Library Chat #20: The Rise of Sunnī Kalām (3rd/4th Hijrī Centuries) | Shaykh Dr. Yasir Qadhi

it's been quite a while since i have done a library chat and inshallah i thought it's time to update my library chat list and i was going to continue from where i left off which is the uh the uh incident of the karamiya and then what happened after that but then i realized that you know i had actually forgotten or not forgotten overlooked a very important precursor which does situate what we're going to be talking about and so what i'm going to be doing now is then taking a step back and talking about uh setting up the rise of sunni kalam and then situating the uh inter sunni polemics that we're going to be talking about in the next lecture uh insha'allah if allah gives me life and we continue down this uh this trajectory so that you understand it better so the usual disclaimers uh this is a library chat and so this one in particular uh is going to be one of the uh for advanced theological discussions and so if you haven't studied advanced theology if you don't know what is kalam and what to sunni kalam and what is ashadism if you haven't heard of the names of a mohasi be in and what not then uh this is really not a very beneficial topic and i always make this disclaimer so go this into something that is a benefit so that inshallah you know you will uh fill your uh time with something that will actually bring you closer to allah these types of discussions are meant for those that are interested in the development of islamic theology and have a passion and interest in a more academic field also another very important disclaimer um given my background and given the fact that at one time in my life i was polemical against the ashari school for those who know me obviously now that is no longer the case but i must make this disclaimer that everything that i'm saying today uh it is not being said uh in the spirit of refutation or in the spirit of finding faults or deviancy at this stage of my life i do not view the ashadi school or the athletic school or the maturity school or any of the mainstream sunday schools as being deviant or incorrect and frankly i have made my disagreements with all of the strands at a theological level disagreements at a personal level and i think they're all good for kulin and i have my own views and perhaps one day i'll give a library chat about those views and we'll see what happens after that but i want to be very clear from the get-go that please do not misinterpret or misunderstand uh the anything that is said today as somehow trying to to demean uh the credit of the ashadi school or to somehow you know uh criticize them in a subtle manner anything that i say that um comes across that way i could say the same about the athletic school or any other school and so please understand this i am i am not doing this in the spirit of refutation per se uh i firmly believe that all of these uh schools uh have developed over time they are not divinely revealed uh that that includes atheism as well and one day i do plan to give a very detailed chat about the development of the athletic theology this this simplistic notion that ibn tamiya is somehow representative of atheism with my utmost love to eben tamiya that is simply factually false there were many competing strands even of atheism and uh iben tamiya represents one strand which then became the dominant uh strand the same applies to the asha'd school as well that the ashadi school is not just one uh position actually you have a multitude of of opinions under the umbrella of aisha's and there's a development taking place the same of maturitism the same with martha's ism this is the reality when you study and you are open-minded and you're not coming with the agenda to prove that for example you know is the defining ashari well then if you have that preconceived notion then you're going to review history in a different manner so anyway all of this is a disclaimer uh and one day inshallah i will give a talk about uh the athletic school which is something that is very very clear to document the developments of the athadi school and the intra-athetic debates that took place until finally one of them became the dominant but today i'm going to talk about uh the beginnings of ashadism proto-ishahidism or to be more precise sunni sunni now if you've uh listened to not just my library chats and in particular the origins of the sifat controversy listen to that one and other talks that i've given and if you're aware of you know general islamic theology you are very familiar with the term kalam by the way if you don't know the term kalam by now you should not be watching this video please i'm trying my best to preach and teach at the appropriate level so if you don't know what kalam means stop this video go watch something else anyway let's forget what the disclaimer is from now on um so uh the the the phenomenon of kalam as is very clear undeniable the phenomena of kalam uh was a phenomenon that did not have anything to do with the groups of scholars who cared about the hadith of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and compiled it and narrated it the traditionalist they did not like kalam and they were opposed to kalam the people who embraced kalam were those that were eventually called the murtazillites right these are the ones who embraced kalam and also there were strands of mortezalism and so the term jahme the term arthesity these are all coming later on of course that uh you back project them onto these figures and these figures are clearly propagating uh what we call neoplatonic concepts i explained this in my uh fat lecture and they were not the people interested in compiling hadith and in narrating hadith i.e they're not sunni muslims right that's the whole point that's what sunni muslim in the beginning of islam the first two three centuries sunni islam is about paying attention to the hadith of the prophet sallallahu sallam with the chains narrating them and generally speaking sunni scholars did not get involved in these sophisticated debates about the reality of the attributes of allah and they shunned that type of discourse and they considered to be heretical and a deviation now the the first uh the first theologians who claimed to be sunni and also embraced kalam right so this is now a new phenomenon coming the first person to do so is generally credited to be abdullah ibn is how he is known and he died 241 hijrah ie 855 ce and a contemporary of his al hadith who died 243 857. so ibn kullab and el mohasibi are the two main figures who are claiming to be sunni now neither of them were famous for hadith narration but overall they are studying in the circles of hadith and their theology is affirming padar so here's a key difference early kalam rejected rejected are affirming qatar this is a defining characteristic of sunni islam at the time and so they affirmed qadhaf they're studying amongst the scholars of you know sunni learning and now they are flirting with their embracing aspects of kalam now ibn kullab we have nothing left of his writings he did leave some writings but unfortunately nothing remains of his writing so we can glean some opinions of his uh as recorded by al-ashadi his student in his meaning indirect student not directly a study as from a student of his so al-ashadi in his catabol uh he records many opinions of him as for al-muhasibi al-muhasibi has left us a number of treatises unfortunately his main treaties of theology is not present but we do have a number of treatises from which we can glean uh certain ideas of his and that these two theologians their main contribution to uh theology was their claim that allah does have attributes unlike the murtazila who said that in reality these are not actual you know attributes i'm being very simplistic even for this talk by the way because that's not exactly what the martha's said but essentially uh you know their their their uh conundrum was as as i said in my other talk about uh uh the uh controversy how does one describe allah with these attributes and generally speaking you know they were deemed by their opponents to deny the attributes even though that's not technically correct they are it's simply a matter of language of how one expresses it uh the uh and ibn kolab come along and they posit that allah indeed is a samir and al-basee however they posited that these attributes are eternal and unchanging this is a key john of damascus or neoplatonic term as if you go back to that lecture that change does not exist within the nature of god no change could be posited within the that within the essence of god and so they affirmed the attributes but they said these attributes are static these attributes cannot change and the classic difference therefore is over the attribute of speech they would say that allah speaks when he wants to speak and uh he is silent when he wants to be silent this is explicit affirmative from his students we don't have his writings but his students say this and generally that is what we would expect from ahmadinejad al-bukhari also has statements in order in which we can glean this also his kitab sahil bahadi also you can glean these types of theological positions that allah speaks when he wants to however of course when you say that uh the the attributes are eternal then uh the notion therefore would be from al-muhasibi and from ibn kullab and this later is adopted by the ashadi school that allah azza is speaking eternally in a manner that his creation cannot comprehend through the senses so allah speech is an internal speech it is an eternal speech internal and eternal internal meaning that it is not expressed in a voice and a sound uh it is an uh as al-khazadi famously remarks it is a speech internally a vati or a speech of the mind it's not an actual uh speech so al-muhasi eben kullab they bring forth what is now called sunni kalam they are the founders of sunni kalam and al-muhasibi seems to have had a larger impact than ibn kullab and uh the next generation uh scholar al-baghdadi who died 429 hijrah al-baghdadi remarks uh that most of the people of kalam who affirmed the attributes so this is really interesting most of the people of kalam who affirmed the attributes because there was a group of people of qalam who didn't affirm the attributes that's the more tesla most of the people of kalam who affirmed the attributes this is sunni kalam this is going to become ashadism and al-baghdadi is in we're going to discover or we're going to come to so most of the people that kalam who affirmed the attributes ascribed themselves to al-muha sibi this is what al-baghdadi is writing in 429 that they ascribe themselves to al-muhasibi becomes the main primogenator and actually if you read his writings you actually see rasalian islam that combination of tasawaf that combination of ashadi kalam and actually shaffer if uh that mohashibi really becomes the what we now call i would say proto-traditionalist in our time in our time there's this traditionalist movement and has really becomes like the father figure and gazali becomes the codifier and the reviver and so hazalian understanding of islam it actually goes back to mohasebhi and this has remained for many many centuries until our times one of the most analytical early accounts of a muhasebe theology is uh given by none other than asha rastani diet 548 hijra 1154 ce asha harastani is a very interesting figure who deserves an entire lecture is neither ashari nor a philosopher he is an independent thinker however if anything he is more inclined towards philosophy than towards kalam and there is a distinction between philosophy and kalam as maybe another talk we'll talk about but some people claim that kalama philosophy is the same thing no not at all qalam is very different even though it shares certain uh characteristics with falsehood nonetheless asha harastani is an independent thinker and it is useful for someone like shaharstani to comment because when he says something then both salafis and ashari should pay attention because he is the third party he is neutral shaykh harastani says in his famous book and i quote or i'm summarizing directly from the book that the hadith scholars such as malik and ahmed ibn humble notices categorizing them together right views early hadith as one movement which really it is would not categorize or differentiate between the attributes of allah mentioned in the text and would affirm all of them in a kefir known to allah notice here shahrasthani is saying the early sunnis affirmed the attributes with akafiya known to allah and this uh very much shows that this notion of taffwild as some modern um ashadis and modern pseudo-hamburgers are trying to revive my contention or my claim is would be that that notion did not exist uh the way that they claim it a different type of tawfiq existed is saying they affirmed the attributes all of them in a kefir with a kefir that is known to allah subhanahu wa ta'ala then he says listen to this since the sila would negate the attributes and basically sunnis would affirm them these sunnis were called sifatiyah affirming the attributes and the more tested were called muatila negating the attributes this remained the case until the time of ibn kullab and al-muhasibi for these two ascribed themselves to sunni islam but embraced the knowledge of kalam and supported the doctrines of sunnism through kalam and through logical reasoning end quote so asha harastani is the one who points out that ibn kullab and mohashibi really were the first people to start something new and to start categorizing the sifa this is a key point here the early scholars did not categorize the sifat all of them are uh affirmed in a manner that is known to allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala and these two giants come along ibn kollab and they're the ones who began to uh differentiate between the uh now it's really interesting here that al muhasibi and hamburg they met multiple times were contemporaries and initially there was some camaraderie between them however ibn hambal began to hear that al-muhasibi is speaking about the attributes and writing books about uh differentiating between the attributes and so he began to warn against uh al-muhasibi and tell people to abandon al muhasibi and it's really interesting there's an anecdote that is found in other hambury books these are anecdotes that are mentioned and allah knows how true they are that one of the students of al muhasibi was also a student of hamburg and he wanted to try to reconcile between the two and so he uh arranged that in hamburg secretly attend a lecture of he arranged that nobody would see you you're going to be behind a curtain in a room and you're just going to listen and he and the students that i want you to listen and judge for yourself and so ahmadinejad agreed uh to do this now uh he happened to listen to a lecture of a muhasivi that was very spiritual by the way was very much uh in uh was very much into early sunni the soul of right not later khaladjian type over others he had a strand of tasawa which is also rasalian so ghazali and tasawaf really is very much almohasibi in many ways and that is a strong sense of orthodoxy of you know following the sharia and also of spiritual awareness of the malcolm and the talking about different aspects of the uh which is very resalient is like this so ahmadine was listening to one of these types of very moving sermons when the student returned back to the room where the muhammad was listening he saw ah was crying like the the talk affected him so much and so the student felt maybe imam muhammad is going to change his view however uh he did not change his view of and he disapproved now why did he disapprove ibn tamiya says and i quote that um and because of this imam ahmad ordered that he be boycotted and iban ahmed would warn against ibn kullab and the followers of ibn kulla now this is an opinion another opinion is that was warned against because felt that his style of preaching his his tasawaf style was not in accordance with the sunnah even if it was effective and that it might lead to extremisms and exaggerations or some say it was both his uh proto-tosovo and his proto-kalam that ahmed muhammad warned against him so this could be this could be the first time that there is a tension within sunnism this tension will later be manifested in salafi islam versus ashadi islam and this is something that will happen later on this is the first time where we find this type of awkwardness between two strands of sunnism muhasi muhaseebi and strand and ahmed ibn hambal strand and uh at the time ahmadinejad and his followers were the dominant majority they were the ones who were respected and so when ahmed ibrahim warned against muhasi be he was abandoned completely and his students completely diminished until it is said when he died barely four people prayed janazah over him barely four people prayed janazah over him now again i just like to point out um no matter how much trouble this gets me into one wonders was this type of warning justified one wonders really uh and i've read muhaseebi's works that are in in existence and had almost been alive today uh he would really be a very effective mainstream preacher uh just like many of the other scholars that are of that you know later movement and you know the the the harshness that one finds in certain trends of islam there are clear seeds that one finds in the founders of those trends and let us leave it at that so uh almohassibi was warned against and because of this his students abandoned him and he died an ignoble death and uh only four people prayed his uh janazah now in my reading of early islam this appears to be the first sign of tension between sundism that would later become what we now call ashadi versus salafi islam or athari islam and of course iban tamiya and al-ghazali represent or the most popular manifestations of this there is another small incident that took place in a far away land in the next generation that also shows this tension between proto-salafism and proto-ashadism and this is going to take place in the land of nishapur in the land of nishapur it's a relatively small incident but it shows that tensions are rising and this is well documented this incident because it's taking place uh a generation later almost 80 years after uh or 90 years after uh mohashibi and uh and even and this is the tension that took place in the circle of knowledge of a great scholar of hadith and the great scholar of the shaffer is whole school and that is ibn huzaima the one who authored sahih bin khuzaimah even 311 hijrah or 923 hijrah now even hozema is an interesting figure ibn hozema is well known as a muhaddith he is well known as a shafiri icon and yet aki the wise he is hardcore athari and i state this factually please don't read in that i'm trying to be contentious or what not it is an undeniable fact that early shafi's and early maliki's and hambalis were all what we now call srifatiya or athadis they were affirming the attributes in totality this is a later development a shadism you know you know was ashadism influenced the shaft for a school in the next generation after ibn huzaima and ashadism influenced the maliki school much later uh as we are aware the malikis were anti-ashari and in fact they burned the books of ghazali famously in in andalus because they had their own version of when i say habalism that's not the right term here they had their own version of sifatiya they had their own version of you know being hardcore you know in terms of sunnah and you know the medic is really were very very what we would consider fanatical they really were just look at it i mean i'm not inventing this and uh early uh chauffeurs as well were also uh uh you know very hardcore in this regard you know what actually subhanallah complete coincidence i just ordered a book from uh from egypt here and it's just uh i haven't glanced through it fully i'm just going to show this to you it's a i think it's a phd uh done by uh dr taha naja ali salafi okay this is a phd uh the author is claiming or proving in his own way and i've glanced through it and i already believe this anyway but he's trying to show that the majority of shafiri's were alitija has appropriate term uh they had the the sifatiya they were affirming the attributes for their early uh you know for the early parts of the shaffer school and that much i think is undeniable because again sunni kalam is a later development remember that al-ashadi dies you know 320 hijrah so what is going to happen to the early shafter is you have ibn huzaima read ibn husema's biography in uh of a subki very much praise of who he is as a shafiri and hardly any discussion of his akrita because i think sukhi understands that uh ibrahima is not upon the that he wants him to be upon and the same goes for many of the early shaffer a scholars now ibn kozaima ibn husema wrote his famous book kitab tohit and this kitab tohit it is considered to be an anthropomorphic book by many icons of uh later ashari school famously muhammad zahid kothari uh the one of the last icons of the ottoman empire and again this type of hatred that exists on both sides i am now free of it i have nothing to do with this hatred i despise the sectarianism from the salafis and i despise it from the ashadis and both of them need to be told calm down chill bro they're all mainstream muslims they love allah and his messenger and you guys are exaggerating this way beyond that it needs to and anyways in any case uh zahid kothari used to call kitab tohid of ibn husaimah this is a totally different book three volumes he used to call it kitabu shirk this is kitabush because ibm hozema wrote this book as a result of ibn kullab's ideas arriving in khorasan arriving in nishapur even even became worried that this heresy is coming to his land so to respond to it he wrote his kitab at uh in around 300 hijri and again this is before uh this is before al-ashadi rises to him is alive 300 but even predates him in terms of ages uh older than him what happened in india with ibn khozema and his students well a number of iber-chozema students began to flirt with uh ideas and they began to say that allah speaks eternally he doesn't speak when he chooses to speak he continuously speaks and even josema was shocked at this like again he said this is a very big deal for him and so he called his students and confronted them and imam zahibi and he summarizes this you can read this up uh he says that uh ibn kozaima said his student abu ali at he says what are you criticizing of our theology so that we can repent in front of you famous he's going to become a famous protest the fact that you are sympathizing to the kullabi school notice he calls it kullabi not ashadi because assad is not here right now right even and even says to his students you are flirting with the kolabi theology and imam ahmad was very harsh against ibn kullab and against al hadith and so as a response to this and you can read his introduction advanced students pause here the video go open his book tabitha and read his introduction he literally says when i saw these ideas come and my students or whatnot i wrote this book to respond and then flick through the pages it is very clear and i've said this multiple times and i don't say this because i used to be an ethereum salafi i'm saying this because it's factually true is that atheism as a school within sunnism predates ashadism and this is an undeniable fact well i can say mortezas and predates atheism and that's also technically correct mortezalism as a school predates atheism but so what what i'm just saying factually speaking uh the athari school and its affirmation of all of the attributes of allah unconditionally on without any categorization atheism predates ashaidism and figures like ibn kullab uh sorry figures like um show this that even is writing these detailed books in which he's affirming all of these attributes in a way that no ashari and no maturity and no more attested would ever agree with so it's an interesting book and it shows you uh this minor clash that even josema is having tensions with his students so we have now two incidents the first is imam ahmed muhasimi himself and the second is even with his students now a third incident as well and it is this incident that is going to spark the main sunni kalam school and it is an interesting quirk of history that neither ibn kullab nor al-muhasibi were primarily credited with the launch of sunni that honor was left to a theologian who lived two generations after them who died three twenty four slash nine three three five c e three twenty four c e hijri nine 935 ce and it was his teachings who would eventually he would found the eponymous school al-ashari was founded the school named after him and he was the one that basically is credited with sunni kalam even though he's not the first and even though he is taking from ibn kula and now al-ashadi visited baghdad and baghdad was in that time frame a hold of ethere slash hambali islam this is something that is again an undeniable fact and the khalifa himself at the time was very much and you had to be that was the dominant trend of uh baghdad in the caliphate and so al-ashadi visits baghdad now this um this uh conversation and this uh back and forth it is recorded in uh the tabakata of the nabila and so you have to take it with a grain of salt that you know the sources are what they are so the records that when uh al-assad visited uh baghdad of the time none other than al-barbahadi yes that al bahari go listen to one of my previous chats about sunnah and the fact that he didn't write the book that did it no matter what we say he was and he was a sheikh of the himalayas and he would never write a book as ludicrous and as as sensationalist as this book called sunnah nonetheless was alive at the time and so al-ashadi and tried to ingratiate himself with al-baar bahari because he understands that al-barbahari is the shaykh and if not going to accept him then he will be in serious trouble and so uh if we believe the source because it is a big if uh al-barbahari was not happy with al-ashadi and he gave him a very lukewarm treatment he was very hesitant like you sound very weird to me and he said to allah all we know is what imam muhammad says and your speech doesn't seem to match up with what imam says so it is said it is said and allah knows best that because of this rejection sorry al-ashadi tried to impress al-barbahari by writing one of his not one of his most his most atypical exotic inexplicable book and that is an elucidation on the foundations of the religion and this book now here students i need you to understand one thing we have a number of writings of al hasan al-ashadi recorded we have his famous you know kitab al-makhala and we have some other treatises as well this book al-ibaana dhyana is completely at odds with all of his other writings there is no question that this book is in its own category so much so that many later ashadis actually claim that he did not write this book later ashadi said this book is a fabrication some of them say because they cannot square it up with the rest of ashadi's teachings the fact of the matter is that you could read this book as a humbly slash ethere and kind of sort of get away with it this book is very humbly it is very ethidy it is pretty much almost not exactly there are certain things that phrases that are incorrect from hambury standpoints but still generally speaking it seems as if he's pretty much and therefore one wonders what does one make of this book now i have thought about this question multiple times for the last 20 years i have read alibana three times covered to cover at least and perused through it many dozens of times and i'll be very honest with you no answer fully satisfies me i know what the opinions are the mother ibentania went on a multiple stage i know this there's not a shred of evidence not to shred of evidence that uh that al-ashadi uh flirted with atheism for a period of his life he was and then he became there's not a shred of evidence that uh for a period of his life he was a pure athari humbly and then he became uh you know sunni with him not at all on the contrary it seems as if yani from mortezalism he flipped over and he embraced ibn kullab and his book makala really seems to indicate this you know the only answer that makes sense to me and i hesitate to say this because i don't want this to be interpreted in a negative way and we expect the best of all people but the only answer that really would make sense is to to say that alibana was written as a means of ingratiating himself with his hosts in baghdad with al-barbahary's camp and that's the only thing that makes sense and allah knows best how he would justify this with his other writings i don't know clearly he wrote the book because of multiple factors beyond the scope of this library chat i think it is undeniable that he wrote the book but it doesn't square with all of his other writings so either you say that he went through phases but his biography does not indicate that at all and there's not a single shred of evidence or the only thing left to say unless you say the book is fabricated which which is what some later ashadi say the only other thing left to say is he felt however he in his mind justified and i don't doubt his sincerity he felt that this book is good for the hambali audience and it will allow him to be accepted by them and his other writings might be better for another audience to do allahu adam this is the only thing that makes sense to me nonetheless even this book did not uh passed the the result and al-barbahari rejected him al-barbahadi did not allow him to teach and preach in baghdad and so ashadi himself was not allowed to spread uh in public because he controlled the sunni masajid nobody could preach without bahadi's approval and barbari did not allow al-ashadi to have a public halacha and this is the key point where i'm setting the stage up here guys this is in a future library chat we will discuss in a lot of detail the first time an ashadi gave a public lecture in baghdad it caused a riot and people died literally people died we're going to talk about this it was such a massive issue the hanabila could not stand it and the ashadis as well acted in a manner they shouldn't have acted both of them you know they they had mob mentality that's not going to happen for another 100 years right now in 320 right roughly 320 hijra roughly and ashadi are in the same city and al-ashadi wants to preach and teach he visits according to our source here lukewarm writes rejects you haven't met the standard so when it was not um it was not accepted then an ashadi abu hassan ashadi goes full out and he writes a treatise uh that is entitled al-hath al-al-baqi al-hithu the encouragement to research the encouragement to research and this book is considered to be it is considered to be the first work ever written by an author who claims to be giving allegiance to sunnis and is explicitly defending the use and role of kalam neither muhasibi nor ibn kullab wrote a book justifying the use of a style of theology and ashadi did so and this book actually has been translated to english so you can find this uh richard or sorry um uh robert mccarthy translated this and uh in in his the theology of and he called it a vindication of of kalam so you can find this i'm sure pdfs are available and rm frank uh has also written about this and you can read about uh this these three diseases the treaties in english very so it's not that long you can read it so in this book he used he attempts to justify uh the usage of um of kalam now al-ashadi was not allowed to preach publicly in baghdad however he did obviously manage to preach privately and this is where now the foundations of ashadism are going to begin in the private halachat of baghdad al-ashadi is taking this notion from ibn kullab from al-muhaseeb he hasn't met them they're they're a hundred years before him but he's met some of their students and he's read their writings their writings we do not have access to we do not have any access to the theological writings of or even clearly is you know a person who is a proto razali in many ways al-ashadi reads and develops this school and he leaves an impact on a few small uh groups of students these students are going to then take his ideas and spread them further and i'll mention uh uh three of the the students here uh amongst them is uh abul hassan al-bahili uh who died 370 hijrah and muhammad ibn mujahid who died 370 as well hijrah and these students then taught the next generation alice farahini and ibn furak and it was those types of students that spread ashadism in other lands the greatest scholar of ashadi kalam in this next generation was sorry al-qaeda abu bakr al-baghdadi who died 403 hijrah and this al-baghdadi who wrote a tamid is considered to be the second ashadi and he was most likely the one who who coined the term ashari for the school so it was al-baqilani who died 403 who was the first to coin the term ashadi school to describe this school however these figures in baghdad only taught in private they did not teach in public and in public what was being taught what was being taught was atheism or embolism and one clear manifestation of this is the official akhida that was taught or that was propagated by the khalifa himself and the khalifa at the time actually commissioned for it to be written and he called it after himself the khalifa al-qaeda who reigned from 381 to 422 hijrah that's 991-1031 the abbasid khalifa al-qaeda the abbas commissioned a treaties to be written about and it was called the kadhiri creed and this creed was commanded to be read aloud in khutbas and in the masajid throughout his reign you know from 400 onwards so for 30 years this creed was officially read and if you read this creed and you can find this online you can find this and preserved in multiple books of history if you're it's a page long if you read this creed it is explicitly an assault on shiism and mortezadism and yes ashadism as well it is a pro-humbly pro-athetic creed that is meant to take down all other theologies and one of the modern academics george mcdesi he writes that this creed was distinctly anti-shieri anti-mortezali anti-ashari end quote so the audi creed which was the official creed of the abbasid adopted at the beginning of the fifth islamic century clearly indicates without a doubt that proto-athodism proto-embolism if you like it was the dominant state-approved theology by the khilafah it was the one dominant amongst the uh masses and uh therefore when anything challenged it then this dominancy is going to react and what was going to challenge it the table is going to be turned and that table is going to be the rise of ashadism so when ashaidism is going to be introduced in baghdad it's going to cause a political turmoil of the highest magnitude and the khalifa himself is going to be dragged in and the khalifa is going to be forced to intervene and quell the tension here we're going to talk about that in our next lecture so i'm setting up the stage here what i want you to understand with all of these dry details that i understand for some of you is totally you know beyond the scope and boring and this is what that's what intellectual history is the key point i want you to understand is that the dominant theological school of the capital of the muslim world and the one that the khalifa adopted and the one that controlled the masajid was what we now call in himbalism and by the way this version of himbalism this version of atherism is way beyond what ibn tamiya this version is the one affirming that the prophet sits on the throne and uh if you read the you know uh um um uh of ibm and you go read it and you'll see what i'm saying here it's a different version of embolism ibn tamiya frankly is toning down this version of hamburism uh sometime afterwards nonetheless so understand that allah himself and his immediate followers are not making a huge impact they cannot make an impact in baghdad in the capital no this is the story we're gonna take up in the next lecture what happens here in summary is that ashadi is not successful in baghdad it's not in baghdad where ishaitism rises up and overthrows himbalism no what's going to happen is that ashadi's teachings are exported to a small outlying province outside of the dominion of the abbasid khalifa where it's a free for all and these provinces in particular nishapur which is in modern-day iran ashadism is going to be exported from baghdad where it's born is living in baghdad he doesn't have a large halaquah but he has a small groups there it is exported from baghdad to neshapur and in neshapur for the first time its madrasas are built are built and in shapur it will win converts some of whom would eventually wield great political might it was those supporters both the scholars and the politicians in neshapur that would then reintroduce a modified and updated and reified version of ashaitism back to the very cities where it originated but this time they're going to introduce it from a position of power and so rather than ashadism being frowned rather than barbari rejecting on the contrary the new theology will have the support of the government and it will supplant and eventually dominate all other theologies eventually becoming the official theology of the muslim khilafah that story is going to be the story of our next lecture so to summarize this and i know it's a very uh advanced chatter but this needs to be said because again these things need to be said so the the goal of this entire chat was very very simple and that is to explain that early sunnism was essentially srifatiya they are all affirming the attributes and not categorizing the attributes what happens is that one figure in particular uh followed by muhasabi so you have ibn kullab and then they're contemporaneous uh we don't have much biographic information about ibn kullab we don't have a single writing of his left these were the first people to respect the sahaba and respect or believe in khadar and so there's sunni and they're overall studying the circles of hadith by the way none of them actually studied hadith none of them are hadith scholars even at ashari is not a hadith scholar hadith scholars actual hadith scholars of this time frame pretty much all of them are sifatiya they are what we call etheres or hamburis that's not going to happen for a while people like al-bayhate and others are going to be the first in the um group that is specializing in hadith and also somewhat pro-kalam that's going to happen 400 hijab right now in 200 hijrah there is no scholar not one not one that is compiling hadith interested in hadith and is also sympathetic to even collab that doesn't exist right now however ibn kulabi sunni what do i mean by sunni i mean as i said uh that he uh respects the books of hadith and he believes in adar this is the key distinction here and al muhammad sunni and imam hambal rejects ibn kullab rejects al-muhasibi the next generation comes along and al-ashari comes and allah tries once again to become mainstream a key point here when ibn humble rejected and al-barbahadi rejected they did not consider this strand to be more tesla they did not rather they were uncomfortable at where this is heading but they didn't even say that they're non-sunni they said this is a deviation creeping in but they viewed it as a strand within sunnism an incorrect strand a deviated strand there's no doubt about that but they did not view it as being martezili this is going to come later on when the tensions are going to rise up so we're still talking about proto-ashadism proto-embolism these are all various strands the earliest ashadi scholars the earliest scholars who followed this trend did not view themselves as a separate sect from mainstream sunnism they viewed themselves as following mainstream sunnism just like the followers of hamburg also viewed themselves as following mainstream sunnism to conclude the next major figure we're going to come to is the figure of ibn furak ibn furak is the one who uh is the first scholar to be patronized by the dynasties of khorasan the dinosaurs of nishapur and to be have a madrasa built for him and the students sponsored so the first ashadi madarasa is the madras of and eben furak is building this madrasa not in baghdad he cannot do this in baghdad he is building this in nishapur and the sim judith dynasty the sim judah dynasty uh patreon item now why would they do that again you have to realize let's we can have one of two motivations right some would say because they agreed and they followed his theology and that's fine to say i'm a little bit more cynical and um so be it and uh i would say that mostly generally speaking the general rule of the world is that politicians uh um uh patronize scholars in order to increase their popularity politicians help scholars when those scholars will or at least their followings will help these rulers so they signed a bin furak and his students whatever they saw and they decided to build and to gift and to make a walk for him and so the sim judah dynasty built a madrasah for ibn furak and this was the first time ashadism becomes publicly taught and codified ibn furak has a number of writings uh still left ibn furak uh this is around 370 hijrah and ibn furaka passes away ibn furak passes away in the year 406 hijri 406 hijrah ibn furak of course by the way i i mentioned him in the previous lecture about um the rise of the karamiya because the fanatical uh karamis they actually murdered ibn furak i mentioned it before as well when i had a previous library chat about the uh refutation controversies and i mentioned ebin furak as well they hated him in furak so much that they literally poisoned him to death uh and so even furak died a very uh ignoble death because of this but of course his memory and his mother lived on and i'm gonna stop and pause here to simply set up the stage for our next lecture so now the stage is as follows asiadism has basically been exiled from from baghdad is hardcore fanatical yanni proto-humbly hardcore we're talking about barbara hambalism not even tamiya and himbalism hypnotami has another 400 years left to come and ashadi theology is only existing in small private halaquahs in baghdad and now finally there is a window open for it where all the way in neishapur ibn furak opens up and it is at this madrasa where the movers and shakers are going to study that will eventually eventually work their way up to the sultan's palace and through the sultan work their way back to baghdad and from baghdad work their way to the rest of the entire muslim world this is where i'm going to stop and just mention one of the campus things stop here uh you do realize these library chats a lot of them are impromptu so my mind just wanders here and there i'm going to mention this now and i'll mention it again in my next lecture the reason why i was interested in this topic for the longest time when i was uh athadi sadafi was i was really getting very like obsessed with the question of why ashaidism dominated muslim intellectual thought for 500 years and if not more than that why why did it dominate from you know 500 600 hd onwards there is no question by the time even tamiya comes ashatism is the dominant trend and it has remained the dominant trend uh up until our times in terms of intellectual nobody can deny this and in the middle ages of islam please jania dear salafi really please calm down be realistic and don't don't become fanatical let's be real here and i knew this even in medina that's what it troubled me at the time why is the ashadi school the dominant school from 600 hijri you know up until premodernity and when i say dominant i mean intellectually dominant i know what i'm saying here i know the responses oh the masses are as they are yes leave the masses alone in terms of in terms of in terms from the 600 onwards the vast majority of them were either a smaller percentage were maturity why this troubled me and i was very curious about this question and in medina i used to keep on asking and researching and no solid answers were given we were given our standard and this and that and firkanagi type of stuff and that's when i decided to do my own research in this regard and of course any i had no idea but in my own way of studying i left my sectarian mindset behind me and i'm no longer obsessed with why for the sake of refuting i'm obsessed with why simply for the sake of understanding and the fact of the matter undeniable fact politics plays a massive role it plays a role in the rise of modern atheism sadism it plays a role and it played a role in the rise of ishidism as well as it used to play a role in the baghdadian abbasid in the orthodoxization of the hambadi school politics and religion are always interconnected and there's almost always an inexplicable link between politics and between mainstreaming of certain views and ideas and so it just so happened i'm kind of giving the the talk away but not the details it just so happened that certain influential ashari scholars were at the right time and the right place and the right political milieu such that they were picked up and their views and ideas were mainstreamed across the umma at an opportune time when there was a vacuum and so those ideas kind of sort of i call it the first domino and i'm jumping the gun here although this if it's too critical for you i apologize i wasn't supposed to talk about this in this talk today's talk was to set up the stage and it will be a necessary precursor to the next talk and with that insha allah i will pause here and whenever we do the next talk you would have had to listen to this one and the previous one to set the stage for the rise and the dominance of the ashari school today's talk was simply the beginnings of sunni and with that insha allah i will see you next time [Music] foreign

Channel: Yasir Qadhi

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Keywords: yasir, qadhi, official, islamic, scholar, Islam, Quran, Sunnah, Hadith, Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi, Peace in Islam, Mercy of Allah, Blessings of Allah, Qadr of Allah, Islamic Lecture, Atheism in Islam, Zakat, Yasir Qadhi, Shaykh Dr. Yasir Qadhi, Islam in 2021, Jummah Khutbah, Modern Islamic Issues, Muslim Youth, Islamic Questions Answered, Islamic Theology, Library Chats With Shaykh Dr. Yasir Qadhi, Library Chat #20: The Rise of Sunnī Kalām (3rd/4th Hijrī Centuries)

Id: NjoB9UYmv1Q

Length: 55min 8sec (3308 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 02 2022