Abu Al Hudhayl Al Allaf

Abu al-Hudhayl al-Allaf, that is Muhammad ibn al-Hudhayl, one of the leading Mu'tazilites of Basra. The data give his birth as 135 AH and his death as 235 AH, at the start of al-Mutawakkil's caliphate. ³ The "Fihrist" says that he took justice and unity from Uthman al-Tawil, and that Uthman took it from Wasil ibn Ata, and that he was in the class of the writers famous for Mu'tazilism after Wasil according to al-Balkhi. ⁴

Ahmad Amin describes him as one of the strongest figures of the Basra school and the head of Mu'tazilism in his age, who mixed the principles of Mu'tazilism with those of philosophy. He says that al-Ma'mun held sessions of debate in which Abu al-Hudhayl was the master, that he disputed with heretics, Magians and Dualists, and that they related that more than three thousand converted to Islam at his hands. ³

Al-Mas'udi quotes him on love in the session of Yahya al-Barmaki. ⁵

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.) entry describes Abu l-Hudhayl Muhammad b. al-Hudhayl b. 'Ubayd Allah b. Makhul al-'Abdi, of the 'Abd al-Qays, as the first speculative theologian of the Mu'tazila. He was born in Basra, where he lived in the quarter of the foragers ('allafun), which gave him his nisba. The article gives three possible dates of birth (about 131-135/748-753). He settled in Baghdad in 203/818-9 and died, at a great age, in 226/840-1, or in the reign of al-Wathiq or of al-Mutawakkil by other reports. He was indirectly a pupil of Wasil b. 'Ata' through 'Uthman al-Tawil, and he was known for his poetry. The article says that al-Ma'mun often invited him to court for theological disputes. All his writings are lost; his disciples included al-Nazzam, who quarrelled with him over the atom, and Yahya b. Bishr al-Arrajani. ⁶

The article describes the early Mu'tazili theology as polemical: it opposed the anthropomorphism of popular Islam and the traditionists, the determinism that the Umayyads favoured, and the deification of 'Ali by extreme Shi'ites. Abu l-Hudhayl was the first to use philosophy in these disputes, and he answered Manichaeans, dualists, the dahriyya and the theologians who adopted gnostic doctrines. The article lists his doctrines as stated by him: God is not a body and resembles nothing, and his attributes (knowledge, power, life) are identical with his essence. Movement is created, so it will end, and the paradise and hell will come to rest. Man has the power to do evil, is responsible for the consequences of his actions (the theory of tawallud), and the atom (jawhar) and the accidents (a'rad) of bodies become the basis for theology, cosmology and ethics. The article says the Muslim theologians rejected the doctrine of the ending of movement. ⁶

The article notes that the theses of Abu l-Hudhayl reached later writers through al-Ash'ari's Maqalat, which reproduces them with the school tradition, and through al-Shahrastani. The encyclopaedia says that Ibn al-Rawandi, a former Mu'tazili, misrepresented Abu l-Hudhayl in his Fadihat al-Mu'tazila, and that al-Khayyat's refutation of Ibn al-Rawandi, the Intisar, allows the real motives to be recovered. This is the encyclopaedia's own account of the sources and is given here as attributed to it, not as the museum's view. ⁷