‘Abd al‐Jabbār and al‐Ghazālī on Divine Speech and their Theories of Language

In 833 the Abbasid caliph al-Maʾmūn (d. 833) began a religious persecution know as the mihna against the opponents of the Mu ‘tazilite doctrine of the creation of the Qur'an. With al-Mu'tásim (d. 842) and al-Wathiq (d. 847), the two successors of al-Ma’mun, the persecution lasted for fifteen years. Around 849-850, al-Mutawakkil stopped enforcing the mihna. As with most theological matters in the early Islamic context, doctrinal disagreements took place between Hanbalites, Mu’tazilites, and Ash’arites. In this case, while the Hanbalites held that the Qur’an was eternal and uncreated, containing the word of God-as Sunni Islam holds-the Mu’tazilites taught that the Qur’an indeed is the word of God but is created in time. ©2021, Luis Xavier López-Farjeat, ©2021 Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. Copyright © 1999-2022 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.