al ma'na richard frank (jaos)

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248 FISCHnL: Exploration of the Jewish Antiquities of Cochin

The facsimiles of the copper plate inscription,first brought to the notice of Europe by Anquetildu Perron in 1771, then around 1780 by A.s'Gravezande and in 1806 by Buchanan have beensupplanted by the meticulous critical work carriedout by experts in the field during the nineteenthcentury, thus affording a sound basis for theunderstanding of these remnants of the Jewishantiquities in Cochin.

This historical-critical survey may have indi-cated the great efforts made throughout the lasttwo and a half centuries to acquaint the Westernworld with these Jewish antiquities of Cochin.During the 20th century, the interest in them didnot diminish as attested by the flow of publicationsby casual visitors as well as serious scholars.106

106 Among those from the second half of the 19th cen-tury, mention ought to be made of Benjamin II (1850),J. Sapir (1860), S. Reinman (1884), E. N. Adler(1906), E. Thurston (1909), C. Z. Kloetzel (1938), andD. Mandelbaum (1938).

AL-MAtNA: SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE TECHNICAL MEANINGS OF THE TERMIN THE KALAM AND ITS -USE IN THE PHYSICS OF MU'AMMAR

RICHARD M. FRANKTHE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

ITHERE HAVE BEEN A NUMBER OF ATTEMPTS to

define the meaning of the term matna as it is usedin the thought of Muammar and to describe thesignificance of the concept in his system, as wellas to trace the origin of the term and concept to

earlier, non-Islamic sources. The most recent ofthese is the short article of Professor H. Wolfsonin Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of Hamil-ton A. R. Gibb.' Indeed, the remarks which Ishall present here were, in some sense, provokedby my reading of Professor Wolfson's article, for,though I must confess (to borrow a phrase fromPlato) s/tAav yE rtva /HE Kat aiCo C'K 7ratso3 cxovaavin regard to Prof. Wolfson's contributions to thehistory of philosophy and to the study of Islamicthought, I cannot but differ from his understand-ing of the term and its function in the physicsof Mutammar. The simple fact is that thereremains a clear need, within the body of scholar-

ship devoted to the kalam, for a systematic studyboth of the term itself, in the specialised use inwhich it is found in Mutammar's work and that ofother kalam writers, and of the structure or func-tion of the concept in the physics peculiar toMutammar.

It is not my intention here to make a detailedanalysis of Mucammar's entire theological andphilosophical system. Rather, I shall limit myselfto determining the exact meaning of the termmatna' in the kalam generally and to trying toplace this meaning within what I should call thephysics of Mutammar's system. This is the abso-lute prerequisite to any attempted hypothesis con-cerning the source of the concept through parallelsin classical or Hellenistic thought. The term, inthis specialised use, is to be found virtuallythroughout the kalam (at least into the eleventhcentury) and it is important, I think, to keep inmind that Mutammar, in all probability, was ledby reasons first historical and then of logical con-sistency within his own theoretical framework, tocarry the principle denoted by it to a kind ofextreme.

Although the author best known for his use ofthe term is unquestionably Mutammar, t would be

best to begin with a brief review and examinationof the term as it is used by other kalam authorsfrom abuf 1-iudhayl into the period followingabuf lalsim al-6lubba&i nd al-'A3arli but prior tothe general tendency to hellenize much of thekalam and its terminology. I shall not make anypretense of completeness of citations (for they arefar too many, especially in the extensive writingsof 'Abd al-Oxabbar) ut shall limit myself to a few

'Ed. George Makdisi (Leiden, 1965), pp. 673-88; onearlier studies by Horovitz and Horten, cf. ibid., 685 ff.



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FRANK: Al-mata: Some Reflections on the Technical Meaning of the Term in the Kalem 249

citations illustrative of typical usage, found inseveral authors of different periods. This shouldbe quite sufficient to establish the overall patternof the term's use and, this done, it will then beeasier to discuss the meaning and function of thema'dni in the work of Mutammar.

Professor Wolfson remarks that in restatingthe position of Mutammar we find, with both eAbdal-Qahir al-Bagdadi and gahrastani, an apparentsubstitution of the term "accident" (tarad) forthe original matna.s The fact is that in manyinstances the term matna is indeed used where wemight well expect the word accident; the two arefrequently used almost interchangeably. Al-'A9tari,in the Maqdiltt al-'Islamityin, has a short sectionconcerning the question of whether "the maan'which subsist in bodies are called accidents." 4Again, abfU Il-Hudhayl l- Allaf is quoted as sayingthat the act of perception ('idra&c) s a mana.We find, in another place, the inverse of thisproposition, as it were, argued by al-'As'ari, whosays that the act of seeing does not imply thecoming to be of a matna in the object seen, i. e.,no new, intrinsic determination of the being ofthe object that defines it in its being perceived.Going on in his discussion of the vision of God bythe blessed (ibid., ? 74), al-'Astari says that " someof our fellows say that the one who holds [theaforementioned thesis] must perforce mean, when

he mentions taste, touch, and smell, either thatGod (the Exalted) creates an act of perception ofHimself in these members, without there coming

to be in Him any maca', or must mean that amatna comes to be in Him. Now if he means thecoming to be of a macna n Him, this is impossible;but if he means the coming to be of an act ofperception in us, this is possible."

So also, rather frequently, we find motion(Qaraka) and in general the so-called 'akwan (themodes of being-in-space), referred to by the termmatnd. In the classical proof of the existence ofGod that is based on the temporality of bodies,attributed to abuf 1-Hudhayl, the first two premisesare formulated by 'Abd al-xabbar in the followingterms: "that there exist ma"'ni [sc., union, sepa-ration, movement, and rest] in bodies; and thatthese ma'Ani are generated." The same author,again, refers

to desire (sahwa) as a macna, in apassage that we can take as typical of all thesecases in which matna is used as the equivalent ofaccident. He says: 8 "Now as for how he knowsthat he is desiring because of a macnd, t is this:he becomes desiring something subsequent to hisnot being desirous of it, all the rest of his statesbeing the same [as they were]; there must, there-fore, be something ['amr] which necessitates hisbeing desiring and there is no way in which hemay become desiring except through the presenceof a matna in him. He must, then, become desir-ing because of an act of desiring [li-sahwa]."

Ibn tAyyas, another member of the Basra school

of the Muttazila, denies that the actuality of pain('alam) is a macnd, arguing that "the pain whichoccurs in his body is not due to a macna but ratherman suffers pain only at the disjoining [of thematerial parts] of his body, since his health hasbeen vitiated and the equilibrium of his body hasceased." 9 Pain is, he goes on to say, a particularperception ('idradk), defined by its content, not adistinct accident or macnd, viz., al-'alam.

Qudra is described as a macna by 'Abd al-Gab-bar: 10 "we have shown that the agent acts onlythrough his being qadir and that he is qadir, when

2 op. cit., 677.8 Al-Farq bayn al-firaq (ed. M. Badr, Cairo, 1328/

1910), 137. and K. al-Milal wan-nihal (ed. M. Badran,Cairo 1327/1910-1375/1955), 98.

' Ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul, 1929-30), 369. I do notthink that one has to do here with the frequent use ofma'nt as a term for " thing" in the most general sense(on which cf. infra, n. 15).

6 'Abd al-(abbar, al-Mujni, 4 (ed. M. Hilmi and A.al-Afifi, Cairo, n. d.), 55, line 15; the author's disagree-ment here is that whereas abA 1-Hudhayl holds that'idrdk is a distinct and separate accident existing in theheart ('ilm al-qalb = an interior act of knowing) heconsiders it to be a kind of function of the faculty ofsense (al-hMssa) and its organ, within the structuredoperation of the organism (binya) ; cf. the discussion ofthe same topic, ibid., 34 f. On the position of abA1-Hudhayl, cf. also Maqdldt, 569 and 312, and on hisgeneral notion of the discreteness of the accidents ingeneral, cf. infra, n. 25.

6 Kitdb al-Luma' (ed. R. McCarthy in The Theology ofal-Ash'ari, Beyrouth, 1953), ?? 68 ff; on the same argu-ment, cf. also 'Abd al-6abbhr, op. cit., 137 f.

?garh al-'usifl al-hamsa (ed. A. Ousman, Cairo, 1384/1965), 95 (where the

attribution to abil 1-Hudhayl isgiven) and al-Muhit bit-taklif (ed. 0. Azmi, Cairo, n. d.)36, where the same formulation with the term ma'nais given.

8 Al-Mu nf, 4, 19, lines 17-20; in translating the pas-sage I have maintained the participial adjectives sincethey are central to the structure of his thought, eventhough they are somewhat awkward in English.

9 Al-Mufntf, 4, 29.10 Al-Mugni, 5 (ed. M. el-Khodeiri, Cairo, n. d.) 49,

lines 6 ff.



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250 FRANK: Al-macnA: Some Reflections onr the Technical Meaning of the Term in the Kala'm

he is corporeal, on account of a mactna [suchthat], if it were absent, he would no longer beqadir. The point here-and it is one upon whichthe author dwells at length-is that of the distinc-tion between God, who is qadir per se (bi-dhtihi,li-ma' huwa 'alayhi fi nafsihi, etc.) and whose

being-qadir (kawnuhu qa'diran) is a hal, andthe corporeal agent who is qaydir hrough the acci-dent (arad) of qudra that is present in him. Soalso, in another place, we find macna used of theact of knowing (rilm), where, arguing to provethat God is knowing, etc., per se and not throughdistinct, inherent acts (accidents or attributes) ofknowing, etc., the same author says 12 that thismay be demonstrated by the fact that the veryattribute

[$ifa]of knowing, when it is necessary,'3

is not contingent upon any matna. The mannerof its non-contingency upon a marna is nothingother than its necessity. Indeed, if it were possi-ble, there would have then to be some matna, butsince it is necessary, it is independent of anyma'na. Thus we know that the necessary attribute[a$-$ifatu l-wadiba] is not contingent upon anymarnan nd that the cause [-illa] of the non-contin-gency is the necessity and nothing else. If thiswere not so, then in the matter of His knowing(be He exalted), it would have to be a knowingcontingent upon a manan and this would lead tounrestricted marAXnA2. inally, in another place,

he refers to the lack of the power of efficientcausality ('agz) in parallel fashion, saying'4 thatin this manner one says of one who is incapable

of acting [al-4'aiz], that he is incapable of thus-and-so, in that the power of efficient causality is

correlated to the other. Hence the absence of thepower of efficient causality is analogous, even if itis not affirmed n a strict sense as a real macnd.

From these few examples (and many moremight be cited) we can begin to determine theprimary content of the term. From one stand-point, the word manad, n all the citations givenabove, is the equivalent of 'arad, accident, as, forexample, 'Abd al-6abbar, in the last two texts,means by ma na precisely the act of knowing or ofqudra, as a distinct, real act, existing or inheringin the subject and separable from it. On the otherhand, it is equally clear from the same contextsthat the reference is not simply to states and con-ditions, considered merely as distinct realitiespresent in a subject, but rather as they constituteseparate determinants of its being. That is to say,rather than regarding motion, perception, desire,etc., as accidents ( a radl) of the subject in whichthey inhere or occur (kala, kadata) or as sepa-rable attributes, permanent or transient, of thesubject as qualified (mawsftf) thereby, they areregarded as the intrinsic causal determinants ofthe thing's being-so: the actuality of the accidentof motion in the subject is the immediate causaldeterminant of its being-in-motion and so also theother accidents are the immediate, intrinsic causesof its being mudrilc, mus'tahi, etc.

In this sense, the term is an equivalent of the

term cause ('illa) and this is one of the mean-ings by which Abd al-xabbar defines it.15 Funda-

t1 The question involved here is that the incorporeal(i. e., God) is qddir per se; the distinction between theqddir bi-nafsihi and the qadir bi-qudra occupies a re-markable quantity of space in the writings of the QA41,being the center of one of the chief quarrels between theMu'tazila and the followers of al-'Ag'ari.

12 Al-Muhl't bit-taklif, 173 (at the bottom) ; cf. alsoibid., 172 f; cf. also garh al-'usul al-hamsa, 199 where,in the same argument, 'illa is used for ma'nn.

13 The necessary (al-w ib) in the present contextis that whose non-existence is impossible, as opposed tothe possible (al-g4'iz), viz., what may exist or notor what exists at one time and not another; note thatthe term mumkin is not, as a technical term for thepossible, a kalam term; rather, the kalAm uses gd'iz andsahih al-wugld (which may be distinguished in certaincontexts) as the normal terms for the possible until theperiod in which the vocabulary tends to become that ofthe philosophers.

14 Al-Mujni, 5, 247.

15 Ibid., 253; there are a number of contexts in whichwe find that the terms 'illa and ma'n& seem to be usedinterchangeably, e. g., in the Tamhid of al-BaqillAni (ed.M. el-Khodeiri and M. abu Rida, Cairo, 1366/1947), p.42, the author says that in the case of a body's movingafter having been at rest, its moving must be eitherper se or through a cause (li-nafsihi 'aw li-'illa) butthen, in repeating the same premise several lines furtheron, he says that it must be either per se or because of amaPna. 'Illa here, it should be noted, is an intrinsiccausal determinant (cf. also infra). In the same way,al-'Ag'arl, in listing various opinions on the classickalAm question of whether God creates on account of acause (li-'illa) or not (Maqalat, 252 f.) quotes

Mu'am-mar as saying that He does (ibid., 253; cf. also infra,n. 33) whereas, to judge from Mu'ammar's usuallyquoted usage, he probably used the term ma'na. Con-cerning the use of the term in the sense of somethingreal or something affirmed as having reality (gay'mutbat-cf. al-MuIni, loc. cit.) we need make no com-ment here save to note that in some instances there isa degree of ambiguity concerning the strict sense inwhich the term is to be taken, as for example, whereabfil-Hudhayl is said to have held that the soul is a



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FRANK: Al-matna: Some Reflections on the Technical Meaning of the Term in the Kalem 251

mentally, there can be little doubt that the termmatna, in this particular technical use, representsin origin an equivalent of Syriac ?elleta and Greekairta. Both the Greek and Syriac terms, it shouldbe noted, carry also the sense of charge, ac-cusation, pretext, etc., and so validate theparallel also in the usual, non-technical use of theterm ma'na' n the sense of meaning, intent,etc.

Before passing on, it might be well to notebriefly the differences between the terms for cause,viz., sabab and 'illa, as they are used in the kalamand to remark briefly on the use of the latter asit relates to that of matna in the sense outlinedabove.

Excluding instances in which the terms are notused strictly-where close distinctions of meaningare not insisted upon-we find the term sabab(most often in the plural, 'asbaib) used to denotethe element in a chain or concatenation of causesor the factors in a causal sequence leading fromsome initial act or event to a resulting event inanother subject than that in which the sequencewas initiated. The relation of the sabab to itsresult (musabbab) need not be necessary; i. e., theterm, per se, does not imply that the result followsimmediately and inevitably from the sabab or thesequence of 'csbab, nor, again, is the sabab neces-sarily the cause of but a single effect. Thus,

according to Bisr b. al-Muttamir, describing thenotion of tawallud, whatever arises as the conse-quent of our act . . ., all this is our act, comingto be as the result of the sequence of causes[3asbab] which result from us, as for example thehand's or foot's being broken when a person fallsis the act of the one who occasioned its cause

['ata bi-sababihi], as also the soundness of thehand, by being set, or of the foot by being set, isthe act of the man. 16 This use of sabab as acausal element or factor in a sequence of eventsor as the occasion of an event is found throughoutthe kalam, especially in discussions of tawalludand whenever the term is used strictly, in contra-distinction to illa, it is to be taken thus. 1Ila, onthe other hand, is used, when used in a strict sense,most commonly as the direct or primary determi-nant cause that produces its effect (ma'lul) im-mediately and necessarily, without the interven-tion of any other causal factor; the existence ofthe 'illca necessitates that of the ma liul and a single

illa, n contrast to sabcab, an produce but a singleeffect.17 There is some debate among the earlymutakallimn as to whether the actuality of the'illa and that of its mablul are simultaneous orwhether the former may be temporally prior to thelatter; according to al-(ubba1 it may precede by asingle, indivisible instant (waqt) and he adds thatwhatever may precede its effect by more than asingle instant is not an cilla.18 Most importantly,the ailla is most often (almost by definition) anintrinsic cause; it is interior to the thing andautomatically produces its effect. Generally thus,according to al-Gubbal' and his followers, no act(fif1-being by definition the the action of an agentwho knows, wills, and intends it) can be the effect

of an tilla or, to put it the other way, no ma1lulcan be fi'l. The same distinction is held byal-'Astarl and goes back, no doubt, to the earliestkalam. The act of the agent can, however, bemusabbab (at least for those who hold the doctrineof tawallud), as an agent may initiate a sequenceof 'asbAb. Therefore it is said that the sababdoes not necessitate its effect as the tilla necessi-tates its effect. The former comes to be through itonly as originating in the qadir, since he is theone who causes the being of the musabbab bycausing the being of the sabab. For this reasonit is possible [for an agent] to effect [several]actions, separately or together; this is not, how-ever, possible in the case of causes ['ilal] sincetheir action is by way of necessity. 19

mamna other than the spirit (Maqdldt, 337) andal-'AMarl's statement (ibid., 336) that Aristotle heldthe soul to be a ma'na so elevated that it is not subjectto certain things and his report (ibid., 335) that somepeople hold the spirit to be a fifth ma'n4t other than thefour natures. In these instances we might have ex-pected the term say' (thing, being) or 'amr (which isused by 'Abd al-dabbar in the passage cited in n. 8 aboveprecisely as a completely neutral term, in order to avoidma'n& which bears that meaning which he wishes toaffirm in the context); on the other hand, Mu'ammarand abA 1-Hudhayl are quoted in the same work (339)as affirming that the soul is an accident ('arad).It is possible that the term, even in these contexts, doesdenote something like a functioning or operativecausal element or the like. For an instance of ma'n4as the equivalent of 'illa in a less restricted sense thanthat pointed out below, cf. at-Mujnf, 4, 337 f.

I Maqalat, 401.17 N. B. the discussion in al-Mujni, 4, 312-14.18 MaqAlat, 390; (I am not concerned here with the

question of 'iflat al-i*tiydr); on the same subject, cf.al-Mugn', 5, 76 (11. 13 ff.) and 46.

IAl-Mujntd, 4, 313; cf. also Sarh al-'usill al-6amsa,98 f.



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To return to our principal subject then, we findthe term manac used frequently in the sense of'illa in such a way that it is a kind of equivalentof the term earad, in that the latter may be con-sidered the immediate cause or determinant of theeffect in the thing of its being-so. Thus 'Abdal-Cabbar refers to heat and cold by the termma na in that they are the immediate determinantsof a body's being hot or cold and goes on to saythat it is not possible that a single maena shouldbe the necessitating cause [muftib] of heating[tashin] and of cooling [tabrid], simply becausethat particular heat [karaira] by which a thing ishot is contrary to that particular coldness by whichit is cold. For this reason it is impossible that asingle thing [say'] should be the necessitatingcause of heating a body and of cooling it. 20 Thepoint that I would make here is that in the kalamthe term mana6 (within the area of meaning hereunder discussion) nearly always means, in onesense or another, an intrinsic, determinant causeof some real aspect of the being of the subject.For most authorities, whether al-'AsAarl and hisschool or the Mutazila, this determinant cause isusually an accident ('arad) or attribute (qifa), butalways an accident or attribute considered as adistinct and separate cause of the thing's being-so(kawnuhu kada' = das Sosein). This may beillustrated quite well by a single passage: in dis-

cussing the fact that God's potential of causalityis infinite and the fact that some things are, never-theless, impossible, 'Abd al-Nabbar notes that theobjective possibility (Pi~ha) or impossibility of aparticular thing's being involves a change of rela-tion between God and the possible object of Hiscausality as it bears on its possibility and impossi-bility at one time or another; he says then that thealternation of the relationship resides in the

coming to be of a new state (tagaddud as-sifa)on the part of the potential object, since God'sstate is eternal; otherwise God, like human beings,

would be qa'dir hrough an act of qudra, because,when an attribute [sifa] is subject to becoming or

alteration of being [ta'addud], without therebeing here anything that necessitates its newnessor alteration, then that which necessitates itsbeing-new must perforce be a mana' [sc. qudra]that renders it necessary. 1

Taking mana& hen in this sense, the most com-

mon problem which we find discussed in thesources, where the term is used, is this: given themaend as the intrinsic causal determinant of acertain aspect of the being of the thing, is it, ofand in itself, the sufficient cause of the presenceof the attribute (the being-so) ? As it is treatedin the sources, by Mucammar and the other kalamwriters, this question takes on two forms; firstthat of the cause or ground of the being of theparticular accident or attribute, as belonging toor inhering in the particular subject at a particu-lar moment of time and in a specific place, andsecondly, the inverse of this, viz., the cause orground of the particular subject (body, atom, etc.)as it is, in its unique individuality, the subject(mahall) of the particular attribute at a par-ticular moment of time. The questions are quitedistinct in that the former involves the cause ofthe attribute as it comes to be in the particularsubject in such wise that the attribute is itselfimmediately the determinant factor of the thing'sbeing-so, while, in the latter case, the questioncenters on the subject as mawsuf or qualified bythe particular attribute or accident, so that thequestion becomes one of whether the reality of thebeing-so of the subject is directly grounded in theattribute or whether its being-so is mediated byanother intrinsic causal determinent (maena).Both these aspects of the question will become

amply clear when we take up the formulations ofMu'ammar's theory shortly. First however, inorder to gain a better general perspective on thequestion, it were well to look at several texts ofother authors. The problem, indeed, is ancient inIslam-as old as the kalam. In examining thequestion, however, one must be careful to deter-mine the precise meaning of the formulae andtheir intent, since sometimes seemingly similarformulae represent the expression of radicallydifferent conceptions and understandings.

The most common aspect under which thisquestion arises, in most of the sources, is, withoutmuch doubt, determined by the thesis of Muam-mar and the 'ashab al-macini; that is, it is formedby the polemic directed against their general posi-tion and its implications. Nevertheless the prob-lem is in no sense the unique property ofMucammar and his followers. We read, for in-stance, that most of the speculative theologianshold that when we affirm that a body is movingafter its having been at rest there must perforce

20 A-tqMuTni, 5, 32 (11. 15ff.).21 Ibid., 4, 330.



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FRANK: Al-ma'na: Some Reflections on the Technical Meaning of the Term in the Kalam 253

be a motion on account of which it has moved, butthe motion is not a motion of the body on accountof the coming to be of some intrinsic causal de-terminant [manan] because of which it is itsmotion, and they hold a like position regarding theother accidents. 22 This statement simply saysthat the motion is itself the sufficient cause of thebody's being in motion without the intervention ofany other cause being necessary to explain theactuality of its being moved. The question of anexternal moving cause is not raised since thefocus is exclusively on the function of the motionas the determinant of the fact of the body's beingmoved. Where one has to do with the question ofthe mamna he problem is not considered by thekalam as one of the extrinsic cause or source of themovement or one of a transfer of energy, throughwhich a new state is effected in the object.23Again, on the same subject, in order to avoid anypossible ambiguity in defining his own notion ofthe relationship between the body as moved andthe reality of the accident of motion in the body,al-6ubba'i says that the motion is a motion ofit [sc. the body] neither per se nor by an intrinsiccausal determinant [macna], while others say thatit is its motion per Se. 24 The positions differin that the latter (that of the others ) wouldseem, according to the formulation, to give agreater ontological independence to the motion as

a distinct element in the complex (gumla) whileal-Oubbai, it would seem, here tends to make themotion more explicitly the actuality of the bodyinsofar as it is in motion. The statement is quitepossibly an indication of the kind of thinkingwhich led his son abft Halim to the formulation

of the theory of 'ahwat.25 Against any inter-mediary determinant in the case of motion 'Abdal-Nabbar argues26 that indeed, we hold that toaffirm the reality, along with the motion, of anintrinsic causal determinant [maena] that, apartfrom the motion, necessitates the body's beingmoved, is to exclude it [sc. the motion] fromnecessitating it, despite the fact that the knowl-edge of its being what necessitates it is well estab-lished since, when its being the necessitating cause[kawnuhad muigiban-leg. mu'gibatan?] is not pos-sible, that which is proximate to it cannot be thenecessitating cause either. Many other examplesmay be found but these few will more than sufficeto demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that

the term matn&, n this technical sense, means animmediate, intrinsic causal determinant.

II

With this preface we may now proceed to abrief examination of Mutammar's use of the con-cept. A number of the principal texts concerningthe maedni n the thought of Mucammar have beencited and translated in the article of Prof. Wolfsonmentioned above. I shall here restrict myself totreating the citations found in the Kitab al-In-titisar of al-Hayyat and those of the Maqailat ofal2AsAari; these are the earliest sources of ourinformation on the subject and are quite adequateto the present discussion. Furthermore, there aresome grounds, as we shall see, to believe that someof the later sources have, in part, at least, restruc-tured certain aspects of the original conception ofthe problem in such wise as to distort Mu'ammar'strue position.

In the K. al-Intisdr we read 27 concerningMu-ammar that when he observed two bodies atrest, the one next to the other, and then observedthat one had moved and not the other, Mutammarasserted that the former must have some causaldeterminant [matnan] that came to inhere in itand not the latter,28 on account of which it moved.

22 Maqdldt, 373, 6 if.23 The context is isolated conceptually from any ques-

tion of the source of the impetus or of the initial causewhich determines that there shall be a motion (whetherGod, man, or a natural cause ). It should be re-membered that for the kalAm, primary efficient causalityis generally taken to be conscious and willing, i. e., thatof an agent who is 'dlim, murid, qdsid, but this is nothere in question. The treatment of the accident ofi'timdd verges, in some contexts, towards the questionof the transfer of energy or force, but nonetheless i'timddremains an accident, to be explained like other accidentsin its inherence in the subject.

24 Maqdldt, loc. cit., lines 11 f. Note that the perse (li-nafsihi) here refers only to this limited idea ofthe nexus between the motion (haraka) and the actual-ity of the body's being in motion (kawnuhu mutaharri-kan), not as to whether motion per se belongs to a bodyin such wise that it could not exist without it.

25 Most notably abA 1-Hudhayl tended to insist on theontological discreteness and separateness of all acci-dents; cf. the text cited above (n. 5) and the remarkson this question in my Metaphysics of Created Beingaccording to abi2 1-Hudhayl al-'Alldf (Uitgaven van hetNederlands historisch archaeologisch Instituut te Istan-bul 21, Istanbul, 1966), ch. 2, n. 6.

26 al-Mujni, 4, 327.27 Ed. A. Nader (Beyrouth, 1957), 46.28 CC Ma'nan hallahu duina fdhibihi ; Prof. Wolfson's



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Otherwise it would have no more reason to movethan the other. Since this is a valid judgementtherefore, there must also perforce have come tobe in it a causal determinant on account of whichthe motion came to inhere in one of them ratherthan the other. Otherwise there would be nomore reason for its inhering in one of them thanfor its inhering in the other. So also, if you askconcerning that causal determinant . ... Muchthe same thing is stated by al-'A~sarl, who re-ports 29 that Mutammar held that when a bodymoved it did so on account of a causal determi-nant without which it would have no more reasonto be moved than another and would have no morereason to move at the moment in which it movedthan to have moved prior to that moment.

They[sc. Mutammar and his followers] say: since thisis true, the same situation obtains in the case ofthe motion: were there not a causal determinanton account of which it became a motion of themoved it would have no more reason to be itsmotion than to be the motion of another, and thiscausal determinant was a causal determinant ofthe motion's being a motion of the moved onaccount of another causal determinant, and thecausal determinants have no finite whole or total-ity. Further [they say] that they [sc. the causaldeterminants-ma'Anil] take place in a single in-stant. The same also is the case with blackness

and whiteness, in the former's being the blacknessof one body rather than of another and the latter'sbeing the whiteness of one body rather than ofanother. The same statement is made concerningthe difference of black from white and likewise,according to them, the same is to be said concern-ing all the other classes ['agrnas] and accidents,and that when two accidents differ or are similarone must perforce affirm the reality of infinitecausal determinants. They also assert that thecausal determinants-which have no finite total-

ity-are the act of the place 30 in which theyinhere.

There are a number of elements contained inthese texts which, taken up one by one, shouldlead to a fairly clear definition of Muammar'sposition. First, it is to be noted that the questionto which he addresses himself is one of why thisrather than this. In each case the example isclearly set in terms of the paired attributes thatform, for the kalam, sets or classes ('agnas) ofcontraries: why the realisation of this one and notthat or, more exactly, why, when one is present inseveral subjects (e. g., rest), does its contrary arisein one and not the other? From this it is quiteclear that we have no unambiguous grounds forseeing in the present passages any direct

reflectionof the discussion of the categories found in Plato'sSophist (254E) as has been suggested.31 Themention of the classes or types of accidents, as itoccurs here, is classically consistent with kalamusage, and though there should be little questionthat the generality of kalam speculation on thesubject does ultimately reflect a classical and Hel-lenistic background, the exact determination ofthe source is extremely difficult to make.

Again, it must be noted, it is not classes oraccidents in the sense of this kind of movementor a particular pattern or type of motion (orwhatever other accident) that Mutammar wished

to explain in terms of his infinite series of causaldeterminants. Rather, as is obvious from the con-text, it is the ground of the particular accident(each and every accident, taken individually) asit comes to exist in the particular substrate at theparticular moment of time that he seeks to ex-plain-part of the question that is discussed by thelater kalam and especially the falsafa most fre-quently under the term targth and the mura ih.It is therefore impossible, given the structure ofthe context and the nature of Mu'ammar's orienta-tion to the problem, to find in the term ma-na anydirect and meaningful reflection of Aristotle's con-cept of nature, a suggestion put forth by Prof.Wolf son in his article on the mnatnd.32 However,before hazarding myself any attempt to suggestcertain possible parallels in Greek thought to cer-

rendering of the verb halla (which in the kalam meansto inhere in, come to inhere in) as abide (op. cit.,675) may be misleading since this may tend to implysome permanence of the hall in its mahall, somethingwhich is not to be inferred in the use of the term apartfrom some specification of the context; for examplemotion is said to inhere (ihalla) in a subject but bymost of the mutakallimin cannot have any perdurance(al-baqd') at all.

Maqdalt, 372 f. (I have here paraphrased the be-ginning of this citation-which may be corrupt-sincethe question of the status of motion, as such, is to betaken up below).

30Makan, used here simply as a normal equivalent forbody (#ism), substrate (ma hall), etc., as the subject inwhich the accident inheres; on the substrate however, cf.infra n. 46.

31 Wolfson, op. cit., 676, n. 1; cf. also infra.-32Op. cit., 683.



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tain aspects of Mu'ammar's understanding of thefunction of the matna in the nature of things, it isnecessary to clarify in greater detail the structureof the causal determinant as an operative functionin the material being of things, as this is mani-fested in the recorded fragments of Mu'ammar'sown system. Without defining this as closely ascan be done on the basis of the available informa-tion, we should be seeking a parallel to an unde-termined quantity.

Now albeit the passage of the K. al-Intisair citedabove may be subject to more than one interpreta-tion on some points, several things are clearenough. Particularly, from the report of al-'As ari,which is more precise and detailed, there can be noquestion but that the series of causal determinantsdiscussed is, in the immediate context, entirelyintrinsic to the individual subject. That is,however he may have analysed the more generalproblem of causality as a causal nexus may existbetween two spatially distinct entities, the discus-sion in our present texts, as also that reflected inthe polemics of later authors, concerns only fac-tors or causal determinants which exist and func-tion within the individual subject. The formula-tion of al-'AsMari s absolutely unambiguous: in theinfinite series, the causal determinants exist, asactually determinant of the effect, simultane-ously 33 as an act of the place in which they

inhere.The act or attribute, quality, accident, or what-ever you will, inheres in the body or substrate asthe result of immanent causes. Consistently thenwith his system (cf. also infra) Mu'ammar allowsthe inversion of this proposition (cf. the doubleaspect of the problem mentioned above) so that

we may also say that the true causes or determi-nants of the being of any attribute are immanentor reside in the material subject in which theattribute is realised. From this then there are twoconsequents that we must outline before going onwith the discussion of the mal'ni and taking uptheir relation to the nature of material bodies.The first is that, following the logic of the system(and Mutammar would seem to be nothing if notrigorously consistent, to the end) he says that Godhas not the power to create any accident ('arad)of any kind, but rather creates bodies alone; 34nevertheless he insisted that, in the sense that Godhas created them as endowed with their natures(tab', pl. taba'it) or structure (hay'a), it is ulti-mately and truly He who is the creator of theirtotal reality in all its real aspects.35 Against God'screating accidents he is reported to have arguedthat whoever has the power of causing motion iscapable of being moved, etc.,36 since the effect,within the system, is realised in the subject thatcontains the immediate causes. Bodies, i. e., theatoms that constitute them in their simple materi-ality, are, of themselves, entirely without qualityor attribute (alrota) so that in creating them, intheir unqualified materiality (though containingtheir natures), God is not involved in the im-mediate production of any accident.

The second consequent (which has undoubtedly

deep historical roots though it appears within thesystem as a direct consequent of the thesis men-tioned above) is rather more complicated but,from the standpoint of the present investigation,is of greater significance. Al-'As arl mentions, inthe passage translated above,37 that when twoaccidents differ or are similar, one must perforceaffirm the reality of infinite causal determinants.It is clear from the statement-which is absolutelyexplicit-that the difference or similarity of twoaccidents mentioned in this context refers to theirsimilarity or dissimilarity in terms of theiractuality as they are concretely realised in dis-tinct subjects, not their similarity or dissimi-larity as they may be considered in them-selves, as accidents, apart from their reality insuch subjects. The whole question is laid in termsof the why of the occurrence of a particular acci-

33 See the text cited above, n. 29; cf. also infra. Bythe logic of the system he is led to posit the same kindof infinite series even in God, in order to explain therealisation of His act of creation (cf. Maqdldt, 253,511-as also in His act of knowing, ibid., 168); the actof creation (though the matter was much debated by themutakallimin) could not for Mu'ammar be the thingcreated (i.e., the thing is not, for him, its own being-created) (Maqdtdt, 511 and 514) as it was for some (cf.my Metaphysics of Created Being . . . , ch. 5). WithMu'ammar, thus, we have the creation of the act ofcreation, etc. (ibid. 364 and 511), and the annihilationof the act of annihilation, etc. (ibid., 367, Inti~sar, 22 f.,and al-Bagdadi, 'UAl ad-Din [Istanbul, 1346/1928] 87and 231; cf. also infra, n. 38). Thus, albeit there is anunquestionable parallelism of logic, the infinite series ofma ani do not meaningfully reflect Aristotle's infinity ofsuccessive motions (cf. Wolfson, loc. cit.).

84 Cf. MaqdIdt, 199, 554, 564, and esp., 548 f.85 Cf. Intisdr, 45-47.86l Maqdlat, 548.87 Supra, n. 29.



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dent in a given subject at a particular instantof time and of why similar or dissimilar accidentsoccur in different subjects. The fundamentalattitude and orientation is, if you will, one of athoroughgoing " materialism." 8 The ma'anit orcausal determinants are the cause of their simi-larity or dissimilarity as they determine the sepa-rate existences of accidents as these are distin-guished as like or unlike in distinct substrates.The similarity and dissimilarity are first thus con-sidered in terms of a function of the separatenessof their existence: of their being in spatially (i. e.,materially) distinct and separate subjects, or oftheir being temporally separated in the same sub-ject. Secondly then, the cause of their being so is,in each separate case, the series of intrinsic causaldeterminants inherent in each subject (not in theaccidents). The accidents are present in two sepa-rate substrates through the action of the causaldeterminants intrinsic to each distinct body orsubject, and their similarity or dissimilarity(whether identical accidents, contrary, or differentones are present) is due to the series of causaldeterminants which are the cause of their realityand actuality in being the particular accidents thatthey are in the particular subjects.

While this would seem to be the clear sense ofal-'AsMarl's ccount of Mu'ammar's thought on thesubject and is fully consistent with what we have

examined of the system thus far, the accountgiven by Rahrastan 9 and Raz140 would seem toconceive a rather different problem. That is,where the function of the causal determinants inthe sameness and difference of accidents is con-sidered, according to the report of al-'As arl, fromthe standpoint of their real, material presence intheir substrates, the latter two authorities wouldmake it a question of their difference or similarityconsidered in themselves-in Plato's terms, as it

were, the otherness of the other from the other assuch and the sameness of the same with the same.It is, of course, conceivable that, following thelogic of his system, Mu'ammar made all determina-tion of being and of any modality of being, evenits relational aspects as viewed from a purely con-ceptual standpoint, dependent upon the intrinsiccausal determinants. From the accounts given ofhis theory of the function of the causal determi-nants in producing the actualisation of accidents,however, and that of bodies and their "natures "-a function which is, to judge from the earlierwitnesses, always that of a real (i. e., material)functional determinant, inhering in a concretelyexisting substrate it would appear to me that theaspect from which

Rahrastanland

Razli describethe question is not fully in harmony with the basic"materialism" of the system. That is, withoutviolating the logic-the logos-of the system, itwould be difficult to abstract the accidents fromtheir subjects, inhering and functioning withinwhich the "causal determinants" determine theirbeing and also their being like or unlike; how shallone do this, viz., keep the maani conceptually,while considering the accidents in themselves?The ma'ani reside (inhere) within the materialsubstrate of atoms, not within the accidents, andfor this reason it would be nigh impossible to treatthe accidents in complete abstraction while yet

keeping the determinants which belong to andfunction exclusively within the particular, materialsubstrate from which the abstraction is made. Anynotion of " forms " or " essences " as abstractentities is clearly foreign to the fundamental con-creteness of Mutammar's universe. It is to be sug-gested therefore that most likely the statements ofRahrastanl and Razi on this subject represent atransfer of the problem out of the original contextof Mu'ammar and the earliest kalam into one whichwas more real and present to the later kalam.41It well may be that the account they give is basedon a truncated exposition of the doctrine givenoriginally by al-Kabli and repeated (and perhaps

"8This kind of "materialism" (I mean one in somerespects more extreme than that of the normal kalam)is confirmed by the statement of Intisdr 22 that the actof annihilation or of the passing away of an accident(al-fand') -thus even the cessation of being-must itselfalways be in a subject, wherefore, in a sense, even Godcannot completely annihilate His creation, since thematerial substrate must forever remain with someattribute

89 Al-Milal wan-nihal, 98 f.40Muqhaal 'afkdr al-mutaqaddimsn wal-muta'ab1hirin

(Cairo, 1323), 104; (both this and the text cited in theprevious note are given and commented by Wolfson,op. cit., 687 f.; cf. however below).

41 For a detailed discussion of the problem of thesameness and otherness of attributes apart from theconsideration of the material reality of an accident orattribute in a material substrate and whether this canbe li-ma'n& or not, cf. e. g., 'Abd al-4abbar, al-Muht4bit-taklif, 178ff. (where the question is of the differen-tiation of God's attributes); on the same subject, cf. alsoal-4uwaynt, as-,gdmil ft 'us2al ad-din (ed. H. Klopfer,Cairo, n. d.) 169ff.



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further paraphrased) by al-BagdAdl.42 On theother hand it may well be that the use of ma'tnin the sense of cause ('illa) or intrinsic determi-nant was simply lost to later writers. 4urga'ndoes not mention it in his Tatrifdt although hedoes try to derive the general meaning of thingfrom that of meaning, sense, etc.,43 and ifhe was unaware of this specialised sense it is notinconceivable that he and a number of other latekalam authors simply read the sense meaninginto the accounts of Mutammar's hought in someplaces and thing in others, understandingthereby some kind of logical abstraction or ensrationis, an jlog or what have you. ConcerningMu'ammar's original thought it might be notedthat the notion of linking logical or conceptualcategories and distinctions rigidly to the order ofmaterial reality is a central element of Stoicthought.

We have yet to consider the question of causalityin general and the place of nature (tab-) in thecontext of the causal determinants, as conceivedby Mu'ammar, for this is central to the under-standing of the whole system; i. e., the function of

nature is inseparable from the notion of thecausal determinants as they function in the mate-rial world conceived by the system. How Mutam-mar understood the relationship between externalcauses and the actualisation of some effect in the

subject or in the generation of the thing as a wholeis not to be determined exactly and in detail onthe basis of the texts, insofar as I have been ableto discover. It is, in fact, of considerable signifi-cance that the problem of external causality wouldseem to have held a position of little importancewithin the system as a whole; that is, it did nothave any position of major concern for Mutam-mar's understanding of the nature of things.Quite clearly he held that the characteristics,qualities, etc., of things were to be explained onthe basis of their internal strncture (hay'a) and asa function of the nature (tab ) of the materialbeing ('ism). He is reported to have said that

things effected through a series of causes[al-mutawallid&t] and that which comes to inherein a body, such as motion, rest, color, . . ., heat,cold, dampness and dryness, are the act of the

body [PI al-'ism] in which they inhere, by its'nature' [bi-tabtihi] and that inert matter pro-duces [yaf'alu], by its 'nature,' the accidents thatinhere in it. 44 In a number of passages we aresimilarly informed that the attributes of things-the accidents which determine and define theirbeing-are realised in them through their na-tures.45 Each individual atom (guz'), in fact,produces (yaftalu) whatever accidents it has as anact of the necessity of its nature (bi-'i_2b at-tab-).46Mutammar s reported to have described the func-tion of this nature in the following terms: Whenthe Creator causes color to be in a body, either itbelongs to the body to be such that it takes on coloror it does not, and if it belongs to the body to takeon color then the color must come to be [yalcznu]by its nature, and since the color comes to be bythe nature of the body it is, then, its act. It isimpossible that there come to be by its naturewhat is consequent on something else. 47 We

42 Cf. al-Farq bayn al-Firaq, 138; al-BakdAdt's account,however, still leaves the relationship clearly within thecontext of the accidents as concretely realised in theirseparate substrates.

43 G. Fltigel's edition (Leipzig, 1845), 235 f.

44 Maqdtdt, 405 (where even the Koran is said to arisewithin that from which it is heard). The externalcause is removed hereby from the question of the beingof things and the causes of their being, since this isrestricted to the determination of internal causes; hesays (ibid.) that the act of perception and the act ofsensation are purely the act of the sentient subject;cf. also ibid., 382.

45E.g. Intiar, 45ff., Maqdldt, 382, 405 f., 409, 417,etc., and Bakdafdl, op. cit., 136.

4 Maqtdlt, 303; he is reported in this passage to haveheld that when the parts are joined, the accidents arenecessary; they [so. the parts] produce them by thenecessitating action of nature [tab'] and each part pro-duces whatever accidents inhere in it. It would seemfrom this that Mu'ammar probably distinguished be-tween the atoms as materia and the atom as a con-stituent part of a body and it is tempting, on this basis,to think that there was perhaps a differentiation in theterminology, #uz' (part) being used for the atom asthe real indivisible part of a body with its inherentqualities and determinations, etc., and #awhar (atom:oi5ala n the Stoic sense-cf. P. Kraus, Jabir ibn Hayyan,2, Mdmoires de l'Institut d'Egypte 45, [Cairo, 1942]170) as the qualitiless substrate (drvow V OKCIe4EVOv)I have been unable to give this latter hypothesis anyconfirmation in a quite cursory survey of a number of

texts but, nevertheless, it is quite possible that sincethe distinction is not significant to the later systems,it may have been lost already by the end of the ninthcentury and is therefore not reflected in any of oursources. This distinction between the material substrateas actively constitutive of things (bodies) and as amateria prima is quite Stoic.

47Maqdldt, 415. This, as well as the passages citedin the preceding notes, clearly precludes any Aristoteliannotion of nature from Mu'ammar's tab'; within hissystem the function of tab'/ma'n4 is rather Stoic in the



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should hypothesize then-for our texts are silenton the subject-that the intrinsic causal determi-

nants (matdmi) are the operative determinantcauses in the actualisation of the variable possi-bilities of the nature of the particular body. Onthe other hand, the structure of the particularbody, i. e., that structure or configuration in termsof which it is such a kind of body and so liable tovarious categories of accidents rather than others,is itself a function of the nature of the mate-rial substrate (the individual atoms of formedbodies and their parts) and, in the final analysis,is formed through the action of other causal de-terminants. The reality of the particular thingtherefore is a function of the nature (tab') of thematerial substrate considered in its structuredmateriality, while the functional or active causesin the realisation of a particular accident are thecausal determinants inherent in the thing. The

nature and the intrinsic causal determinantswill be then so linked that, in the real order, eachis in fact a function of the other.

On the subject of external causes Sahrastani,reporting the teaching of Mutammar,48 peaks ofthe sun's producing heat, fire's producing burning('ihra'q), and the moon coloration (talwin) bynature (tabiam) and there can be little doubt thatMutammar accounted for and somehow describedthe causality of exterior forces and the like. It isquite clear, nonetheless-and this is certainly thecentral emphasis of the whole, if not its veryheart-that the primary concern of Mutammar'sthought was the character of the being of thingsas determined by intrinsic causes and principles.That is, the being of any being-its reality inbeing what it is, with all its permanent and tran-sient qualities and attributes-is determined bymaterially operative causes inherent in itself inso-far as it is a material body; the accidents (andthey are, in a real sense, constitutive of the beingof the thing in being what it is 49) of a thing areto be explained, as accidents of the particularbeing, and understood in the fact of their coming

to be realised in the thing, in terms of determinantcauses inherent in the material substrate that

underlies the being of the whole. If a thingcomes to be hot through the action of the sun, its

being hot is determined by the presence of heat init, which is immediately due to its nature's beingsuch as it is; it is possible because, given theantecedent external cause or sequence of causes, itsnature allows of its becoming hot through a seriesof causal determinants, whose actualisation, ineffecting the attribute, is a function of its nature,constituting the actuality of the nature at themoment.

From one standpoint it is as if he came to thepoint of making the total series of causes thateffect the being of the thing interior to it in anymoment of its actuality. The insistence that mate-rial reality makes up the totality of the real (ex-clusive of God) is common to all the mutakalliminas also the atomists, the Stoa, and others inantiquity. With Mutammar, however, we find apeculiar concentration on the functional elementsthat are constitutive and determinant causes of thething as they exist in the immediate present of themoment of its realisation, even though these in-trinsic elements or causes are, in fact, operativecauses only through being affected by exteriorcauses. The universal mesh of interacting causesis, as it were, viewed as it is actually operative(EvEpyEta) in the present subject.50 That is, theintrinsic elements or constituents of the thing areby nature (Iv'an) the active determinants of itsbeing as they are ultimately related to a series ofevents stretching far beyond the temporal andspatial limits of the individual body, but Mucam-mar chose to consider all these in terms of theinterior determinants and elements of the singu-lar, corporeal unit of existence, as actuated in itin the single effect of their presence at the par-ticular instant of the realisation of a particularevent or accident in the thing. Everything isconcentrated in the real (sc. material) presentwhich is the actual locus of all its causes as causes.Thus the infinity of causal determinants existssimultaneously in a single instant and a man, in a

single act, effects an infinity of acts simultane-

overall structure of the context. For an indication ofthe functional relationship between the ma'na and thetab', cf. al-Mfu~ni 12 (ed. I. Madkour, Cairo, n. d.) p.320, 11. 15 ff., in which the author probably refers to thegeneral position of Mu'ammar.

48 op. cit., 97.49 Cf. generally my Metaphysics of Created Being ac-

cording to abil 1-Hudhayl, ch. 4.

50 Thus is it in the same way that he says (Intisar,46) that in any single act the agent produces an infinityof acts; these are, no doubt, the consequences and effectsproduced by the determinant causes arising in the bodywhich is the locus of the act, as the result of therealisation of the act in it at the instant of its realisa-tion. Both causes and effects, in this way, are viewedas they exist in the present actuality of the subject inwhich their own actuality is realised in the particularmoment.



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ously. Although Mu'ammar quite clearly recog-nised that all bodies have natures and that events

take place through these natures in the interactionof many bodies, the system, as reflected in oursources, centers its attention on the sole primaryreality which is the individual body in the realpresent. Consequently it is the nature of thematerially unified body and the function of causesintrinsic to it or inherent in it, as they are presentin their effect at the particular moment, whichbecomes the primary locus of the investigation andunderstanding of the being of things in all theirattributes, acts, etc., for this is their actuality inbeing and the actuality in being of the causalityof their causes.

The notion of the accident as direct cause ofthe effect while its presence as cause depends on aseries of other causal determinants reflects, in arather obvious sense, the distinction made by thephysicians and the Stoics between he tTLOV aUTO-TEXES and the many secondary prior and concomi-tant causes that effect and determine the actualisa-tion of a particular state in the subject. Mutam-mar, however, has restricted his view to that of theindividual thing in the single, real moment of itspresent. For him, as it were, primary and secon-dary intrinsic causal determinants function co-herently, of themselves, entirely according to thenature of the thing (4ihots, kiydmi) according to aXo'yos nherent in matter itself (al-'agza'), a Xo'yos,according to Mu ammar, given matter in its crea-tion by God. Again, however, his almost exclusiveconcentration on the individual in the immediatepresent as also his apparent denial of the realityof motion unquestionably (though only super-ficially, perhaps) appear to reflect certain atti-tudes of the Megarians, even though what kinshipthere may be between the two is certainly distantand tenuously affirmed.51

To try to work out these analogies and confirmtheir possible validity, whether in whole or in part,

is beyond the scope of this paper. In conclusion,however, I should like to remark that the fact thatone may find apparent remnants and traces of anumber of diverse classical systems in Mutammar'sthought-besides those mentioned, others whichappear quite Neoplatonic 52-should give no diffi-culty, as the same combination of disparate ele-ments is to be found in nearly every kalam system.Generally, insofar as individual systems arestudied for their own consistence and coherentmeaning these elements are found to be not simplyjuxtaposed in eclectic salads but quite on the con-trary, are revealed to be integrated into tightlyconstructed and coherent syntheses, both in theMuztazila and in the school of al-'Asarl. Whatmakes the kalam a really unique phenomenon inthe history of speculative thought is the way inwhich this has been done and the basic orientationthat directed its formation and evolution. Finally,it is for this reason that the primary task, in myopinion, for scholarship on the kalam must be, forsome years to come, to elucidate the philosophicaland theological meaning of the kalam itself inthe individual systems of single authors. Onlyafter this has been accomplished will it becomepossible to discover and describe genuinely mean-ingful and significant relations between the kalamand the thought of antiquity.

51 He is reported to have denied the reality of motionsaying that bodies are said to move only by way ofdenomination (ft I-luja) (Maqdldt, 325 and 347) butthat in reality they are at rest (sakina) ; all modes ofbeing-in-space ('akwdn), he says, are really rest(suklin) (ibid., loc. cit., and 355). The denial of motionis certainly related to his apparent insistence on theexclusive reality of the thing in the present moment andthis much concords with the ideas of the Megarians,even though other elements of the system, e. g., theabsence of any evidence for essences or forms andthe nigh total concentration on material reality insofaras his physics is concerned, clearly separate Mu'am-mar from the basic foundation of their thought. Onthe other hand, he clearly allowed motion some reality

as a distinct accident which inheres in things, as isamply clear from his primary argument for the realityof infinite causal determinants (cit. supra) and fromhis argument against God's creation of movement(Maqdtdt, 548, cit. supra, n. 36). His understanding ofthe nature of movement would seem to be perhaps nomore than an extreme version of one like that of abAI-Hudhayl, for whom the reality of movement is notthe passage over a trajectory through space but ratherconsists in the act of having arrived in the secondplace ; the progression through space (as opposed tothe accident of motion [haraka] which comes to be inthe body when it arrives in the second place) abuiI-Hudhayl accounts for in a separate accident of kawn(that is also recognized by certain later members ofthe Basra school); on abA 1-Hudhayl's treatment ofmotion, kawn, and becoming in general, cf. my Meta-physics of Created Being . . ., ch. 2, ? B.

52 E. g., his description of man (Intisdr, 46, 11. 6 f.and Maqdldt, 318 and 331 f.); as also in the chargeagainst him that he denied that God knows Himself,since this would introduce into Him the duality ofknower and known (Intisdr, 45, al-Farq bayn al-Firaq,141, and al-Milal wan-nihal, 100 f.) which, valid or not,shows him to have had a sufficient reputation forNeoplatonist leanings to have made the charge at leastcredible or likely.

al ma'na richard frank (jaos)

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