Shahrastānī on the Arcana of the Qur'an: A Preliminary Evaluation

Abstract

The oeuvre of cAbd al-Karim al-Shahrastani (d. 548/1153), whose epithets 'the Crown of the Faith' (taj al-din), 'the Most Learned' (al-afdal) and even 'the Proof of God' (hujjat al-haqq) bespeak his high repute, nevertheless lifts the veil on a startlingly bold and even eclectic religious intellectual of Seljuq times. The atypical drift may even be sensed in his best known works, the great doxography Kitab al milal wa'l-nihal (The Book of Religions and Sects'),1 written in 521/1127, and the Ashcari treatise Nihayat al-iqdam fi cilm al-kalam (The Limit of Daring in the Discipline of Theology'), written around 530/1135. For while the first takes over much data from earlier works like Ibn al-Rawandi's Fadihat al-Muctazila and Baghdad!'s Farq bayn al-firaq, it can also be viewed as set apart within the genre through its largely non-polemical tone and sweeping range of interest. The Nihaya, for its part is notable for the rigour and refinement with which the Ashcari school's familiar positions are unfolded. Unexpectedly, even in this dogmatic context the sheer breadth of Shahrastani's concerns remains evident, insofar as he only sets out the views of his school colleagues after detailing the alternatives espoused by Muctazilis, philosophers, Materialists (dahriyya), Shici extremists (ghulat) and even pseudo-Sabaeans and 'Brahmins'. Moreover, the Nihaya contains clear cases of the author's disagreement with the historical norms of Ashcari thought, as was noted by Guillaume in his far from satisfactory edition and translation of the work, and also by others.2