Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 22 (2025): 5-37
Najib George Awad
Bonn University
Muʿtazilism and
‘Ḫalq al-Qur
ʼ
ān’
and
Lingua Sacra
: The Qurʼānic Arabic
Text as a Challenge in Early Islam
Introduction: The Question of the Created Creating Medium
During the 3
rd
/9
th
century, the discussion among Muslim scholars overheated over whether the
Qurʼān is created or uncreated; is eternal or contingent. The supporters of each opinion
equally believed that, before the existence of the written muṣḥaf, God has eternal words/speech
(kalām) called ‘the Qurʼān’. They both conceded that God’s kalām (Qurʼān) is eternal and it is
part and parcel of God’s eternity before any other existence. However, the clash circled around
a differentiation between those who believe in ‘a created pre-existent Qurʼān’ and those who
emphasize ‘an uncreated pre-existent Qurʼān’.
1
Both sides embraced the ‘pre-existence’ idea,
yet one suggested that there was a time when the Qurʼān did not pre-exist (it is contingent),
while the other argued that there was no time when the Qurʼān did not pre-exist (it is eternal).
On the side of the ‘uncreated pre-existence’ option stood Ibn Ḥanbal, some Ašʿarites, and Ibn
Ḥazm. Whereas, on the side of the ‘created pre-existence’ idea stood the Muʿtazilites and their
diversified elaborations on the matter.
In his attention to the Muʿtazilites’ take on the createdness argument, Harry Wolfson
pauses at a saying attributed to the Muʿtazilites and was invoked by Ibn Ḥazm. According to
the latter, the Muʿtazilites explained how God usually brings His words (kalām) into existence
(creates them!) by means of a mediatorial, sort-of calculated action, and they back this
explanation by pointing to the example of God’s communicating with Moses by means of a
word God created and divulged from a burning bush. Commenting on this logic as transmitted
by Ibn Ḥazm, Wolfson states that what is evidently meant by such an idea (if one of the
Muʿtazilites truly articulated it) is “that the word of God in the sense of the Qurʼān was
created in some created thing, just as the word of God spoken to Moses was created in a bush.
But what was that created thing in which the Qurʼān was created? We are not told”.
2
1
Harry A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, (Cambridge, USA/London, UK: Harvard University
Press, 1976), pp. 240ff.
2
H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, pp. 266-267.
Najib George Awad
6
Wolfson chases after what that created thing was, and he searches for a possible data about
it in extant sayings from the Muʿtazilites’ legacy. To fulfill this goal, he resorts to al-Ašʿarī’s
text, Maqālāt al-Īslāmiyyīn wa-Iḫtilāf al-Muṣallīn (The Muslims’ Discourses and the Discrepancies
among the Worshippers). He pauses there at the data recorded on the Muʿtazilite views of
Jaʿfar b. Ḥarb, Jaʿfar b. Mubaššir, and Abū al-Huḏayl al-ʿAllāf.
3
In the transmitted sayings of
these three figures, Wlfson detects a suggestion that the created medium, by means of which
the Qurʼān was brought into being, is ‘al-laūḥ al-maḥfūẓ’ (the preserved tablet). This meant that
these Muʿtazilites deemed the Qurʼān the created, contingent text that is arranged of words
and letters, whose role is to mediate the pre-existent words of God that exist eternally in a pre-
existing, yet created and preserved tablet.
4
Since the created thing, in which the Qurʼān was
created, is heard, memorized and written, it is, then, just “an imitation (ḥikāya) of the pre-
existent Qurʼān [in the preserved tablet]…and this imitation is the act of the writer and reciter
and memorizer”.
5
Wolfson’s pondering of the Muʿtazilites’ attempt at specifying the mediating created means,
in which the Qurʼān was created, invites us to detect the Muʿtazilites’ attention to the
mediatorial role played by the human agent (through writing, memorizing or reciting), and to
ponder its influence on determining the nature and value of the Qurʼān, let alone inviting us to
acknowledge the primary role the human linguistic agency (i.e. the agency of Arabic language)
plays as that mediating, contingent means in which the Qurʼān was created. Upon looking at
the Qurʼānic studies during the early Islamic era and beyond, the reader realizes a highlighting
of the role of Arabic language and a stress on the belief in its sacred, miraculous nature,
specifically in relation to the Qurʼānic textual attestation. One gleans the impression that such
attention to the textual Arabic language and its sacred status was one of the primary arguments
in these literatures. Focusing on the Arabic language as the lingua sacra that mediates the eternal
words of God might be the untold mediating factor, which Harry Wolfson tried to find in the
Muʿtazilites’ suggestion that there is a created thing that God uses to create the Qurʼān and to
imitate (ḥāka) his eternal words through the Arabic words of this created text.
If this could be the case, one is motivated to ask whether this lingua sacra conviction is
connected, by any logical, theological, and contextual means possible, to the Muʿtazilites’
conviction that the Qurʼān, after all, is nothing but a created/contingent text. Scholars have so
far been occupied with how the early Muslim historiographers account for the ramifications of
the caliph al-Ma’mūn’s adoption of the ‘ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ (the createdness of the Qur’ān) belief
and imposing it over the caliphate, and the ideas, which the Muʿtazilites and somemuḥaddiṯūn,
like Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, exchanged in their debates over this teaching. However, what we do not
exactly have a sufficient investigation on yet is related to the primary, motivating reasons that
3
H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, pp. 267ff.
4
H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, p. 268.
5
H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, p. 269.
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
7
drove the Muʿtazilites to develop such a theological doctrine in the first place. Figuring this out
requires attentive interrogation after the broader intellectual and contextual factors that could
have driven the Muʿtazilites to believe that the ‘createdness of the Qurʼān’ idea would speak
positively to the broader public, and it would resonate with what this public seeks to
understand and deal with (given the fact that no one would conjure a public religious teaching
for the hobby of deliberately provoking or challenging the public and stand in enmity with
them).
In this essay, therefore, I attempt at pursuing an investigation after possible answers to the
question of the historical and contextual reasons behind the Muʿtazilites’ leaning toward the
belief in the createdness of the Qurʼān. I shall search for an answer to the question: What
could be the challenge or the problem related to the Qurʼānic texts, which the Muʿtazilites
thought that the teaching of ‘the createdness of the Qurʼān’ would sort-out or respond to? I
attempt to pursue this by, first, pausing at the stances of some main Qurʼānic studies from
early Islam. Investigating this literature is something scholars today hardly opt for when they
try to unpack the roots and ramifications of the Muʿtazilites’ belief in ‘the createdness of the
Qurʼān’ teaching. I believe that, in these Muslim texts, one finds a stance on the Arabic
linguistic nature of the Qurʼān, paired with an endeavor to deal with the problems,
ambiguities, and challenges which the Arabic wordings of the Qurʼān cause for the Muslim
readers, reciters, hearers, and memorizers. The authors of these old Qurʼānic studies do not
touch directly upon the createdness of the Arabic Qur’ānic text. They, deal more attentively,
instead, with the lingua sacra belief in relation to the Qur’ān’s linguistic nature.
6
I shall be seeing
how such a textual-linguistic discussion corresponds and correlates with the Muʿtazilites’
stance on ‘the createdness of the Qurʼān.’ Before delving into the Qurʼānic studies of these
Muslim traditionalists’ stance on lingua sacra and then into the Muʿtazilites’ stance on ‘ḫalq al-
Qurʼān’, I will pause shortly at the historical context of the famous ‘Miḥna’ (crisis) situation
during the rule of the caliph al-Maʼmūn. I pause at this moment because it represents one of
the central contextual frameworks of the controversy within the Muslim intellectual circles
over the issues of lingua sacra and ‘ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ alike.
Once Upon a Crisis in Baghdad
The extant Muslim historiographical and theological texts report frequently about the so-called
‘Qur’ān’s ordeal,’ and they inform us that this affliction circled around an intellectual and
6
This essay is not on the ‘lingua sacra’ concept as such, nor about the historical process that generated
it. I deal with these aspects elsewhere, particularly my forthcoming, “From ‘Lingua Graphica’ into
‘Lingua Sacra’: When Arabic Language Became the Lingua Franca of the Early Islamic Centuries,”
which will be published in an anthology from Routledge in 2026.
Najib George Awad
8
theological divisiveness over whether the Qur’ān is created/contingent or uncreated/eternal.
They all similarly maintain that this crisis perpetrated dire, afflictive tribulation in the early
Abbasid era. In his book, Ṭabaqāt al-Muʿtazila (The Muʿtazilites’ Strata), Aḥmad b.Yaḥyā b. al-
Murtaḍā (d. 1437 A.D.) narrates that a muğādala (debate) over the createdness of the Qur’ān
occurred in the court of the caliph al-Muʿtaṣim between the Muʿtazilite, Ibn Abī Dū’ād, and
the traditionalist, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal. Ibn al-Murtaḍā’s account confirms the prevalence of Ibn
Dū’ād’s ‘createdness/contingency’ argument over Ibn Ḥanbal’s ‘uncreatedness/eternity’
defense, and it reports the caliph’s order of punishing Ibn Ḥanbal for his failure and
flagellating him with sixty-eight lashes, before making him, afterwards, confess that the Qur’ān
is created/contingent.
7
We do have also another extant text reporting a muğādala over ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’. This debate
took place this time in the court, and under the moderation, of the caliph al-Ma’mūn, and it
occurred between the Jewish Muʿtazilite (Jahmite) who converted to Islam, Bišr b. Ghayyāṯ al-
Marīsī, and the Muslim orthodox scholar, ʿAbdulʿazīz b. Yaḥyā b. Muslim b. Maymūn al-
Kinānī al-Makkī. The extant account of this debate is written by the Sunnite orthodox
mutakallim. Therefore, it bluntly praises its author’s point of view and its formidable accuracy,
and it explicitly declares the triumph of the ‘uncreatedness/eternity’ belief over the
‘createdness/contingency’ discourse. This text narrates that, rather than being punished by the
caliph, al-Ma’mūn praises al-Makkī’s solid argument that the Qur’ān is uncreated and is the
eternal divine words of God. The Caliph, the text suggests, endorsed al-Makkī’s suggestion
that the Qur’ān’s Arabic text delineates its eternal uncreatedness vis-à-vis the suras’ literally
lucid and explicit meanings that need no interpretation or exegesis. This report then relates
that the Caliph rewarded al-Makkī with thousand Dinars, and he categorically rebuked al-Marīsī
for his total failure in defending the belief in the createdness of the Qur’ān.
8
According to Muḥammad b. Jarīr aṭ-Ṭabarī (d. 923 A.D.), a crisis (Miḥna) was generated by a
debate over the createdness of the Religious Book, when the caliph al-Ma’mūn – who is
known with his avid passion towards the Muʿtazilite teaching – sent a letter from his residence
in Raqqa city to Isḥāq b. Ībrāhīm, the Head of Security in Baghdad, ordering him to
interrogate all the jurists (quḍāt) and muḥaddiṯīn (Ḥadīṯ scholars) and examine their stance on the
belief in the createdness of the Qur’ān and its contingent origination (ḫalq al-Qur’ān wa-īḥdāṯih).
7
Aḥmad Yaḥyā b. al-Murtaḍā, Ṭabaqāt al-Muʿtazila (The Muʿtazilites’ Strata), Susanna Diwald-Wilzer
(ed.), (Beirut & Wisbaden: Franz Schteiner Verlag, 1961), Vol. 2, pp. 123-125. The narrative of this
debate before al-Muʿtaṣim is also conveyed by ʿAmr b. Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ in one of his letters: al-Jāḥiẓ,
“Ḫalq al-Qur’ān” (The Creating of the Qur’ān), in Rasāʼil al-Jāḥiẓ (al-Jāḥiẓ’s Letters), ʿAbdulsalām
Hārūn (ed.), (Cairo: Ḫānjī Bookshop, n. d.), pp. 283-300, pp. 292-296.
8
ʿAbdulʿazīz b. Yaḥyā b. Muslim b. Maymūn al-Kinānī al-Makkī, al-Ḥayda wal-Īʿtibār fī al-Radd ʿalā Man
Qāla bi-Ḫalq al-Qur’ān (Digressive Apology in Response to those Who Said the Qur’ān is Created),
ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Nāṣir al-Fiqhī (ed.), (Madina, KSA: al-ʿUlūm wal-Ḥikam Bookshop, 2002).
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
9
The Caliph eventually asked his officer to emancipate those who complies with the createdness
teaching and to allow them to teach religion to the public, and to detain those who call for the
uncreatedness belief and prohibit them from contacting the public.
9
Aṭ-Ṭabarī goes so far as
reporting that al-Ma’mūn ordered Isḥāq to send a number of scholars from Baghdad up to
Raqqa in order for the Caliph to interrogate them personally.
10
In his explanation of the
theological problem that lies in the public belief in the uncreatedness/eternity of the Qur’ān,
according to aṭ-Ṭabarī’s report, the caliph al-Ma’mūn relates that the people started to
exchange wrong ideas about God and to equate the divine reality of God with the creaturely
things, making God and His creation co-eternal and equal:
.
It has been brought to the attention of the prince of the believers that the public predominant
majority of the subjects’ orators and the lowly commoners…are ignorant about God…
incapable of appreciating God accurately and of perceiving Him profoundly and of
distinguishing Him from His creatures…for, they equalized God, be blessed and glorified, to the
Qur’ān that He descended, consensually conceding and monolithically concurring that [the
Qur’ān]is eternal and a priori, uncreated, unoriginated, and uncaused by God. Whereas, God, be
blessed and glorified, stated in one of His Book’s crystal-clear verses… ‘we have made it an
Arabic Qur’ān’ (az-Zuḫruf 43:3], so whatever God made, God Has created.
11
The theological logic of al-Ma’mūn’s support of the createdness of the Qur’ān is symptomatic
of a typical Muʿtazilite reasoning. The almost exact argument was echoed by Bišr al-Marīsī in
al-Makkī’s account on their debate. Al-Marīsī similarly cites from surat az-Zuḫruf, the very same
verse al-Ma’mūn personally jots down in his letter to Isḥāq:
(īnnā jaʿalnāhu
Qurʼānan ʿArabiyyan).
12
Another traditionalist response to the belief in the createdness of the Qur’ān by means of
referring to verse 3 in Surat az-Zuḫruf is also developed by the orthodox scholar, ʿAbdullah b.
Muslim Ibn Qutayba. This is what Ibn Qutayba attends to in the section titled “Response to
Those Who Say the Qur’ān is Created” (Al-Radd ʿalā al-Qāʼilīn bi-ḫalq al-Qur’ān), in his book,
9
Muḥammad b. Jarīr aṭ-Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ al-Rusul wal-Mulūk (The History of the Messengers and the
Kings), Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ībrāhīm (ed.), (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif al-Maṣriyya, 1980), VIII: 531-
534.
10
aṭ-Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ al-Rusul wal-Mulūk, VIII: 534.
11
aṭ-Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ al-Rusul wal-Mulūk, VIII: 532.
12
al-Makkī, al-Ḥayda wal-Īʿtibār, II: 59.
Najib George Awad
10
Al-Īḫtilāf fī al-Lafẓ wal-Radd ʿalā al-Jahmiyya wal-Mušbiha (The Discrepancies of Pronunciation
and the Response to the Jahmites and the Anthropomorphists). There, Ibn Qutayba relies on
an argument similar to the one made byʿAbdulʿazīz al-Makkī, and he stipulates that the word
‘jaʿala’ (made) is etymologically different from ‘ḫalaqa’ (created) in Arabic language.
13
Back in
his al-Ḥayda wal-Īʿtibār fī al-Radd ʿalā Man Qāla bi-Ḫalq al-Qur’ān (Digressive Apology in
Response to those Who Said the Qur’ān is Created), his own (most probably partial) personal
account on this debate, al-Makkī reports his success in explaining the very same Qur’ānic verse
and in refuting the Muʿtazilites’ scriptural backing of ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān.’ He even relates that the
caliph personally praised his (al-Makkī’s) counter-explanation of the concerned verse. As if by
saying this he alludes that al-Ma’mūn embraced an argument against the ‘createdness’ belief.
Over all, the contrasting trends in the accounts of al-Makkī and the abovementioned one
of aṭ-Ṭabarī are inescapable, and both cannot be right. Some other historiographical records
provide an answer for this contrariety by reporting on a close affinity between al-Ma’mūn and
the Muʿtazilites. ʿAbdulqāhir al-Asfarāyīnī al-Baghdādī (d. 1037 A.D.), for instance, points to a
strong influence from the Muʿtazilite Ṯumāma b. al-Ašras over the caliph al-Ma’mūn, and the
former’s responsibility of seducing the latter and calling him to embrace the ‘Īʿtizālī’ way.
14
The
role of the Muʿtazilites in the caliphal court in the 3
rd
/9
th
century and the impact of their
teaching on the createdness of the Qur’ān has perpetually captured the attention of
contemporary scholarship. It made scholars compose considerable number of writs on this
subject during the past decades. This interest was essentially motivated by a consensual
conviction like the one Telman Nagel once stated: “It was during [al-Ma’mūn’s] caliphate that
the Muʿtazila reached the height of its influence”,
15
as they succeeded in making effective
impacts on the caliphal court by prominent Muʿtazilites, like Ṯumāma b. al-Ašras, Ībrāhīm b.
Sayyār an-Naẓẓām, and Abū al-Huḏayl al-ʿAllāf. The consequences of such dominance,
however, were inerasable on the career-track of Muʿtazilite rationalism, as it led to this
rationalism’s defeat and paved the way for a sweepy come-back to the Sunnite traditionalist
rationalism soon after al-Muʿtaṣim’s rule. It even left deep scars on the Abbasid caliphate, as al-
Ma’mūn’s and al-Muʿtaṣim’s presentations against the believers in the ‘uncreatedness of the
Qur’ān’ (like Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal) “helped to further fuel the masses’ anger toward the
caliphate…[after it] sowed the seeds of discord among the Sunnis [that] was to flare up two
13
ʿAbdullah b. Muslim ibn Qutayba, Al-Īḫtilāf fī al-Lafẓ wal-Radd ʿalā al-Jahmiyya wal-Mušbiha (The
Discrepancies of Pronunciation and the Response to the Jahmites and the Anthropomorphists),
ʿUmar b. Muḥmūd Abū ʿUmar (ed.), (Giza: Dār al-Rāʼiya, 1991), pp. 38-39.
14
ʿAbdulqāhir al-Asfarāyīnī al-Baghdādī, Al-Farq Bayn al-Firaq wa-Bayān al-Firqa al-Nājiya (The
Difference between the Groups and the Discourse of the Surviving Group), (Beirut: Dār al-Ᾱfāq al-
Jadīda, 1977), p. 157.
15
Tilman Nagel, The History of Islamic Theology: From Muhammad to the Present, Thomas Thornton
(trans.), (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2010), p. 106.
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
11
hundred years later”.
16
Such a public reaction, and not just the jurists’ influence, must have
been one of the reasons that forced al-Ma’mūn to refrain from openly declaring ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’
as an official, stately recognized, dogma.
17
One of the prominent scholars who offered a tentative (though now classical) reading of
the Miḥna, and the connection of its genesis and evolvement to the Muʿtazilites’ thought, is
Josef van Ess. In the third volume of the English translation of his Theologie und Gesellschaft,
van Ess refers to the profound affinity between al-Ma’mūn and the two Muʿtazilites, Abū al-
Huḏayl al-‘Allāf and Ībrāhīm b. Sayyār an-Naẓẓām. In the eyes of these two known
Muʿtazilites, van Ess relates, al-Ma’mūn “presented himself as teacher of the community;” that
is, as someone who “lived up to the image theologians [like the Muʿtazilites]…sketched of the
caliph”.
18
Many contemporary scholars are persuaded like van Ess that al-Ma’mūn bought
seriously into this image and he acted towards the public upon it. He expected the people to
succumb to whatever he deems true and abide with it as decreed resolutions.
19
This self-belief,
van Ess suggests relying on the historiography of aṭ-Ṭabarī, originated al-Ma’mūn’s decision
on June 827 A.D. to issue a public decree proclaiming the createdness of the Qur’ān.
20
The accent of van Ess’s abovementioned speech gives the reader the impression that the
caliph’s decision was sudden and unpredictable; something aṭ-Ṭabarī’s account of the decreeing
of ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’ similarly alludes to. Van Ess demonstrates that the real motivation behind al-
Ma’mūn’s various decrees, including ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān,’ still puzzles scholars and leads them into
considerably diverse conjectures that never exclude a pure politically-driven scenario.
21
Van Ess
personally does not cast the political complications off the scene. Yet, he seems to be leaning
16
T. Nagel, The History of Islamic Theology, p. 125.
17
Josef van Ess, Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra: A History of Religious
Thought in Early Islam, Gwendolin Goldbloom (trans.), (Leiden & Borton: Brill, 2017), Vol. II. p. 489.
Van Ess points out that it was believed that al-Ma’mūn refrained from this due to the influence of
the Ḥadīṯ scholar, Abū Ḫālid Yazīd b. Hārūn b. Zāḏī (J. van Ess, Theology and Society, II: 488-489).
18
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, III: 483.
19
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, III: 483. See also Ira M. Lapidus, “The Separation of State and
Religion in the Development of Early Islamic Society”, in International Journal of Middle Eastern
Studies, 6(4), 1975, pp. 363-385; and Tilman Nagel, Rechtleitung und Kalifat. Versuch über eine Grundfrage
der islamischen Geschichte, (Bonn: Selbstvertl des Oriental Seminars der Universität, 1975).
20
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, III: 483.
21
This is, for example, what one gleans from the proposals of W. Montgomery Watt, “The Political
Attitudes of the Muʿtazila”, in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Irland,
1/2(1963), pp. 38-57; W. M. Watt, “Early Discussions about the Qur’ān”, in The Muslim World, 40(2),
1950, pp. 96-105; M. Qasim Zaman, Religion and Politics under the Early ʿAbbāsids: The Emergence of the
Proto Sunni Elite, (Leiden: Brill, 1997); and Marco Demichelis, “Between Muʿtazilism and Syncretism:
A Reappraisal of the Behavior of the Caliphate of al-Ma’mūn”, in Journal of Near Eastern Studies,
71(2), 2012, pp. 257-274.
Najib George Awad
12
further towards factors and challenges of predominant intellectual and theological nature. He
relates that, after his removal to Baghdad from Merv, al-Ma’mūn coincided with his old,
Mervian, intellectual opponents in Baghdad. His reaction to this, van Ess proposes, was as
follows:
He stood for a ‘progressive’ concept of God focusing on transcendence, while [his opponents]
adhered to the older anthropomorphism that had already been in conflict with transcendentalism
in Eastern Iran, and whose Iraq opponents were decried by them, ascribed by them as
‘Jahmites.’
22
What al-Ma’mūn launched in the eyes of the Baghdadi public, knowingly or unknowingly, was
a permission, coming from the highest rank of power in the caliphate, for promoting
theological innovations in “an area traditionists and legal scholars regarded as theirs”,
23
much
to the annoyance of scholars like Ibn Ḥanbal and other muḥaddiṯūn, and much more to the
relief of Qur’ānic scholars and Muʿtazilites, so it seemed. Be that as it may, the teaching of
‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’ was not necessarily the most central, most discussed, most cognized theological
idea among all sorts of scholars at that time. It was, rather, one detour, or road-junction,
towards reasoning on another more crucial and important matters: Some political, others
Qur’ānic and exegetical in nature. Legitimizing this teaching placed it under the spot as an
instrument used for all kinds of political and social reasons and ends, save for the original ones
that generated the belief in the createdness of the Qur’ān and drove the Muʿtazilites to
construct such an idea, in the first place.
As for the reason behind al-Ma’mūn’s official endorsement of ‘alq al-Qur’ān’, J. van Ess, T.
Nagel, and M. Watt, relying fully on aṭ-Ṭabarī’s account, maintain that the caliph was driven by
a realization of a spread public ignorance about Islamic faith. He was also motivated by his full
obsession with his role of “protecting the true faith of God (dīn Allah) and of perceiving the
prophetic legacy he received”.
24
Something pushed the Caliph towards practicing his religious
patriarchal duties specifically by imposing on his subjects, primarily the jurists and the scholars,
the belief in the createdness of the Qur’ān. It is well known, in this regard, that one of the
prominent scholars who paid the price of disobeying the caliph’s orders was Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal.
This Sunnite, traditionalist scholar was interrogated over his stance on the createdness of the
Qur’ān, summoned by the caliph to debate with other Muʿtazilites in his court over it, and he
was, eventually, fated to sustain thirty lashes (or sixty-eight, according to some accounts) and
was thrown into prison as a punishment for his standpoint. For the Sunnites, van Ess notices,
al-Ma’mūn made Ibn Ḥanbal a heroic martyr, something that generated a direly reversed
outcome that caused deep disintegration and fraction in the society: “Al-Ma’mūn wanted the
22
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, III: 486.
23
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, III: 489.
24
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, III: 491.
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
13
unity of power and authority, but the process he initiated shortly before his death would put it
into doubt forever”.
25
His scheme eventuated public resistance clearly leaning towards violence
and bloodshed, which started first in the chief mosque of Ruṣāfa and ensued in Karḫ: Both
were hotbed of resistance in that Miḥna incidents.
26
It was from Ruṣāfa that the resistance against the ‘createdness of the Qur’ān’ view kicked
off, just two weeks after the death of al-Ma’mūn’s successor, al-Muʿtaṣim. Such riots were not
unexpected reactions to the radical extent the application of the ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’ reached: “A
woman could divorce her husband if she could prove that he did not ‘believe the commander
of the faithful’s doctrine on the Qur’ān’”.
27
No wonder that after the success of the
traditionalists in defeating this doctrine and imposing the ‘uncreatedness of the Qur’ān’ norm
again, the Muʿtazilites, who were publicly held accountable of the Miḥna and were deemed the
protégées of the caliphal agenda, were exposed to different forms of persecution and atrocity
from the opponents of the ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’ among the jurists, the fuqahāʼ, the muḥaddiṯūn, and
the traditionalist mutakallims.
The complexity of the political and religious relationship between al-Ma’mūn and the
Muʿtazilites, in the context of the Miḥna and the doctrine of the ‘createdness of the Qur’ān,’
occupied scholars for quite a long time.
28
Marco Demichelis (in the footsteps of the majority
of other scholars) have already formidably argued that one of the central reasons behind this
relationship is rooted in the caliph’s following two fold modus operandi.
The caliph’s first political and religious objective was to create persistent enemies… to enable
him to appear as the defender of Islam… the second aim of al-Ma’mūn was to surprise and
guide debates on religious and cultural subjects, to foster the image of a caliph who was the
defender of the religion and to personalize the interpretation of the holy Qur’ān based on a
political-religious ideology.
29
Supervising muğādalāt (debates) between theologians in his court over all kinds of religious
themes gave al-Ma’mūn the chance to witness at first-hand scholars like Bišr al-Marīsī, Abū al-
Huḏayl al-ʿAllāf, Ṯumāma b. al-Ašras, Bišr b. al-Muʿtamir, Ḍirār b. ʿAmr, Aḥmad b. Abī
Dūʼād, and others right in action. The role of the Muʿtazilites’ thought in religiously
solidifying the Abbasid dynasty’s rule was already established in the first half of the 3
rd
/9
th
century. This must have motivated the Kalām- and falsafa-oriented caliph, al-Ma’mūn, to pause
25
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, III: 495.
26
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, III: 508.
27
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, III: 510.
28
For a valuable list of some of the main studies in modern scholarship, see Marco Demichelis,
“Between Muʿtazilism and Syncretism: A Reappraisal of the Behavior of the Caliphate of al-
Ma’mūn”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 71(2), (2012), pp. 257-258.
29
M. Demichelis, “Between Muʿtazilism and Syncretism”, p. 261.
Najib George Awad
14
piercingly and to demonstrate great interest in what he heard of the Muʿtazilite mutakallims in
such muğādalāt occasions. He might have even decided to make Muʿtazilites like Ṯumāma and
Ibn al-Muʿtamir members in the circle of his intimate collaborators and friends.
30
This
personal intimacy and intellectual affinity must have been one of the sources of the caliph’s
decision to fulfill his vision by means of a theological belief like ‘the createdness of the
Qur’ān’ and no other.
All the above historiographical data and hermeneutical analysis of it offer us an explanation
of the reason and circumstances that could have been behind the caliph al-Ma’mūn’s adoption
of ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’ Muʿtazilite teaching and implementing it as the primary instigator for
cementing his political and religious status. What all this fails to tell us, nevertheless, is why
would the Muʿtazilites conjure up such a teaching on the createdness/contingency of the Qur’ān in the first
place? There is nothing to indicate that the Muʿtazila constructed such a discourse upon the
request of the caliph or as a response to al-Ma’mūn’s ambition, or even as their contribution to
the grounding of his cause in religious soil. The historiographical extant data indicate, or at
least invite us to surmise, that the Muʿtazilites already had discourses on the createdness of the
Qur’ān, and that they possibly entertained their views on this doctrine in interaction with the
public, the muḥaddiṯūn, the fuqahāʼ and other mutakallims, even before the beginning of the Miḥna
incidents. Could this suggest, then, that the Muʿtazila developed their theological views on the
createdness of the Qur’ān in interaction with other Muslim voices occupied with theological
and exegetical matters that are directly related to how the public approached the Qur’ānic
muṣḥaf and related to its linguistic content?
Let us remember here that the 3
rd
/9
th
century’s Muslim intellectual scene was not merely
occupied with mutakallims, muḥaddiṯūn, falāsifa, and fuqahāʼ. It witnessed also the presence and
seminal intellectual influence of the Qur’ānic scholars: the Mufassirūn. Those scholars were
primarily occupied with the Qur’ānic texts’ understanding by the community of the believers
and with attending to the possible inquiries and problems its linguistic forms, content, and
transmission (oral and textual) might generate before the Muslims. It was within this scriptural
focus that the treating of the Arabic language of the Qur’ān as lingua sacra was born. What if
the Muʿtazilites’ primary motivation behind speaking about the createdness of the Qur’ān was
a scriptural, linguistic, and interpretative concern about the same lingua sacra view, and what if it
was expressive of their reciprocation with the Qur’ānic scholars’ attempt at assessing the belief
in the sacredness of the Arabic language of the Qur’ān, which was commonly embraced by
the Muslim public? What if ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’ is the Muʿtazilites’ way of rejecting the ‘lingua sacra’
idea in correspondence with the Qur’ānic scholars’ reservations on the very same claim?
30
M. Demichelis, “Between Muʿtazilism and Syncretism”, p. 267. This is also stressed and paused at in
Patricia Crone and Michael Hinds, God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
15
In the ensuing two sections, I examine the plausibility of such option. I visit first some of
the Muslim Qur’ānic scholars to unpack their stances on the linguistic nature and value of the
Qur’ānic text. Afterwards, I visit the available data we have on the Muʿtazilites’ ‘createdness of
the Qur’ān’ discourses to see whether, or not, one can detect therein a connection which the
Mutazila could have presumed between the belief i9n ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’ and the lingua sacra claim.
Attending to the‘Lingua Sacra’Belief By the Qur’ānic Scholars
It does not seem to be the case that the early Muslim Qur’ānic scholars allowed the belief in
the sacredness of the Arabic language of the Qur’ān (i.e., it was descended from God’s divine
realm) to detain them from treating this language as a subject for critical intellectual,
philological, and etymological investigation and assessment. Hani Hayajneh expresses this
factor eloquently in the following manner:
«Medieval Muslim scholars generally understood that language is one of the main sciences that
one should master before starting any endeavors of Qur’ānic exegesis, as it is deemed to be the
repository of the collective memory of the community members through which interpretation
takes place. Language, as a holistic system, absorbs the experience of the predecessors who
utilized and made it productive morphologically and semantically».
31
Quite intriguing here is that old Muslim exegetes seem to be more liberal and scientifically
critical in their approach to Qur’ānic language than contemporary scholars like Hayajneh.
Contrary to tolerating the impact of linguistic, historical, and culturally-based complexities on
the diversification of the textual interpretation, Hayajneh believes that, no matter how
multifaceted and diverse the Qur’ānic language might be, the interpretation of the Qur’ānic
linguistically-based content must be universal, simply because the Qur’ān is a ‘sacred text,’
which means that its linguistic attestations are sacred too. This is how Hayajneh articulates the
universality of the sacred textuality of the Qur’ān.
I think that the historical and cultural horizon of the interpreter’s understanding should not
influence the meaning of the texts, especially if we are dealing with a sacred text such as the
31
Hani Hayajneh, ‘The Usage of Ancient South Arabian and other Arabian Languages as an
Etymological Source for Qur’ānic Vocabulary”, in New Perspectives on the Qur’ān: The Qur’ān in its
Historical Context. 2, Gabriel S. Reynolds (ed.), (London & New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 117-146,
p. 120. Hayajneh echoes here the claims of Sizā Qāsim-Dirzār, “Tawālud al-Nuṣūṣ wa-Išbāʼ al-
Dilāla: Taṭbiqāt ʿalā Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-Karīm” (The Multiplication of Texts and the Gratification of
Denotation: Applications on the Interpretations of the Glorious Qur’ān), in Alif: Journal of
Comparative Poetics. Interpretation and hermeneutics, 8(1988), pp. 30-41.
Najib George Awad
16
Qur’ān. A universal understanding of the Qur’ān means that it must be valid to scholars from
different social and cultural backgrounds. This is especially important for a sacred text such as
the Qur’ān.
32
At any rate, and the sacredness aspect notwithstanding, Hayajneh does acknowledge the
etymological and semantic linguistic exegesis of the Qur’ānic attestation. He deems such
exegetical approach to the Qur’ānic language the plausible means for demonstrating that the
Qur’ān is “a very important source of linguistic and cultural knowledge that can elucidate
vague cultural and linguistic references in ancient Arabian inscriptions”.
33
This was also the
conviction of the old Muslim exegetes, according to Hayajneh. These early Qur’ānic mufassirūn
paused seriously at the text’s Arabic language and terms, and they painstakingly uncovered the
linguistic origins of some of them, describing, eventually, “some Qur’ānic words as ḥimyarī
‘Himyaritic’, Yamani or Yamānī ‘Yemenite’ and bi-lughati ahl al-Yaman ‘in the language of the
people of Yemen’”.
34
Quite known are also the Muʿtazilites’ views among the Qur’ānic scholars of early Islam
who developed a theory of language and applied it exegetically to the Arabic language of the
Qur’ān. For them, treating the Qur’ānic text as ‘created/contingent’, not as sacred, leads to
approaching its language not as a holy, ontological manifestation of divine will, nor as an
infallible, epistemological, and linguistic medium of divine revelation. The Arabic language of
the Qur’ān, for the Muʿtazilites, was a medium of ideas, the content of which is attainable by
human reasoning (ʿaql). Human reason deduces the meanings of the message by treating the
language as a conglomeration of ‘majāz’ (metaphorism) and ‘qiyās’ (analogy) and by using what
they described “qiyās al-ghāʼib ʿalā al-shāhid” (analogically deducing the invisible from the
visible).
35
This is what made the Muʿtazilites implicitly sideline the claim of the universality of
the Qur’ānic sacred content, and thus of the sacredness of its Arabic language. For them, this
language is not universal or sacred because it loads the Qur’ān’s passages with some clear
(muḥkam), yet simultaneously other far-from-clear and ambiguous (mutashābih), linguistic
expressions of God’s transcendence and will.
36
It is just tenable to say that the Muʿtazilites’
approach to the Arabic linguistic content of the Qur’ān is purely humanist, rather than
metaphysical, and their epistemological stance on it is purely textual and exegetical.
32
Hayajneh, ‘The Usage of Ancient South Arabian and other Arabian Languages as an Etymological
Source for Qur’ānic Vocabulary”, p. 122.
33
Hayajneh, ‘The Usage of Ancient South Arabian”, pp. 125-126.
34
Hayajneh, ‘The Usage of Ancient South Arabian”, p. 127.
35
See on this Nasr Hamid Abuzayd, “Towards Understanding the Qur’ān’s Worldview: An
Autobiographical Reflection”, in New Perspectives on the Qur’ān, pp. 47-88, pp. 55ff.
36
Abuzayd, “Towards Understanding the Qur’ān’s Worldview”, p. 59. See also Nasr H. Abuzayd,
Mafhūm al-Naṣṣ: Dirāsāt fī ʿUlūm al-Qur’ān (The Concept of the Text: Study in the Sciences of the
Qur’ān), (Beirut & Casablanca: The Arabic Culture Center, 1990).
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
17
I am going to reflect at length on the Muʿtazilites’ stance on the Qur’anic linguistic
attestation in the ensuing section. I just wanted here to show that the Muʿtazilites seriously
overlapped with the Muslim mufassirūn in avoiding the treatment of the Qur’ānic text as a
metaphysically sacred, un-investigable, divine gift from heaven. They both seem to have
approached the religious text as a linguistic enterprise, whose proses have irregular rhythmical
rhyming that can obstruct clarity and hinder understanding; thus, it needs clarification and
interpretation. Known in modern Western Islamic studies is Theodore Nöldeke’s
comprehensive overview of the attending to this matter by the earliest Muslim creators of
Arabic exegesis, starting with Ibn ʿAbbās (d. 687 A.D.), Ibn Isḥāq (d. 786 A.D.), al-Wāqidī (d.
822 A.D.), Ibn Hishām (d. 828 A.D.), al-Buḫārī (d. 870 A.D.), right to al-Tirmiḏī (d. 829 A.D.).
37
Even the Qur’ān scholar who staunchly confirms the sacred origin of the Arabic language of
the Qurʼān, Muḥammad b. Jarīr aṭ-Ṭabarī, indirectly concedes that the Qur’ān’s Arabic speech
might sometimes hold meanings beyond the apprehension capacities of the common readers,
and that the Qur’ān’s linguistic attestation needs interpretation by the help of the prophetic
Ḥadīṯ:
And if it happened that God,be glorified, told His worshippers that He made the Qur’ān in
Arabic and that it was descended in a plainly clear Arabic language, yet its [linguistic]exterior
manifestation implies different private and public understandings, we are left with no option for
truly knowing which among the private and the public connotations is God’s meaning unless by
means of the clarification made by the one whom the declaration of the Qur’ān was bestowed
upon, namely the Messenger of God, peace be upon Him.
38
This is aṭ-Ṭabarī’s indirect arguing for the necessity of treating the language of the Qur’ān
exegetically in order to unpack God’s message in it. The exegetical requirement that is
necessitated by the demand of obtaining clarity about the declaration (bayān) justifies sidelining
the belief in the sacredness of the Qur’ānic language and permits treating it as just a language
of particular human tongue in need of interpretation. Even orthodox commentators, like aṭ-
Ṭabarī, were ready to pragmatically sideline the lingua sacra belief regarding the Qur’ānic
linguistic content in order to guarantee that this content is clearly perceived by the
37
Theodore Nöldeke & Friedrich Schwally, Geschichte des Qur’āns: Die Sammlung des Qur’āns, 2
nd
. Ed.,
(Leipzig: Dietrichsche Verlagbuchhandlung, 1919), pp. 163-179.
38
Muḥammad b. Jarīr aṭ-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān ʿan Taʼwīl al-Qurʼān (The Complete Declaration on the
Hermeneutic of the Qurʼān), ʿAbdullah b. ʿAbdulmuḥsin al-Turkī (ed.), (Cairo: Hajr Press, 2001), I:
21.
Najib George Awad
18
worshippers. Even aṭ-Ṭabarī walked in the footsteps of the rationalist exegetical approach to
the religious scripture without needing to declare, for instance, that the Qurʼān is just human-
made (maḫlūq).
Treating the Arabic language from a focused approach is also followed by the 4
th
/10
th
century linguist, Aḥmad b. Fāris b. Zakaryyā al-Qazwīnī al-Rāzī (d. 1004 A.D.). In his book, Al-
Ṣāḥibī fī Fiqh al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya wa-Masāʼilihā wa Sunan al-ʿArab fī Kalāmihā (The Companion
to the Jurisprudence of Arabic Language and the Arabs’ Rules and Issues Regarding their
Speech), Ibn Fāris dedicates a chapter for discussing if the Qur’ān was descended or it, rather,
contains pericopes written in a language other than Arabic. After invoking different mussnads,
and after echoing the belief that God “ordered reading the miraculous Qur’ān that is written in
Arabic” (īnnamā amara Allah jalla thanāʼuhu bi-qirāʼati al-Qur’ān al-ʿarabī al-muʿjiz), he discloses
his leaning towards acknowledging the possible existence of non-Arabic language in the
Qur’ān. He thinks that the letters of the foreign languages are mixed with the Arabic letters;
therefore, he concludes: “
” (fa-man qāla
īnnahā ʿarabiyya fa-huwa ṣādiq wa-man qāla īnnahā ʿajamiyya fa-huwa ṣādiq/ so, whoever said it is
Arabic is right and who said it is foreign is also right).
39
Ibn Fāris, then, concedes the existence
of discrepancies among the exegetes in interpreting the Qur’ān. Yet, he believes in the
reliability of the made exegeses, and he does not seem to consider the potential existence of
non-Arabic terms or parts in the Qur’ān a threat to the authenticity and referentiality of the
Arabic language.
It seems that the Qurʼān’s scholars tended often to justify the discrepancies between their
interpretations of the content of the Qur’ān (there was no consistent, evident iğmāʿ
[consensus] in this regard) by means of emphasizing that the language of the text is one, i.e.,
Arabic, yet there are various readings for the linguistic attestations of the suras (seven readings,
first of all), and that all these readings are decreed by God (qirāʼa munzala). This approach
seems to have even persisted in the ensuing centuries. For instance, in his commentary of the
Qur’ān, the Muslim scholar, Niẓām ad-Dīn al-Qammī al-Nisābūrī (d. 1416) refers to a musnad
from Ḥadīṯ to support his adoption of such an exegetical approach, narrating that ʿAmrū b. al-
ʿᾹṣ and Hishām b. Ḥakīm used to recite Surat al-Furqān after two clearly different ‘alphabetics’
(ḥurūf). This made ʿAmrū complain about it to the Prophet, stating that Hishām reads the
alphabets very differently from how ʿAmrū learned to read this sura from the Prophet:
"
(fa-īḏā huwa yaqraʼu ʿalā ḥurūfin kaṯīratin lam
yuqriʼnīhā rasūlu Allah ṣallā Allah ʿalayihi wa-sallam/ and behold, he reads many alphabets in a
different manner, the Prophet, peace be upon Him, did not teach me to read after). To ʿAmrū’s
complain, the Prophet responds by saying that both ʿAmrū’s and Hishām’s readings are
congenial with how this sura was given down to the Prophet from God, and that the Qur’ān
was descended from God after seven alphabetic readings, all are acceptable and the Muslims
39
Aḥmad b. Fāris b. Zakaryyā al-Rāzī, Al-Ṣāḥibī fī Fiqh al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya wa-Masāʼilhā wa Sunan al-
ʿArab fī Kalāmihā (The Companion to the Jurisprudence of Arabic Language and the Arabs’ Rules
and Issues Regarding their Speech), (Beirut: Muḥammad ʿAlī Bayḍūn, 1997), pp. 32-33.
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
19
are called to use whichever reading was available:
(hakaḏā unzilat. Īnnā al-Qur’ān unzila ʿalā sabʿati aḥrūfin, fa-aqraʼū mā-tayassara minhu).
40
In his commentary on various readings of the Qurʼān, Niẓām ad-Dīn Al-Qammī relates
that the seven various readings are frequent in recurrence (mutawātirāt) and this frequency is
evident in relation to the common and to the dissonant between the readings. So, one must not
discriminately cling to one reading and abandons the others.
41
He, then, points out that these
seven alphabetic recitations represent seven dialects spoken by the tribe of Quraysh, and they
are all consonant in meaning, without discrepancy or contradiction:
(annahā sabʿu lughātin min lughāti Quraysh lā-taḫtalifu wala-
ttaḍādu bal-hiya muttafiqatu al-maʿnā).
42
As an explanation of this diversity, al-Qammī argues that
the Qur’ān contains inclusively every language known to Quraysh, for every content in the
Qur’ān must be understood by every member in Quraysh. God sends His messengers speaking
in the tongues of the targeted people, so that these recipients can perceive lucidly His message.
Add to this, al-Qammī relates, the Qurayshi people knew also the languages of other nations
(al-ʿilmu bi-lughāti ghayrihim).
43
Over all, al-Qammī concedes that the Qur’ān’s language is human
in origin, as it is the language of the tribe of Quraysh with its seven Arabic alphabetic
variations that are all synonymous in meanings, though different in pronunciation and
vocalization.
44
The example of a latter exegete like al-Qammī shows us that the challenge of having
diverse Arabic alphabetic languages in the Qur’ān consistently confronted the Muslims long
after the end of the 3
rd
/9
th
century. Although the exegetes departed in their attendance to this
challenge from the affirmation of the correctness and authenticity of all these various readings
as equally descended from God (munzala min ʿindi Allah), they also conceded that the divine
origin of the Qur’ānic language requires exegetical efforts to interpret them lucidly and
accurately. And, as al-Qammī says echoing what aṭ-Ṭabarī suggests earlier, when the exegetes
disagree on the right interpretation, the opinion of the Prophet (derived from the Ḥadiṯ’s
musnads) is the criterial, determining voice on how to understand the related Qur’ānic parts.
The foundational exegetical criterion which al-Qammī proposes is
40
Niẓām al-Dīn al-Qammī, Gharāʼib al-Qurʼān wa-Raghāʼib al-Furqān (The Wonders and Inclinations of
the Qur’ān), Zakariyyā ʿUmayrāt (ed.), (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1995), I.1, p. 9.
41
al-Qammī, Gharāʼib al-Qurʼān, I.3, p. 23.
42
al-Qammī, Gharāʼib al-Qurʼān, I.3, p. 23.
43
al-Qammī, Gharāʼib al-Qurʼān, I.3, p. 23.
44
al-Qammī, Gharāʼib al-Qurʼān, I.3, p. 24.
Najib George Awad
20
So, if it was said: what do you say about the readings that denote different meanings? We would
say: there are [all] correct and descended from God, yet they are derived from these seven
alphabetic terms and there must not be in what God descended any terms whose meanings are
contradictory and conflictual, but only diverse without contradiction.
45
This suggest to us that the Qur’ānic scholars did not shy away from admitting that the Arabic
language of the Qur’ān is not supernatural, sacred, or metaphysically miraculous. It is, rather,
loaded with diversity and dissonance that sometimes obscure the meaning and fail to elucidate
the message. It is a language that demands painstaking interpretational efforts that can
exclusively be made by specialized mufassirīn. Furthermore, the scholars went as far as
distinguishing God’s words/speech (kalāmullah) from the Arabic Qur’ānic codex. God’s speech
was believed to be eternal (qadīm) and one of God’s divine attributes, whereas the Qur’ānic text
is not eternal because it is ‘contingent’ (ḥādiṯ). God’s speech cannot happen, because no
contingency takes place in eternity (which is beyond sequence):
(min al-
musḥāli qiyāmu al-ḥādiṯi bil-qadīm). This is not the case with the Qur’ān. In its various modes of
subsistence, i.e., concrete (ʿaynī), intellectual (ḏihnī), verbal (wujūd fī al-ʿibāra), and scriptural
(wujūd kitābī), cannot be eternal but contingent, and the linguistic attestation we call ‘Qur’ān’ is
just allegorically expressive of the speech that is substantially in God’s being:
(lā-rayba anna al-Qur’ān…ḥādiṯun, balil-
Qur’ān īnnamā yuṭlaqu … bil-majāziʿalā al-kalāmi al-qā’imi bi-ḏāti Allah taʿālā).
46
Back in the early Islamic centuries, especially the 2
nd
/8
th
- 3
rd
/9
th
centuries, such challenges
that are related to the linguistic-textual nature of the Qur’ān clearly occupied the attention of
the Muslims in general. The mufassirūn listened to the believers transpiring that there are verses
in the Qur’ān that are ambiguous, abrogated, and hard to relate to (something, actually, the
Qur’ānic text itself attests to in Sura 3:7); the thing that drove the exegetes, as early as the
2
nd
/8
th
century, to distinguish, for instance, between the muḥkamāt and the mutashābihāt verses.
47
This is also what seems to have made them search for arguments that can hermeneutically
demonstrate the linguistic-textual divine arche (origin) of the Qur’ān, if not necessarily the
sacredness and metaphysical origin of its language. This seems to be one of the challenges that
Muslim scholars were internally haunted by during the peak of the 3
rd
/9
th
century.
In his text on the challenges in the Qur’ān, the Muslim scholar, Ibn Qutayba, starts by a
manifesto-like declaration of the divine origin and descension of the Qur’ān (he is someone
who was contemporaneous to the Miḥna and certainly familiar with the ‘ḫalq al-Qurʼān’
teaching), which was handed down from God in absolute pricelessness (qaiyyman), in details
(mufaṣṣalan), in lucidness (bayyinan) and in infallibility (lā yaʼtīhi al-bāṭil); as a descended book
45
al-Qammī, Gharāʼib al-Qurʼān, I.3, p. 25.
46
al-Qammī, Gharāʼib al-Qurʼān, I.10, p. 54.
47
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, I: 44. See also Leah Kinberg, “Muḥkamāt and Mutašābihāt (Qur’ān 3/7):
Implications of a Qur’ānic Pair of Terms in Medieval Exegesis”, in Rabica, 35(2), 1988, pp. 143-172.
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
21
from a blessed omniscient source (tanzīlun min ḥakīmin ḥamīd).
48
Ibn Qutayba proceeds claiming
the miraculous nature of the Qur’ān’s composition and the wondrousness of its structuring
and its fullness of miraculous content. He grounds his attestation in a belief in a superiority
which God bestowed upon the Qur’ān’s Arabic language above all other languages:
(wa-mā ḫaṣṣa Allah bihi lughatihā dūna jamīʿi al-lughāt). For him, bestowing
this language, and the ability to apprehend its sciences and meanings, upon the Arabs has
assigned to these people an exclusive prerogative from God: (mā
utiyatuhu al-ʿArabu ḫiṣṣiṣan min Allah).
49
This prerogative makes the linguistic-textual attestation
called ‘Qur’ān’ the central miraculous sign of the Prophet Muḥammad:
And for Muḥammad …the Book was given, which if the humans and the Djinns gathered to
make a book similar to it, will fail to do so…
50
It is essential to pause here and realize that, despite his above stated stance, Ibn Qutayba does
not opt for such a glorifying prolegomenon to deny or negate the need for attending to the
evident ambiguity, and sometimes problematic content, of the Arabic sacred text. Far from
this, he concedes such problematic challenges and proposes nothing but an exegetical method
to attend to it. His first take on achieving elucidation is that the experts in the sciences of
Arabic language, not the common Arabic-speakers and certainly not the foreigners, can alone
understand fully and accurately the textual-linguistic attestations of the Qur’ān. Be that as it
may, they alone can realize that there is no actual built-in problematic fallibility or defect in the
text.
51
Only those who are not qualified to read Arabic and to perceive its profound, wonderful
content dare to mistakenly charge the followers of the Prophet with abrogating and
manipulating the grammar, the syntaxes, the forms, and the expressions of the Arabic Qur’ān.
By spotting such discrepancies and linguistic flows in the text, the vilifiers, (aṭ-ṭāʼinūn), Ibn
Qutayba relates, say to the believers
48
ʿAbdullah b. Muslim b. Qutayba, Taʼwīl Muškil al-Qur’ān (Hermeneuting the Qur’ān’s Challenge),
Ībrāhīm Šamsiddīn (ed.), (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1973), p. 11.
49
Qutayba, Taʼwīl Muškil al-Qur’ān, p. 17.
50
Qutayba, Taʼwīl Muškil al-Qur’ān, p. 17.
51
Qutayba, Taʼwīl Muškil al-Qur’ān, pp. 18ff.
Najib George Awad
22
And you allege that all this is the speech of God, the Lord of the worlds. What more than the
[mentioned] discrepancies you need? And, which abrogation other than such mistakes and errors
you seek?
52
In response to these vilifiers, Ibn Qutayba suggests that the discrepancies and variations in the
Arabic Qur’ānic text are not signs of contradiction, mistakes, or abrogation. They are just
variations expressive of diverse alphabets of seven Arabic linguistic accounts existing
simultaneously in and as the Qur’ān. They are all God’s talk, descended upon His messenger
by the trustworthy Spirit:
(wa-
kullu haḏihi al-ḥurūfu kalāmu Allah taʿālā nazala bihi al-Rūḥu al-amīnuʿalā rasūli Allah ʿalayihi as-
salām). This variety is due to God’s order to Muḥammad to let people recite the Qur’ān, each in
his own Arabic dialect and after their common manner of speech:
(an amarahu bi-an yaqraʼa kullu qaūmin bi-lughatihim wa-mā jarat ʿalayihiʿādatuhum).
53
The difference in these attestations is a “difference of distinction” (/īḫtilāfu at-
taghāyur), and not a “difference of contradiction” ( /īḫtilāfu at-taḍādd).
54
In the
remaining of his commentary, Ibn Qutayba busies himself fully with a meticulous
implementation of this exegetical method on the verses of the Qur’ānic surās. He endeavors to
demonstrate the text’s harmony and to elucidate and interpret what he already, even if
implicitly, conceded and embraced to be problematic and defective therein.
In the 3
rd
/9
th
century as well, al-Ḥāriṯ al-Muḥāsibī attends to the criticism against the
Qur’ānic language, and he develops a proposal on how to interpret the text and understand it.
He pursues this vis-à-vis his debate with the Jahmites, the Muʿtazilites, the Ḥashwites, and the
Mushabbihites, as he tells us in his book, Fahm al-Qur’ān wa-Maʿānīh (Understanding the Qur’ān
and its Meanings). Al-Muḥāsibī argues that the Qur’ān prevails over reason (al-muhayminuʿalā al-
ʿaql), and those who are rational would be able to apprehend that the divinely descended Book
is inimitable in its splendor. All the texts that preceded it testify to the Qur’ān and declare that
it is immune from any fallibility.
55
Like other Muslim exegetes, al-Muḥāsibī emphasizes that
understanding the Qur’ān accurately requires a reliable, comprehensive knowledge on how to
deal with its language and its grammatical rules
The reciter of the Qur’ān must know its replaced and deleted parts, its confirmed and debated
verses, its generals and particulars, its beginning and end, its conjunctives and disjunctives, its
52
Qutayba, Taʼwīl Muškil al-Qur’ān, p. 24.
53
Qutayba, Taʼwīl Muškil al-Qur’ān, p. 32.
54
Qutayba, Taʼwīl Muškil al-Qur’ān, p. 33.
55
al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī, Fahm al-Qur’ān wa-Maʿānīh (Understanding the Qur’ān and its Meanings),
Ḥusayn al-Qūwatlī (ed.), (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1977), pp. 246-247.
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
23
foreign elements as well as what cannot be understood except linguistically or by means of
Sunna and consensus.
56
Al-Muḥāsibī’s words suggest his acknowledgment of the existence of replacement and
deletion (nasḫ wa-mansūḫ) cases. This might suggest his concurrence with the Muʿtazilites’
belief in the createdness/contingency of the Qur’ān. Far from being the case, however, al-
Muḥāsibī argues that the nasḫ cases in the Qur’ān do not prove its createdness. God did not
change his words or deleted them or replaced them with different ones. Such actions are
usually done by the liar who reverts from what he said (al-kāḏibu ar-rājiʿuʿammā qāl).
57
God
merely changes the manner of his verbal expressions of one and the same meaning: He utters
one message in more than one linguistic alphabet, but He does not contradict the meaning He
conveyed in the first place, nor does He delete or cancel it:
(Allah… lā yubaddilu kalāmahu wa-lā yansaḫu qaūlahu wa-īnnamā yansaḫu farḍahu
bi-farḍin āḫar).
58
The superiority of the Qur’ānic linguistic attestation, for al-Muḥāsibī, is the main reason
behind the ambiguity of its content for those who are not qualified to read the Qur’ān and
interpret it. So, when a reader fails to understand what God said and complains to al-Muḥāsibī
about it, the latter would tell him that what the non-specialized readers need merely to perceive
is that understanding the text grants salvation, while failing to do so (al-īʿrāḍuʿan fahmihi) leads
to damnation (al-halaka), and that the reader ought to consult an exegete to show him that God
availed in the Qur’ānic text the explanations of what might avers as ambiguous.
59
The Qur’ānic
language is self-elucidating, self-exegeting, to those who master the language, who would be
able to perceive that there is no rating or leveling in the Qur’ānic language: All of it is good
and none is imperfect.
60
Be that as it may, al-Muḥāsibī concludes that God’s divine wisdom
decreed handing the Qur’ān down specifically in the ‘language of the Arabs’ (bi-lisāni al-ʿarab),
so that its meanings would be apprehensible, and this language, in its sophisticated structure,
nature and grammars, is the most qualified language for achieving this purpose.
61
Another commentator from the 3
rd
/9
th
century, who also occupies himself with
explanations to the linguistic ambiguity and inconsistency among the various versions and
readings of the Qur’ān, is Hūd b. Muḥakkam al-Hauwārī. In his book, Tafsīr Kitāb Allah al-
ʿAzīz (A Commentary on the Precious Book of God), al-Hauwārī refers to a musnad relating
that the Qur’ān descended in fourfold form:
” (ḥalālun wa-ḥarāmun lā-yasaʿu an-nāsa jahluhu, wa-tafsīrun yaʿlamhu al-
ʿulamāʼu wa-ʿarabiyyatun taʿrifuhā al-ʿarabu wa-taʼwīlun lā-yaʿlamuhu īllā Allah/ lawful and unlawful
56
al-Muḥāsibī, Fahm al-Qur’ān, p. 248.
57
al-Muḥāsibī, Fahm al-Qur’ān, p. 252.
58
al-Muḥāsibī, Fahm al-Qur’ān, p. 252.
59
al-Muḥāsibī, Fahm al-Qur’ān, pp. 274-275.
60
al-Muḥāsibī, Fahm al-Qur’ān, p. 368.
61
al-Muḥāsibī, Fahm al-Qur’ān, p. 493.
Najib George Awad
24
which people cannot unknow, and an interpretation known to the scholars and an Arabic
language known to the Arabians and an exegesis only known to God).
62
Al-Hauwārī’s relating
that the Arabic Qur’ānic text can, at some parts, be un-interpretable, save by God, is an
expression of his awareness of the controversies among his contemporary Muslims over the
defects and contradictions of the unclear and enigmatic elements in the Arabic language of the
Qur’ān. This is why he proceeds by citing another musnad, which relates that the Prophet
personally pointed to these linguistic and exegetical difficulties, and he warned the believers
about it, saying: “There is no verse in the Qur’ān without explicit and implicit meanings and
each letter in it has someone who can know what it means” (
/ mā-fī al-Qur’ān āyatun illā lahā ẓahrun wa-baṭnun wa-mā fīhi ḥarfun īllā
wa-huwa ḥaddun wa-likulli ḥaddin muṭṭaliʿ).
63
This Ḥadīṯ is invoked as an authoritative explanation
aiming to convey that, though God handed the Qur’ān down in a language known to people,
He does not want every person to read the Qur’ān and to give himself the right to explain
what its language transmits. Be that as it may, al-Hauwārī confirms:
Only the one who knows the following twelve features would be able to interpret the Qur’ān: the
Meccan and Medinan [surās], and the transcribed and the duplicated, and the forwarding and the
postponement, and the disjunctive and the conjunctive, and the particular and the general, and
the concealment and the Arabic [language].
64
We also have here a similar approach to the Arabic text of the Qur’ān in the commentary of
the 3
rd
/9
th
century’s Sufist exegete, Sahl b. ʿAbdullah b. Yūnis at-Tastarī. In his book, Tafsīr al-
Qur’ān al-ʿAẓīm (A Commentary on the Glorious Qur’ān), at-Tastarī re-articulates most of the
arguments for the divine origin of the Arabic text of the Qur’ān that we read in the other
discourses we visited. He also grounds his defense of the infallibility of the Qur’ānic text in
the prophetic Ḥadīṯ and the musnads attributed to authoritative Muslim voices (e.g., Ibn
ʿAbbās).
65
He also refers to the Prophet’s call for the believers to learn how to exegete the
Qur’ānic Arabic discourses and to beware of the multi-layered meaning of the Qur’ānic
verses.
66
He also suggests that the various ways of relating to the Qur’ānic text stem from the
62
Hūd b. Muḥkkam al-Hauwārī, Tafsīr Kitāb Allah al-ʿAzīz (A Commentary on the Precious Book of
God), Balḥāj b. Saʿīd Šarīfy (ed.), (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1990), Vol. I, p. 69.
63
al-Hauwārī, Tafsīr Kitāb Allah al-ʿAzīz, I: 70.
64
al-Hauwārī, Tafsīr Kitāb Allah al-ʿAzīz, I: 71.
65
Sahl b. ʿAbdullah b. Yūnis at-Tastarī, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-ʿAẓīm (A Commentary on the Glorious
Qur’ān), Ṭaha ʿABdulraʼūf Saʿd and Saʿd Ḥasan M. ʿAlī (eds.), (Cairo: Dār al-Ḥarm lil-Turāṯ, 2004),
pp. 75-84.
66
at-Tastarī, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-ʿAẓīm, p. 76.
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
25
diverse motivations and goals that drive the believers to read the Qur’ān.
67
He also relates that
God descended the Qur’ān in an Arabic language that is fully known to Muḥammad’s
followers, so that not just the divine text, but also the exegesis of the explicit and implicit
meanings of its verses would also be known to them.
68
What is particularly highlighted in at-
Tastarī’s commentary is his affirmation that quarreling and debating (ğidāl) over the meanings
of the Arabic Qur’ānic text is not recommended by God. It is, rather, forbidden, for, at-Tastarī
states, “if the guided believer debated about it, he will be correct, but if the one who debates is
a hypocritical slanderer, he will inaccurately fabricate arguments by means of analogy and bias
predisposition”: (
/in jādala bihi al-mūʼminu al-muhtadī aṣāba, wa-īn jādala bihi al-munāfiqu al-muftarī aqāma
ḥujjatan bil-qiyāsi wal-hawā bi-ghayri ṣawāb).
69
Eventually, at-Tastarī endorses the studying of the
Arabic Qur’ānic text and mastering the accurate exegetical methods of understanding and
interpreting over the mere mastering of the arts of enchanted reading and reciting of the
Qur’ān; deeming the latter a threat to the Qur’ānic message if it was pursued and performed as
an end by itself.
70
The previous examples of Qur’ānic exegetical discourses on the Qur’ān and its Arabic
language inform us that, at least, during the 3
rd
/9
th
century there were lively interlocutions over
the Qur’ān and the problems that the worshippers encounter when they read it, recite it, or
hear it. The mufassirūn did not delve into a discussion on the Qur’ān’s createdness/contingency
or uncreatedness/eternity. They were, rather, more concerned about approaching the Qur’ānic
text and the claim of its sacred language from the perspective of the lingua sacra belief. In
touching upon this, the mufassirūn not only engaged a public concern and challenge, but also
other Muslim intellectuals, particularly the Muʿtazilites. This plausibly invites for realizing that
the Muʿtazilites tackled problems related to the Qur’ānic text even before the Miḥna phase, and
that such a correlation continued after the receding of the Miḥna ramifications (and maybe
even after). In the ensuing section, I shall cross over to the Muʿtazilite river-bed to see whether
in the extant data we have on their teachings we might see them speaking about the
createdness of the Qurʼān in any sort of a connection with the lingua sacra and the problematic
ambiguity of the Qur’ānic language.
Lingua Sacra and Ḫalq al-Qurʼān inThe Muʿtazilī Thought
One of the teachings that are consensually ascribed to the Muʿazilites is their claim that the
Qur’ān is created/contingent(maḫlūq/ḥādiṯ). We have primary and secondary resources
67
at-Tastarī, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-ʿAẓīm, pp. 77-78.
68
at-Tastarī, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-ʿAẓīm, p. 79.
69
at-Tastarī, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-ʿAẓīm, p. 81.
70
at-Tastarī, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-ʿAẓīm, pp. 83-84.
Najib George Awad
26
explaining the meaning of this Muʿtazilite teaching and how these rationalist mutakallims
elaborated on the religious text as created/contingent. However, while the ‘how’ question is
intensively attended to, what is yet to be answered is the following question: Why did the
Muʿtazilites opt for this theological belief? What drove them towards arguing for the
createdness/contingency of the Qurʼān instead of just following the predominant trend of
thought of their contemporary Muslim Qur’ānic scholars; namely that the Qur’ān is not just
pre-existent but also uncreated text? Why the Muʿtazilites parted ways with this mainstream
conviction?
In his book, Al-Fiṣal fī al-Milal wal-Ahuwāʼ wal-Niḥal (Chapters on the Sects, the Heresies
and the Confessions), ʿAlī b. Aḥmad b. Saʿīd Ibn Ḥazm touches upon the miraculousness of
the Arabic text of the Qur’ān. Against those who ascribe the Qur’ān’s uniqueness to its highest
rank of linguistic rhetorical eloquence, Ibn Ḥazm maintains that the Qur’ānic miraculous
superiority lies in the fact that its linguistic content is inimitable and impossible to be produced
by any rhetorician or someone versed in Arabic language
But the miraculous in this is that God, be praised and glorified, hindered the worshippers from
creating a text like it and He totally deprived them of the capacity to do so… the Qur’ān is not a
model of the people’s rhetorical eloquence, for it contains these parts at the beginning of the
suras and the dissected letters which no one knows their meaning. Such is not a model of the
common public rhetoric.
71
Ibn Ḥazm states that his argument here is his primary response to the Muʿtazilites’ claim of
the createdness of the Qur’ān in specific. In the light of this, it is valid to inquire if the
Muʿtazilites’ discourse on ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’ was not just developed in relation to the debate over
divine attributes and their createdness or eternity, but equally, if not primarily, within the
framework of the Muslims’ defense of the divine origin of the Qur’ān from a lingua sacra
perspective. Ibn Ḥazm invites us to ponder such a connectedness when he associates the
demonstration of the Qur’ān’s miraculous nature directly with the factor of linguistic supreme
rhetorical eloquence and hidden meanings.
Ibn Ḥazm’s attestation suggests that the Muʿtazilites were not happy with the defense of
the Qur’ān’s divine origin on the basis of confirming the miraculous inimitability of its
language. It seems that they did not consider the repetitiveness, the ambiguity, the unclarity, the
71
ʿAlī b. Aḥmad b. Saʿīd b. Ḥazm, Al-Fiṣal fī al-Milal wal-Ahuwāʼ wal-Niḥal (Chapters on the Sects, the
Heresies and the Confessions), (Cairo: al-Ḫānjī Bookshop, n. d.), I: 87.
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
27
interruptions, and other linguistic features demonstrative of uniqueness and inimitability, but
evident, instead, of human weakness, normality (rather than supra-normality), fallibility, and
contingency: The Qur’ān is imitable and not miraculous, and this is what one gleans from
pausing at its linguistic posture. This seems to be the logic that possibly drove Ğaʿfar al-Qaṣabī
and al-Ašağğ, two leading Muʿtazilite figures according to Ibn Ḥazm, to say:
(īnna al-Qur’ān laysa huwa fīl-maṣāḥifi wa-īnnamā fil-
maṣāḥifišayiʼun āḫarun wa-huwa ḥikayatu al-Qur’ān/the Qur’ān does not exist inside the written
texts.Inside the texts there is something else, namely the Qur’ānic narrative).
72
For the
Muʿtazilites, ambiguity and defections in the linguistic format of the written texts can never be
characteristic of God’s words and, thus, the divine words of God are not truly the muṣḥafs.
These latter can only be God’s words metaphorically (bil-majāz), as their ambiguous, and
sometimes meaningless, linguistic terms and letters cannot really contain God’s perfect,
infinite, and infallible knowledge.
73
One can even glean from Ibn Ḥazm’s insistence on treating
the Arabic language of the Qur’ān as an emblem of its divinity his indirect response to the
following Muʿtazilite argument: The Qur’ānic narrative inside the written muṣḥaf is
created/contingent, simply because it is composed in a language originated by the Arabic-
speaking nations (al-lisān al-ʿarabī), and because the Arabic text is inscribed by created human
beings and by means of creaturely materials (ʿawrāq [papers]) and midād [ink]).
74
The claim that some Muʿtazilites believed that the Qur’ānic written text is creaturely
because it can be imitated by humans is also recorded in Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ašʿarī’s book,
Maqālāt al-Īslāmyyīn wa-Īḫtilāfāt al-Muṣallyin (The Muslims’ Discourses and the Worshippers’
Discrepancies). He attributes to Ībrāhīm b. Sayyār an-Naẓẓām the belief that what is
miraculous in the Qur’ānic text has nothing to do with its composition and writing, since these
are potentially possible to be conducted by the worshippers, though God seeded in the humans
an incapacity that hinders them from creating similar composition: “
”
(fa-ammā at-taʼlīfu wan-naẓmu faqad kāna yajūzu an
yaqdiraʿalayih al-ʿībādu laūlā anna Allah manaʿahum bi-manʿin wa-ʿajzin aḥdaṯahumā fīhim).
75
Further
down, al-Ašʿarī invokes diverse Muʿtazilite views on the idea of ‘ḫalq.’ He principally states
that the Muʿtazila almost consensually relate that, though the Qur’ān is God’s own words,
there was a time when the Qur’ān was not, and that God, at one point, brought it into
existence (lam yakun ṯumma kān). Here also, al-Ašʿarī points out that, for some Muʿtazilites, like
Hišām b. al-Ḥakam and al-Balḫī, one must neither say the Qur’ān is ‘created’ (maḫlūq) nor
‘uncreated’ (ġayru maḫlūq) since God’s words are God per se, and God’s divine attributes cannot
72
Ibn Ḥazm, Al-Fiṣal fī al-Milal, IV: 149-150.
73
Ibn Ḥazm, Al-Fiṣal fī al-Milal, VI: 3.
74
Ibn Ḥazm, Al-Fiṣal fī al-Milal, VI: 3.
75
Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ašʿarī, Maqālāt al-Īslāmyyīn wa-Īḫtilāfāt al-Muṣallyin (The Muslims’ Discourses and the
Worshippers’ Discrepancies), Muḥammad Muḥyiddīn ʿAbdulḥamīd (ed.), (Beirut & Sidon: al-
ʿAṣriyya Bookshop, 1990), I.2, p. 296.
Najib George Awad
28
be described as separate entities (li-anna aṣ-ṣifāta lā tuṣaf).
76
Instead of ‘created’ or ‘uncreated,’
some Muʿtazilites, like Muḥammad b. Šuğāʿ al-Ṯalğī and Zuhayr al-Aṯarī, opted for terms like
‘contingent’ or ‘generated’ (muḥdaṯ) to speak about the Qur’ān as a contingent thing
engendered by God, and not co-eternal with Him.
77
The most interesting understanding of ‘ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ al-Ašʿarī reports on is the stance of
ʿAbdullah b. Kullāb, which sounds like an attempt at working out a solution around the
Muʿtazilite thought, instead of rejecting it. According to al-Ašʿarī, Ibn Kullāb differentiates
between the Qur’ān as God’s speech (kalām Allah) and the Arabic written attestation of the
Qur’ānic speech. For him, God’s speech is not made of letters, nor vocalized and neither it is
divisible or disintegrated nor partitive or variant:
” (īnna al-kalāma laysa bi-ḥurūfin wa-lā ṣaūtin wa-lā yanqasimu wa-lā yatajazzaʼu wa-lā
yatabaʿʿaḍu wa-lā yataghāyar). On the other hand, Ibn Kullāb maintains, the Arabic written text is
the produced depiction (in words and letters) of the divine speech. This depiction (al-rasm)
contains divisibility, disintegration, partition, and variation, because it is made of linguistic
differentiated letters (al-ḥurūfu al-mutaġāyyira) and it is expressed in the readings of the Qur’ān
(qirāʼātu al-Qur’ān).
78
Ibn Kullāb’s logic unfolds the Muʿtazilite conviction that God’s speech
cannot ontologically be the Arabic text of the written depiction of the Qur’ān, for the Arabic
text contains differences, variations, and partitions; the things that cannot be applicable to
God’s divine, eternal speech.
Be that as it may, Ibn Kullāb, as al-Ašʿarī presents his stance here, seems to be implicitly
conveying the Muʿtazilite suggestion that the written Arabic attestation of the muṣḥaf is not
exactly, or evidently, a lingua sacra. We had to call the divine speech allegorically ‘Arabic Qur’ān.’ It
was called ‘Arabic’ merely because the originated linguistic depiction that expresses it and
represents its reading is Arabic: “
”
(wa-īnnamā summiya kalāmu Allah, subḥānahu, ʿarabiyyan li-anna ar-rasma al-laḏī
huwa al-ʿibāra ʿanhu wa-huwa qirāʼatuhuʿarabiyyun fa-summiya ʿarabiyyan li-ʿilla).
79
Ibn Kullāb, in al-
Ašʿarī’s account, seems to be inviting for the conclusion that the Muʿtazilites propose a
notional and ontological distinction between ‘spoken speech,’ associated with hearing (simāʿ),
on one hand, and ‘written discourse,’ associated with inscribing (kitāba). For them, the first is
applicable to God, and it can be deemed uncreated (though brought by God once into being,
for some Muʿtazilites), and it is not associated with language. Whereas, the second is
inapplicable to divine wording, and it is deemed created because it is characterized with all the
limitations, differentials, divisibility, partition, disintegration, and finiteness of human
languages, Arabic language included. For the Muʿtazilites, therefore, the written textual Arabic
depiction of God’s speech belongs to the second category and there is no necessarily
miraculous sacredness in its Arabic rasm.
76
al-Ašʿarī, Maqālāt al-Īslāmyyīn, II.284.2-3, p. 256.
77
al-Ašʿarī, Maqālāt al-Īslāmyyīn, II.284.4-5, p. 256.
78
al-Ašʿarī, Maqālāt al-Īslāmyyīn, II.284.20, p. 257.
79
al-Ašʿarī, Maqālāt al-Īslāmyyīn, II.284.10, p. 258.
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
29
The Arabic linguistic identity of the Qur’ān, then, neither demonstrates anything about its
sacredness or miraculousness, nor does it directly grant the Qur’ān evident imitability. Later in
the 4
th
/10
th
century, the Muʿtazilite judge, ʿAbduljabbār al-Hamaḏānī, leaned towards a similar
argument. In his multi-volumes’ composition, Al-Mughnī fīt-Tawḥīd wal-ʿAdl (The Enricher on
Monadization and Justice), ʿAbduljabbār defended the miraculousness of the Qur’ān (in
volume 16), and simultaneously explained and justified the Muʿtazilites’ use of the term
‘ḫalaqa’ (created) and ‘muḥdaṯ’ (generated) in relation to the Qur’ān and its origination (in
volume 7). In volume 16, he critiques Ibn Kullāb’s take on createdness. Yet, he follows suit in
avoiding the use of a lingua sacra preconception to prove the Qur’ān’s miraculousness. Right in
the volume he dedicated to defend this miraculousness,ʿAbduljabbār relates, instead, that one
of the justificatory logical indications of the validity of saying that the Qur’ān is created is the
fact that it was descended in the language of the Arabs:
(īnnamā nazala bi-
lisāni al-ʿarab). ʿAbduljabbār concedes that this factor suggests that Arabic language existed
before the Qur’ān’s existence and that God has generated the Qur’ān after the appearance of this
language: (aḥdaṯahu baʿda ẓuhūri haḏā al-lisān).
80
In other words, Arabic
language needed to already exist and be known to the Arabs so that the Qur’ān’s writ can be
produced in it, so that the readers of this text will understand its content since they already
know its language before the Qur’ān was engendered. All this logically necessitates, ʿAbduljabbār
implicitly proposes, that there was a time when the Qur’ān was not and then it came into being.
This is a subtle use of the linguistic identity of the Qur’ān not to verify its miraculousness and
inimitability, but, rather, to delineate a rational explanation for the Muʿtazilite belief in the
Qur’ānic text’s createdness and producibility.
81
ʿAbduljabbār was relatively a later Muʿtazilite voice, which frankly grounded the
miraculoussness of the Qur’ān in a strong defense of the Qur’ān’s superior, inimitable, and
unmatchable eloquence and fluency (faṣāḥa), as one can read all over volume 16 of his Mughnī.
Earlier Muʿtazilites from the 2
nd
/8
th
- 3
rd
/9
th
centuries were less certain or emphatic about
connecting the Qur’ān’s extent of uniqueness to its Arabic linguistic superiority or supernatural
caliber. Aḥmad al-Šahristānī in his book, Al-Milal wal-Niḥal (The Sects and the Confessions)
reports also on the ideas of the early Muʿtazilites. He refers, for instance, to Bišr b. al-
Muʿtamir’s staunch emphasis on the createdness of the Qur’ān, relating that the latter insisted
80
ʿAbduljabbār al-Hamaḏānī, Al-Mughnī fīt-Tawḥīd wal-ʿAdl (The Enricher on Monadization and
Justice), Amīn al-Ḫūlī (ed.), (Cairo: al-Dār al-Maṣriyya Press, n. d.), XVI.102a, p. 233.
81
For some other, now classical and slightly outdated, literature on the miraculousness of the Qur’ān
subject, one can also see and assess, for example, J.R.T.M. Peters, God’s Created Speech: A Study in the
Speculative Theology of the Muʿtazilī Qāḍī l-Quḍāt Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Jabbār bn. Aḥmad al-Hamaḏānī
(Leiden: Brill 1976); argaret Larkin, “The inimitability of the Qur’ān: Two perspectives”, Religion and
Literature 20 (1988), 31-47; M. Larkin, The Theology of Meaning: ʿAbd al-Qāhir’s theory of discourse, (New
Haven, CT.: American Oriental Society, 1995); Sophia Vasalou, “The miraculous eloquence of the
Qurʾān”, Journal of Qur’anic Studies, 4 (2002), 23-53; and S. Vasalou, “iʿjāz”, The Encyclopedia of Arabic
Language and Linguistics, II, (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 302-307.
Najib George Awad
30
on this createdness not just because stating otherwise would make the Qur’ān co-eternal with
God: “” (man qāla bi-qidamihi bi-annahu qad aṯbata qidamayin). Bišr’s
insistence on the createdness of the Qur’ān is equally grounded in his belief that people can
imitate the Qur’ān’s eloquence:
" (īnna an-nāsa qādirūnaʿalā
miṯli al-Qur’ān faṣāḥa).
82
Al-Šahristānī also reports that Bišr’s disciple, Abū Musā al-Mirdār
(whom he calls ‘the monk of the Muʿtazila’ (rāhib al-Muʿtazila)), not only confirmed the
createdness of the Qur’ān on the basis of the human ability to produce a text linguistically
equal to it, but also negated any evidence of the Qur’ān’s miraculousness that can be derived
from claimed Arabic linguistic eloquence and succinctnes:
(ībṭālu īʿğāzi al-Qurʼān min ğihati al-faṣāḥati wal-balāġa).
83
To the above Muʿtazilite interpretation, ʿAmr b. Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ, in his attempt at justifying
the Muʿtazilite belief in the createdness of the Qur’ān, adds that, not just people can compose
texts that can match the Qur’ān in eloquence, but God can also make amendments to the
Qur’ānic composition if God willed to. For example, God can replace one verse with another
(yubaddilu āyatan makāna āya), displace and abrogate a verse by another (yansaḫu āyatan bi-āya), or
even take this Qur’ān in its entirety away and bring over another (yaḏhabu bi-haḏā al-Qur’ān wa-
yaʼti bi-ġayrih). Be that as it may, al-Jāḥiẓ opines, God’s words in the Qur’ān cannot be eternal
like His knowledge, but rather created and engendered.
84
God can perform these options in the
Qur’ān because it is a composed writ that has a body and a sound (ğismun wa-ṣaūt), and it is
composed and it has a structure (taʼlīfun wa-ḏū naẓm); it has signs and divisions (taūqīʿun wa-
taqṭīʿ) and it is disposed to expansion or reduction (yaḥtamilu al-ziyādata wal-nuqṣān) and it is
exposed to perish ability and durability (al-fanāʼu wal-baqāʼ).
85
In other words, the Qur’ānic text,
like any other creaturely thing holding the same features, is engendered de facto and not just
analogically. In this sense, the Qur’ānic Arabic writ is imitable, since the humans can imitate it
(ḥikāya) in their hearing, memorization, and writing.
86
We have other accounts reporting that what al-Jāḥiẓ states was echoed also in the discourses
of other Muʿtazilites from that era. Ibn Ḥazm, for example, informs us that the Muʿtazilite,
Ğaʿfar b. Mubaššir al-Qaṣabī, used to say: “The Qurʼān is not the pages of the book. What is
82
Aḥmad al-Šahristānī, Al-Milal wal-Niḥal (The Sects and the Confessions), Aḥmad Fahmī Muḥammad
(ed.), (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2007), Vol. I, p. 69.
83
al-Šahristānī, Al-Milal wal-Niḥal, I: 30. The same reporting is also repeated in Ibn al-ʿAbrī, Tārīḫ
Muḫtaṣar al-Duwal (The Brief Historiography of States), Anṭoun Ṣālḥānī, S.J. (ed.), (Ḥāzmiyyih, LB:
Dār al-Rāʼid al-Lubnāniyya, 1983), pp. 164-165.
84
ʿAmr b. Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ, “Ḫalq al-Qur’ān” (The Createdness of the Qur’ān), pp. 294-295.
85
al-Jāḥiẓ, “Ḫalq al-Qur’ān”, pp. 290-291.
86
See al-Ašʿarī, Maqālāt al-Īslāmyyīn, II.1-2, p. 600; al-Šahristānī, Al-Milal wal-Niḥal, II.5-7: 49; and
Harry Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, pp. 268-269.
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
31
in the pages of the book is something else, and that is the imitation of the Qur’ān”.
87
If
‘imitation’ is designative of an act of bringing something into being, which the human writer,
reciter, and memorizer can originate, then the text of the Qur’ān is created. Such a logic stands
behind the Muʿtazilites’ general differentiation between the preexisting Qur’ān, which is saved
in a reserved tablet in God’s eternity, and the earthly Qur’ānic muṣḥaf that is written in Arabic
language. The latter, which is imitable, fallible, and ambiguous in some of its linguistic
attestations, is made by the human agent through writing, memorizing, or reciting. The
Muʿtazilite, Abū al-Huḏayl al-ʿAllāf, means as much when he construes all these human-made
mediums the ‘abode’ (maḥallu) of the preexisting Qur’ān, and this dwelling location is created
by the human to enable the Qur’ān to exist in earthly form.
88
In his turn, al-Šahristānī reports
the Muʿtazilites’ saying that the Qur’ān is generated as a contingent (muḥdaṯ) and created
(maḫlūq) thing in the abode where its letter (ḥarf), sound (ṣaūt) and likeness (amṯāl), namely the
earthly Arabic texts, are all just created imitations (ḥikāyāt).
89
The belief in the imitability of the Qur’ānic Arabic text seems also to underpin an-
Naẓẓām’s take on the Qur’ān as a created text. He is reported “to have denied the miraculous
nature of the literary form of the Qur’ān and to have maintained that a work of greater
[linguistic] beauty and elegance could be produced by others”.
90
For an-Naẓẓām, not every
Qur’ānic content is evidence of the prophetic status of Muḥammad, for there are parts there
in that are linguistically obscure and far from revelatory. Only the content that makes the
unknown understandable and disclosed, he maintains, are revelatory in this regard. It seems
clear from this that the Muʿtazilites shared with some other Muslim scholars the feeling that
the Qur’ānic Arabic is far from sacred and is linguistically inflicted with weaknesses and
problems at considerable places inside the muṣḥaf. Harry Wolfson, thus, is not probably far
from truth in relating that, for Muʿtazilites like an-Naẓẓām and others:
The language in which the Qur’ān is written is only an external shell of the created word of God
and an obstacle to its audibility. That shell… is broken, as it were, when one reads the Qur’ān.
91
Such an attention to the literary imperfections of the Arabic text of the Qur’ān drove the
Muʿtazilite Muʿammar al-Sulamī, for instance, to a far radical extreme denial that the Qur’ān
could by any means be created by God. For Muʿammar, such an Arabic literarily broken ‘shell’
87
Ibn Ḥazm, Al-Fiṣal fī al-Milal wal-Ahuwāʼ wal-Niḥal, II.9-10: 97, as translated into English and cited
in H. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, p. 269.
88
Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, pp. 270-271.
89
al-Šahristānī, Al-Milal wal-Niḥal, II.10-11: 30.
90
Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, p. 274.
91
Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, p. 275.
Najib George Awad
32
of God’s words cannot but be the responsibility of a human creator or any other created
natural side.
92
The skepticism towards the lingua sacra belief and its applicability to the Arabic text of the
Qur’ān, as we can realize, is not a Muʿtazilite invention, and it did not start, so it seems, in the
3
rd
/9
th
century. It might, rather, have already been in circulation since the 2
nd
/8
th
century. Josef
van Ess seems to be suggesting this, as he brings to our attention the text that some scholars
used to attribute to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (and it was refuted by al-Qāsim b. Ībrāhīm), where the
author seems to suggest that the Qur’ānic text is imitable and that nothing really singles out its
Arabic language from other languages. Commenting on this text, van Ess states the following:
The author was not imitating the Qur’ān in order to replace or improve it, but merely to show
that the Qur’ānic style was nothing special, that the awe people felt when they heard the suras was
due to their being accustomed to hearing them in a liturgical context. [Such imitation seems to be
responding to] a diffuse conviction that the language of the Qur’ān was perfect and inimitably
beautiful, a conviction presumably held mainly by Arabs.
93
Associating the language with hearing evolved in the ensuing century’s Muʿtazilite discourses
into something designative of the nature of divine speech. Van Ess brings to our attention, in
this regard, an-Naẓẓām’s definition of divine speech, and of human speech, as a
conglomeration of interrupted soundings (aṣūāt muqaṭṭaʿa), which God brings into being
(almost begot) in a specific place (namely, in the heavenly realm). Be that as it may, an-Naẓẓām
concluded, this broken linguistic shell of the Qur’ānic text cannot be God’s un-mediated, un-
created speech, but only figuratively a mediation of God’s speech through created means.
94
For
an-Naẓẓām, the challenge lies in the fact that God conveyed His speech via this Arabic
language and by means of any Arabic Prophet. This leaves us with a scripture “expressed in
oblique language and awaits interpretation”, and it informs us that “the Qur’ān is not
rhetorically unsurpassable”.
95
Van Ess suggests that it was an-Naẓẓām’s views that inspired al-
Jāḥiẓ to relate that “īʿğāz is not a permanent quality of the Qur’ān, but a kind of a shock
caused by the challenge (taḥaddī)”: If it is a miracle, it is not unique, but “a miracle God worked
in other cases as well”.
96
92
Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, p. 276.
93
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, II: 40.
94
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, III: 443-444.
95
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, III: 444-445.
96
J. van Ess, Theology and Society, III: 446.
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
33
Concluding Remarks
One can certainly find in the extant primary resources considerable data on the historical and
intellectual circumstances that surrounded, or generated, the Muʿtazilites’ discourse on ‘the
createdness/contingency of the Qur’ān’ during the 2
nd
/8
th
- 3
rd
/9
th
centuries. Known, and
intensively studied in contemporary research are the political crisis (Miḥna) that this Muʿtazilite
teaching participated in inflecting during the reigns of al-Ma’mūn and al-Muʿtaṣim, and how
the Muʿtazilites exploited this doctrine’s decree in the service of their ambitious manipulation
of power to prevail over the intellectual scene. Known also are much details related to the
theological and philosophical components of how the Muʿtazilites advocated for their belief
and how ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’ was theologically linked to their understanding of God’s oneness,
divine attributes, and God-world relation.
All this, nevertheless, does not give us a direct answer to the specific question of why the
Muʿtazilites needed to develop a discourse on the idea of ‘createdness’ (ḫalq) in particular, and
why to speak about this createdness idea specifically in relation to the Qur’ān (not to ḥadīṯ or to
šarīʿa or to Sunna for instance) in the first place? The ‘why’ inquiry is not truly answered by just
looking at how the Muʿtazilites constructed Kalām on God and the attributes in relation to the
createdness of the Qur’ān. Also, the political ramifications of adopting this belief shed light
on some major consequences and results of embracing such belief and implementing it in
power-games. However, it does not necessarily unearth the reasons and factors that generated
the belief in the createdness of the Qur’ān and the genesis story that lies behind it.
In this essay, I tried to revisit the discourses of early Qur’ānic scholars on the linguistic
superiority of the Qur’ān, as well as the available data on the early Muʿtazilite discourses on
‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’. My examination of the available data invites for pausing at a serious causal link
behind the Muʿtazilite, rather, reactionary stance on the Qur’ānic attestation. This causality is
primarily rooted in a particular discourse the Muslims at that era started to construct on the
superiority of the Qur’ān and on the basis of a gradually spreading presumption that the
Arabic language of the Qur’ān is not just lingua franca, but ultimately a lingua sacra that is
demonstrative of the miraculoussness of the Muslim religious text.
There seems to have evolved among the Muʿtazilites a conviction that claiming the
miraculoussness and divine origin of the Prophet’s religious book on the basis of its Arabic
textual-linguistic quality is not a rationally and theologically persuasive, solidly plausible, or
rationally demonstrable argument. The Muʿtazilites seemed to have been down-to-earth in
their perceptive sensitivity towards the complains and quarrels in the public domain about the
problems and challenges, let alone what is deemed either wrong or foreign, in the Arabic text
of the Qur’ān. For the believers, the Qur’ānic texts were sometimes sources of discrepancies,
ambiguity, obscurity, contradictions, and divisiveness. One can find good examples of Muslim
referential primary sources suggesting that the Qur’ānic Arabic text during that era was not just
a triggering source of awe, admiration, and wonder, but also a subject of fractions and
schisms. Suffice it is just to go through the long list of titles related to problems in the
Najib George Awad
34
Qur’ānic text in Ibn an-Nadīm’s Fihrist, volume one, chapter one, article three, for the reader to
encounter an endless number of books Muslims composed to interpret the Qur’ān, to attend
to the challenges of grasping its meanings and decoding its metaphors and their problems (al-
kutub al-muʼallafa fī maʿānī al-Qurʼān wa-muškilihi wa-Mağāzih), or to tackle the awkward elements
in the Qur’ān (al-kutub al-muʼallafa fī ġarībi al-Qur’ān), or its various languages (fī Luġāti al-
Qur’ān), or the discrepancies among its various muṣḥafs (fi Īḫtilāfi al-Maṣāḥif).
97
One of the known orthodox Sunnite traditionalist authors, who seems to have been deeply
concerned about the linguistic problems and textual ambiguities and confusions the common
believers were seemingly exposed to in their use of the Qur’ān, is Ibn Qutayba. One just needs
to look at some of the titles and themes of the extant writs from his pen to realize that the
textual linguistic attestation of the Qur’ān might have seriously driven the public to become
skeptic about the sacredness of the Arabic language of the Qur’ān, thus of the Qur’ān’s divine
origin: al-Īḫtilāfu fī al-Lafẓi wal-Raddiʿalā al-Jahmiyya wal-Mušabbiha (The Discrepancies in
Pronunciation and the Response to the Jahmites and the Anthropomorphists); Taʼwīlu Mašākili
al-Qurʼān (Hermeneuting the Qur’ānic Problematic Aspects). Ibn Qutayba conceded at least
the Qur’ān’s need for interpretation and exegesis, he did not condescend above it. For him, the
Qur’ānic literary attestation is not quite clear or self-elucidating by default.
Another exemplary demonstration of the problems the Qur’ānic texts’ lucidness in that era
is the muğādala, mentioned earlier, in al-Ma’mūn’s court between Bišr al-Marīsī and ʿAbdulʿazīz
al-Kinānī al-Makkī over the createdness of the Qur’ān. There, al-Makkī degrades al-Marīsī’s
take on the Qur’ān upon the latter’s non-Arab, foreign (aʿğamī) background and original tongue
(Hebrew), accusing his linguistic apprehension of making the Qur’ānic lucid Arabic literal
meaning obscure and ambiguous and exempting the Arabic text of the Qur’ān from such
responsibility. Noticeable also is the fact that the questioning of the Arabic textual nature of
the Qur’ān occupies an entire, rather lengthy, section in al-Makkī’s account on the debate over
the specific subject of the createdness of the Qur’ān and no other issue. There, al-Marīsī
argues that the Arabic language of the Qur’ān needs interpretation and exegesis (taʼwīl wa-tafsīr)
to be understood correctly, whereas al-Makkī rejects the createdness claim upon the conviction
that the Qur’ānic Arabic is lucid and its literal meanings are evidently plain to those who are
indigenous Arabs and masterfully speak Arabic as their native language. Insisting on the
Qur’ānic Arabic’s need for interpretation and exegesis (al-Marīsī) or on the Qur’anic Arabic
literal lucidity (al-Makkī), and both sides’ use of such arguments in particular in a debate over
the createdness of the Qur’ān, are yet further demonstrations that this was one of the possible,
urgent factors behind the dynamics of the 3
rd
/9
th
century’s Muslim-Muslim interlocutional
context.
98
97
Muḥammad b. Abī Yaʿqūb Isḥaq al-Warrāq, al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist (The Book of Catalogue), Riḍā
Tajaddud al-Māzindrānī (ed.), (Amman: Dār al-Masīra, 1988), I.1.3: 36-45.
98
Al-Makkī, al-Ḥayda wal-Īʿtibār fī al-Radd ʿalā Man Qāla bi-Ḫalq al-Qur’ān, II: 59ff.
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
35
The massive number of texts and authors the Fihrist of Ibn an-Nadīm enlists, and the
debate over the clarity of the Qur’ānic language in the abovementioned muğādala, strongly
suggest to us the seriousness of the quarrels, problems, and instability the Arabic textual
attestations of the Qur’ān and its language were causing in that Abbasid social and intellectual
context. In the light of this, the Muʿtazilites attended to such a public crisis and decided to
critically respond to it by trying to find an explanation to the linguistic fallibility, ambiguity and
problems of the religious Book. They endeavored to achieve this by means of confirming the
Qur’ān’s createdness. They could have opted for this idea upon the hope that it might bring
forth some peace-of-mind and tranquility to the public scene.
There are enough data, as this paper endeavored to show, to make us propose the following:
Comparing the theological stances on the Qur’ān that were developed by the Qur’ānic exegetes
and commentators (mufassirūn), on one hand, and by the Muslim Muʿtazilites, on the other,
relinquishes serious indications that the former’s defense of the uncreatedness of the Qur’ān
and the latter’s argument for the createdness of the religious text were neither related primarily
to a theological disagreement (though such disagreement did exist indeed) about God’s
oneness and the divine attributes. It was, rather, contextually driven and historically generated
from an occupation with a lingua sacra idea that was attentively constructed and spread during
the early centuries of the Abbasid era.
In his monograph on the historical origination of the Qur’ān, Stephen Shoemaker chases
after the transition of the Qur’ān from an oral tradition into a written text, concluding that
“the conversion of an oral tradition to a written one is not sudden but gradual, involving
numerous stages and multiple editions along the way to a finished product”.
99
In a similar vein,
is it valid to surmise that the debate over the lingua sacra nature of the Arabic written Qur’ān in
relation to the theological idea of ‘ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ was just one stage along the way of bringing
to completion the Qurʼānic attestation in its now written, no more oral, form gradually, and
through multiple editions of composing, reading, and determining the shape and content of
the finished reliable product? If this conjecture is plausible, and if the Qur’ānic Arabic text is
“a continuous communal rethinking”,
100
the ‘createdness of the Qur’ān’ theology might not be
confounded to the circle of the Muslim-Muslim discussions on monotheism and divine
attributes. It can, rather, be validly seen as one of the chapters of the Muslims’ story with the
evolutionary formation of the final Qur’ānic canonical written muṣḥaf. This, I reckon, is a niche
of inquiry that merits further serious investigation.
99
Stephen J. Shoemaker, Creating the Qur’ān: A Historical-Critical Study, (Oakland, CA: University of
California Press, 2022), pp. 14-15.
100
S. J. Shoemaker, Creating the Qur’ān., p. 260; an expression earlier used and expanded by Angelika
Neuwirth, “Locating the Qur’ān in the Epistemic Space of Late Antiquity”, in Books and Written
Culture of the Islamic World -Studies Presented to Claude Gilliot on the Occasion of His 75
th
Birthday, Claude
Gilliot; Andrew Rippin and Roberto Tottoli (eds.), (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2015), pp. 159-179 and
pp. 166-167.
Najib George Awad
36
Abstract: One of the discourses that are
ascribed to the Muʿazilites is their claim that
the Qur’ān is created. We do have primary
and secondary resources explaining this
Muʿtazilite teaching and elaborating on how
these rationalist mutakallims treated the
Religious Text as a created entity. However,
while the question of ‘how’ is intensively
exposed in scholarship, what is yet to be
answered is the following question: Why did
the Muʿtazilites opt for this theological belief
in specific? What drove them to argue for the
createdness of the Qurʼān instead of just
following the predominant trend of thought
that was adopted by their contemporary
Muslim Qur’ānic scholars, namely the belief
that the Qur’ān is not just pre-existent but
also an uncreated text? What could be the
driving-force behind the Muʿtazilites’ parting
ways with this mainstream conviction? This
essay tackles these inquiries by means of
proposing that the Muʿtazilites’ speech about
the createdness of the Qur’ān is scriptural,
linguistic, and exegetical in nature. It is
expressive of their corosspollination with the
other Muslim Qur’ānic scholars’ praising of
the sacredness of the Qur’ān’s Arabic
language; this belief that was commonly
emphasized by the Muslim public. This might
indicate that ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’ is the
Muʿtazilites’ way of questioning the ‘lingua
sacra’ idea in correspondence with other
Muslim traditionalists’ reservations on this
sacredness. The essay develops this proposal
by unpacking the stances ofdiscourses on the
Qurʼān from 2
nd
/8
th
-3
rd
/9
th
centuries onwards
on the sacredness of the Qurʼān’s Arabic
language. It, then, looks attentively at some
of the main discourses on the createdness of
the Qurʼān in known Muʿtazilite texts. The
Resumen: Uno de los discursos atribuidos a
los mutazilíes es su afirmación de que el
Corán fue creado. Disponemos de fuentes
primarias y secundarias que explican esta
enseñanza mutazilita y profundizan en la
forma en que estos mutakallimūn
racionalistas trataron el texto religioso como
una entidad creada. Sin embargo, aunque la
cuestión del ‘cómo’ se debate ampliamente en
la erudición, lo que aún queda por responder
es la siguiente pregunta: ¿por qué los
mutazilíes optaron por esta creencia teológica
en particular? ¿Qué les llevó a defender la
creación del Corán en lugar de seguir
simplemente la corriente de pensamiento
predominante adoptada por sus eruditos
coránicos musulmanes contemporáneos, es
decir, la creencia de que el Corán no sólo es
preexistente, sino también un texto increado?
¿Cuál podría ser el motivo detrás del
distanciamiento de los mutazilíes de esta
convicción dominante? El presente trabajo
aborda estas cuestiones y propone que el
discurso de los mutazilíes sobre la creación
del Corán es de naturaleza escritural,
lingüística y exegética. Esto expresa su
correspondencia con la alabanza de otros
eruditos coránicos musulmanes a la sacralidad
del Corán en árabe, una creencia que era
comúnmente enfatizada por el público
musulmán. Esto podría indicar que el ḫalq al-
Qur’ān es la forma en que los mutazilíes
cuestionan la idea de la ‘lingua sacra’, en
consonancia con las reservas de otros
tradicionalistas musulmanes sobre dicha
sacralidad. Este trabajo desarrolla esta
propuesta analizando las posturas de los
discursos sobre el Corán desde los siglos
II/VIII-III/IX, en adelante, en relación con
la sacralidad del Corán en árabe. Para ello, se
examinan con atención algunos de los
Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra
37
essay aspires at offering a new reading of the
historical-contextual and religious factors that
generated the controversy between Muslim
scholars over the createdness of the Qurʼān,
and wants to propose a possibility exceeds
the classically believed political and power-
game causing factors.
principales discursos sobre la creación del
Corán en textos mutazilíes conocidos. Este
trabajo pretende ofrecer una nueva lectura de
los factores histórico-contextuales y religiosos
que generaron la controversia entre los
eruditos musulmanes sobre la creación del
Corán y propone una posibilidad que
trasciende los factores políticos y de juego de
poder clásicamente considerados.
Keywords: Createdness of the Qurʼān;
Muʿtazilites; Mufassirūn; Miḥna; Lingua sacra;
Early Islam.
Palabras clave: Creación del Corán;
Mutazilíes; Mufassirūn; Miḥna; Lingua sacra;
Islam primitivo.
