فصلنامه نقد و نظر
سال بیستم شماره 1 (پیاپی 77، بهار 1394)

When the Imamiyya school of Kalam in Kufa declined in the middle of the third century A.H., some Imamiyya and Mutazila scholars of Kalam-who converted to Shiism and are not much known-came to represent the Imamiyya Kalam; they had tendencies towards Mutazila thoughts and turned away from the Imamiyya Kalam in the Presence Period (the period when Shiite Imams were present). In this paper we rely on Abu al-Ḥasan al-Asharī's Maqālāt al-Islāmīyyīn (written in the last decade of the third century A.H.) to rediscover some views of this school of Kalam and investigate the approach of scholars of the School of Baghdad, from Nawbakhtīs, who are almost contemporary to the above-mentioned school of Kalam, to the age of al-Shaykh al-Mufīd and Sayyid al-Murtaḍā. The upshot is that since this school shared Mutazila views in many issues of Kalam and turned away from the official positions of the early Imamiyya Kalam, the School of Baghdad reacted differently to their views, but, eventually in the age of Sayyid al-Murtaḍā, the Imamiyya Kalam fully agreed with their views.

From a historical point of view, the Imamiyya Kalam can be investigated in terms of different schools of thought. Until the fifth century A.H., there were two Shiite Schools of Kalam in Qum and Baghdad with the latter gradually turning into the official reading of Shiism. After al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī's death in 460 A.H. (1067), many of his and Sayyid al-Murtaḍā's students immigrated to Rey and paved the ground for a new school of Kalam. Scholars of Kalam in Rey can be classified in three generations, with the third generation having obviously different views from those of the School of Baghdad. The emphasis on the issue of Imamate, just like the School of Baghdad, and its intellectual interactions with later Mutazili scholars are characteristics of this school of Kalam.

Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Nawbakht was a philosopher and a scholar of Kalam whose life history is subject to much controversy. In this paper, I will draw upon various pieces of evidence to show that Nawbakhti was a scholar contemporary with Sayyid al-Murtaḍā and Abu al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī. Moreover, I seek to scrutinize his influences on issues of Kalam, especially among later scholars, as well as his importance and his scholarly and historical place, through a comparison of his views with those of Sayyid al-Murtaḍā (an early scholar of Kalam) and 'Allāma al-Ḥillī (a later scholar of Kalam).

An important issue in studies of Ibn Sina and Kalam is that of the interaction between the former's philosophical tradition with the latter and the extent to which Ibn Sina's philosophical doctrines influenced Shiite and Sunni scholars of Kalam. One consequence of the development of Ibn Sina's philosophical thoughts in the middle period was the formation of the school of philosophical Kalam among Sunni scholars by Fakhr al-Rāzī and among Imamiyya scholars by Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī. The introduction of Ibn Sina's philosophical doctrines into debates of Kalam led to remarkable developments in the ways in which Imamiyya scholars of Kalam treated various issues of Kalam. In this paper, I will compare the epistemological issues of the pre-philosophical Imamiyya Kalam known as the Imami School of Baghdad with those of the Imamiyya School of philosophical Kalam, and I will then explain various influences of Ibn Sina's philosophical tradition on these issues in the middle period of Imamiyya Kalam. Some important aspects of this fundamental change include: semantic developments of some epistemological terms, new categorizations for knowledge, the introduction of some epistemological principles, accounts of how human beings achieve knowledge, and new problems for epistemology.

Imamiyya scholars of Kalam in the 7th century A.H. did not exhibit the same reaction to philosophy. The encounters of two prominent Imamiyya scholars of Kalam with philosophy are worthy of consideration. Ibn Maytham al-Baḥrānī exhibited tendencies towards philosophy, on the one hand, by providing combinations of philosophical and kalami doctrines, applying philosophical principles and doctrines in order to show views in Kalam, applying philosophical notions to the issues of Kalam, and even preferring philosophical views in some cases. On the other hand, he shows his attachment to Kalam by opposing some philosophical doctrines. However, al-Muhaqqiq al-Ḥillī showed his attachment to the common Imamiyya tradition of Kalam and opposition to philosophy by refusing to use philosophical vocabulary, ignoring the philosophical worldview, and criticizing some philosophical doctrines.

Al-Shaykh Ḥurr al-'Āmilī was an Akhbari scholar who made helpful contributions concerning epistemology and the sources of knowledge in his work. The problem of sources of knowledge, as it is related to problems of Kalam, includes three issues: (1) the scope of each source of knowledge and their capacity for religious knowledge, (2) their relations and interactions with one another: which source can yield information on the basis of the data of which source? And (3) resolving the discrepancies and apparent contradictions between the data provided by difference sources. Al-Shaykh Ḥurr al-'Āmilī was in particular concerned with the latter problem. He took fiṭrat (innate capacities), reason and divine revelation (waḥy) to be sources of knowledge, and gave a detailed answer to the above questions.