Abul Hudhayl al-Allaf, Muhammad B. Al-Hudhayl B. Ubayd Allah B. Makhul, with the nisba of al-Abdi (being a mawla of abd al-Kays), the first speculative theologian of the Mutazila. He was born in Basra, where he lived in the quarter of the allafun, or foragers (whence his surname); the date of his birth is uncertain: 135/752-3 or 134/751-2 or even 131/748-9. In 203/818-9 he settled in Baghdad and died, at a great age, in 226/840-1, or according to another tradition, in the reign of al-Wathik (227-32/842-7), or, on the authority of others, in 235/849-50, under al-Mutawakkil. He was indirectly a disciple of Wasil b. Ata, through the intermediary of one of Wasil's companions, Uthman al-Tawil. Like Wasil, he was lettered; his profound knowledge of poetry was especially celebrated. Some hadiths also are quoted under his name.

The theology which he inherited from the school of Wasil was still rudimentary. Essentially polemical, it opposed--in a rather unsystematic fashion, it seems--the anthropomorphism of popular Islam and of the traditionists, the doctrine of determinism favoured for political reasons by the Umayyads, and the divinization of Ali preached by the extreme Shites. While continuing this polemic, Abu'l-Hudhayl was the first to engage in the speculative struggles of the epoch, a task for which he was exceptionally well equipped by his philosophical mind, his sagacity and his eloquence. He became the apologist of Islam against other religions and against the great currents of thought of the preceding epoch: the dualists, represented by the Zoroastrians, the Manichaeans and other Gnostics; the philosophers of Greek inspiration, the dahriyya, mainly represented by the champions of the natural sciences; finally against the increasingly numerous Muslims who were influenced by these foreign ideas: crypto-Manichaean poets like Salih b. Abd al-Kuddus, the theologians of the "modern" type who had adopted certain gnostic and philosophical doctrines, etc. It seems that it was only at a mature age that he made himself acquainted with philosophy. On the occasion of his pilgrimage (the date of which is unknown) he met in Mecca the Shi'ite theologian Hisham b. al-Hakam and disputed with him concerning his anthropomorphist doctrines, which show a gnostic influence; and it was only then that he began to study the books of the dahriyya. Later historians observe certain similarities between his doctrine of the divine attributes and the philosophy of Pseudo-Empedocles, forged by the Neo-Platonists and natural scientists of late antiquity; in effect his philosophical sources must have been of such a kind, which are represented in general by medieval Aristotelianism. These philosophers attracted, as well as repelled, him; while combatting them, he adopted their methods and their manner of looking at problems. Naive as a thinker, and having no scholastic tradition, he approached speculative problems with a daring which did not even recoil from the absurd. Hence all the prematurity and the lack of balance which characterize his theology, but also the freshness of his attempts. He was the first to set many of the fundamental problems at which the whole of the later Mu#tazila was to labour.

The unity, the spirituality and the transcendence of God are carried in the theology of Abu'l-Hudhayl to the highest degree of abstraction. God is one; he does not resemble his creatures in any respect; he is not a body (against Hisham b. Hakam); has no figure (hay"a), form (Sura) or limit. God is knowing with a knowledge, is powerful with a power, alive with a life, eternal with an eternality, seeing with a faculty of sight, etc. (against the Shiites who asserted that God is knowledge, etc.), but this knowledge, power, etc. are identical with himself (against popular theology which regarded the divine attributes as entities added to essence): provisional formulas of compromise which did not satisfy later generations. God is omnipresent in the sense that he directs everything and his direction is exercised in every place. God is invisible in the other world; the believers will see him with their hearts. The knowledge of God is unlimited, as to what concerns his knowledge of himself; as for his knowledge of the world, it is circumscribed by the limits of his creation, which forms a limited totality (if it were not limited, it would not be totality). The same applies to the divine power. Abu'l-Hudhayl strove to reconcile the Kuranic doctrine of creation ex nihilo with the Aristotelian cosmology, according to which the world, set in motion by God, is eternal, movement being co-eternal with the prime mover himself. While accepting movement as the principle of the universal process, he declared it to be created in the Kuranic sense; in consequence, movement also will reach its end and will cease. This end is placed by him in the other world, after the last day: movement having ceased, paradise and hell will come to a standstill and their inhabitants will be fixed in a state of immobility, the blessed enjoying for eternity the highest pleasures and the damned enduring the most cruel torments. This bizarre doctrine, which, according to tradition, he himself revoked, is unanimously rejected by all the Muslim theologians, Mutazilites or not; nor have its grave consequences for the doctrine of God's omniscience and omnipotence escaped them. In regard to theodicy, Abul-Hudhayl taught that God has the power to do evil and injustice, but he does not do it, because of his goodness and wisdom. God admits the evil actions of man, but he is not their author. Man has the power to commit them, he is responsible for them, and responsible even for the involuntary consequences resulting from his actions (theory of tawallud, first developed by Abu'l-Hudhayl). The responsible being is man in his entirety, his Ruh together with his visible body. It was Abu'l-Hudhayl who introduced into Mutazilite speculation the concept of the accidents (a'rad) of bodies, and that of the atom, which he called Jawhar. These concepts, which originally had a purely physical relevance, were made by him to serve as the basis for theology proper, cosmology, anthropology and ethics. This is his most original innovation, as well as the most heavy with consequences; it was this which gave to Mutazili theology its mechanical character. Life, soul, spirit, the five senses, are accidents and therefore not enduring; even spirit (ruh) will not endure. Human actions can be divided into two phases, both of them movements: the first is the approach ("I shall do"), the second the accomplished action ("I have done"). Man having free will, the first movement can be suspended in the second phase, so that the action remains unaccomplished; it is only the accomplished action which counts. Divine activity is interpreted in the light of the doctrine of accidents: the whole process of the world consists in an incessant creation of accidents, which descend into the bodies. Some accidents, however, are not be found in a place or in a body; e.g. time and divine will (irada). The latter is identical with the eternal creating word kun; it is distinct from its object (al-murad) and also from the divine order (amr), which man can either obey or disobey (while the effect of the creating word kun is absolute: kun fa-yakunu, Kuran ii, 111, etc.). Those who are not acquainted with the Kuranic revelation, but have nevertheless accomplished laudable acts prescribed by the Kuran, have obeyed God without having the intention to do so (theory of ta'a la yuradu'llahu biha, otherwise attributed to the Kharidjites). The Kuran is an accident created by God; being written, recited or committed to memory, it is at the same time in various place--In the question of the manzila bayn al-manzilatayn Abu'l-Hudhayl took up a position which was in conformity with the political situation of his time: he did not reject any of the combatants round Ali, yet preferred Ali to Uthman. He enjoyed the favour of al-Ma"mun, who often invited him to the court for theological disputes. --All the writings of Abu'l-Hudhayl are lost.

During his long life, Abu'l-Hudhayl had an enormous influence on the development of theology and he collected round him a large number of disciples of different generations. The best known amongst them is al-Nazzam, though he quarrelled with his master because of his destructive theories concerning the atom; Abu'l-Hudhayl condemned him and composed several treatises against him. Among his disciples are named Yahya b. Bishr al-Arradjani, Al-Shahham, and others. His school continued to exist for a long time; even al-Jubbai still avowed his indebtedness to Abu'l-Hudhayl's theology, in spite of the numerous points on which he differed from him. --Unfortunately, the theology of Abu'l-Hudhayl was exposed to the malevolence of a renegade from Mutazilism, the famous Ibn al-Rawandi, who, in his Fadihat al-Mutazila grossly misrepresented it, by submitting it to an often too cheap criticism; this caricature has been faithfully reproduced by al-Baghdadi in his Fark and often recurs in the resumes of the Mutazila. It is only with the help of al-Intisar, by al-Khayyat, the severe critic of Ibn al-Rawandi, that we are able to unmask the latter's procedure and gain an exact idea of true motives of Abu'l-Hudhayl's speculation. Al-Ashari, in his Makalat, reproduced his theses with admirable impartiality, after the school tradition of the Mutazila. Al-Shahrastani based his expose on the later Mutazilite tradition, especially, it seems, on al-Ka'bi.

(H.S. Nyberg)