Muʿtazila as we know held that the thing (shayʾ) was such and the first level of the diairesis was existence and non-existence. 

The second position that he cites is that of Sirāj al-Dīn al-Urmawī [d. 1283] in his well known theological manual Maṭāliʿ al-anwār, famous later in his commentary by Bayḍāwī and the gloss by Jurjānī: the subject of the discipline is the nature of God, and so one studies the positive and negative attributes of God, and his agency with respect to the cosmos such as the voluntaristic emanation of the cosmos, the origination of the cosmos, the creation of acts, the nature of the order of the cosmos and the need for prophecy, and the afterlife and other revealed matters about it. Hence to summarise: a discipline that studies the states of the creator such as his positive and negative attributes and his agency with respect to matters of the cosmos and the afterlife. 

The third position is association with Shams al-Dīn Samarqandī [d. 1302], a Māturīdī theologian, in his al-Ṣaḥāʾif al-ilāhīya: a discipline that studies God's nature as it is and the nature of contingents insofar as they depend totally on God according to the dispensation of Islam. 

The fourth position that he associates with more 'recent kalām' is that it is a discipline that studies the knowable (al-maʿlūm) insofar as it relates to establishing the doctrines of the dīn. Hence it studies states of the Creator such as his oneness, his eternity and his will, and so forth, and the properties of bodies and accidents such as origination, existential indigence, composition of parts, and being mortal as per the dictates of Islam. But this is with respect to these conceptualisations and not the judgement of their existence at a particular time - thus, a normative inquiry. Lāhījī in his commentary indicates that the problem lies in the clash between philosophy and kalām in which the latter sought to attack the extrinsic (and Greek) nature of the philosophers' arguments; in the Imāmī school, as he puts it, the teaching of the Imams correspond well with the established arguments of the pillars of philosophy (the seven sages, Plato, and Aristotle of course are intended). 

As is the normal order in such inquires, having established the definition, he moves onto a discussion of the benefit (fāʾida) of studying kalām (a transformation from rehearsal and imitation of doctrines to their rational understanding), the excellence (sharaf) of the discipline which is associated with the excellence of its subject matter, and finally how it might be distinguished from the principles of the dīn and of a particular school doctrine (madhhab), which for the Imāmī school lies in the five principles of divine unity, divine justice, prophecy, imamate, and the afterlife (with divine justice and imamate being the principle of the Imāmī school doctrine while the other three are true of all who adhere to Islam). Broadly this order as well as the discussion in Astarābādī follow Lāhījī but since the latter was more of a philosopher he goes into greater details on how, following Ibn Sīnā (al-Shifāʾ, K. al-burhān, II on the nature of essential accidents and so forth), one establishes the definition of a science and its subject matter and the distinction between the conceptions (taṣawwur) of the science and its assents and judgements (taṣdīq). 

So what is the takeaway from this post? Reading Jurjānī's gloss is like taking a master class in philosophical theology and an intellectual challenge and pleasure. Reading Astarābādī is like reading a highly competent and quite excellent teacher who guides you through the issues at stakes and helps to locate and contextualise them well. 

al-Ḥillī's The Way of Nobility and Polemics in Islamic Theologies

 The second volume in the series The Collected Writings of al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī published by al-Mahdī Institute Press has just been released. I discuss the first volume, Clearing the Soul and the broader context here. 

The Way of Nobility (Minhāj al-karāma) is perhaps one of the most famous controversial and polemical texts of the post-Mongol period, inviting a rather excessive response from the famous Sunni Damascene polemicist Ibn Taymīya (d. 1328) entitled Minhāj al-sunna al-nabawīya (an English translation of an abridgement is here). Ibn Taymīya's text is much longer and although it follows the original it is refuting, it meandering and digresses and tends to conflate Shiʿi positions (Twelver, Ismaili, and so forth). al-Ḥillī's text is a relatively concise case for the imamate of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib based on scriptural sources and some elements of rational argument. 

The text is dedicated to the Mongol ruler of Iran, Öljeitü (r. 1304–1306) probably in 1311. Tariq al-Jamil discusses the text in the context of the polemic with Ibn Taymīya that followed (Minhāj al-sunna is commonly thought to have been penned in 1317). One could also read the text alongside al-Ḥillī's al-Alfayn and Nahj al-ḥaqq wa-kashf al-ṣidq which was also written at court for Öljeitü. This latter text initiated a cycle of polemics, the most recent of which is Dalāʾil al-ṣidq by Shaykh Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Muẓaffar (1883–1955) in 8 volumes. These texts are somewhat different - al-Alfayn is primarily scriptural but contains elements of logical reasoning. Nahj is more extensive and includes important corollaries on the nature of God - and provides more of the template for later Shiʿi polemics (one thinks of al-Ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm of Ibn Yūnus al-Bayyāḍī al-ʿĀmilī in the 15th century). 

The text is divided into six chapters: the first on the various positions taken on the imamate and succession to the prophet (including the important corollary issue of divine justice and provision of facilitating grace - luṭf - that is so central to his theology), the second on the broad case for the Twelver Shiʿi position, the third is divided into four parts on the Shiʿi cased including rational and scriptural evidence, the fourth on the concomitance of the imamate of ʿAlī's successors, the fifth on their who do not qualify as leaders in lieu of the prophet, with  final sixth on why Abū Bakr did not qualify as the successor. The case is therefore both positive and negative (why X was not), and comprising rational and scriptural proofs and consideration of evidence. 

The Arabic text used is the edition published in 1999 by Muʾassasat ʿĀshūrāʾ in Qum and edited by ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Mubārak based on three manuscripts from the Āstān-e quds-e rażavī library in Mashhad (MS 13754), and from the library of Āyatullāh Marʿashī Najafī in Qum (MS 29 and 2523). All of these are Safavid but the aim of the series is not necessarily to produce new critical editions.  According to the Fankhā Union catalogue of manuscripts in Iran, there are 175 copies of the text but none reliably dated to before the Safavid period. The text is introduced and translated by Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad, who holds the Prophet Muhammad Chair of Shia Islamic Studies at Florida International University.

It is worth contextualising this polemic and its response in the following cycles:

1) The first was al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/869) and his al-Risāla al-ʿUthmānīya followed by a non-extant refutation by al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī (d. c. 310/922) a full refutation by Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn Ibn Ṭāwūs (d. 673/1274) entitled Bināʾ al-maqāla al-Fāṭimīya. 

2) The second is this text by al-Ḥillī and its refutation by Ibn Taymīya which remains the most well-known.

3) The third of al-Ḥillī's Nahj al-ḥaqq mentioned which led to a response by the litterateur and historian Faḍlallāh b. Ruzbihān al-Khunajī (d. 927/1521) to which there is the famous response of Sayyid Nūrullāh Shūshtarī (exe. 1610), Iḥqāq al-ḥaqq, published with apparatus and extensive, voluminous notes by Āyatullāh Sayyid Shihāb al-Dīn Marʿashī Najafī. I have written on it. Here is a shot of the opening of one of the British Library copies of Khunajī's Ibṭāl nah al-bāṭil:

4) The fourth is relatively well-known but also came out of the school of al-Ḥilla, namely al-Risāla al-muʿāriḍa of Yūsuf b. Makhzūm al-Aʿwar al-Wāsiṭī and its refutation by Najm al-Dīn Khiḍr al-Ḥabalrūdī and his al-Tawāḍīḥ al-anwār bi-ḥujaj al-wārida li-dafʿ shubhat al-Aʿwar completed in 839/1435. Here is a shot from the British Library MS of the text:

There are of course many others in Arabic on the imamate (in the contemporary period there are far too many which then circulate in English, Urdu and other translations) - and many more in Persian and other languages (perhaps the most famous in Persian being Tuḥfa-ye isnāʿasharīya of the Delhi scholar Shāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz [d. 1823] and its responses by Mīrzā Kāmil Dihlavī [d. 1810], Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī [d. 1820] and his sons in Lucknow, and of course ʿAbaqāt al-anwār of Sayyid Ḥāmid Ḥusayn Mūsavī Kintūrī [d. 1888]). 

There is little doubt that al-Ḥillī's text and the response by Ibn Taymīya remain at the heart of modern polemics. Hence the importance of having this dual text available. I hope that AMI press will also take on Nahj al-ḥaqq and al-Alfayn in the future as they are with Kashf al-murād which is al-Ḥillī's most important exposition on theology.

Maximalist Imamology - a new term for an older phenomenon

 Much ink has been spilled in the modern period in Shiʿi circles and beyond about the true nature of the Imām and his cosmic role - this debate is often around what since the late 19th century has been called walāya takwīnīya or the authority and control of the Imām over the cosmos and the objects within it. I am not particularly interested in the more normative question but what seems clear to me is that within Imāmology there has always been historically somewhat of a spectrum. Hence I have used the term 'maximalist imamology' to describe a conception of 'divine humanity' that still locates itself within the Twelver Shiʿi tradition without falling into the (contested) category of exaggeration or ghulūw and hence into Nuṣayrī-ʿAlawī or other conceptions of the Imām. 

'Maximalist Imamology' therefore renders this notion that the Imam has complete authority of the cosmos as the true mediating heir of the Prophet. Increasingly, as we begin to engage with Avicenna's prophetology we realise that the philosophical defence of a perfect mediating human whose very existence not only ensures the correct social, ethical and political order of the cosmos but also entails the metaphysical order of reality can easily be extended into Imamology. In the Twelver ḥadīth corpus, this is through the narrations on the Imāms as the divine names and as those who manifest the divine names and divine attributes. Maximalist Imamology takes up this theme and then develops a number of positions on the origins of the cosmos, its sustenance and its unfolding eschatology and soteriology. 

Therefore Maximalist Imāmology constitutes a series of historically articulated and developed positions on the prehistory, history, and coming messianic moment of the Imām. The first of these includes the idea of the Imam in the world of spirits and motes (ʿālam al-arwāḥ, ʿālam al-dharr), and the third of these includes the role of the Imām in the apocalyptic return (al-rajʿa, al-karra) and the eschaton. 

To this end, I have now written three articles on the historical development of this Maximalist Imamology:

1) ‘Seeking the Face of God: The Safawid Ḥikmat Tradition’s conceptualisation of walāya takwīnīya’, in Gurdofarid Mizkinzoda, M.A. Amir-Moezzi and Farhad Daftary (eds), The Study of Shiʿi Islam, London: I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2013, pp. 391–410 [Maximalist Imamology I] This first piece dealt with an aspect of the Safavid manifestation. 

2) ‘Shiʿi Political Theology and Esotericism in Qajar Iran: The case of Sayyid Jaʿfar Kashfī’, in Mohammed Ali Amir-Moezzi et al (eds), Esotérisme shiʿite: ses racines et set prolongements, Louvain: Peeters/EPHE, 2016, pp. 687–712 [Maximalist Imamology II] This turned to one significant Qajar development - there is much more to say on the Qajar context as it became a major issue of discussion by philosophers (of the school of Mullā Ṣadrā, the school of Ibn ʿArabī as well as among the Shaykhīya) as well as Sufis. 

3) ‘Esoteric Shiʿi Islam in the Later School of al-Ḥilla: Walāya and Apocalypticism in al-Ḥasan b. Sulaymān al-Ḥillī (d. after 1400) and Rajab al-Bursī (d. c. 1411)’, in Edmund Hayes and Rodrigo Adem (eds), Reason, Esotericism, and the Construction of Authority, Leiden: Brill, 2021, pp. 190–241 [Maximalist Imamology III - this work]

Soon to come are two further articles. One looks at the issue of divine simplicity and its philosophical defence in Shiʿi philosophical theology and how it engages with a theology of the divine names to explains how the transcendent intervenes in the cosmos and how the immanent pervades it. The fifth in the series that will follow soon after will examine another episode of the exposition of Maximalist Imamology on the cusp of the Safavid period by examining the devotional literature especially of Taqī al-Dīn al-Kafʿamī. 

While I don't think I will manage a full history of the idea of Maximalist Imāmology, I hope that these articles will put forward a certain account within Islamic intellectual history. The influence of Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi's work and his early articles on divine humanity in the Shiʿi context should be clear. 

Imāmī Theology: The Contribution of Ibn Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī (d. 726/1325) and a New Series of Publications

 The main intention of this blogpost is to say something about the Al-Mahdi Institute Press' new series of editions and translations of the works of the major Imāmī theologian al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī. The translation of Taslīk al-nafs ilā ḥaẓirat al-quds - rendered as Clearing the Soul for Paradise - is the first of this series. And I should declare an interest as someone who has been consulted on the series and the whole production and its academic content. 

But before saying something about this publication, it would be useful to locate it within a broader history of the development of Imāmī theological traditions from the classical period to the current age. 

We still have a long way to go in filling out an intellectual history of the course of theological traditions and especially philosophical theology in the Imāmī tradition. A sketch of a periodisation of rational (and increasingly systematic) theology known as ʿilm al-kalām among the Twelver Shiʿa might go something like this:

1) The period of the companions of the later Imāms, the mix of traditionalisms as well as the encounter with other traditions (aṣḥāb al-maqālāt, al-milal) and faiths on the ground of rational debate that was increasing - for which the translation of Aristotle's organon into Arabic was critically important. The key point about this period is the absence of fixed terminologies and technical discussions but the emergence of different modes of 'rationality' or intellectual inquiry, and not a simplistic opposition of 'traditionalism' and 'rationalism' - even the texts from the early generations such as al-Mufaḍḍal b. ʿUmar al-Juʿfī (d. c. 183/799), Hishām b. al-Ḥakam (d. 179/795), through to al-Faḍl b. Shādhān (d. 260/874) as well as the texts attributed to the Imām themselves (as in this study of Abrahamov). They are known for their views on creation and cosmology as a foundational metaphysics, determinism and human free will, the nature of prophecy and the imamate, and other issues - although most of their texts have not survived outside of doxographies and heresiographies like the works of hostile reporters like al-Intiṣār of al-Khayyāt (d. c. 300/913) and Maqālāt al-islāmīyīn of Abūʾl-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/936). 

 

2) The immediate period after the onset of the occultation of the Twelfth Imam and the Shiʿi moment under the Buyids that brought the Imāmī tradition even more into dialogue with the Muʿtazilī tradition. This is the period from the 'traditionalist' influenced by Muʿtazilī categories and responding to their themes, Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummī known as al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq (d. 381/991) followed by his students and the first generation of serious Imāmī Muʿtazilī thinkers, al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 413/1022) and his students al-Sharīf al-Raḍī (d. 406/1015) and al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (d. 436/1044) - the former was more closely aligned with the Baghdādī Muʿtazila since he had studied with ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā al-Rummānī, the main figure of the Ikshīdī branch of the Baghdādīs and engaged with the thought of Abūʾl-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī (d. 319/931), and al-Murtaḍā was more in line with the Basran Muʿtazila. The latter engaged with the school of Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī (d. 321/933) and entered into polemics with the prominent Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Hamadānī (d. 415/1024). Al-Mufīd had also studied with the first major Muʿtazilī Imāmī thinker Abū Sahl al-Nawbakhtī (d. 311/924) whose lost Kitāb al-ārāʾ waʾl-diyānāt also demonstrated knowledge of Aristotelian science and philosophy. The classic studies here are the following studies of McDermott and Abdulsater:

This MA is also important:

And the locus classicus of the development from al-Ṣadūq to al-Mufīd is the famous 'correction' by the later of his teacher's creed:

This period is marked by the 'rational', Muʿtazilī turn as well as the development of an Imāmī rationalism as well as finding space for arguments that are scripturally based especially pertaining to the main doctrine of the imamate. One also finds in that rationalist spectrum the importance of intra-Shiʿi disputation with the Zaydīs and the Ismailis.

3) This is followed by that first classical period from al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067) to Sālār al-Daylamī (d. 448/1057) who wrote a work on atoms and cosmology through Sadīd al-Dīn al-Ḥimmaṣī al-Rāzī (d. 600/1204) and his al-Munqidh min al-taqlīd through to the 13th century school of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 1274) and his student Ibn al-Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī known as al-ʿAllāma (d. 726/1325). This period has recently been studied by Sabine Schmidtke and Hasan Ansari (although the period from al-Ḥimmaṣī to Ṭūsī is not so well known perhaps due to the uncertainties of the early Mongol age and the survival of texts and knowledge networks). Four important figures of the 12th century are the contemporaries Abu ʿAlī al-Faḍl al-Ṭabrisī (d. 548/1153) and Abūʾl-Futūḥ al-Rāzī (d. after 552/1157) authors of significant theologically inflected exegeses on the Qurʾan and Quṭb al-Dīn Rāwandī (d. 573/1177) and ʿAbd al-Jalīl Qazwīnī Rāzī whose Kitāb al-naqḍ is an invaluable source on kalām positions among the Shiʿa and others in Iran. This period is marked by the increasing influence of the Muʿtazilī thinker Abūʾl-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī (d. 436/1044) and his follower Rukn al-Dīn Ibn al-Malāḥimī (d. 536/1141) as well as the rising impact of metaphysics of Ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037). This is sometimes considered the truly classic period of Imāmī rational theology but also marked by different trends of reception, response and engagement with the Muʿtazila and the philosophical traditions. 

4) Perhaps the most important phase - and we will return to this in the description of the book - is Ṭūsī and al-Ḥillī that established the parameters of Imāmī kalām through some key texts such as Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād (on which see my previous posts part 1, part 2, and part 3) as well as al-Ḥillī's famous creed al-Bāb al-Ḥādī ʿashar best read through the commentary al-Nāfiʿ yawm al-ḥashar by Miqdād al-Siyūrī (d. 826/1423). This then became the 'school of al-Ḥilla' in theology. 

5) Alongside that school, there was a more esoteric turn which engaged with maximalist Imamology, lettrism and the occult sciences as well as the increasing influence of the school of Ibn ʿArabī and here one thinks of a diverse set of 14th and 15th century thinkers from Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī (d. after 1385) to Rajab al-Bursī (d. 813/1411) [see my earlier blogpost on him] and onto Ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1502) especially in his massive al-Mujlī that attempts to 'reconcile' Imāmī kalām with the philosophical schools of Ibn Sīnā and Suhrawardī and the Sufi metaphysics of Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240), and Taqī al-Dīn Ibrāhīm al-Kafʿamī (d. c. 1499), compiler of a famous sets of devotions entitled al-Miṣbāḥ. 

6) The Safavid theologians developed the esotericist line along with the Ṭūsī-Ḥillī school and also spread the schools through translation and composition in Persian. The best examples are the philosophical theology of Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1045/1636) as well as the commentary on the Tajrīd of his student ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī (d. 1070/1661) as well as his Persian work Gawhar-i murād. 

Other works that tried to extend the reconciliation of philosophical theology with scripture were penned by Mullā Ṣadrā's other major student and son-in-law Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī (d. 1090/1680). 

7) In the post-Safavid period, one finds the development of distinct parallel and rival branches (and that is without considering those who eventually self-identified outside of Imāmī Shiʿism such as the Bahais):

a) a deepening of Shiʿi Sufi theologies with figures such as ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Damāvandī (d. 1757) and Sayyid Quṭb al-Dīn Nayrīzī (d. 1761) that drew upon the Sufi metaphysics of Ibn ʿArabī

b) continuation of the main Safavid tradition culminating in the work of Hādī Sabzawārī (d. 1289/1873) and Hādī al-muḍillīn

c) a more extended esotericist Imāmology in the work of Sayyid Jaʿfar Kashfī (d. 1843) through to ʿAlī al-Ḥāʾirī al-Yazdī (d. 1333/ and his Ilzām al-nāṣib

d) the best known esotericism of the Shaykhī school starting with Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1241/1826), his disciple Sayyid Kāẓim Rashtī (d. 1259/1844) and then the two traditions that developed in Kerman and Tabriz. Henry Corbin famously thought that the Shaykhī school represented the final esotericism of Imāmī Shiʿism. What was clear is that it represented a metaphysics and theology of presence that was critical of Ibn Sīnā and Mullā Ṣadrā and that found a more extended metaphysical role for the Imams as Aristotelian causes for the existence of the cosmos. A major feature of their work is philosophical theological exegesis on the Qurʾan and sayings of the Imams and devotional texts. 

8) In the modern period, alongside the continuation of Safavid esotericism and the school of al-Ḥilla (as well as the Shaykhīya), there are at least another three distinct trends:

a) Reformists who criticised and increasingly attacked the core positions on the imamate from the time of Aḥmad Kasravī (d. 1946) and Sharīʿat-Sangalajī (d. 1944) through to Ḥaydar ʿAlī Qalamdārān (d. 1983), and more recently I would include the likes of ʿAbdolkarīm Sorūsh, Moḥsen Kadivar, Moḥammad Mojtehed Shabastarī, Moṣṭafā Malekiyān and others - though there are differences in their positions on hermeneutics and the nature of religion.

b) The School of Separation (the maktab-e tafkīk) and their fideist rejection of philosophical theology in favour of insisting upon scripturalism and eschewing philosophical arguments since they 'bring into question' innate beliefs that all humans hold (such as the existence of God, and the necessity of prophecy and the imamate and so forth)

c) The New Theology (kalām-e jadīd) was one attempt starting with thinkers in Najaf such as Muḥammad Ḥusayn Iṣfahānī Kumpānī (d. 1942) and developing through his student ʿAllāma Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabātabāʾī (d. 1981) and his student Murtażā Mutahharī (d. 1979) to deploy the philosophical method and system of Mullā Ṣadrā to respond to the theological and intellectual challenges of forms of idealism, materialism, and dialectical materialism as well as atheism in the 20th century. This school is now one might say morphing into an 'analytical Sadrianism' which brings the philosophical theology of Mullā Ṣadrā into conversation with modern anglo-American analytic philosophy of religion and theology. 

Now returning to the Ṭūsī-Ḥillī school, the publication of a dual text edition of Ḥillī's Taslīk al-nafs in a translation by Jari Kaukua, who heads up the ERC-funded Epistemic Transitions in Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science project, is a major event. Up to now, there are hardly any Imāmī theological text available in such an attractive design and binding - or even in translation. I can see how it will become essential for teaching purposes even within Shiʿi circles. The fact that the translation came out of the ERC-funded project also means that the digital copy is available online on a Creative Commons license. The text is also the first in a new series of translations of the works of al-Ḥillī.

This work in a sense falls between the shorter creedal al-Bāb al-Ḥādī ʿashar and al-Ḥillī's more extensive works such as his commentary on the Tajrīd, Kashf al-murād, as well as his incomplete work on kalām (of which the metaphysics section is extant), Nihāyat al-marām fī ʿilm al-kalām and his well known Manāhij al-yaqīn.

The Arabic text follows the earlier critical edition of Fāṭima Ramaḍānī - the translator cites Schmidtke on the 8 manuscripts of the text although there are many more that are extant. 

Ramaḍānī's edition is based on the two earliest manuscripts: 1) MS British Library Or 10971 dated 18 ṣafar 716/May 1316 in the life of the author in the hand of (probably his sister's son) Sayyid ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan al-Ḥusaynī al-Aʿrajī - and the codex also includes an ijāza to his son Fakhr al-muḥaqqiqīn and some of his marginal glosses 2) MS Maktabat Āyatullāh al-Ḥakīm in Najaf 929 dated 22 ṣafar 722/March 1322 also in the lifetime of the author and it says it is based on the autograph (which has not survived). But this is a rough copy with mistakes that are corrected in the margins. 

It is unfortunate that the translation omits the detail of which Arabic text has been used or any of the critical apparatus. But the intention of the series is not to produce critical editions. 

The introduction that follows does a decent job of outlining the importance of the text and the contribution of al-Ḥillī's ideas and his influence but independence from Muʿtazilī and Avicennian ideas. But much of it is based on Schmidtke's earlier published Oxford DPhil. One wonders whether there is more to say? 

The structure is as follows:

As with most later theological compendia, much of the text is taken up with metaphysics of general terms (general things seems a bit vague and it seems that one means the way in which we use terms like one and many and universal and particular - so the semantics of being) and categories of beings (substances and accidents and their properties). Another large chunk is on the nature of God and her attributes including the famous proofs for the existence of God. Here the important discussion of limited and compatibilist human free will as well as evil and the question of pleasures and pains as well as the very significant theological issue of God's facilitating grace (luṭf) are discussed in the section on theodicy. He consistently presents kalām arguments alongside the philosophical ones. Interesting on the major dispute on the eternity of the world he presents both arguments but does not adjudicate - elsewhere he does in favour of the theological position on creation out of nothing in time. The shortest section is on the imamate which is consistent with the other works of this genre. Given his extensive work on that topic of dispute, that is not surprising - and forthcoming titles in this series will engage with those such as the controversial Minhāj al-karāma currently being translated. The final section on the return includes the discussions on resurrection as well as the philosophical problem of how one can return to existence something that has become non-existent. It also ends with a brief discussion on the nature of faith (īmān) that takes up on old kalām debate - interestingly this section is entitled 'on names and judgements'.

The text is well designed and presented. 

The translation itself is readable if at times rather literal or interpretative (in a manner with which I disagree - for example, charge for taklīf that is often rendered as legal or moral obligation). But at least we have a translation that is workable especially alongside the Arabic. 

On the whole there is little doubt that this is a contribution that is wonderfully produced and deserves to be widely disseminated, known and used. An essential step in the study of post-classical kalām and especially Imāmī kalām.