Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/224

 he said, "They who know me know who I am; as for those who do not know me, I am 'Ali b. Isma'il al-Ash'ari, and I used to hold that the Qur'an was created, that the eyes of men shall not see God, and that we ourselves are the authors of our evil deeds; now I have returned to the truth; I renounce these opinions, and I take the engagement to refute the Mu'tazilites and expose their infamy and turpitude" (Ibn Khallikan, ii. 228). From this it will be perceived that the doctrines then regarded as characteristic of the Mu'tazilites were (i.) that the Qur'an was created, (ii.) the denial of the possibility of the beatific vision, and (iii.) the freedom of the will.

In the period after this change al-Ash'ari wrote a controversial work against the Mu'tazilites, which bears the name Kitab ash-Sharh wa-t-Tafsil, "the book of explanation and exposition"; he was the author also of religious treatises called Luma "flashes," Mujaz "abridgment," Idah al-Burhan "elucidation of the Burhan," and Tabiyin "illustrations." His real importance, however, lay in founding a school of orthodox scholasticism, afterwards more fully developed by al-Baqilani, and gradually spreading through the Muslim world, although strongly opposed on the one side by the falasifah, who saw in its teaching the introduction of traditional beliefs limiting and restricting the Aristotelian doctrine, and on the other side by the more reactionary orthodox, who disapproved the use of philosophical methods as applied to theological subjects. This use of