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Refutation of the Christians Abū Muḥammad al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib al-Rassī Date: Unknown, before 826 Original Language: Arabic Description The Refutation upholds strict qur’ānic monotheism against Christian trinitarian doctrine on rational grounds. The attribution of a coequal Son and a coequal Holy Spirit to God is inconsistent with his unique divinity and eternal lordship. It is comparable to the philosophical doctrine ascribing to the seven planets shared…

Al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhīm Date of Birth: Unknown, c. 785 Place of Birth: Medina Date of Death: 860 Place of Death: Jabal al-Rass (near Medina) Biography Al-Qāsim was educated in Zaydī Shīʿī Islam by his ʿAlid family and in Medinan ḥadīth by a nephew of Mālik ibn Anas, the founder of the legal school of Medina. His elder brother Muḥammad headed a revolt in Kūfa, claiming the Zaydī imamate, and was killed in 814. Al-Qāsim was in Egypt at that time, where he studied the Jewish and Christian scriptures and Christian theological …

Rukn al-dīn Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad al-Malāḥimī al-Khuwārazmī Date of Birth: Before 1090 Place of Birth: Khwārazm, Khorezm Date of Death: 19 October 1141 Place of Death: Khwārazm Biography Ibn al-Malāḥimī was the most prominent Muʿtazilī theologian in Khwārazm in the early 12th century. Muʿtazilī theology still prevailed among the Ḥanafī community in Khwārazm during this period, while it was suppressed as heretical in most of the Islamic world. Little is known about his life. He initially belonged to the Muʿtazilī school of the famous Qāḍī…

The reliable book on the principles of religion Ibn al-Malāḥimī Date: Before 1137 Original Language: Arabic Description Ibn al-Malāḥimī introduces his critical discussion of Christianity by quoting from the work he refers to as Kitāb al-diyānāt of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Nāshīʾ al-Akbar (d. 906) (q.v.), who describes various religions, including Christianity, as essentially based on ancient Greek philosophy, in contrast to the pure monotheism of the prophets. Ibn al-Malāḥimī concurs with this judgment, adding that the doctrine…

Ṭalḥa b. ʿUbaydallāh, a prominent early Companion of Muḥammad, is considered to have been among the first eight converts to Islam and one of the ten mubashshara to whom the Prophet promised Paradise. He belonged to the Banū ʿAmr b. Kaʿb, the leading clan of the Taym b. Murra of the Quraysh, and was a second-degree cousin of Abū Bakr, with whom he was already closely associated before the advent of Islam. Abū Bakr, who was some twenty years his elder, may have trained him in the caravan trade in Syria, a business he later pursued successfully. By his own account, he first learned of the adve…

Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf b. ʿAbd ʿAwf b. ʿAbd (al-Ḥārith) b. al-Ḥārith b. Zuhra (d. 32/652–3) was a prominent early Companion of Muḥammad and one of the ten for whom he prophesied Paradise. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was born in about 579 C.E. and became a Muslim at the age of thirty-one, at which time he was a successful caravan trader with close ties to the Meccan nobility of Umayya and ʿAbd Shams (ancestors of clans of the Meccan nobility). His father, ʿAwf, had been associated in the caravan trade…

Ḥujr b. ʿAdī b. Jabala b. ʿAdī b. Rabīʿa Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Kindī was a Companion of the Prophet, a military leader in the early Muslim conquests, and a close supporter of the caliph ʿAlī (r. 35–40/656–61). He was executed in 52/672 by the caliph Muʿāwiya (r. 41–60/661–80). He belonged to the tribal nobility of the Banū ʿAdī b. Rabīʿa b. Muʿāwiya al-Akramūn of Kinda. With his brother Hāniʾ, he visited the Prophet in Medina—probably in the delegation of Kinda led by al-Ashʿath b. Qays in 10/631—and accept…

Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd al-Fazārī (b. c. 130/748, d. after 179/795) was a Kufan Ibāḍī kalām theologian of the Ibāḍī subsect of the Khārijīs. He was born in Kufa, probably not later than 130/748, into a family of the Arab tribe of Fazāra. His training as an Ibāḍī scholar most likely took place in Basra under Abū ʿUbayda Muslim b. Abī Karīma (d. before 158/775), whom he recognised as the spiritual leader of the early Ibāḍiyya, after Jābir b. Zayd al-Azdī (d. c. 93/712). In Kufa al-Fazārī owned a silk trad…

Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ b. al-Ashʿath was the leader of the Qarmatian movement in the sawād (rural district) of Kufa. Al-Ṭabarī (3:2125) has Karmītah, which is supposed to mean “red-eyed.” The diminutive form Qarmāṭūya is used by al-Nawbakhtī and Niẓām al-Mulk. Originally a carrier (who transported goods on oxen) from the village of al-Dūr in the ṭassūj (subdistrict) of Furāt Bādaqlā (east of Kufa), he was converted to the early Ismāʿīlī movement by the dāʿī (propagandist) al-Ḥusayn al-Ahwāzī. The date 264/878 given for his conversion by a much later report may be approximate…

b. Moḥammad Ṭūsī (1058-1111), one of the greatest systematic Persian thinkers of medieval Islam and a prolific Sunni author on the religious sciences (Islamic law, philosophy, theology, and mysticism) in Saljuq times. Overview of entry: i. Biography, ii. The Eḥyāʾ ʿolum al-dīn, iii. The Kīmīā-ye saʿādat, iv. Minor Persian works, v. As a Faqīh, vi. Ḡazālī and Theology, vii. Ḡazālī and the Bāṭenīs, viii. Impact on Islamic Thought.A version of this article is available in printVolume X, Fascicle 4, pp. 358-377blod:ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD, b. Moḥammad Ṭūsī (450-505/1058-1111), …