The al-Qushayri fitna between the Hanbalis and the Ash'aris in Baghdad

فتنة القشيري بين الحنابلة والأشعرية ببغداد

c. May 1076 CE · Shawwal 469 AH

In Shawwal 469 fighting broke out in Baghdad between the Hanbalis and the Ash'aris. The cause was that Abu Nasr ibn al-Qushayri returned to Baghdad and sat in the Nizamiyya denouncing the Hanbalis and attributing anthropomorphism (tajsim) to them. Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi inclined to support him and wrote to al-Nizam complaining of the Hanbalis and asking for his help. The mob agreed to attack the Sharif Abu Ja'far in his mosque; he had arranged a group to repel them, who pelted the attackers with bricks, and the fitna broke out. A tailor from the Tuesday market was killed, and a cry went up at the Nawbi gate: 'Al-Mustansir bi-llah, O Mansur!' Abu Ishaq was angry and went off to Bab al-Taq, beginning to prepare for departure, but the caliph sent to bring him back. Then the vizier Fakhr al-Dawla ibn Jahir summoned Sharif Abu Ja'far for reconciliation; he attended with Abu Ishaq, Abu Sa'd al-Sufi and Abu Nasr ibn al-Qushayri. Abu Ishaq kissed the Sharif's head and said: 'It is as you say, but when you were poor your inner feelings were not visible to us; when the agents and the sultan and Khwaja Buzurg came to you, you revealed what had been hidden.' To Abu Sa'd al-Sufi he said: 'Sheikh, as for the jurists, when they speak on matters of principle they have standing; but you are a man of amusement, music and sudden fancies.' When al-Qushayri rose he said: 'If anyone could be thanked for his innovation it would be this young man, for he confronted us with what was in him and did not flatter us as those two did.' Then he said: 'What reconciliation is there between us? Reconciliation is between litigants over an office, worldly matters, the division of an inheritance or a dispute over property. But these people claim we are unbelievers, and we claim that whoever does not hold our belief is an unbeliever; so what reconciliation is there between us?' The Sharif declared that his two grandfathers, the caliphs al-Qa'im and al-Qadir, had made their belief public and had it read in their registers, and that the Khurasanis and the pilgrims carried it to the ends of the earth: 'and we follow their belief.' It is said that the Sharif fell ill afterwards and his legs swelled; it is also said that one of the jurist-enemies slipped poison into his shoe, God knows best ¹.