Abū Hāshim al-Jubbā’ī

Abstract

Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī (b. 861 or, more likely, 890; d. 933) was one of the most influential representatives of Muʿtazilism, a school of “rational theology” – or ʿilm al-kalām (literally “science of speech”) as the discipline is termed in the Islamic intellectual tradition. He significantly developed the doctrinal system of the “School of Baṣra,” and his followers are sometimes called after him “Bahshamiyya” or “Bahāshima.” The most important element of Abū Hāshim’s metaphysical thinking was his development of the so-called theory of “states” (pl. aḥwāl, sing. ḥāl). According to this doctrine, the qualifications of beings have an ontological reality that is neither described by existence nor nonexistence. The theory helped him to explain the nature of God’s attributes without asserting the existence of co-eternal beings in God. Abū Hāshim also claimed that the very being of things does not collapse into their existence. It was therefore debated whether or not his teaching had an influence on Avicenna’s essence-existence distinction.