Classical Arab Islamic culture, which became practically the single heir to the ancient philosophical and natural science traditions, not only saved this tradition, but vastly enriched it and promoted its revival in Europe. In the Islamic world, ancient philosophy was developed not by separate marginal personalities and groups, as is claimed in Islamic historical philosophical literature. Besides the oriental Peripatetics (falasifa),1  it was cultivated by the thinkers of Kalam, Sophism, Shi’ism (particularly Ismailism), the Western, Ancient Greek, and Hellenic typified by elemental-analytic and continual-synthetic perceptions of the world.

Following Shi’ism, the Mutakallim Hisham ibn al-Hakam and the Mutazilite al-Nazzam and his successors taught the division of bodies to infinity. Objecting to this idea, al-Allaf and many other Mutazilites upheld the thesis of the presence of a limit to divisibility and the existence of "indivisible particles." Some Mutazilites, including Abu al-Hussein al-Basri, the head of the Mutazilites in Baghdad, occupied a neutral position on the issue of "indivisibles." Similar divergence existed also among the Asharites. While al-Ashari (d. 935) and al- Bakillani (d. 1013) held atomistic views, al-Juweyni (d. 1085) and Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi (d. 1210) preferred to refrain from joining either the finitists or their opponents. This last tendency was characteristic on the whole of the late Mutakallims. According to Maimonides, most of the late Mutakallims supposed that their predecessors tried in vain to prove the existence of the atom.3 

Some researchers explain the interest in atomism by the Mutakallims as being bearers of the "specific spirit" of Arab-Islamic culture. They suppose that Arabs and others in the Near East possess "symbolic," "atomic," "discrete," purely "analytical" thinking, ever immersed in the single unit and incapable of an integrating activity, embracing the whole.4  Moreover, the atomistic doctrine served Mutakallims as an ontological basis of theistic occasionalism, with its radical creationism (the concept of the uninterrupted creation of the world by God) and indeterminism (denial of any natural regularity whatever in the whole universe).5 

According to L. Massignon, Islamic art is built on a theory of the universe, founded on the belief about the world, which was persistently defended by all orthodox Islamic philosophers who did not fall under the influence of the Greeks. According to this theory, the world has no form or images within itself; God alone possesses constant existence.6 

This theory is also expressed in the fact that the perception of the universe as a Cosmos, as an ordered system of things, is alien to them. The Greeks, when developing metaphysics, turned greater attention to what they called the aesthetic proof of the existence of God, coming from the harmony of things in the Cosmos. Such a proof does not exist in Islamic theology. Its proof of God’s existence is founded on the changeability of all that is not God.7 

From this doctrine, "specific" features of the Islamic science, logic, and music are derived. The "fact" that Muslims had a zealous concern for algebra and chemistry8  is also associated with the above doctrine. In logic, although Muslims knew the Greek syllogism, they concentrated on the minor term.9  A similar picture holds for music. Muslims, in general, do not have any idea of harmony, the notion of simultaneous chords, which in themselves are the great discoveries of the Christian West, concludes Massignon.10  Similar ideas are expressed also about other genres of Islamic art.

Some researchers, not wishing to declare the atomistic world perception as an inborn Islamic attribute, offer a different cultural explanation for the phenomenon. In the spirit of geographical determinism, Gabriel confirms the determining role of desert conditions in shaping an atomistic doctrine; M. Watt links it with the interest of Arabs in the "linguistic and grammatic sciences."11 

B. Lewis connects the genesis of atomism to the needs of Islamic society, in which the freer socio-economic life of the commercial epoch yielded to a rigid conservative feudalism, which did not change for many centuries.12  According to B. Lewis, atomism was not only generated by the socio-cultural specifics of medieval Arabs and Muslims, but became a factor in promoting the "stagnation" of Islamic society after the 11th century.13  Some authors explain away such a phenomenon as the political disintegration of modern Arab countries by "atomistic determinism."14 

Such cultural speculations were subjected to circumstantial criticism in the work of the prominent Russian orientalist, A.V.Sagadeyev: "Humanised World in Medieval Islamic Art."15  We demonstrated in our own works the weakness and defects of the appeal to the atomistic natural philosophy of the Mutakallims.16  However, this chapter will develop several ideas expressed in my works revealing a successive relationship between the atomistic systems of antiquity and classical Islam, revealing the contribution of the Mutakallims to the history of atomism.

In developing atomism, the Mutakallims did not employ it to substantiate the doctrine of the continuous creation of the world by God—for the dynamic teaching was developed in its most consistent form precisely in the anti-atomist current (by al-Nazzam and his followers). They did not strive for a fragmentation of matter into tiny, isolated particles, in opposition to which there arose the continual empire of God. The finitism of the atomist Mutakallims did not presuppose the discreteness of bodies and promote theistic voluntarism. Mu’ammar, a militant adherent of determinism in nature, was one of the first atomists. They did not assert the absolute omnipotence of Allah. Quite the contrary, the existence of a limit to the divisibility of a body presupposed the impossibility of its further division, or rather threw doubt on divine omnipotence. The opponents of the Mutakallims’ atomistic doctrine, like Ibn Hazm, drew attention to that.17 

But to count and embrace, he adds, is possible only for the finite.18 

Insufficient attention to such a context was characteristic of theological interpretation of the problem of the genesis of the atomist problematic in Kalam, which came up against the following "paradox." Namely, how could the teachers of Kalam adopt the ontological principles of one of the most materialist and atheistic doctrines of antiquity—the doctrine of Democritus and Epicurus—and on their basis erect an exclusively theistic system? Propositions were voiced in reply that Mutakallims did not know the real doctrine of the Greek atomists, that the atomic philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus had come down to them in distorted form (in a mystical alchemist envelope),19  that when the Mutakallims became acquainted with the Greek legacy, atomism was already associated with indeterminism, and so on.20 

But in fact, the teachers of Kalam must have disposed of quite rich and exact information about Greek atomism (in particular with pseudo-Plutarch’s De Placitis Philosophorum and Aristotole’s Physics and Metaphysics, already translated into Arabic in the early ninth century), and about the atheistic trend of the philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus, who denied a creator, another world, and so on.21 

By distinguishing between physical and mathematical divisibility, Mutakallims-atomists stopped the process of division at the smallest bodies (aqall al-ajsam) corresponding to the primary bodies or atoms of Democritus and Epicurus, and to an even greater extent to the minimal lines of the pythagoreans and Platonists. The parts, they said, were divided down to two after which, if one wanted to divide further, division annihilated them. It was not discovered in the imagination (wahm); when one wanted to distinguish them by imagination or in some other way, nothing else was found than their disappearance.22  The first Mutakallims employed two terms, as a rule, in order to designate the limit of divisibility, the "indivisible part (particle)" (al-juz allazi layatajazza) and "indivisible sole substance" (al-jawhar al-fard allazi layanqasim). Sometimes, the terms "part," "sole substance," or simply "substance" were used as abbreviations. Later, these terms became established in an abbreviated form.

An atom has no independent existence but existed only together with other atoms that compose the given body.23  Certain atomists, it is true, assumed the isolated existence of a separate atom, but they implied by that a mental, imaginary existence, and not a real one. In that respect, the Mutakallims’ "parts" were similar not to Democritus’ "atoms" but to Epicurus’ "ameres" (mentally distinguishable atoms but not separable from them) and to the monad-points of the Pythagoreans and Platonists.

The anti-atomists pointed out that atoms were either bodies, and then they were divisible, or points, from which it was impossible to form a body or continuum allowing for this. Epicurus put forward a third possibility, "ameres" that occupied an intermediate position between primary bodies and points, "measuring magnitude in their own way." The Pythagoreans and Plato earlier had come to a similar solution. From Plato’s point of view (according to Aristotole): "extension is different from magnitude; it is what is contained and defined by the form, as by a bounded plane."24  The discrimination of magnitude and extension fully corresponded to the Greek philosophical tradition of not including the element or principle of things in their number bounded unity, which was not considered a number because it was the principle of counting.

In the same spirit, but in more precise form, the atomists of Kalam constructed an extension of the "indivisibles." The atom, in their opinion, lacked corporeality, but occupied a place in space (hayyiz), possessed a certain extension (imtidad), magnitude (miqdar), volume (hajm), area (masaha), etc. Some Mutazilites, for example, gave the atom extension; those from Basra considered it necessary for each atom to have a certain area. Asharites taught that an atom had area, magnitude, and volume.25  As for the Mutazilites of the Baghdad school, wanting even more to stress the difference between microscopic and macroscopic extension, they refused to characterize the atom in itself as extension, which could be attributed only to the composition of a body. Al-Ashari cited the opinion of several Baghdad Mutazilites that when an atom was joined to another atom, each of them would be a body; but when separated neither of them would be a body.26  That also corresponds to the testimony of al-Nisaburi that in the opinion of Kabi, the head of the Baghdad Mutazilites, it was impossible to say of an atom that it occupied a place in space or had an area until it was joined to another atom. In fact, as Nisaburi noted, the discord among the Mutazilites of the two schools on the extension of an atom did not go beyond differences in modes of expression because there was no disagreement between the two schools that an atom could exist without occupying a definite place in space.27 

The atom was thus not a body, did not have length, breadth, and depth, but extended in its own way; its extension was the principle of extension in general, the principle of corporeality. When Mutazilites said (Nisaburi wrote in their name) that an atom occupied a place in space (Mutahayyiz), they implied that therefore, atoms increased in size (volume) when they were joined to one another.28 

At the Asharite stage of evolution of Kalam, an idea prevailed of the smallest body as composed of two atoms, a notion that, according to al-Ashari, had previously been held by certain Mutazilites-Iskai (d. 855) and several Baghdadis.29  It has to be stressed once more that, in the Mutakallims’ arguments about the formation of a body from atoms, it was a matter of a purely mental, geometric construction and not of a real, physical process.

The doctrine of the classical atomists about the building a continuum from indivisibles was developed further in the atomicism of Kalam. The anti-atomists (in particular Aristotle) had, of course, pointed out that atoms excluded a continuum: They could not completely coincide with one another but they merge, and they could not come into contact even partially because they had no parts. The atomists (Pythagoreans, Epicurus) spoke of a third possibility by which continuity was preserved, but in what way remained unclear. By drawing a clearer difference between physical and mathematical divisibility, the atomist Mutakallims taught that an atom had six sides (corresponding to the positions or turns of Democritus): top and bottom, right and left, front and back. In the opinion of the Basra Mutazilites, these sides (jihat) pertained to the atom itself, and did not differ from it. Some Baghdad Mutazilites were also inclined to hold this view. Others, including Jubbai and Kabi, considered sides to be accidents of the atom. Asharites, like ah-Shahrastani, considered the sides or edges (atraf) to be unextended parts of an atom; they were, so to speak, geometrical parts of an atom and not its physical components. In that sense, an atom was indivisible although sides or parts could be mentally distinguished in it. By making contact on sides, which represented attributes, accidents or nonextended parts, atoms could form a continuum.30 

An atom with six sides could come into contact with six atoms. Those atomists who denied the existence of different sides in an atom considered it capable of making contact with no more than one atom. Such was the view of Abu Bishr Salih ibn Abi Salih, and Salih Qubba (d. 860), who claimed that one of the contacting atoms completely occupied the other because, if it were assumed that an atom could make contacts with more than one atom, the whole universe could fit into a fist.31 

This explanation of the preference for the square form expresses such a specified element of Mutakallims’ atomism as denial of the existence of void, which played such an exceptionally important role in the atomistic doctrine of Democritus. Atoms did not exist outside a body in Kalam, so that the Mutakallims had no need to explain motion or the uniting and separation of atoms in a void. Al-Kabi and other Mutazilites of the Baghdad school rejected the void even as an imaginary assumption. Other Mutakallims, who assumed the existence of a void, spoke of the existence of a void or space between bodies, but not between atoms.32 

Mutakallims were also concerned with the problem of the weight (thiqal) of an atom. According to al-Ashari, for instance, every atom had weight.33  A body, too, had one weight or another depending on the number of atoms composing it.

The atomists of Kalam, especially Asharites, regarded atoms as uniform, and identical with one another. They linked differences between them, as a rule, with their accidents in them. Asharites, and together with them the Mutazilites Salihi, Iskafi, Salih Qubba, and others, endowed the atom with the property of being the bearer of all accidents (except compositeness). Other atomist Mutazilites, in particular al-Allaf, Futi, and Abbad ibn Suleiman, considered that an atom could only serve as a substratum of one or another in the composition of a body. According to al-Allaf, for instance, a separate atom could not be the vector of color, taste, or smell until six atoms had been gathered together. When they came together they formed a body and could be the bearer of these accidents.34  It would be incorrect to interpret such statements, however, in the spirit of Democritus’ atomistic doctrine, that is, in the sense that the accidents of a body arose from the union of atoms and disappeared when they were separated. It meant only that uniting of atoms was a sine qua non (but not the cause) for the "installation" of qualities in a body.

Mutakallims also discussed the question of the qualities of an individual atom, if its isolated existence could be mentally assumed. Certain Mutazilites (for example, al-Futi and Abbad ibn Suleiman) categorically denied the possibility of the separate existence of an atom. Even God, they taught, did not have the power to endow an atom with such existence. Other Mutazilites, who assumed the separate existence of an atom, disagreed among themselves about its qualities. From the standpoint of Muammar and al-Allaf, for instance, an atom taken separately could only move, be at rest, and come into contact with other atoms, but lacked any sense-perceived qualities. Al-Jubbai considered that a separate atom could possess such qualities as color, smell, and taste, although it could not, as such, be a vehicle of life, knowledge, etc. It was characteristic of Mutazilites as a whole to deny that a separate atom could be a vehicle of life and the attributes associated with life. Life, knowledge, will, etc., were accidents of a body as a whole, and not of each of its component atoms. Asharites recognized a capacity for separately existing atoms to possess all the qualities of bodies.35 

The conception of atomist Mutakallims set out above is (as was noted in the medieval Islamic literature)36  one of the four possible versions of the answer to whether bodies were divisible, depending on the character of the divisibility (finite or infinite, actual or potential). These variants were as follows: (1) a body admitted of a finite number of actual divisions and consisting of a finite number of atoms (parts not having parts); (2) a body admitted of an infinite number of actual divisions and consisted of an infinite number of atoms; (3) a body admitted of a finite number of potential divisions, and consisting of a finite number of atoms, which existed potentially but not actually; (4) a body admitted of an infinite number of divisions and did not consist of actually existing atoms.

The second view is ascribed to al-Nazzam and Anaxagoras, though it is more accurate that al-Nazzam himself did not put it forward but was compelled (according to the well-known method of Ilzam) to adopt it. In fact he, like the Peripatetics, denied the atomic structure of a body. He stressed that each particle of a body had a part, and each half a half; a part was always divisible, and there was no limit as regards divisibility.37  But infinite divisibility, which is at stake here, is more actual (as was held by the stoics) than potential (as with the Peripatetics). Al-Nazzam’s claim, explaining the difference in the volumes of bodies on the assumption of their divisibility to infinity, witnesses to that to some extent: If a mountain and a mustard seed were divided into half (he argued), the half of the mountain would be bigger than the half of a mustard seed, and it would be just the same if they were divided into four, five, or six equal parts; the quarter, fifth, or sixth of the mountain would be bigger than the quarter, fifth, or sixth of the seed, and that would remain true even with such division to infinity.38  Jurjani, incidentally, pointed out that al-Nazzam did not distinguish between what was potentially in a thing, and what was actually in it.39  He was, therefore, faced with the problem of complete divisibility (which Aristotle discussed in his Coming To Be and Passing Away)40 : If a continuum could be divided wherever one wanted, at some convenient place, there is no logical grounds for asserting that it could not be divided immediately in all these places. When affirming the actual divisibility of a body to infinity, al-Nazzam should have concluded (according to Jurjani) that an infinite number of parts actually existed in a body, and because any possible division could be considered already realized, these particles should be indivisible. The doctrine of an infinite number of atoms in a body ascribed to al-Nazzam is, thus, only a logical deduction from his doctrine of the actual divisibility of a body to infinity.

Therefore, Mutakallims continued the antique atomistic tradition, which was almost buried in oblivion in medieval Christian Europe, and promoted its revival there. In working out the principle of finitism, the teachers of Kalam developed a number of ideas, which the thinkers of antiquity were only about to approach. Among them, the distinction between "extension" and "corporeality," "position," and "place," physical and mathematical divisibility, and physical and mathematical minimums (atom and spot). These ideas, apparently, were perceived directly or indirectly by natural philosophers of the Renaissance epoch from the Mutakallims. The ancient concept of "pause," which passed to the atomists of the modern epoch through Kalam, explains the difference in velocities of motion of a body by big or smaller number of "stops."41  It should also be noted that the main philosophical and mathematical arguments in defense and refutation of "indivisibles" were crystallized in the doctrine of the atomist Mutakallims and of their opponents, arguments and that would be repeated in different versions over the centuries.42  It is not accidental that even in the 19th and 20th centuries, some European finitists, were among the first in the list of their predecessors and teachers, the Mutakallims.43 

The erroneous stereotypes regarding the fate of the ancient heritage in medieval Islamic culture included the belief in an antagonism of two traditions—paganism and Islamic—supposed to be reflected in the irreconcilable opposition of Kalam against Falsafa. The culmination of this opposition, it is supposed, is the book by al-Ghazali Tahafut al Falasifa (Refutation of Philosophers or The Incoherence of the Philosophers), which, ostensibly, inflicted such a blow on falsafa that it was unable to recover.44  But according to this view, the rapprochement of Kalam and falsafa, which began after the 12th century, appears as "enigmatic" and "paradoxical," and for this reason is neglected by the adherents of these views discussed in Overthrowers of Peripatetism.

Maimonides, in explaining the origins of Kalam, wrote that all the opinions of Mutakallims were based on positions borrowed from Greek and Syrian authors who disputed opinions of philosophers and criticized their position.45  Thus, Kalam appeared to protect the teachings of Islam from the destructive influence of falsafa, alien to Islam in its "letter and spirit." Such belief about the origin of Kalam as "anti-falsafa" up to now has been the most widespread view in literature. For example, in one of the most recent works on the subject, it is contended that the opposition between Kalam and falsafa was a continuing opposition between the fathers of Church and traditional philosophers.46 

It is maintained that Kalam did not only appear as a reaction to falsafa, but became a philosophical system only in its struggle with falsafa. Precisely, the opposition of the followers of Aristotle to orthodox doctrine, according to A. Shekel, forced Mutakallims to leave the ground of simple interpretation of Qur’an and try, on the one hand, to prove the rationality of its main positions, particularly those which were in contradiction with philosophers, and, on the other, by rational arguments to refute those who were against it.47 

The means by which the Mutakallims carried on the struggle with the "heretical" falsafa was none other than the adoption of the logic, dialectics, and even the metaphysics of the falasifa. In this light, the question is about Aristotle’s logic, dialectics, and metaphysics. The Mutazilites, maintains Goldtsier, carried on a struggle with Peripatetics’ philosophy, under the cover of Aristotelianism.48  I.P. Petrushevsky states the same, saying that the Mutazilites used the methods, terminology, and arguments of Aristotle’s logic and philosophy.49  Sometimes, it is specified that the Mutakallims took the idealistic elements of Aristotle’s doctrine and on this built a scholastic system.50 

However, none of these authors, postulating in the most general form the borrowing by the Mutakallim of one or another element from Aristotle’s philosophy, render their theses concrete, nor note that these statements do not at all agree with their belief about Kalam as a system of "atomistic occasionalism." The most plausible of these theses seems to be the position that Aristotle’s logic, first of all, his dialectics, was accepted as an armament by all the teachers of Kalam, both Mutazilites and Asharites. The idea of the dominant role of Aristotle’s logic in the theoretical formation of oriental Peripatetics, as well as in their Mutakallim opponents, apparently originated from the appearance in 1934 of the book by an Egyptian researcher I. Madkuor, the "The Organon of Aristotle in the Arabic World."51  There, he demonstrated the general presence of the Organon in the formation of the creative works of the most prominent teachers of Kalam.

To begin with, that thesis is refuted by the fact that the Mutazilites were one of the first admirers of the ancient wisdom in the Arab Islamic world and played a considerable role in the familiarization of Arabs with the works of ancient philosophers, including Aristotle and his commentators. According to Steiner, al-Nazzam reports that he studied Greek philosophy and connected its views with the doctrine of his predecessors. Later thinkers followed his example. We can confirm, adds Steiner, that the Mutazilites were the first who not only were acquainted with the translations of works by Greek natural scientists and philosophers, done during the reigns of al-Mansur and Al-Mamun, but also employed the process of Greek education and put their own thoughts onto a new road.52  On this issue, the legend about A Dream of al-Mamun tried to explain the motives that spurred the Caliph to encourage translations of the ancient authors—Aristotle, first of all. This legend was reported in the work of Ibn Abi Usaiba.

-Nothing more."53 

In this legend, attention is paid to the association between Aristotle and "translation movements" in the epoch of al-Mamun, on the one hand, and Mutazilism with its doctrine on the reasonable nature of virtue and evil, on the other hand. Al-Balkhi notes about al-Nazzam that, having answered a rebuke about being ignorant of the corresponding works of Aristotle, added the following: "Which do you want? . . . that I recite by heart from the beginning to the end or from the end to the beginning?"54 

The general attitude of Mutazilites to falsafa is expressed by an utterance of al-Jahiz that the true Mutakallim is the one, "who is a master of the questions of religion (Kalam ad-Din) as well as questions of philosophy (Kalam al-falsafa); we consider a good scientist to be the one who combines both in himself."55  In this light, it is difficult for one to imagine any hostile attitude of the Mutazilites to "philosophy," unless one speaks of polemics on one or another natural scientific question on which, among the Mutakallims themselves, there were no less heated disputes. On the other hand, al-Ashari confirms that in their doctrine about God and His attributes, the Mutazilites borrowed from "their own fellow philosophers" (ikhwanihim min -al-mutafalsifa), but did not voice their own views openly, as the philosophers could afford to do, since -they were afraid of a sword and blows from those in power."56  But al-Shahrastani accuses adherents of Mutazilism of having "followed in the tail of falasifa."57 

In the thesis on the irreconcilable opposition between Kalam and falsafa is not confirmed by the works of outstanding Asharites. Thus, in the works that have reached today from àl-Ashari one does not find any instructions on polemics with "philosophers." The same can be said of the conserved works of al-Bakillani. In the list of works of the latter, one also does not meet any title, which mentions any disputes of the author with philosophers. This is exactly the same with works of al-Juweyni. In the single place in Irshad where al-Juweyni polemizes, on only two pages with falasifa, he is discussing partially natural scientific questions.58 

The list of the works of al-Ashari includes the treatise Refutation of philosophers ("Fi ar-radd ala falasifa").59  But a question arises, why al-Ashari does not mention this polemic in the work The Doctrine of Muslims—more correctly—Islamiyin, a large work which reached us safely. Nor were any treatises of this sort saved and there are no references to this treatise among the followers of al-Ashari or among doxographers. Considering the general defensive tactics of the adherents of the Asharite Kalam, it is possible to suppose that al-Ashari did not write such a treatise, but that it is added by his followers to the list of his works, so as to dissociate themselves from falasifa and portray their teacher as an apologetic of "orthodox" Islam.

Therefore, both at the Mutazilites stage of development of Kalam, and the Ashari stage, there can be no talk of any serious confrontations between Mutakallims and falasifa, at least from the side of the former. The hostile attitude to philosophy should be sought among those dogmatic theologians who rejected rationalist methods of falsafa as well as of Kalam. Let us refer to the message of al-Kindi to Caliph al-Mutasim in defense of "first philosophy"60  and the highly significant fact that the "philosopher of the Arabs," the founder of oriental Peripatetism, shared with the Mutakallims-Mutazilites the ordeals suffered by liberal thinkers during the rule of al-Mutawakil. Some time later around 890, according to the historiographer Ibn al-Asir in Baghdad "from professional copiers it was demanded that they take a vow not to copy a single book on philosophy."61  This took place when Mutazilistic Kalam was already prosecuted, but Asharism had not yet appeared in the ideological arena.

Consequently, the attacks on philosophy by the conservative circles began before the appearance of Tahafut of al-Ghazali, whose author usually is accused of having by his anti-Peripatetic deliberations put an end to the further development of Aristotelism in the Islamic world. To illustrate the exaggeration of the role of al-Ghazali, A.S. Sagadeyev cites the words of Nasir Hisrow, who described in 1964 the fatal consequences of the "witch hunts": "As these so-called scientists (that is, theologians—I.Ò.) declared unbelievers all those who mastered the science of created things, searchers for answers to questions "how?" and "why?" became silent; the interpreters of this science continued to keep silent, and as a result everything fell under the authority of ignorance, in particular in the region of Khorasan and lands of the East."62  At that time and for more than a decade in Khorasan, Tugrul-Bek prosecuted Asharites, and on his orders famous Mutakallims-Asharites were expelled from this province. The worst was that al-Ashari was publicly cursed in all the mosques of the province. Thus, both the Asharites and Falasifa equally fell victim to the "orthodox" reaction a long time before the appearance of al-Ghazali’s The Incoherence of the Philosophers.

4. In other of his treatises (for instance, Marij al- Kudus), al-Ghazali holds theses similar to those criticized by him in The Incoherence of the Philosophers. This "inconsistency" captured the attention of not only the critics of al-Ghazali "from the left" (Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Rushd), but also his critics "from the right," including his contemporaries, al-Maziri and al-Tartushi, who accused him of following the philosophers, especially Ibn Sina63  even to apostasy. In his answer to al-Ghazali, Ibn al-Salah brought back the famous formula "Logic is the threshold of philosophy, but the threshold of evil is evilness." The unfriendly utterances of al-Ghazali—the Sufi in the address of Kalam and Mutakallims—naturally caused a corresponding reaction on the side of the latter. Ash Shahrastani limited himself by not identifying him as an Asharist, but the Asharite al-Subki persistently refused to identify him as belonging to the Mutakallims and even to have authored any treatises on Kalam.64 

During the times of al-Kindi, there existed only one form of Kalam—Mutazilism. In the list of multiple works, the "Philosopher of the Arabs," one finds only two unknown treatises, whose titles suggest polemics with some Mutazilites: Treatise on the Bankruptcy of the Statement on the [Existence] of Indivisible Particle" and "Discourse in the Refutation of Some Mutakallims. As seen, al-Kindi stood not against Kalam, in general, but against "some" Mutakallims only; moreover, if one proceeds from the first of the above-mentioned treatises, he opposed all those who held the principle of finitism. But, as we remember, the concept of indivisible particles was rejected among some Mutakallims-Mutazilites, for instance, al-Nazzam. Consequently, his polemics with the Mutakallims were not universal and in principle, but were particular in nature. In general, the solution of the question of the correlation between reason and faith was consonant with the corresponding prescriptions of Mutazilite Kalam. It is no wonder that in historical-philosophical literature al-Kindi is considered as a Mutazilite, or the one who joined within his doctrine Kalam and falsafa.65  In particular, S.N. Grigoryan in his book Medieval Philosophy of Near and Middle East Peoples writes: "The struggle against Islam in this period was led by prominent representatives of Mutazilism. The most prominent in this school of thought was al- Kindi."66 

-Fifth, in criticizing the Mutakallims, Ibn Rushd repeatedly emphasized that the outlook of Mutakallims, in the last analysis, coincided with the outlooks of the "philosophers," and that their differences are not principle in character because they are related to argumentation and expression. In the treatise, Discourse, Which Brings a Solution on the Fundamental Problem of the Eternity of the World, Ibn Rushd writes: "As to the question whether the world is eternal, or came into being at a definite time, according to my viewpoint, the differences between the Mutakallims and the ancient philosophers, on this question, is a matter of the different names they use."67  Ibn Rushd also wrote a special treatise (which has not reached us) about the proximity of the views of Mutakallims and Peripatetics on the existence of the world.68  At the same time, in Inconsistency, the Cordoban thinker agrees with the criticism against Eastern Peripatetics by Hamid al-Ghazali, speaking on behalf of the Mutakallims, that this criticism is only in relation to al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, but not in relation to falsafa as a whole. It is not at all that Kalam had been severely criticized and lost its philosophical appeal.69  The content and methodological criticism of Ibn Rushd is directed, first of all, against al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, while the "dialectical" method used by Kalam, and which al-Ghazali uses, is refuted by the Cordoban thinker in so far, according to him, as this method has no relation in general to falsafa. More than that, if he forgives al-Ghazali’s The Incoherence of the Philosophers for the "time and place," he never gives any excuses for al-Farabi and Ibn Sina who distorted the authentic philosophy of Aristotle.

The first thinker, some of whose works have reached us, and who began the convergence of Kalam and philosophy, was Abu-l-Barakat al-Baghdadi (1077-1164).70  While keeping, in general, to the views of Peripatetics on questions of logic, physics, and metaphysics, he rejected the theses as unacceptable to the Mutakallims, that the single produces only the single, that the eternal can not be a receptacle for the emerging things, that God can not have attributes in addition to His essence, about the existence of 10 cosmic reasons, etc.

Laying bridges to Kalam from the side of philosophy was continued by the follower and defender of the philosophy of Ibn Sina, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. He left the book Explaining Kalam (Tajrid al-Kalam),71  in which, by using the terminological apparatus of Peripatetics, he gave a short exposition of the essence of the doctrine of his contemporary Mutakallims.

At the same time, Kalam was coming closer to philosophy. But it is necessary to underline, that some Mutakallims argued that they began to study "philosophy" in order to criticize those points, which contradict Islam. In explaining this phenomenon, at-Taftazani argued that, later, when many philosophical works were translated into the Arabic language, and Muslims began to study them, they tried to refute the viewpoints of philosophers, which were inconsistent with the Shari’a. At the same time, they enriched Kalam with many ideas from philosophy, although they were mainly oriented to the refutation of the latter. The end result was that they brought into Kalam large parts of physics and metaphysics, and studied mathematics to such an extent that it became difficult to differentiate between the two. The only difference was that Kalam continued to study the religious tradition (samiiat). This was how later Kalam (Kalam al-Mutakhirrin) looked, concludes at-Taftazani.72  It is necessary to underline one more point: the manner of expression of the Mutakallims, such as at-Taftazani’s, shows that the interest of Kalam in "falsafa" was not only for the purposes of apologetically defending religion.

Characterizing the work of al-Razi, one of his contemporary travelers, Ibn Jubayr, writes that having arrived in the yard, he discovered that al-Razi turned away from the Sunni and forced people to study the books of Ibn Sina and Aristotle.73  An even more acerbic picture is drawn of Muhammad al-Shahrastani by one Khorezemian historian who closely knew him: Al-Shahrastani, he informs us, knew theological science well; he could have become an Imam if only he was not disturbed by a lack of faith and by his inclination to philosophical heresy. "We Khoremzians were often surprised by him: that such a person as he with high achievements and a sharp mind, still gravitates towards those matters which have no ground under them. He concerns himself with affairs that are impossible to prove either with arguments of wit, or with the witness of tradition. He drops into the dark debris of philosophy and turns away from the light of the Qur’anic laws—the Shari’a. We were his neighbors and good friends. And in vain he used all his diligence to prove the righteousness of philosophical doctrines, and reject all of that was said against them."74 

Below, readers shall be convinced of the groundlessness of the statement of M. Watt that the Asharite school disappeared in the end, so to speak, in the flames of philosophy.75  D. B. McDonald stated (supported by E. P. Petrushevsky), that to the contrary, at the time of al-Iji and at-Taftazani, philosophy definitely fell from its throne and was transformed into the maidservant and defender of theology.76  The synthesis of Kalam and falsafa, on the basis of the treatise of "Tawali al-anwar"77  of al-Baydawi (d.1286), served as an example for similar encyclopedic works written by representatives of later Kalam at-Taftazani (d. 1390), al-Iji (d. 1355), and others.78 

It is easy to notice, even from this scheme of the general contents of the introductory part of "Tawali al-Anwar, that the author of this work follows the Peripatetic tradition and its interpretation of logic, sometimes verbally repeating corresponding statements of Ibn Sina. The difference in this instance reduces itself mainly to the fact that al-Baydawi does not consider the subject of the classification of theoretical discourses, which occupied a significant place in the logic of Eastern Peripatetics, that is, the division of these discourses into apodectic, dialectical, rhetorical, poetical, and sophistic. Al-Sawi explains the above-mentioned difference in this way: The later Mutakallims (including himself) were not interested in the last four types of reasoning in as much as they do not give reliable knowledge. However, it is wholly possible that the reason for this was the unwillingness of the later Mutakallims to compromise (after the philosophers) those methods of reasoning, first of all, dialectics to which they broadly resorted, just like their predecessors, particularly in meetings organized by them for polemical purposes.79 

The natural science concepts stated in the book Tawali al-anwar are almost wholly extracted from the physicists among the Eastern Peripatetics. Baydawi refrains from extensive vast reasoning related to the mechanism of the "reasoning power" and, accordingly, from the classification of it into the types of human reason that we meet among Eastern Peripatetics and on which they concentrate greater attention in their teaching about the spirit. The carefulness of al-Baydawi, like other later Mutakallims, may be explained by the fact that in ontology the Eastern Peripatetics in the most clear form rejected the generally accepted beliefs about the immortality of the individual human spirit, acknowledging the "eternity" only of its reasoning power. This they identified with unchangeability, and, therefore, the "eternity" of the truth known by it. Besides, it is notable that al-Baydawi states this theory of the Peripatetics without opposing it to another that is different from his theory, and without accompanying its interpretation by any commentary. As for the life hereafter of a human soul, he cites a standpoint of the "falasifa", according to which the bliss of this soul in the after-life depends on its longing for "authentic knowledge."80 

The pantheistic direction of Kalam is here expressed in the teaching of the essence and attributes of Necessary Being, that is, God. Commenting on a given section of the treatise of al-Badawi, al-Asfahani reduces it to the following theses. The will of God is a specification predestined by Him for phenomena through "providing with them actual existence" (Takhsis), that is, in the language of the Peripatetics, through the actualization of the order of preceding one another and following one another (Taqdim wa Takhir). In other words, the question is about "unfolding" in space and time that which is "convoluted" in a nonrevealed form in God’s knowledge. The latter is characterized by al-Baydawi, in the words of al-Asfahani, as that which is located in all things in the same relations, which is not surprising, as far as these things come into divine knowledge out of space and time. Thus, divine will corresponds here to the action of cosmic spirit in the teaching of the neo-Platonists, while divine knowledge corresponds to their world reason. Pantheistic conclusions follow directly from the following theses: (1) "the being of concretely existing things (aiyan al-mawjudaat) – this is the knowledge of Almighty God";81  (2) "the essence of God and His knowledge are different not in itself, but depending on [our] way of consideration (bi-l-itibar)".82 

In a purely neo-Platonic manner, there is explained the correlation of the empirical world with metaphysical, that is from the position of the necessity of existence, his reason (knowledge) and of world spirit (divine will), from which the last two principles mediate two levels of being—the necessity of existence and its "concretely existing" in the empirical world of things. Al-Baydawi interprets this relation in terms of emanation.83  It is exactly such an interpretation of the correlation between the Creator and the created world that is founded in the metaphysics of al-Taftazani and other late Mutakallims. Moreover, like Ibn Sina, the difference of these two levels of being, among some late Mutakallims, is explained by reducing the necessity and possibility of existence to an analogy (bi-Tashkik). 84 

It is not surprising that the later critics of Kalam speak of its later representatives in harsh terms, particularly their interpretation of the origin (hudus) of things as "essential" (dhati) or "eternal" (Dahri).85  In this connection, Fakhrad-Din ar-Razi preferred to express his belief in the eternity of the world in the careful form of abstaining from an answer to the question "is the world eternal or temporal?" which he considered "unsolvable."86  According to Khaiyali, the world (being) should necessarily be eternal in consequence of the eternity of God’s "will." Commenting on the given concept of Khaiyali, al-Sialkuti limited himself to its explanation, which indicates his consent.87 

Such representatives of late Kalam as al-Taftazani, in this metaphysical part of his doctrine, considers the problem of universals and concludes approximately the same as the Eastern Peripatetics to denying the realism of the Platonic types. "Being, writes at-Taftazani, "has several levels: The high forms of being present themselves in concrete things (fi-l-aian), that is the primary being with which all must agree, due to which things and their essences become real and identical in its reality. Then follows being in wisdom (fi-l-adhkhan), that is not primary being, but like shadows of being dropped by the body."88 

Al-Baydawi does not comment either on the point of view of al-Ashari or on the doctrine of Ibn Sina. What then is his own position with respect to what is generally accepted in Islamic dogmas concerning prophecy and the next world? In order to answer this question, two moments are important. First of all, the author of Tawali al-anwar, like other late Mutakallims, refers all these dogmas to samiyat; secondly, together with other representatives of late Kalam, he confirms, "proof based on traditions (naql) does not give reliable knowledge."89  In actual fact Samiat and Naqliyat are synonymous terms, both of them meaning information based on traditions. Consequently, all eschatological images of religion, just as its teaching on the divine origin of prophecy, late Mutakallims almost openly referred to the area of inauthentic knowledge, but more exactly to the area of knowledge necessary not for comprehending truth, but for the achievement of the purely practical aims of maintaining the moral foundations and laws of society.

Before giving a general characteristic to the problematics of late Kalam, it is necessary to point out that the subject of this science was identified with the subject of metaphysics in falsafar that part of which interprets questions concerning the essence of God, His attributes and relations to the existence of possible things. Its difference from metaphysics was seen only in the fact that, research on it is carried out in "accordance with the principles of Islam."90 

It is true that they confirmed that the problems of natural philosophy, logic, and mathematics are of interest to them only in so far as the study of nature "leads to reliable knowledge that can be believed"91  But it can be asked if it was so necessary for the Mutakallims to engage themselves in such vast excursuses in the areas of, for example, the classification of minerals with the description of the method used by al-Biruni in determining their specific weight, for the proof of the existence of God and a determination of His attributes? What relationship does this have with, for instance, the minute description of the seven climates or the equator? One does not find the answer to these questions in the works considered here, because their authors do not in the least link these questions either with the essence of God and His attributes nor with the religion of Islam in general.

Now, if we compare the problematics of the works of late Mutakallims with the work of Nasirad-Din at-Tusi, Tajrid al-Kalam, the ideas of the first correspond as a whole to the ideas of the followers and supporters of the philosophy of Ibn Sina. The difference between them is only in secondary details and accents. It is not surprising that Ibn Khaldun, in presenting the history of the development of Kalam, stated that the subjects of Kalam and philosophy got mixed up in such a way that these sciences become indistinguishable, as has happened, for instance, in Tawal of al-Baydawi and the works of late Iranian scientists.92  It is not surprising also that later traditionalists not only accused at-Tusi of an attempt to unite Kalam and philosophy, but also that they in every way forewarned their own readers against any acquaintance with the works of the late Mutakallims. According to al-Maraashi, these works, for instance, were "filled with discussions (Kalam) of philosophers, in which their authors passionately state ideas, obviously exposing their lack of faith."93  This author particularly emphasizes the noxious influence of Kalam on young Muslim students.

Of course, widening the circle of problems considered in Kalam to the bounds of the philosophical sciences in the form in which they are contained in the encyclopedic works of Ibn Sina, representatives of late Kalam could not but resort to Taqiya [monotheism]. To the field of Taqiya pertains the above-mentioned reservation that the interpretation by them of philosophical sciences is conducted solely, "according to the principles of Islam." Here one should refer to their assurances that the highest aim of Kalam is samiyat,94  that the inclusion in this science of other alien subjects gives nothing but benefits,95  that "some philosophical subjects are included in Kalam in so far as they do not conflict with religious dogmas, and more so suit [the purposes and essence of] Kalam."96  There are also multiple references to hypothetical viewpoints ("anybody could have the right to say ") and their hints that in the given section the whole truth is not stated ("there are some secrets, which I can not afford to voice, I put my hopes on your quickness of wit").97