the origins of kalām

The Origins of "Kalām"Author(s): M. A. CookSource: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 43,No. 1 (1980), pp. 32-43Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of School of Oriental and African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/616124 .

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THE ORIGINS OF KALAM

By M. A. COOK

That the dialectical technique of Muslim kaldm is a borrowing from Christian theology is no secret.1 Its extra-Islamic origin has indeed been asserted by van Ess with great forthrightness in the context of his recent publication of an early kaklm text.2 The text in question is an anti-Qadarite polemic ascribed to al-Hasan b. Muhammad b. al-Hanafiyya (d. c. 100 A.H.) ; it lacks a title, but may conveniently be designated Questions against the Qadarites.3 Van Ess accepts the ascription, and dates the tract to the 70s of the first century of the Hijra.4 Since the text contains no contemporary historical reference or colour, and the ascription rests on the sole authority of the Zaydi imam al-Hadi (d. 298), the case for so early a dating rests heavily on the theological style and content of the tract. Many of the arguments advanced by van Ess are questionable, and the result could not be said to constitute proof.5 But it would be churlish to reject the case for an early dating out of hand, and difficult to sustain one later than the first half of the second century.6 The text is thus

1 It was already regarded as well known by Becker (see C. H. Becker, 'Christliche Polemik und islamische Dogmenbildung ', Zeitschrift fiir Assyriologie und verwandte Gebiete, xxvI, 1912, 190 = idem, Islamstudien, Leipzig, 1924-32, I, 445; further references to this article are to the reprint).

2 J. van Ess, Anfdnge muslimischer Theologie, Beirut, 1977, 24. (The book was due to appear in 1974, and in fact appeared in 1978.) In the parallel passage in the English summary of his findings, van Ess refuses to speak of Christian 'influence' (idem, 'The beginnings of Islamic theology', in J. E. Murdoch and E. D. Sylla (ed.), The cultural context of medieval learning, Dordrecht and Boston, 1975, 99 f.); I take this to represent a change of venue rather than of view.

3 Cf. van Ess, Anfdnge, p. 36, 1. 12, of the Arabic text. 4 See particularly pp. 12-31 of his introduction; the dating to the 70s is at pp. 17 f. 5 The core of his case rests on a set of arguments from silence (mostly summarized at p. 17) :

al-Hasan seems not to know of views elsewhere attested at a given date, and therefore wrote before that date. In this category fall: (a) certain exegeses attributed to QatAda b. Di'dma; (b) the clear distinction between divine foreknowledge and predestination made in the Qadarite epistle of

al-.Hasan of Basra (pp. 16, 18); (c) the notion that a man can affect the term of his

life, held by the addressees of 'Umar II's anti-Qadarite epistle; and (d) the absence of badith. Objections of two kinds arise. First, the reliability of these termini is a matter of argument: ascriptions of exegeses to figures like Qatada invite scepticism, ascriptions of epistles to early authorities are certainly open to it, and van Ess's dating of the beginnings of predestinarian hadith turns on that of the epistles. Second, the meaning of the silences is beset with ambiguities. One can (and not infrequently does) ignore a view without being unaware of it, a point with significant application to (b): it is polemically inconvenient for a predestinarian propagandist to take cognizance of this obvious distinction, and van Ess is taking too stringently Darwinian a view of religious disputation in arguing that al-Hasan could not afford not to take full account of the views of his opponents. Equally, one can be unaware of a view without being anterior to it, a point with a particular bearing on (c): van Ess argues that 'Umar II was addressing himself to a rather minor Qadari group, and not to the Qadariyya at large (pp. 126-31); if al-Hasan seems not to have heard of them, it may effectively be countered that the same is true, as van Ess points out, of Ritter and Montgomery Watt. The absence of badith is undoubtedly the most attractive of the arguments presented. Yet it too is susceptible of alternative explana- tion-as that hadith already existed but had yet to penetrate the rigid rules of al-Hasan's dialectical game, or that the author did not recognize its authority (compare J. Wansbrough, Quranic Studies, Oxford, 1977, p. 161, on the Qadarite epistle of

al-HI.asan of Basra). There is

after all no lack of evidence of the persistence of predestinarian kaldm in the second century (contrast van Ess, Anfinge, p. 25). (I do not, of course, intend to suggest that arguments from silence are invalid as such.) Further arguments adduced by van Ess include points arising from the politics of al-Hasan, and from his post-mortem reputation (or lack of it); I hope to treat these in another study (Early Muslim dogma: a source-critical study, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), and to do more justice there to van Ess's case for the authenticity of the early epistles.

6 Van Ess, Anflinge, pp. 16 f.



THE ORIGINS OF KALAM 33

an archaic one, and provides an appropriate starting-point for an inquiry into the origins of kaldm.

In this, however, van Ess's harvest is not a rich one. He refers generally to a long tradition of Christian writings instructing the faithful in how to argue their cause; and he illustrates it by referring to the Dialogue with the Jew Tryphon of Justin Martyr and the Dispute of the Saracen and the Christian of John of Damascus.7 There is little about Justin Martyr to remind one of al-Hasan. The comparison with John of Damascus is more apt, in that parts of the Dispute are to some extent reminiscent in style of al-HIasan's Questions.s But it is not an entirely felicitous choice. The Dispute has had some rough handling in recent literature with regard to the question of its authenticity; there is equally good authority for ascribing it to John's pupil Abif Qurra, which in the present context would make it uncomfortably late.9 In addition, it is unsatisfactory to have to illustrate the Christian model behind Muslim kalam from prescriptions relating to the defensive tactics to be adopted when challenged by Muslims; for it is precisely at this point that Christian tactics are most likely to reflect, as opposed to antedate, those of the Muslim adversary.10

In a slightly more recent study of the Muslim practice of disputation," van Ess returns twice to the question of origins. Near the beginning of his article, he compares the familiar set phrases of Muslim dialectic with what he presents as their Greek equivalents (I translate):

(a) 'if you say ... we say... (b) 'if he asks . . . we shall answer.

These, he states, are already attested from the time of the Church Fathers.12 The first example hardly merits the 'already': it turns out to derive from a work of John of Damascus, this time against the Nestorians.13 This is a better source than the Dispute: the Muslims play no part, and the authenticity of the work has survived or escaped the ravages of critical scholarship. But the wording quoted by van Ess does not represent a stereotyped formula, and dialectic forms of this kind could not be said to dominate the tract as a whole 14 - observations which apply equally to the occurrence of such forms elsewhere in John's works.

The second example cited by van Ess is chronologically beyond reproach: it derives from Origen's reply to the Alethes logos of Celsus.15 It suffers, however, from what a late Muslim traditionist would call t~il al-isnad; and as may happen in such cases, contact has been lost with the original context. To be specific, the lower links in the chain of reference are: van Ess (1976) from

7 Ibid., pp. 22 f. 8 See van Ess, 'Beginnings', p. 104, n. 54. 9 For a statement of this and other problems regarding the date and integrity of the Dispute,

see A.-T. Khoury, Les theologiens byzantins et l'Islam, Louvain, 1969, pp. 68-71. 10 This is the central weakness of Becker's argument for Christian influence on the content

of Muslim theology in the article cited above, note 1. 11 J. van Ess, ' Disputationspraxis in der islamischen Theologie ', Revue des etudes islamiques,

XLIV, 1976. 12 Ibid., p. 25. 13 John of Damascus, Adversus nestorianorum haeresim, in MPG, xcv, col. 189. 14 Their other appearances are at cols. 188 and 196, the former being by far the most striking

example in the work (see below, n. 31). But for most of the course the hypothetical Nestorian adversaries are either asleep or too polite to interrupt, and towards the end they seem to have disappeared altogether.

15 Origen, Contra Celsum, vI: 68 (= M. Borret (ed. and tr.), Origqne contre Celse, Paris, 1967-76, III, p. 348 = 349).



34 M. A. COOK

van Ess (1970) 16 from von Grunebaum (1950).1 In all three instances, the point of the citation is to exemplify a dialectic formula. Von Grunebaum in turn had it from Norden (1913),18 who had it from Origen, who had the question from Celsus.19 For the last three, what was at issue was how Christians could come to know God. Moreover their contribution to the prehistory of kaldm was not just inadvertent; it was non-existent. Celsus, in the course of his attack on Christianity, had posed a philosophical question and put into the mouths of the Christians a rather shallow answer; Origen retorted that, if Celsus were to put the question, they would in fact answer quite differently. The whole character and tone of the argument is quite alien to the constrained drill of dialectic, and a dialectical formula can be elicited only by selective quotation and suppression of context.

These, then, are our patristic precedents. Von Grunebaum, who threw these citations into a brilliant footnote to a work on poetics, felt it unnecessary to bridge the gap between Origen and John of Damascus; and it accordingly remains unbridged. Near the end of his article, van Ess does, however, do something to close the gap in a related field, the tradition of the religious dialogue. He gives a useful list of examples from Christian literature of the early Islamic period,20 including the now notorious Doctrina Jacobi..21 All but one are in Greek, and none of the relevant Syriac material is cited; 22 at the same time, the list is oddly biased towards Christian polemic against the Jews.23 Again, there is no new light on the dialectic form so strikingly exemplified in the Questions of al-HIasan.

Now there is no reason in principle why we should not encounter relevant texts in Greek. Yet given the fact that the immediate source of Muslim borrowing is more likely to have been Syriac, it is unduly self-denying to confine one's attention to Greek.24 It is accordingly the purpose of this article to bring to the notice of Islamicists a Syriac theological text which provides a sustained and close parallel to the dialectical style of al-HIasan's Questions.

The Syriac codex Add. 7192 of the British Museum is made up of two originally separate parts. A few years ago Brock pointed out that the second part includes a group of four Monothelete texts directed against the Dyotheletes. (In more familiar if slightly anachronistic terms, the Monotheletes are the

16 J. van Ess, ' The logical structure of Islamic theology ', in G. E. von Grunebaum (ed.), Logic in classical Islamic culture, Wiesbaden, 1970, 24.

17 G. E. von Grunebaum, A tenth-century document of Arabic literary theory and criticism, Chicago, 1950, p. 1, n. 1. (Von Grunebaum also gives the direct reference to Origen, but cf. below, n. 19.)

18 E. Norden, Agnostos Theos, Berlin, 1913, 89. 19 Cf. the restitution of the Alithis logos by O. G16ckner, Bonn, 1924, 53. It seems clear firom

his comments that already von Grunebaum had lost sight of the fact that Origen's ' if he asks.. .' served not to introduce a hypothetical question, but to repeat one actually asked and already under discussion.

20 Van Ess, ' Disputationspraxis ', 56.

21 Cf. P. Crone and M. Cook, Hagarism, Cambridge, 1977, 3 f. 22 For one example of such material, see below, note 66; and for another, Crone and Cook,

Hagarism, 163, n. 23. 23 The oddity is easily explained. There is a very useful survey of Christian polemic against

the Jews (A. L. Williams, Adversus Judaeos, Cambridge, 1935), but nothing comparable for intra-Christian polemic. When G. Bardy wrote the relevant section of the article ' Dialog' for the Reallexikon fiur Antike und Christentum (Stuttgart, 1950- ), he was accordingly able to give a good list of dialogues directed against the Jews (cols. 946 f.), but had little to offer against heretics. Van Ess's list in turn is in the main a transcription of Bardy's.

24 A reference to a Syriac text bearing on a historical point does appear in the ' Nachtraige' to van Ess's Anfdnge thanks to a visit to Oxford in 1976.




Maronites and the Dyotheletes are the Melkites.) 25 He published the first and fourth of these texts: a document stating Monothelete grounds for censuring the Sixth Council of A.D. 680-1,26 and a Life of Maximus the Confessor (d. A.D. 662), the leading Dyothelete theologian.27 At the same time Brock corrected the bibliographical data regarding the two intervening texts, which are sets of Christological questions to be put to the followers of Maximus. There are 26 questions in the first set and 11 in the second, all in the same dialectical style. Confirming the judgment of Wright, Brock is quite definite that the manuscript is of the seventh or eighth century, and no later. At the same time, he dates the first and fourth texts on the basis of their content to the later seventh century: the first to shortly after 681, the fourth to between 662 and c. 680. The date of the two sets of questions is thus unlikely to be much later. The point is important: it makes it implausible that we have in these texts a Maronite borrowing of Muslim kaldm.27a It is possible that the original language of the questions was Greek; but this is not, in Brock's opinion, the case with the Life.

Since the style and technique of argumentation in these questions is highly stereotyped, I confine myself to publishing three questions taken from the first set: Questions 2, 3, and 13.28 The text appears overleaf. I make no attempt to elucidate the Christological issues involved, which do not concern us.

Translation

Question 2 'Did Satan wish the Son of God to die and that our nature should be

redeemed by his death, yes or no ? ' If they say that he did, then Satan is equal with the Father in will, which is quite absurd. And if they say that he did not wish it, then again they are asked: 'Did the human will of the Son wish to die and redeem us, yes or no ? ' If it did so wish, why did he pray that the cup of death pass from him ? For it is absurd that anyone should pray contrary to his own will and strive against his own person, and that in prayer. And if they say that it did not wish it, here too there is great absurdity. For it follows that it took no pleasure in our redemption, and in this there is something contrary to the will of the Father, who did not spare his Son, but rather gave him up for us all. Again, there follows according to your view something absurd and unspeakable : that this will had separated and removed itself [from the Messiah] through its agreement with Satan.

Question 3 ' That human will which you profess, was it good or bad ? ' And if' good ':

'Why did he ask that it should not be ? For according to your opinion, the Messiah did not take pleasure in good when he sought to annul his good will and asked that it should not be.' And if they say it is ' bad ', the absurdity is patent beyond concealment.

25 The split between Monotheletes and Dyotheletes divided the Chalcedonian community from late in the reign of Heraclius.

26 S. P. Brock, 'A Syriac fragment on the Sixth Council ', Oriens Christianus, LVII, 1973. 27 Idem, 'An early Syriac Life of Maximus the Confessor', Analecta Bollandiana, xcI, 1973. 27a Cf. also below, notes 39, 41, 55, 56. 28 Add. 7192, fols. 66b, 67a, 69b. I would like to thank the British Library for permission

to publish these texts, and Dr S. P. Brock for transcribing my edition into a fairer Syriac hand; he is not, of course, responsible for any misreadings. The scribe normally writes 'n (not 'yn) for 'yes'; Brock has emended this to 'yn in two places.



36 M. A. COOK

Question 13 'Do you assert one mind in the Messiah or two ? ' If' one ', they are asked:

'Are these two wills moved by this one mind ? ' And if they say 'yes': 'How can it be that two wills are moved by one mind ?' And if they say 'two ', this is absurd.

q6uest I shall conin msl torroi•ng? am no.

g/vci avii cc q?vi ,$ :Cfir9ct &a

.•_<A, -'•_ (?$9crc - •Q,•7CLL2 ,•., ,

buestion X

shlcine &seif to?3&' ocing as l

questions, ~FSJhII shllcofie yslf oepoucin aC sigl example; hi i n.




of van Ess's edition.29 The doctrinal content is elucidated by van Ess in his commentary, and again need not concern us.

Translation

'Tell us: did God will good for them and then establish it [Hell] for them, or did He will evil for them ? ' If they say: 'He willed good for them', it is said to them: 'How can that be, when He made it knowing that they would have no benefit from it and that it would only be harmful for them ? ' And if they assert that He made it for them in order to harm them, their doctrine is refuted.

The similarity of form is unmistakable. Both the Maronite and the Predestinarian begin by posing a question which is invariably a disjunction.30 The heretic must choose; whichever choice he makes, he either loses immediately or faces a further disjunction. Sooner or later all the possibilities are exhausted, and the adversary is trapped in a position which is either manifestly untenable, or identical with that of the questioner. Few games last more than two or three moves. The dialectical structures are presented in both texts by means of set phrases, of which the most stereotyped are undoubtedly :

(a) en deyn ne'mriin = fa-in qglii (b) neshta'lin =fa-yuqal lahum

Stereotyped in function, but more varied in diction, are the phrases marking the accomplishment of refutation. Here derivatives of the root Akr are not uncommon in the Syriac, while forms of the root nq?d dominate in the Arabic. For example:

(c) hadd shekhrd =- intaqada 'alayhim qawluhum

A further similarity is negative: there is no introductory phrase preceding the posing of the initial dilemma such as we might expect to be addressed to the reader. In free composition it would be natural to begin 'now you should ask them . . .' or the like.31 The absence of such openings in either the Syriac or the Arabic suggests continuity of literary convention between the two faiths.32

There are also differences.3 The Maronite has in store for his opponent a fine repertoire of dialectical fates derived from Christian heresiography: if he takes a given position, he becomes an Arian, a Sabellian, a Jacobite, a

29 Van Ess, Anfdinge, p. 13 of the Arabic text. Van Ess has also given an English translation of this and the following question in his ' Beginnings ', 91 f.

30 The disjunction must of course be one in which the alternatives exclude each other. 31 Only once does the Maronite begin tiiv mesha'linan,

' again we ask ' (question 11 on fol. 69a).

Contrast the way in which John of Damascus opens his refutation of the Nestorians: ' This is how one must begin arguing against those who agree with Nestorius: " Tell us ... And if they say . . . while if they say . . ." ' (Adversus nestorianorum haeresim, col. 188).

32 The alternative would be to attribute the absence of such phrases in al-.Hasan's Questions to omission by al-Hidi.

33 A difference of some interest which does not concern us here lies in the character of the authorities cited. The Maronite makes occasional reference to the New Testament for Christo- logical data, but also cites the Church Fathers and, conversely, seeks to embarrass his adversaries by referring to the doctrine of 'your teachers and your heresiarch ... Maximus your lord' (question 4 on fol. 67b). By contrast al-Hasan adduces only scripture, and that in formidable quantities (cf. Wansbrough cited above, n. 5).



38 M. A. COOK

Theopaschite, a Manichee. The equivalent fates of the Qadari are by contrast anonymous: he becomes a polytheist, 'lies', or denies the Book of God. Again,

al-H.asan usually opens the game with akhbirln5 can ... ; whereas only

once does the Maronite begin with emar lan ..., 'tell us '.34 But I do not think that such differences seriously affect the overall identity of genre.

We may now ask what light this comparison, eked out by the evidence of other Christian sources, can shed on the key questions regarding the borrowing of the genre into Islam. When, where and how did it take place ?

As to the first question, our text does not help much. It is a happy coincidence that, if van Ess's dating is right, the two texts are more or less contemporary; but it need not be anything more. It would be absurd to assume that the Maronite questions were the first or the last text of the kind to be composed in Syriac. In one respect, indeed, the effect of our text is slightly to weaken the case for an early date for al-Hasan's Questions. Van Ess considered the relentless style of the Questions-the pedantic spelling out of the logical alternatives and the stereotyped phrasing-to reflect an imperfect mastery of the genre,35 which in turn would point to an early date. Our comparison shows this quality to be of the essence of the genre itself.36

What of the source of the borrowing ? Our text is Maronite. A Maronite origin for Muslim kalJm is a pleasant thought, and not quite as implausible as it sounds. Brock has argued strongly that, a few Byzantine collaborators like John of Damascus apart, the Chalcedonian community of Syria was solidly Monothelete well into the eighth century; 37 and I have not found a piece as sustained as the Maronite questions in the theological literatures of the other Christian confessions. But this may reflect only the limits of my reading, and adequate parallels are not hard to come by. We have already, thanks to von Grunebaum, encountered an example from John of Damascus.38 We may now consider the Monophysites and Nestorians.

Occasional Monophysite examples are to be found in another Syriac codex of the British Museum, Add. 14,533.39 Thus to deal with a sun-worshipper one proceeds as follows: ' " So what do you say ? is the sun your God, yes or no ? " If " God " : " When he brings about [something], does he need something else to bring it about with, or does he not ? " And if he says he does not, he is asked ...'.40 Similar treatment is meted out to the followers of John Barbfir and Probus in one place, and to the Dyophysites in another.4' Further

34 Question 7 on fol. 68a. Occasionally emar lan, like al-Hasan's akhbiriind 'an, appears within the body of a question. Cf. also the 'tell us' of John of Damascus in the passage cited above, note 31.

35 Van Ess, Anfdnge, 23. 36 On balance it would probably be fair to say that al-Iasan uses a wider range of diction

than the Maronite, and has more passages of' free composition'. 37 Brock, 'An early Syriac Life', 344. 38 See above, note 13; also notes 14, 31. 39 For the manuscript and its contents, see W. Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in

the British Museum, London, 1870, 967 ff. The manuscript is dated by Wright to the eighth or ninth century; the contents relate overwhelmingly to the theological debates of the sixth century (Julianism, Tritheism, etc.). The probability is thus that what we find here is pre- Islamic.

40 Add. 14,533, fol. 138b. The sun-worshippers bear the uninteresting designation banp?; for a brief account of sun-cults in this area, see C. Cahen, ' Simples interrogations hr6'siographi- ques (Yezidis, Nusayris, Shamsiyya, etc.)', in R. Gramlich (ed.), Islamwissenschaftliche Abhandlungen : Fritz Meier zum sechzigsten Geburtstag, Wiesbaden, 1974, 31 f.

4l Question 3 on fol. 106a; and fol. 146a. For John Barbfir and Probus, see A. Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur, Bonn, 1922, 177. Their relative insignificance suggests a near- contemporary (and so pre-Islamic) date for the polemic against them.



THE ORIGINS OF KALA-M 39

Monophysite examples are to hand in Add. 12,155, a codex dated by Wright to the eighth century.42 The main harvest is to be found in the anti-Julianist florilegium which forms part of this manuscript, and was analysed by Draguet in his monograph on Julian of Halicarnassus.43 Draguet noted three sets of questions containing material pertinent to our study,44 and gave a good characterization of the genre.45 A little further on in the manuscript there are comparable questions directed against the Chalcedonians.46 All these examples, like the Maronite material, are anonymous.

This Monophysite evidence shows clearly that the genre was not a monopoly of the Chalcedonians, Maronite or Melkite. It also presents us with a variant repertoire of phrasing. Some of the variation is trivial; for example, Mono- physite usage favours ' if he says .. .' (singular and perfect) where the Maronite has 'if they say .. .' (plural and imperfect). Some of it is of interest inasmuch as it provides closer parallels to the diction of al-Hasan's Questions. Thus

al-H. asan's 'tell us about ...' plays a similar role in introducing the initial

dilemma as the common Monophysite 'what do you say? . .

(d) mann amar at = akhbirind 'an

Again, both use formulae the function of which is to mark the collapse of the adversary's position through agreement with that of the questioner. The commonest forms are:

(e) yahv hdy demetba'y- =fa-qad ajadb 47

Finally, we may note that both al-Hasan and the Monophysite texts give some attention to defence as well as to attack."4 Thus al-Hasan has a few instructions of the form ' if they say . . . say .. .',49 to which we may compare Monophysite directions of the type 'if someone asks you . . . say to him ...'.50 This complementary genre might be labelled 'answers '.

For the Nestorians, we can conveniently turn to the collection of Christo- logical texts published and translated by Abramowski and Goodman.51 The manuscript is late, but some of the material seems to date from c. A.D. 600.52 Again, nothing parallels the sustained character of the Maronite questions. There is indeed one long passage on dealing with heretics in a text attributed to Isaac of Nineveh; 53 but the characteristic form here is ' he says to me ... I say to him ...'.54 In other passages the dialectical use of the dilemma is clear enough, but the literary form makes no use of dialogue.55 A closer

42 For the manuscript, its contents and its date, see Wright, Catalogue, 921 ff. 43 R. Draguet, Julien d'Halicartnasse et sa controverse avec Severe d'Antioche sur l'incorruptibilitd

du corps du Christ, Louvain, 1924, 83-8. 4? Add. 12,155, fols. 180b-182b, 182b-183a, 185b-186b. 45 Draguet, Julien d'Halicarinasse, 86. 46 Add. 12,155, fol. 187b. 47 For the Arabic form, see for example nos. 2, 12, 16, etc. (van Ess, Anfdnge, 12, 17, 19, etc.,

of the Arabic text). The Syriac may be rendered literally ' he has given that which was sought '. 48 The passage from the Dispute of John of Damascus adduced by van Ess (see above, note 8)

is likewise defensive. 9 Van Ess, Anfdnge, 35 f. of the Arabic text.

50 Add. 12,155, fol. 187b. The technique of posing a counter-question, prominent in the Syriac and Greek material, is not attested in the Questions; it appears, however, in the early Hanafite al- Fiqh al-absat (edited together with the Kitdb al-'5lim uwa'l-muta'allim, likewise attributed to Abi

.Hanifa, Cairo, 1368/1949, 43).

51 L. Abramo-wski and A. E. Goodman, A Nestorian Collection of Christological Texts, Cambridge, 1972.

52 See the editors' introduction to vol. IT.

.3 Fragment IIb. The ascription is rejected by the editors, which leaves the dating uncertain. 54 A stray instance of' and if they say ... say ...' occurs at p. 97 = 57. 55See for example ibid., 157 = 93, 170 if. = 101 ff. The first example is from a document

of A.D. 612. (See p. xlii of the introduction to vol. II.)



40 M. A. COOK

parallel-and a good one, since the text appears to date from the sixth century- is the refutation of the Julianists : 'Now it is fitting that these new disciples of that new teacher Julian should be asked . .. if they say ... but if, being compelled by the truth, they say ...'.56 Yet there is here a quality of literary embellishment, incipient or more likely residual, which has no place in the Maronite drills. In the whole collection, I can find only a single instance which exactly parallels the Maronite and Monophysite genre: 'Again we ask ... if they say ... and if they say .. .'.57

No firm conclusion can be drawn from a sampling of Syriac literature as cursory as this. I would however like to risk a hypothesis for future confirma- tion or refutation; it turns on the contrast between the Syrian and Nestorian material suggested above. Our genre has the look of a product of the period of Christological schism. Despite its bizarre use against sun-worship in the Monophysite text cited above, it presupposes in general a situation in which almost everything is agreed and schism turns on the energetic exploitation of doctrinal diacritics. Where a whole way of looking at the world is at stake, as between Origen and Celsus, the parties cannot readily reduce their disagree- ments to the level of theological noughts and crosses. What is more, the genre could well be a rather late and specialized product of the continuing process of Christological schism that characterizes sixth- and seventh-century Syria.58 This might help to explain why the genre is at best poorly attested for the Nestorians: Mesopotamian Christianity was less Christologically divided, and lived in an environment that was predominantly non-Christian. It might also help to explain why we find so little comparable material in Greek, and that little in the writings of a Syrian Melkite : the Greek heartlands of the Byzantine Empire were less affected by the later Christological schisms, and were soon to be plunged into a controversy over icons in which far more was at stake than diacritics. If this interpretation is correct, its implication for the history of kaldm is that the borrowing is most likely to have taken place in Syria. In any case, the data presented in this article do not count against those who would like to see a certain Fortleben of Christian Syria in early Muslim theology.59 We should then perhaps regretfully abandon van Ess's hint that al-Hiasan may have acquired his grasp of dialectical theology while acting as the leader of a Khashabi gang in Nisibis.60

This brings us to the question of the mode of transmission. Two mechanisms have been proposed to account for Christian influence in the formation of Islamic theology. The first was suggested by Becker: the polemical pressure of Christianity exercised through religious disputation.61 The second is adopted by van Ess: the role of Christian converts to Islam.62 Neither Becker nor van Ess has direct evidence to offer in favour of their respective conjectures.

56 Ibid., 110 = 64. The author was a pupil of Henini of Adiabene (see xxxiv of the introduction to vol. n).

57 Ibid., 199 = 118 f., in a text apparently dating from the first half of the sixth century (see xlviii of the introduction to vol. n).

58 An account of this process is given in W. H. C. Frend, The rise of the Monophysite movement, Cambridge, 1972.

59 Van Ess, Anfdinge, 23; Crone and Cook, Hagarism, 95. This agreement is however some- what illusory. Van Ess takes a very negative view of our sketch of the role of Syria in the formation of Islamic culture (see The Times Literary Supplement, 8 September 1978, 997). Conversely, his emphasis on the role of 'Abd al-Malik rests on a view of al-Hasan's politics which I believe to be mistaken, and hope to discuss in the study mentioned at the end of note 5 above.

60 Van Ess, ' Beginnings ', 99.

61 Becker, ' Christliche Polemik', 433 et passim. 62 Van Ess, 'Beginnings', 100 (and cf. his article '

Kadariyya' in The Encyclopaedia of Islam (second ed.), 371).




Yet a priori both seem eminently sensible, and indeed compatible-who is more likely to engage in disputation with Christians than the ex-Christian convert to Islam ? The continuity of genre established in this article does not help us to be more concrete, and the other available Christian sources shed no direct light on the process of transmission.

These sources do nevertheless offer us one significant point: they render untenable van Ess's refutation of Becker.63 What Becker and van Ess have in common is that they are unaware of the record of Christian-Muslim theological disputation prior to John of Damascus,64 and are thus reduced to conjecture. Becker extrapolates backwards, taking John of Damascus to be the oldest surviving witness to a polemic already old in his time. Van Ess, more specula- tively, presents Muslim-Christian relations in early Islam on the model of modern Beirut: the confessions live side by side, do business with each other, but never discuss religion, and are astonishingly ignorant of what their neigh- bours believe.65 Now comparisons can help us to understand what we know, and they can console us when we know nothing; but they are no substitute for evidence that is in fact readily available.

The evidence shows that the world of early Islam was in fact more like that of John of Damascus than modern Beirut. It is almost a commonplace of seventh-century literature that religious discussions draw motley crowds; Muslims appear in such discussions in a variety of roles, and they are taken seriously as adversaries. In the dialogue of 644 a Hagarene emir questions a Jacobite patriarch; we hear also of the presence of a Jew, of Christian Arabs, and of Chalcedonians.66 The Chalcedonian-Jewish disputation of 681 boasts of pagans, Saracens and Samaritans in addition to the parties of the disputants.67 Van Ess himself has now drawn attention to the Jacobite-Maronite disputation in the presence of Mu'dwiya that is mentioned in the fragmentary Maronite chronicle first edited by N61deke.6s Jacob of Edessa insists on the tenacity with which the Hagarenes will argue against all comers that Jesus is the Messiah; 69 and he assures his correspondent that any Hagarene endowed with the faculty of reason will understand and accept the syllogism with which he seeks to establish the Davidic descent of the Virgin.70 Finally, if the Byzantinists are right to certify the authenticity of the Hodigos of Anastasius the Sinaite,71 we have here a handbook of theological disputation from the later seventh

63 Van Ess,' Beginnings', pp. 99-101. 64 Becker, ' Christliche Polemik ', 434 f.; van Ess, ' Disputationspraxis ', 56. 65 In substantiation of this latter point van Ess states that ' Christians seem to have regarded

Islam as a new sect in the long series of heresies they were accustomed to ' (' Beginnings ', 100 f.). If this means that Christians did not see Islam as a new religion, it needs to be revised in the light of the early sources.

66 For the text and translation, see F. Nau, ' Un colloque du Patriarche Jean avec l'6mir des Agareens ', Journal asiatique, XIe serie, v, 1915; and for the date, Crone and Cook, Ilagarism, 162, n. 11 (tacitly correcting Lammens). I use ' Hagarene ' here and below to render the Syriac mahgriyi and related forms.

67 G. Bardy (ed. and tr.), Les trophies de Damas: controverse judeo-chretienne du VIP si'cle, in Patrologia Orientalis, xv, 2, 1920, 233 f. (for the date, see 175 f.).

68 Van Ess, 'Disputationspraxis ', 46; for the passage see also below, note 78. 69 F. Nau, 'Lettre de Jacques d'Edesse sur la g6n6alogie de la sainte Vierge ', Revue de

l'Orient chritien, first series, vi, 1901, 518 = 523 f.; also Crone and Cook, Hagarism, 11. 70 Nau, ' Lettre ', 519 = 526. The syllogism is pitched considerably above the level of

common sense. 71 See H.-G. Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich, Munich, 1959,

442 f. (the reference to Anastasius in Crone and Cook, Hagarism, 171, n. 4, should be deleted). This handbook on theological disputation with heretics might make as good a starting-point for comparison with Muslim practice as the long shadow of the Hellenistic rhetorician Hermagoras (cf. van Ess, ' Disputationspraxis ', 53).



42 3i. A. COOK

century in which the 'Arabs' figure as one potential adversary. Anastasius advises the would-be disputant that it is good tactics, before the disputation formally opens, to anathematize those false doctrines of which the adversary suspects him: if he proposes to dispute (dialegesthai) with Arabs, he should first anathematize whoever says there are two Gods, or that God has begotten a son after the flesh.72 There is, then, a small corpus of evidence of Muslim participation in the theological games of the day well before the end of the first century of the Hijra. This evidence does not, of course, prove that the Muslims owed any of their knowledge of dialectical theology to these encounters; but it is a plausible hypothesis that they did.73

If Syriac sources can illuminate the origins of the technique of kalim, it is perhaps worth reopening the old question of the origin of the term itself. In 1970 van Ess stated without qualification that ' the word kalm . . . indubitably is derived from the Greek dialexis used by the Church Fathers '." But in 1966, in his monumental study in Iji's Mawaqif, his tone was more cautious, and he briefly set out a doxography of conflicting scholarly opinion.75 One view relates kalam to dialexis 76 and mutakallim to dialektikoi (Horovitz, van den Bergh). The other relates it to logos-either logos as in theologia (Macdonald) or logos in the rhetorical sense of 'argument' (cf. Vajda). After rehearsing some subtle philological arguments, van Ess inclined to the first view.

Two comments seem in place here. First, what is puzzling about the relationship between kaldm and the Greek 'etymologies' adduced is that it seems to represent the intersection of dialectic and theology: kalam is dialectical argument within the theological domain. Secondly, no cognizance has been taken of Syriac. We have, so to speak, eliminated the middleman; which may be good business, but is a questionable procedure in philology.

This would not, of course, matter were Syriac usage transparent to Greek; but in this case, as it happens, it is not. Whatever their ultimate etymological connexion, 'dialectic' and 'theology' do not sound much alike in Greek. But Syriac cannot do justice to Greek compounds without periphrasis, and does not take pains to distinguish lexis from logos. 'Dialectic' and 'dialecti- cian' become meliltX and melIldy; "77 mamld and melleta may appear in the sense of 'dialexis'.78 Yet at the same time, as Macdonald indicated,79

72 Anastasius the Sinaite, Hodigos, in MPG, LXXXIX, col. 41. The beliefs anathematized show that there can be no question of referring the passage to pagan or heterodox Christian Arabs.

73 I am not here concerned with Becker's main thesis, which was that Christian polemic strongly influenced the content of Muslim theology.

74 Van Ess, ' Logical structure', 24. The parallel passage in his ' Disputationspraxis ' (also p. 24) is slightly more guarded.

75 J. van Ess, Die Erkenntnislehre des 'Adudaddin al-Ici, Wiesbaden, 1966, 57-9. 76 I am not sure why van Ess selects the form dialexis rather than dialektiki; it is not used

by Horovitz or van den Bergh in the passages he cites. It is however well-attested as a term for a (theological) disputation (Anastasius, Hodigos, cols. 37, 53, 161, and cf. the use of lalein at col. 36), and to that extent is clearly germane.

77 R. Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus, Oxford, 1879-1901, cols. 2114 f. Jacob of Edessa makes contemptuous use of the diminutive meliland in an epistle there cited.

78 The dialogue of 644 is described in the heading as a mamla which the Patriarch had (mallel) with the emir (Nau, ' Colloque ', 248 = 257). The Maronite Life of Maximus offers maml& da-sfistiUti (' sophistic discourses '), mellet5 da-v'it& and melleti da-drdsha (Brock, 'An early Syriac Life ', 305, 1. 7 f., 311, 1. 6). But note that mellet& does not here appear alone in the relevant sense, and is pleonastic: the second elements in each case appear by themselves with the same sense in the Maronite chronicle (see T. N6ldeke, ' Zur Geschichte der Araber im 1. Jahrh. d. H. aus syrischen Quellen ', ZDMG, xxIx, 1876, 90, 11. 3, 12).

79 The Encyclopaedia of Islam (first ed.), art. 'Kalm '. Macdonald's examples are clearly taken from the Thesaurus.




'theologian' is memallel allhayadt,s80 and 'theology' is mamlt allhit sl81 or

mamld alldhiyd.82 In this pattern of usage, ' dialectic ' and 'theology' are still just distinguishable; but they no longer sound very different, and the question which of them lies behind the Arabic kaldm may accordingly be spurious.

Whether or not this suggestion is right, I am not the first to put it forward. If we follow up van Ess's reference for Vajda's view of the origin of the term

kaldm, this is what we find: 'Dans son sens technique, le terme ne s'explique d'ailleurs pas sans que

l'on considere ses antec6dents gr6co-syriaques: ils nous montrent qu'il connote d lafois le discours appliqu6 aux choses divines (theologie) et la dialectique.' s3

In concluding there are two general points I would like to make. First, the sources. The Syriac (not to mention Greek) documentation adduced here represents only a fraction of what could and should be brought into the discussion of the origins of kalam. We need fresh air, not the repetition of a closed canon of references whose original contexts we have long forgotten. We also need not to be afraid of the primary sources. For what is gold to the Islamicist may be dross to the Syriacist. Van Ess has lavished an edition, translation and commentary on the Questions of al-Hasan; Draguet and Brock dismissed their Syriac equivalents in a few lines.84

Second, the originality of Islamic culture. I subscribe to the view that the raw materials of this culture are for the most part old and familiar, and that it is in the reshaping of these materials that the distinctiveness and interest of the phenomenon resides.85 Two illustrations may serve to relate this general perspective to the case of kaldm. One relates to the literary genre. We have seen how close al-Hasan stands to the Maronite in the use he makes of the 'questions' genre, and have alluded briefly to the complementary genre of ' answers '. But where in Greek or Syriac would we find any real precedent for Baqilldni's Tamhid, in which a whole summa theologica is systematically presented in the form of answers to a hypothetical questioner ? The other illustration relates to the role of the mutakallim. He may well owe his name, as suggested above, to such Syriac terms as melilaya and memallel. Yet one has no sense with these Syriac words of a differentiated group with a concrete function such as has been picked out with such insight by Pines for the

mutakallimni of early Islam.86 When we have established the similarities, we may hope to understand the differences.87

80 Payne Smith, Thesaurus, col. 2110; this regularly translates theologos as the epithet of Gregory of Nazianzus. In general, memallel renders the Greek -logos (memallel keydniyata = physiologos, etc.). It is accordingly not a valid objection to Macdonald that one occasionally hears of mutakallims in fields other than theology in Islam (van Ess, Erkenntnislehre, 57).

81 Payne Smith, Thesaurus, col. 2116. The term appears frequently in the section of the polemic of Peter of Callinicum (d. 591) against Damian of Antioch contained in the Monophysite first half of Add. 7192 (see for example fols. 38b, 39b; for this polemic, see Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur, 177).

82 The term is used of a rather pedestrian collection of ' demonstrations against various heresies ' in Add. 12,155, these being referred to at fol. 32b as ' chapters of mamld alldhiy& or divine theology ' (the last word is Greek in transcription).

83 G. Vajda, Introduction d la pense'ejuive du moyen dge, Paris, 1947, 27 (my italics). The passage on p. 26 regarding kaldm in the sense of' argument' is not concerned with pre-Islamic origins.

84 Draguet's comment on the genre is scathing: 'La valeur doctrinale de la dialectique de ces deux pieces est mince, et I'interet qu'elles offrent pour l'histoire des doctrines est minime' (Julien d'Halicarnasse, 86).

85 See Crone and Cook, Hagarism, part III. 86 S. Pines, 'A note on an early meaning of the term mutakallim ', Israel Oriental Studies,

I, 1971. Van Ess has criticized this argument in two places (' Beginnings', 104, n. 64; Anfdnge, 20, n. 1), and extended its documentation in another (' Untersuchungen zu einigen iblditischen Handschriften', ZDMG, cxxvi, 1976, item 6, especially pp. 49-52).

87 I would like to thank Dr F. W. Zimmermann for encouragement, comments, and discussion.

VOL. XLUI. PART 1. 4



the origins of kalām

Documents