Andani, Khalil. 2024. 'Divine Unicity (tawḥīd)', St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. Edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. https://www.saet.ac.uk/Islam/DivineUnicityAndani, Khalil. "Divine Unicity (tawḥīd)." In St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology, edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. University of St Andrews, 2022–. Article published August 29, 2024. https://www.saet.ac.uk/Islam/DivineUnicity.Andani, K. (2024) Divine Unicity (tawḥīd). In: B. N. Wolfe et al., eds. St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. University of St Andrews. Available at: https://www.saet.ac.uk/Islam/DivineUnicity [Accessed ].Khalil Andani, 'Divine Unicity (tawḥīd)', in St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology, ed. by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. (University of St Andrews, 2024) <https://www.saet.ac.uk/Islam/DivineUnicity>
1 Allāh the eternal maker: Sunni kalām theology
One of the most important and longstanding intellectual traditions of Islam is known as Kalām (‘speech’, ‘logos’). Kalām is a religious science involving rational inquiry (naẓar) in which Muslims seek knowledge of articles of faith through rational arguments and inferences: ‘The primary function of Kalām – its end and its activity – is to rationalize the basic beliefs of the Muslims as they are given in the Koran and the Sunna and are present in the way these are read and understood by orthodox believers’ (Frank 1992: 22). The Kalām tradition focuses on proving the existence of God, establishing the reality of God’s attributes, conceptualizing divine action, proving the veracity of Muhammad’s prophethood, human agency and predestination, epistemology, etc. Three major Kalām schools in classical and post-classical Islam are the Muʿtazilīs, Ashʿarīs, and Māturīdīs; meanwhile the Ḥanbalīs (Atharīs) register as a credal school. What scholars and believers consider today as ‘Sunni Islam’ was still being consolidated well into the post-classical period; for centuries, multiple legal, Kalām, and credal schools competed with one another to claim the mantle of orthodox Sunnism. By the early modern period, the Muʿtazilīs were no longer included in the orthodox credal definition of ‘Sunni Islam’, which was limited to the Ashʿarīs, Māturīdīs, and Atharīs.
The Muʿtazilīs were the earliest Kalām school in Islamic history. While they no longer exist as an independent communal group, their theological positions profoundly influenced the evolution of Islamic theology among Sunnis and Shiʿis. Muʿtazilī theology expounds tawḥīd by greatly emphasizing the absolute uniqueness and absolute oneness of God and allowing a formative role for human reason in theological reflection. The Muslim heresiographer Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī accurately summarizes the Muʿtazilī account of tawḥīd as follows:
God is one. ‘Nothing is like Him and He is hearing and seeing’ (Quran 42:11). He is not a body, not an apparition, not a volume, not a form, not flesh, not blood, not a shape, not a substance, not an accident [...] He has neither length, width, or depth. He neither conjoins or separates. He is neither in motion nor at rest [...] He does not inhere in any place. He cannot be described by anything among the attributes of creatures that indicate their being originated. Nor can He be described as finite [...] Eyes do not see Him. Sights do not perceive him. Imagination does not encompass Him [...] He is a thing unlike other things. He is knowing, powerful and living unlike the knowers, possessors of power, and living things [in creation]. He is eternal in His singularity, not eternal through another [...]. (Ashʿarī 1990: I, 235)
As seen above, Muʿtazilīs negate all physical and temporal qualities from God. Everything other than God is temporal and corporeal whereas God alone is incorporeal and eternal. Thus, God has no similarity with creation. At the same time, the Muʿtazilīs affirmed the Qur’anic names and descriptions of God in a manner that prioritizes God’s metaphysical and ontological oneness. In general, the Muʿtazilīs hold that ‘God is knowing, powerful, and living in Himself, not through a knowledge, a power, or a life’ that is numerically distinct from His Self (Ashʿarī 1990: I, 244). This position amounts to what modern philosophers of religion call ‘divine simplicity’ in which God does not possess any attributes that are numerically distinct from Himself; rather, most divine simplicists hold that God’s attributes are identical to Himself (Vallicella 2023). As will be seen, a significant number of Muslim thinkers adhere to the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS).
The theologian Abū l-Hudhayl (d. 841) professed that ‘God is knowing through a knowledge that is Himself; He is powerful through a power that is Himself; He is living through a life that is Himself. [It is the same case] with respect to His hearing, His seeing, His eternity, His honor, His greatness, His majesty, His exaltedness, and all the attributes of His essence’ (Ashʿarī 1990: I, 245). Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbā’ī (d. 915) likewise held that God is living, powerful, knowing, and existent ‘due to His Essence’ (Hamadhānī and Ḥusaynī 1965: 182). In other words, each of God’s essential attributes – His knowledge, life, power, hearing, seeing, eternity, and existence – is identical to God’s Self or God’s Essence. God is metaphysically simple without any distinctions. Accordingly, the Muʿtazilīs interpret many of divine names found in scripture as allusions to God’s essential attributes (see Peters 1976: 243).
As for God’s relations with His creatures, the Muʿtazilīs speak of God as an agent (fāʿil) who performs various actions with regard to creatures. They uphold justice (ʿadl) as an essential attribute of all divine actions. God only does what is good and just; He cannot perform evil actions. Accordingly, many of the scriptural divine names refer to God’s performance of particular actions – including creating, originating, sustaining, giving favour, rewarding, providing, commanding, speaking, etc. (Peters 1976: 269–271). God’s actions are created – either as bodies or accidents inhering within bodies. God originated the Cosmos through an act of temporal creation (ḥudūth) and God’s existence precedes the Cosmos which began to exist at the moment He created it. Muʿtazilīs interpret all anthropomorphic descriptions of God found in scripture as metaphors for divine attributes or actions: God’s face (wajh) refers to God Himself; God’s hand (yad) refers to God’s favour (niʿmah); God’s eye (ʿayn) refers to His knowledge. God in His Essence transcends having a literal face, hands, or eyes (Ashʿarī 1990: I, 245, 248). Muʿtazilī theology recognizes both direct divine causation and secondary causation in which creatures produce effects. Human beings are the creators of their own voluntary actions which they freely choose. While the Muʿtazilīs no longer exist as a separate community, many aspects of their theology continue in the Zaydī Shiʿi and Twelver Shiʿi Kalām traditions up to the present day.
One of the most popular Kalām school among Sunni Muslims is the Ashʿarī school of theology. This tradition traces its heritage back to the teachings of Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 936). Al-Ashʿarī was reportedly a member of the Muʿtazilī school before renouncing it and adopting a more scripture-centric approach to theology. The Ashʿarīs uphold a view of tawḥīd that differs from the Muʿtazilīs in several areas and agrees with them in others. In common with the Muʿtazilīs, the Ashʿarīs affirm that God is one, eternal, incorporeal, timeless, and wholly different from His creations. However, unlike the Muʿtazilīs, Ashʿarīs hold that God possesses real-distinct entitative attributes (ṣifāt maʿnawiyyah). The proposition that ‘God is living, knowing, and powerful’ means ‘God possesses life, knowledge, and power.’ The Ashʿarīs understand each divine attribute to be an ‘entitative reality’ (ḥaqīqa maʿānī) – a real and distinct entity that ‘subsists in [God’s] Self’ (qā’im bi-nafsihi) (Ibn al-Fūrak 1987: 43–44). Classical Ashʿarīs held that God possesses seven entitative attributes that are eternal, uncreated and numerically distinct from God’s Essence or Self: ‘The seven attributes, which we established, are not the Essence. Rather, they are additional to the Essence. According to us, the Maker of the world (Exalted is He) is a knower with knowledge, living with life, powerful with power, and so on with respect to all the attributes’ (Ghazālī 2013: 129). The Ashʿarīs affirm the formula, first coined by ʿAbdullāh b. Kullāb (d. 850), that God’s attributes ‘are not identical to God and not other than Him’ (lā hiyya Allāhu wa-lā hiyya ghayruhu) and that these attributes ‘subsist in God’ (Ashʿarī 1990: I, 250). This formula, taken at face value, appears to be a logical contradiction because it violates the law of excluded middle: ‘It is not said that He is His knowledge, life and power and it is not said that He is other than these attributes’ (Bāqillānī 1957: 210). Al-Ghazālī also affirmed this formula and explained it by analogy to a parts-to-whole relationship:
For if we say “God, the Exalted,” then we have referred to the Divine Essence together with the divine attributes, and not to the Essence alone [...]. Thus Zayd’s hand is not Zayd and is not other than Zayd; rather both expressions are absurd. Similarly, every part is not other than the whole, nor is it the same as the whole [...] Thus it is possible that an attribute is other than the Essence in which the attribute subsists. (Ghazālī 2013: 129)
A common criticism of the Ashʿarī doctrine God’s entitative uncreated attributes is the degree to which it resembles Christian Trinitarian theology. Christian Arab theologians often defined the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in terms of divine attributes such as God’s uncreated life, knowledge, and power, which are both distinct from and inseparable from God’s Essence (see Husseini 2014).
While God has uncreated eternal attributes that subsist in His Essence, God also performs various divine actions. God’s acts are temporally originated (muḥdath): ‘These attributes, such creation, provision, justice, beatification, and favour, because they are actions of the Exalted God, are temporally originated and among the attributes of action’ (Bāqillānī 1957: 210). Ashʿarī theologians interpret and explain the meaning of various divine names by recourse to these theological principles. Some divine names refer to God’s uncreated entitative attributes; other divine names are negations of imperfections from God. Some divine names describe God’s created actions (Ibn al-Fūrak 1987: 44ff.). As for scriptural references to God’s face, eyes, hands, descent (nuzūl), and sitting (istiwā’), Ashʿarī understandings have evolved over the centuries. Early scholars such as al-Bāqillānī (d. 1013) rejected the Muʿtazilī exegesis that understood such terms as allegorical references to God’s essence, knowledge, power, and favour. Instead, al-Bāqillāni affirmed God’s face, His two eyes, and His two hands as eternal attributes of God’s Essence and refused to interpret these symbolically; he also read God’s sitting (istiwā’) as a temporal divine action that cannot be interpreted allegorically and whose modality is unknown (Bāqillānī 1957: 259–262). However, al-Juwaynī (d. 1085), the famous ‘imām of the two holy places’ (al-ḥaramayn), employed allegorical interpretation (ta’wīl) to God’s face, hands, eyes, side, and descending. In his view, God’s face simply refers to God’s existence; God’s hands refer to His power; God’s eyes refer to God’s protection; God’s side (janb) refers to His command and operation; and God’s descending (nuzūl) refers to the descent of His angels by His command or the descent of His blessings (Juwaynī 2000: 84–90).
The Ashʿarīs maintain an occasionalist worldview – that God is the libertarian agent and creator of all actions, including actions performed by human beings. Humans merely acquire (kasb) or perform actions, but God is the creator of all acts within creaturely substrates. Al-Qushayrī writes: ‘The determination of events, both good and bad, is God’s: He creates the deliberate actions of human beings and the human individual performs His acts’ (Frank 2001: 211).
The second major Sunni theological school of Kalām is the Ḥanafī-Māturīdī tradition. This school traces its intellectual heritage to the teachings of Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 767) and his students and the theological legacy of Abū Mansūr al-Māturīdī (d. 944). The consolidators of the Ḥanafī-Māturīdī theology were Abū al-Muʿīn al-Nasafī (d. ca. 1115) and Abū Yusr al-Bazdawī (d. ca. 1100), whose teachings form the basis for this section. Like the Muʿtazilīs and Ashʿarīs, the Māturīdīs profess that God is absolutely one, eternal, incorporeal, and dissimilar to all created beings. They affirm two kinds of divine attributes: attributes of God’s Essence and attributes of divine action. The essential divine attributes are God’s life, power, hearing, seeing, knowledge, speech, and will (or intention). The attributes of God’s action include creation, provision, granting bounty, favouring, beautifying, compassion, and forgiveness. According to al-Nasafī, all of the divine attributes – both of God’s Essence and His action – are eternal and uncreated:
God the Exalted is eternal and everlasting with all of His attributes and names. God’s names and attributes are not identical to Him and not other than Him – just as in the case of the number one with regard to the number ten […] As for the attributes of action – such as creating, providing, granting bounty, favouring, beautifying, compassion, forgiveness, and guidance – all of them are eternal and everlasting and they are not identical to Him and not other than Him […] It is possible that God be called creator even if he has not created the creatures and be called a provider even if he has not provided to the creatures [...] These attributes subsist in God’s Essence, may He be exalted, in eternity. This is because if these did not subsist in God’s Essence in eternity, then His Essence would be the locus of temporal accidents and this is impossible (Nasafī 1997: 91–93).
Similar to the Ashʿarīs, al-Nasafī and al-Bazdawī uphold the ‘Kullabī formula’ that God’s attributes are not identical to God and not other (ghayr) than God. According to al-Bazdawī, the term ‘ghayriyyah’ (otherness) means ‘separability’; thus, to deny that God’s attributes are ‘other than’ God simply means that His attributes are inseparable from His Essence (Bazdawī 2002: 46). The Māturīdīs also emphasize that God’s act of creating and existentiating (al-takwīn wa l-ījād) is also uncreated and eternal.
As for the anthropomorphic descriptions of God found in scripture, Māturīdī thinkers interpret some expressions through ta’wīl (allegorical interpretation) and affirm others without modality (bi-lā-kayf). For example, al-Bazdawī interpreted divine actions such as God’s coming (atā, jā’a), sitting (istiwā’), and descending (nuzūl) in allegorical terms: God’s coming means the manifestation (ẓuhūr) of God’s traces or effects instead of the literally coming of God; God’s sitting upon His Throne signifies His eternal action of exercising mastery (istīlā’) and domination (qahr) over His Throne as opposed to a literal settling (istiqrār) on His Throne; finally, God’s descending to the lowest heaven means His connection (ittiṣāl) to the lowest heaven in the sense that the effects of God’s attributes reach the world (Bazdawī 2002: 36–38). As for God’s eye (ʿayn) and hand (yad), al-Bazdawī denies that these are physical limbs but he still affirms that the terms ʿayn and yad each refer to a ‘specific attribute’ (ṣifah khāṣṣa) of God’s Essence and refuses to interpret them allegorically (Bazdawī 2002: 39). On the matter of human agency, the Māturīdī position was that human actions are created by God and acquired by man through an act of free choice. God created in the human being the capacity to choose to acquire an action. This results in a stronger sense of human agency than in Ashʿarī theology (Haidar 2016: 76-78).
2 Allāh without modality (bi-lā kayf): Ḥanbalī creeds
The Ḥanbalī movement, based on the teachings and legacy of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal as transmitted by his students, styled itself early on as ahl al-ḥadīth (‘People of Prophetic Reports) and ahl al-sunna (‘People of Tradition’). In its early phase, the Ḥanbalīs completely eschewed Kalām theology and regarded it as an impermissible innovation. However, over the centuries, some Ḥanbalīs engaged the theological positions of the Kalām schools and through such interactions, the Ḥanbalīs articulated certain theologically distinctive positions. The professed method of the Ḥanbalīs is to simply affirm all attributes and descriptions of God found in scripture (Qur’ān and Ḥadīth) without using any allegorical interpretation (ta’wīl) to understand the meaning of these expressions. However, implementing this method in practice proved to be difficult, particularly in the face of Kalām theology’s rational account of tawḥīd and the numerous anthropomorphisms found in scripture. In what follows, a sample of discourses about God and His attributes from prominent Ḥanbalī authorities are surveyed and analysed.
Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, as expressed in the Creeds attributed to him by his students, affirms various anthropomorphic attributes of God. Below are excerpts from one of his creeds:
The Throne of the Most Merciful (mighty and glorious is He) is above the water. God is over [ʿalā] the Throne. The Footstool is at the place of His two feet […] He moves, speaks, [1:62] observes, looks, laughs, joys, and loves [...]. He descends every night to the lowest heaven however He wills. ‘There is nothing like Him; He is the Hearing and the Observing’ (Qur’an 42:11). The servants’ hearts are between two of the Most-Merciful’s fingers […] The heavens and the earth on the Day of the Resurrection are in His hand. He will put His foot in the Fire, causing it to recoil. (Creed 1, Yaʿlā 1999: 60-62; trans. Melchert 2017: 5-6).
Ibn Ḥanbal affirms a host of divine descriptions found in the Qur’ān and Ḥadīth: these include God’s two hands, fingers, feet, anger, laughter, descent every night, etc. For Ibn Ḥanbal, reports such must be understood and transmitted in their plain meaning: ‘According to us, ḥadīth is according to its apparent meaning (zāhirihi) just as what came from the Prophet. Kalām about it is an innovation. But we believe in it according to what came according to its apparent meaning (ẓāhirihi) and we do not dispute with anyone about it’ (Creed 3, Yaʿlā 1999: II, 168).
A textbook case of a ḥadīth (ḥadīth al-shābb) with clear anthropomorphic implications is a highly circulated report of the Prophet Muhammad seeing God in human form: ‘I saw my Lord, glorified and exalted, as a beardless young man with long curly hair wearing a red garment.’ As reported by his personal assistant a-Marrūdhī, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal authenticated this ḥadīth with several chains of transmission (Yaʿlā 1999: III, 81). Ibn Ḥanbal also affirmed the chains of this report (Creed 3, Yaʿlā 1999: II, 168). The ḥadīth was also reported on the authority of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal and authenticated by Ḥanbalī authorities such as ʿAbdullāh b. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, al-Tabarānī, Abū l-Ḥasan b. Bashshār (d. 925), al-Dāraquṭnī (d. 995) and Ibn ʿAqīl (d. 1119) and enjoyed wide circulation in Ḥanbalī circles in the classical period of Islam (Williams [n.d.]: 445–447). Ibn Taymiyyah also quoted this ḥadīth as an authentic report (Ibn Taymiyyah 2005: VII, 290). Similar ḥadīths describe how the Prophet saw God in a beautiful form (ṣūra) and felt the coolness of God’s hand touch him between his shoulders (al-Tirmidhī, Book 47, No. 285, 286, 287).
Ibn Ḥanbal’s approach to ḥadīth poses several difficulties for his concept of tawḥīd. According to Ḥanbalī scholars like Ibn Qudāmah, the ‘apparent meaning’ (al-ẓāhir) is ‘what first comes to the mind from that text, irrespective of whether it is literal or metaphorical’ (Maqdisī 2002: 55). Thus, when expressions like God’s hand, foot, aboveness, fingers, or descent are understood in their apparent meaning, this entails that God has spatial, temporal, and bodily qualities and renders God similar to physical creatures. Williams (2002) concluded that Ibn Ḥanbal affirmed an anthropoid form for God. At a philosophical level, Ḥanbalī affirmations of the apparent meaning of God’s hands, feet, face, fingers, descent, etc. while also insisting that there is no similarity between God and His creation entail a ‘contradictory theology’ (Chowdhury 2021). Al-Azmeh sees Ḥanbalī doctrine as ‘a form of knowledge which is devoid of epistemic content, and whose utterance is consumed immediately by its audience [...] and belongs properly to an act of devotion more than to one of intellection’ (Al-Azmeh 1988).
The Ḥanbalī scholars in the succeeding centuries took somewhat different approaches to dealing with these apparent anthropomorphisms in their attempt to articulate tawḥīd. The most frequent expression one encounters in Ḥanbalī discourse is bi-lā kayf (without modality), in which one affirms the reality of the divine attributes without specifying their ‘howness’ or ‘modality’ – an approach one may call ‘amodal affirmationism’. Qādī Abū Yaʿlā b. al-Farrā’ (d. 1066) adopted Kalām terminologies to articulate the Ḥanbalī creed in this fashion. Like the Ashʿarīs and Māturīdīs, Abū Yaʿlā affirms that God has eternal ‘entitative attributes’ (ṣifāt maʿnawiyyah): ‘He, may He be glorified, is knowing through a single knowledge, powerful through a single power, living through a single life, willing through a single will, and speaking through a single speech’; these eternal attributes are all mutually distinct and subsist in His Essence (Farrā’ 1974: 49–50). God also has attributes of action such as providing, creating, or granting favour, which are temporal acts (Farrā’ 1974: 45). Abū Yaʿlā likewise upholds the Kullābī formula: ‘The attributes of God are not the Creator and not other than Him’ (Farrā’ 1974: 46). Abū Yaʿlā affirms the amodal reality of God’s two eyes, His face, His two hands, His shin, His foot, His leg, His sitting upon the Throne, His descent, His direction, and His form or configuration. In his view, God’s two eyes are divine attributes (ṣifatān) super-added (zā’ida) to God’s sight and vision but they are not organs or limbs; likewise, God’s face is an attribute super-added to God’s Essence. God’s two hands do not metaphorically refer to God’s favour or power, rather, they are two essential divine attributes. God’s shin, foot, and leg are all super-added divine attributes and do not refer to physical limbs. God’s sitting is an attribute of the Divine Essence by which God eternally describes Himself; but it does not refer to bodily sitting or physical contact. God’s descent every night does not involve any physical motion and should be taken as akin to His self-manifestation (tajallī) to Moses on Mount Sinai. God may be described with a ‘whereness’ (ayniyyah), which is the direction above the heavens. God also has a form (ṣūra) which the Prophet saw in a vision, but it is a form unlike other forms (Farrā’ 1974: 51–58). Overall, Abū Yaʿlā took an affirmative amodal (ithbāt bi-lā-kayf) approach to God’s attributes including the anthropomorphic descriptions.
The Ḥanbalī scholar Ibn Qudāmah (d. 1223) took a somewhat different approach to God’s attributes. He entirely prohibited the science of Kalām theology and followed a method that he regarded as the way of the pious ancestors (al-salaf):
To have faith in God’s names and attributes by which He described Himself in His verses and His revelation or upon the tongue of His Messenger without adding to them, subtracting from them, without exceeding them, without explaining them, and without allegorically interpreting them with what contradicts their apparent meanings (ẓāhirihā). There is neither any similarity (tashbīh) of His attributes to creatures nor is there any description of temporally generated beings. (Maqdisī 2002: 11–12)
Ibn Qudāmah approaches the scriptural descriptions of things such as God’s hands, eyes, descending, etc. through a method known as tafwīḍ al-maʿnā (consigning the meaning to God). In this approach, one simply affirms the revealed Arabic words of God in scripture but pleads ignorance regarding their true meaning and defers any knowledge of their intended meaning to God: ‘As for our faith in the verses and prophetic reports of the [divine] attributes, it is to have faith purely in the verbal expressions for which there is no doubt in their soundness and truthfulness and He who spoke them is more knowing of their meanings. Thus, we have faith in them according to the meaning our Lord, the Exalted, has intended’ (Maqdisī 1990: 59). Ibn Qudāma’s approach is an ‘amodal apophaticism’ (Kars 2019) in which one admits their ignorance about what many divine attributes truly signify and our knowledge is limited to the names and words: ‘It is possible to have faith in them without knowledge of their meanings for faith with ignorance is sound’ (Maqdisī 1990: 52).
The Ḥanbalī tradition featured further developments to articulate and conceptualize their doctrine of tawḥīd. Perhaps the most infamous among post-classical Ḥanbalīs was Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328; see Hoover 2007). While a full analysis of his contributions remains outside the scope of this chapter, it suffices to say that his influence on the later Ḥanbalī and Salafī movements cannot be underestimated. Ibn Taymiyyah engaged the Kalām and falsafah discourses to argue for his own version of Ḥanbalī theology. On the matter of God’s attributes, Ibn Taymiyyah rejected both ta’wīl (allegorical interpretation) and tafwīḍ al-maʿnā (consigning the meaning to God); instead, he upheld the amodal affirmation (ithbāt bi-lā kayf) of God’s anthropomorphic attributes including His two hands, eyes, face, sitting upon the Throne, and descent. Against the Kalām tradition, Ibn Taymiyyah differentiated between God’s essential attributes (His life, knowledge, power, and will) and God’s voluntary attributes; the latter attributes are uncreated yet temporal divine actions that God performs by His power and will, such as His acts of speaking, hearing, seeing, love, mercy, creating, anger, sitting, coming, and descending. God’s voluntary attributes or actions are temporally occurring (ḥādith) but they subsist in God’s essence after they occur, which means that God’s actions are temporal, dependent upon God yet uncreated (Hoover 2010). Ibn Taymiyyah conceived God as a spatially extended entity that surrounds the Cosmos by literally being ‘above’ the world spatially; this in contrast to Kalām conceptions of God transcending all spatial directions (Hoover 2022). Finally, Ibn Taymiyyah rejected the popular Muslim practice of directing intercessory supplication (istighāthah) to the Prophet and saints – an issue that will be discussed in a later section.
3 Allāh the necessary existence: Ibn Sīnā’s philosophy (falsafah)
Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), popularly known as Avicenna, was both a proponent and great transformer of the Islamic intellectual tradition known as falsafah. According to McGinnis and Reisman (2007: xvii), falsafah is ‘a continuation and refinement, undertaken at least initially in the Arabic language, of the Greek philosophical and scientific tradition.’ Very quickly, falsafah developed into an Islamic form of philosophical inquiry that runs parallel to, competes with, and cross-pollinates with the aforementioned Kalām tradition. Ibn Sīnā marked a turning point in the history of falsafah and Islamic intellectual history as his contributions became the primary reference point for most Muslim philosophical and theological projects. What concerns us here are Ibn Sīnā’s distinctive positions on the concept of tawḥīd as embedded in his teachings concerning God as the Necessary Existence (wājib al-wujūd).
Ibn Sīnā’s concept of tawḥīd is grounded in his modal metaphysics of existence. In his view, whatever exists is either ‘Necessary Existence in Itself’ (wājib al-wujūd bi-dhātihi) and ‘possible/contingent existence in itself’ (mumkin al-wujūd bi-dhātihi). The possible or contingent existence in itself is that which, when considered by itself, its existence or non-existence is due to a cause upon which its existence or non-existence depends. The Necessary Existence in Itself is absolutely independent and uncaused; it is also the source and necessitating cause of all possible existences. When a possible or contingent existence in itself actually exists due to its cause, its existence is ‘necessary through another’ (wājib al-wujūd bi-ghayrihi) (Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) 2005: 29–31). Theologically speaking, for Ibn Sīnā, the Necessary Existence is God and the possible existences, which all exist as necessary existences through another, are the creations of God: ‘This is the meaning of a thing’s being created – that is, attaining existence from another’ (Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) 2005: 272). Based on this modal framework, Ibn Sīnā rationally demonstrated the existence of God as the Necessary Existence through a famous argument known as the ‘Proof of the Truthful’ (burhān al-ṣiddiqīn). The gist of Ibn Sīnā’s argument is that something exists, and whatever exists is either a necessary existence in itself or a possible existence in itself. If what exists is possible in itself, then this existent depends upon a cause for its existence and the same inquiry applies to that cause. Even if one supposes an infinite series of possible existents in a chain of cause and effect, the aggregate of possible existences still requires a cause external to the aggregate; and this external cause must be a necessary existence in itself – this being God, the Necessary Existence (Shahrastānī 2001; Avicenna, trans. McGinnis and Reisman 2007: 215–216).
Having proved the Necessary Existence, Ibn Sīnā goes on to affirm the doctrine of divine simplicity – that God is absolutely one without any parts or internal composition due to His ontological independence. Accordingly, God transcends having any entitative or mutually distinct attributes such as life, knowledge, or power subsisting in His Essence – as classical Sunni Kalām scholars believe. If God’s Essence contained any internal plurality, including metaphysical parts or entitative attributes, God would depend upon those attributes and no longer be the Necessary Existence in Himself. God has neither genus, species, differentia, quiddity, matter, nor form. God’s absolute simplicity entails that there cannot be more than one Necessary Existent. The existence of two or more Necessary Existents requires that they each possess a differentiating attribute by which they are distinguished from one another; this entails that each Necessary Existent is internally complex and therefore dependent. God transcends matter, form, space, time, change, and definition; He is an absolutely simple, immaterial and timeless Necessary Existence. Ibn Sīnā apophatically negates from God all the qualities of created existence: ‘He is only described by means of negating all similarities of Him and affirming to Him all relations. For all things are from Him, and He shares nothing in common with what [proceeds] from Him’ (Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) 2005: 283).
Ibn Sīnā interprets various divine attributes of God found in scripture in a manner that renders their meanings compatible with his metaphysics of God as the absolutely simple Necessary Existence: ‘His attributes operate as negations (salb), as relations (idāfah), as a composition of negation relation [...] Thus, their plurality does not violate His oneness or contradict necessary being’ (Kars 2019: 85). Some attributes like ‘eternity’ (qidam), ‘the one’ (al-wāḥid/al-aḥad), and ‘the knowing’ or ‘the intellecting’ are negations of imperfection and limitation from God, such as non-existence, multiplicity, and ignorance or materiality. The attribute of ‘Necessary Existence’ signifies the negation of any cause for God and the affirmation of God’s relation to creatures as the cause of everything. Divine names like ‘creator,’ ‘producer’, or ‘compassionate’ are attributes of action that describe God’s relationships to created beings. Overall, the various attributions ascribed to the Necessary Existence do not result in multiplicity in God; this is because God’s life, knowledge, will, power, goodness, intellect, unity, firstness, etc. are absolutely identical to Himself both in essence and in meaning; every positive attribute of God is reducible to God being the Necessary Existence through Himself (Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) 2005: 295–296).
In accordance with the above approach, Ibn Sīnā refers to God as ‘perfect in existence’ in the sense that God does not lack any perfections; He is also ‘above perfection’ because His existence is exclusive to Himself and all other existences emanate from God and depend upon Him. God is the ‘good’ because He bestows all perfections upon all things and He is desired by all things. God is called ‘pure intellect’ because His Essence is disassociated from matter in all respects (Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) 2005: 283–285). Ibn Sīnā also affirms that God intellectually apprehends all existents, not by directly intellecting the things themselves but by intellecting His own Essence as the principle or cause of all things: ‘The Necessary Existent apprehends all things intellectually in a universal way; yet, despite this, no individual thing escapes His knowledge’ (Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) 2005: 287–288).
For Ibn Sīnā, God is the eternal originator of all possible or contingent existents – which comprise His creation. God’s act of creation is a volitional act based on God’s will. However, since God’s will is identical to His knowledge, power, and His essence, God’s will to originate His creation is also a necessary action as opposed to a libertarian choice. God’s act of creation is necessitated by God’s Essence and He necessarily creates the best possible order which emanates from Him. Furthermore, the first of the originated beings that emanates from God directly without mediation is one entity and cannot be many things; this first created being is the First Intellect. This is because the procession of multiple entities from God logically necessitates multiple aspects within God’s Essence – which is impossible: ‘The first of the existents [proceeding] from the First Cause is one in number, its entity and quiddity being one, [and is] not in matter [...] the first effect is a pure intellect, because it is a form not in matter. It is the first of the separated intellects that we have enumerated’ (Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) 2005: 328). Ibn Sīnā envisioned God’s creation as a hierarchy of eternal immaterial intellects, immaterial spiritual souls, and the spheres in a state of perpetual motion. The Prophets, through the faculty of the prophetic intellect, receive spiritual divine emanation or inspiration from the lowest of the intellects known as the Active Intellect and imaginal forms from the souls of the spheres. A Prophet apprehends the intelligible contents of the Active Intellect without discursive effort and translate these into symbols and allegories that he communicates to the masses in the form of scriptural revelation. Even after the Prophets, a human being who perfects both practical and theoretical wisdom and purifies his soul can acquire the prophetic virtues. Such a human being attains the rank of God’s deputy on earth: ‘[He] wins the prophetic qualities, becomes almost a human god. Worship of him, after the worship of God, becomes almost allowed. He is indeed the earthly king and God’s deputy on earth’ (Azadpur 2011: 60).
4 Allāh beyond being: Shiʿi Ismaili philosophy (Ḥikmah)
The Shiʿi Ismaili Muslims are a branch of Shiʿi Islam that traces the spiritual authority of the Prophet Muhammad through a succession of Imams (divinely guided leaders) beginning with ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and continuing through the lineage of Ismā‘īl b. Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq (d. after 755). The Ismailis consider the Imams as infallible authorities who interpret Islamic belief and practice for the community of believers, much like the Prophet had done during his own lifetime. Historically speaking, the Ismaili Imams expounded distinctive theological doctrines through a hierarchy of authorized teachers known as the dāʿīs. Today, the present living Imam of the Nizārī branch of Ismaili Shiʿism is His Highness Prince Shāh Karīm al-Ḥusaynī Aga Khan IV (b. 1936).
As explained by the Ismaili philosophers, God alone is independent and self-sufficient in His subsistence while everything other than God, including the eternal spiritual existents, are dependent upon Him to exist. One generation before Ibn Sīnā, al-Kirmānī (d. ca. 1021) presented a philosophical argument that deductively inferred the logical necessity of God as the sole absolutely independent reality from the existence of dependent realities (Kirmānī 1983: 129–130).
The Ismaili Imams and dāʿīs taught an apophatic doctrine of tawḥīd in which one negates all creaturely attributes from God and affirms God’s absolute simplicity, independence, transcendence, and dissimilarity to His creation. In common with the Kalām schools, the Ismailis negate all physical and temporal attributes from God: God transcends body, space, time, matter, motion, shape, color, etc. However, the Ismailis go even further and negate all spiritual and intellectual attributes such as intellection, form, spirit, substance, accident, and spiritual motion from God (Sijistānī 2011: 81). Thus, God is outside the categories of body and spirit, effect and cause, intellect and soul, time and eternity.
The Ismailis affirmed a doctrine of divine simplicity by negating all traces of multiplicity from God. In the words of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī: ‘He is the One (al-wāḥid) beyond each one of the numbers, natural and spiritual [...] This One whom we praise as the Creator does not contain any multiplicity and is without weakness’ (Sijistānī 2011: 87–88). The unity of God entails that God is beyond possessing any entitative attributes that are numerically distinct from His Essence. On this point, the Ismailis differ with Sunni Kalām theology and are closer to Avicennian falsafah. Al-Kirmānī argues that if God possessed an entitative attribute – like power, life, or knowledge – then either God must depend upon this attribute for His subsistence or the attribute must depend upon God. In the former case, God becomes a creature and in the latter case, the so-called attribute is a dependent creature and not divine. Therefore, God has no attributes whatsoever: ‘He transcends and is sanctified from the attributes that fall under His creation while He, the Exalted, is the Maker (fāʿil) of them and all other things’ (Kirmānī 1983: 153). Accordingly, the Ismailis negate all predications, both positive and negative, from God. Contrary predicates such as ‘is knowing’ and ‘is ignorant’ are equally inapplicable to God. It is likewise the case with every predicate pair such as powerful/impotent, living/dead, seeing/blind, hearing/deaf, etc. As Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. c. 1070) argues:
It is wrong to describe God by such attributes as ‘ignorance’ and ‘powerlessness’ – not because they are unseemly but because they are attributes of creatures – as well as that it is also wrong to ascribe the opposites of such attributes, such as ‘knowledge’ and ‘power’, to Him on the grounds that these too are creaturely qualities. (Khusraw 2012: 55)
Overall, the Ismaili view of tawḥīd exalts God above all types of attributes – spiritual and physical, entitative, and essential, and positive and privative. Ismaili philosophers prefer to say that God is beyond both being/existence and non-being/non-existence rather than classify Him as a ‘supreme being’ or ‘necessary existent’. As for God’s names found in scripture, such as the knowing or the powerful, Ismaili thinkers interpret these names as metonyms (majāz ʿaqlī) as opposed to real predicates. This means that God may be called ‘knowing’ only in the sense that God bestows knowledge upon every knower: ‘He is “existent” in the sense that He existentialises every existence, is “Necessary of Existence” in the sense that He necessitates every existent, is “knowing” in the sense that He causes whatever is knowing to know, and is “powerful” in the sense that He empowers whatever is powerful’ (Shahrastānī 2001: 48).
According to Ismaili metaphysics and theology, God is an eternal creator who originates created existence from nothing. God originates creatures through an eternal and timeless divine action known as God’s command, will, or word. The Divine Word proceeds directly from God by necessity and manifests in contingent existence as the First Originated Being (al-mubdaʿ al-awwal) – which Ismailis and other Islamic philosophers call the First Intellect (al-ʿaql al-awwal) or Universal Intellect (al-ʿaql al-kull). The First Intellect is an eternal, immutable, and incorporeal creation of God and possesses all created perfections: ‘When the True Originator originated the first [being], He originated it perfect and without defect. He did not leave anything out of it’ (Sijistānī and Walker 1994: 53). The Ismailis agree with the Islamic philosophers that God’s direct creation must be a singular immaterial entity because God’s absolute unity precludes the possibility of multiple effects issuing from God. In Ismaili belief, the First Intellect is the proper object of predicative names and attributes that other theologians mistakenly apply to God. For example, the First Intellect may be described as living, knowing, powerful, majestic, luminous, intellecting, and good through its essence whereas God transcends such predications. As explained by al-Kirmānī, the First Intellect is
entirely living, entirely powerful, entirely knowing, entirely eternal, entirely all-encompassing, entirely perfect, complete, and singular. It is the first existent, the real, and the originated being [...] It is a singular essence to which these attributes are connected – some of which are due to its essence and some of which are due to its relationships with other things. (Kirmānī 1983: 189)
Thus, all the divine names when taken as predications properly refer to the First Intellect. This is even true for the divine name Allāh, insofar as Allāh is taken as a predicative or descriptive name (as opposed to a purely nominal name), even Allāh describes the First Intellect due to its own bewilderment (wilāh) before the absolute and ineffable God. The First Intellect recognizes God as transcending all attributes and worships Him in the most perfect manner by admitting its own inability to encompass God. Ismaili cosmology posits a hierarchy of created spiritual intermediaries after the First Intellect, including the Universal Soul, Prime Matter, Universal Nature, various levels of souls, and the spatio-temporal Cosmos. The Universal Intellect and Universal Soul are the two highest intermediaries and mediate all relationships between God and His creatures.
In the world of humanity, there always exists a divinely guided human being whose pure soul reflects the First Intellect in knowledge, authority, and virtue in the manner of a mirror. This person, the locus of manifestation (maẓhar) of the First Intellect, was the Prophet Muhammad in his era and the Imam of every time who is the spiritual inheritor of the Prophet’s knowledge and authority. This theological framework also allows Ismaili philosophers to affirm anthropomorphic divine attributes mentioned in scripture like God’s face, two eyes, and two hands as referents to specific levels of God’s creation. The ‘face of God’ (wajh Allāh) refers to the First Intellect due to its imperishability and because it contains all the intelligible forms by which things are distinguished. God’s ‘two eyes’ (ʿaynān) refer to the Universal Soul, the second creation, because the Soul mediates between two worlds – the First Intellect and the world of natural things – and casts one ‘eye’ towards each of the two worlds. God’s ‘two hands’ (yadān) refer to the Prophet Muhammad and his Spiritual Legatee (waṣī), ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and each Imam after him, who elucidate the religious law and its spiritual exegesis on God’s behalf (Sijistānī 2011: 104–106).
In modern-era Ismaili vocabulary, the First Intellect is called the ‘Light of Imamate’ (nūr al-imāmah) or the ‘Light of ʿAlī’ (nūr ʿAlī) because it is the metaphysical cosmic reality reflected in each and all of the Imams. Pīr Shihāb al-Dīn Shāh (d. 1884), the eldest son and deputy of the forty-seventh Ismaili Imam, explicitly restated the Ismaili apophatic theology of tawḥīd and the idea of the Light of ʿAlī and Muhammad as the first and greatest creation of God (Ḥusaynī 1963: 2–15). The present Imam, Shāh Karīm al-Ḥusaynī Aga Khan IV, publicly defines his theological status as the ‘the bearer of the Light’ in the manner of a mirror or locus of manifestation: ‘I have been the bearer of the “Nūr” a word which means “The Light.” The Nūr has been handed down in direct descent from the Prophet’ (Andani 2019: 174). In his religious pronouncements (firmāns), the Ismaili Imam frequently refers to God as ‘He who is above all else’ to emphasize His absolute unity and transcendence over all things including the Light of Imamate. Theologically speaking, the Ismaili Imam has consistently distinguished between human person of the Imam, the metaphysical and Neoplatonic Light of Imamate, and the absolutely transcendent God (‘He who is above all else’): ‘The Imam of the Time shows you the way thereby to bring you closer to the Nūr of Imamat, and through the Nūr of Imamat, near to He who is above all else’ (Aga Khan IV 1972). The essential role of the Imam in the Ismaili Ṭarīqah is to guide his murīds to unite with the Light of Imamate through which one attains to the complete recognition of tawḥīd.
5 Allāh the absolute existence: Ibn ʿArabī’s mystical thought
The mystical theology of Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240), famously known as al-Shaykh al-Akbar (the Great Master), may be analyzed from multiple standpoints and has been subject to various interpretations. Ibn al-ʿArabī is most famous for advancing a mystical worldview known as waḥdat al-wujūd (the unity of existence) even though he himself did not himself employ this term. His ideas showcase a critical engagement with Ibn Sīnā’s thought, Kalām theology, classical Sufi theology, and Ismaili philosophy.
Ibn al-ʿArabī drew on Ibn Sīnā’s idea of God as the Necessary Existence in Himself (wājib al-wujūd bi-dhātihi) and developed it into a mystical theology of unitary existence. According to these teachings, God is Absolute Existence (al-wujūd al-muṭlaq) and all created things are the loci of manifestation of God in the manner of empty mirrors reflecting a light that is extrinsic to them. There is nothing in existence except for God – a phrase that mystically intuits the Muslim testimony of faith (‘there is no god except God’ = ‘there is none in existence except God’). In this worldview, God is identical to the very existence (wujūd) of all created or contingent things while created things, in and of themselves, are essentially non-existent. This theology evoked much controversy and has sometimes been characterized as ‘pantheism’. However, upon closer examination of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s mystical worldview, charges of pantheism can hardly be justified.
According to Ibn al-ʿArabī, God can be considered either with respect to His Essence or with respect to His names (Chittick 1989: 49). God in Himself without any consideration of His relationships to creatures, is called the Divine Essence (dhāt). God’s Essence cannot be described with any positive names or attributes because creatures have no direct access to It. Thus, Ibn al-ʿArabī emphasizes the absolute incomparability (tanzīh) of God’s Essence and rejects Kalām theologies that speak of God possessing uncreated entitative attributes like knowledge, power, life, etc. Ibn al-ʿArabī also affirms a doctrine of divine simplicity by stressing the absolute oneness (aḥadiyyah) of God’s Essence:
In our view there no disputing the fact that the Essence is unknown. To It are ascribed descriptions that make It incomparable with the attributes of temporal things (al-ḥadath). It possesses eternity (al-qidam), and to Its Being is ascribed beginninglessness (al-azal). But all these names designate negations, such as the negation of beginning and everything appropriate to temporal origination.
In respect of Itself the Essence has no name, since It is not the locus of effects, nor is It known by anyone. There is no name to denote It without relationship, nor with any assurance. For names act to make known and to distinguish, but this door is forbidden to anyone other than God, since ‘None knows God but God.’ So the names exist through us and for us. They revolve around us and become manifest within us. (Chittick 1989: 62)
The Essence of God, due to transcending all relationship and descriptions, cannot be named and is not accessible to human reason. Even the Qur’ān and ḥadīth cannot disclose anything concerning God’s Essence. ‘Reflection has no governing property or domain in the Essence of the Real, neither rationally nor according to the Law’ (Chittick 1989: 62). Ibn al-ʿArabī refers to the Essence of God as Absolute Being (al-wujūd al-mutlaq) and the Necessary Being (al-wājib al-wujūd): ‘The Real is existent through His own Essence for His own essence, unbounded in wujūd, not bound by other than Himself’ (Chittick 1998: 17). Created beings have only a kind of ‘relative existence’ and ‘relative non-existence’ since they are nothing more than loci of manifestation (maẓāhir) of God in the manner of mirrors reflecting something external to themselves. However, the Essence of God due to its infinitude and transcendence is not revealed in or by anything in creation:
Were the Essence to make the loci of manifestation manifest, It would be known. Were It known, It would be encompassed (iḥāṭa). Were it to be encompassed, It would be limited (ḥadd). Were It limited, It would be confined. Were it confined, it would be owned. But the Essence of the Real is highly exalted above this. (Chittick 1989: 60)
While God’s Essence remains forever unmanifest and concealed, Ibn al-ʿArabī also affirms that God’s self-manifestation is revealed in, through, and as created beings. He refers to the self-manifestation of God as God’s Divinity, which is described by God’s Names. Ibn al-ʿArabī conceives God’s Names as referring to relationships (nisab, iḍāfāt) between God and creatures as opposed to entitative attributes (ṣifāt maʿnawiyyah) that subsist in God’s Essence; in this respect, Ibn al-ʿArabī rejects a key teaching of Sunni Kalām theology. Thus, each Divine Name describes a relationship between a created being and God. All of these divine-creaturely relationships taken together constitute what Ibn al-ʿArabī calls God’s Divinity (al-ulūhiyyah) or God’s Level (al-martabah). Ontologically speaking, God’s Divinity is the primary intermediary or isthmus (barzakh) that mediates between God’s inaccessible Essence and all created beings:
The Divinity [...] confronts the creatures through Its own essence and It confronts the Essence through Its own essence. That is why It discloses itself (tajallī) in many forms, transmuting (taḥawwul) Itself and undergoing continual change within them. It has a face toward creation through which It discloses Itself in the forms of creation; It has a face toward the Essence through which It becomes manifest to the Essence. So the created things do not know the Essence except from behind this barzakh, which is the Divinity. Nor does the Essence exercise properties within the created beings except through this barzakh, which is the Divinity. We have verified It, and we have found it no different from the Most Beautiful Names by which we call upon. (Chittick 1989: 62)
The Divine Names are manifold but they are also ranked according to degrees of excellence. Among all the divine names, the Living (al-ḥayy) is the greatest in degree because it is the substrate for all the other Divine Names: ‘We know that the degree of the Alive (al-ḥayy) is the most tremendous degree among the names, since it is the precondition (al-sharṭ) for the existence of the names’ (Chittick 1989: 49). God’s Divinity, comprising many Divine Names, is often called the ‘One-Many’ (al-wāḥid al-kathīr) because the multiplicity of the Divine Names is still undergirded by the unity of God’s Essence: ‘The entity of Life is the entity of Alive, Knowing, Desiring, and Powerful. And so on with the rest. So the relationships are diverse, but the Entity is One’ (Chittick 1989: 52). Thus, every Divine Name – when understood as a predicate or attribute – properly describes God’s Divinity and not God’s Essence; this is because each Divine Name describes relations between God and creatures and these relationships require creatures to exist. Even the all-comprehensive divine name Allāh, when taken as signifying all the divine attributes, describes God’s Divinity as opposed to God’s Essence which remains beyond positive and negative descriptions: ‘That which is denoted by the name Allāh demands the cosmos and everything within it. So this name is like the name “king” or “sovereign.” Hence, it is a name of the Level, not the Essence’ (Chittick 1989: 50).
In the context of cosmology and creation, Ibn al-ʿArabī refers God’s Divinity comprising all the Divine Names as God’s ‘All-Merciful Breath’ (al-nafas al-raḥmānī). The All-Merciful Breath is God’s creative word or logos – His eternal act of uttering ‘Be’, which serves as the perpetual cause of the coming into being of all creatures (Chittick 1989: 126). The All-Merciful Breath is variously called ‘the Cloud’, ‘the Real through Whom Creation takes place’ (al-ḥaqq al-makhlūq bihi), ‘the Supreme Barzakh’, ‘the Reality of Realities’, ‘the Sphere of Life’, and the ‘One-Many’ (al-wāḥid al-kathīr) because the entire Cosmos comes into existence by means of this Breath (Chittick 1989: 141). From the perspective of theology, Ibn al-ʿArabī identifies God’s Divinity, the Divine Names, and God’s all-Merciful Breath with the Muhammadan Light (al-nūr al-Muḥammadī) and Muhammadan Reality (al-ḥaqīqa al-Muḥammadiyyah). As stated in his Book of the Fabulous Gryphon (Kitāb ʿanqāʾ mughrib), the Muhammadan Reality is the first and self-manifestation of God. The Muhammadan Reality ‘emerged out of the Everlasting Lights (al-anwār al-ṣamadīya) and the Unitary Presence (al-ḥaḍra al-aḥadīya)’ and ‘arises in the [Divine] Unity (al-qāʾima bi-l-aḥadīya)’; the Muḥammadan Reality is ‘the Veil of [God’s] Self-Manifestation (ḥijāb tajallī-hi) and the Fashioning of His Self-Adornment (ṣiyāghat taḥallī-hi)’ (Elmore 1999: 372ff).
Through the mediation of the Muhammadan Reality, the locus of the Divine Names, God originates the Neoplatonic hierarchy of originated and composite beings. The first originated being (al-mubdaʿ al-awwal) is the Universal Intellect or Pen; this is followed by the Universal Soul or Guarded Tablet, Nature, Prime Matter, Universal Body, and the corporeal world with its various constituents (Murata 1992: 156-160). All created existents, from the First Intellect onward, are loci of manifestation that reflect one or more of God’s Names and Attributes. Among them, the Perfect Human (al-insān al-kāmil) functions as the most perfect and greatest locus of manifestation (maẓhar) of God with respect to the Divine Names. The Perfect Human is also the microcosm of the entire created hierarchy from the spiritual realm to the corporeal world. Perfect Humans have purified and perfected their souls into polished mirrors for all the Divine Names in the proper balance; the Prophet Muhammad is the foremost among them. As Ibn al-ʿArabī says: ‘The manifestation of the Real within the mirror of Muḥammad is the most perfect, most balanced, and most beautiful manifestation, because of the mirror’s actuality.’ Accordingly, Ibn al-ʿArabī believes that a Muslim should contemplate God as He is manifest in the mirror of the Prophet’s perfect humanity as opposed to the far weaker divine manifestations in normal humans or within oneself (Chittick 1989: 241).
This mystical theology of tawḥīd allows Ibn al-ʿArabī to identify God with the existence of created things, but not with their contingent essences which lack real existence: ‘God is identical with the existence of things, but He is not identical with the things [...] He is identical to all things in manifestation, but He is not identical to them in their essences. On the contrary, He is He, and the things are the things’ (Chittick 1989: 89-90). This means that God is Absolute Existence and any given creature is just an empty mirror or non-existent essence that bears a limited reflection or manifestation of God. God’s Essence remains unknown and unmanifest due to its sheer infinitude while God’s Divinity consisting of the Divine Names, as the first entification or self-disclosure of God, is reflected in and as creatures. Expressed by way of analogy, for Ibn al-ʿArabī, God’s Essence corresponds to the sun, the sunlight that emanates from the sun corresponds to God’s Divinity comprising the numerous Divine Names, and creatures are empty mirrors in which the sunlight is reflected without the sun being affected or displaced in any manner. This rebuts the common charge that Ibn al-ʿArabī’s mystical worldview is ‘pantheism’ because the latter asserts that God is identical to the sum of created things.
By upholding this onto-mystical worldview, Ibn al-ʿArabī is also able to accommodate the anthropomorphic descriptions of God found in the Qur’ān and ḥadīth, such as God’s hands, face, descending, sitting, etc. In his view, various anthropomorphic attributes of God are true with respect to the manifestation of God’s Names or the All-Merciful Breath; this Breath is the substance being reflected within and as the forms of various created things: ‘The Breath of the All-Merciful is the substance of the engendered things. That is why God described Himself by attributes that belong to temporally originated things, attributes which are considered impossible by rational and considerative proofs’ (Chittick 1989: 181). Thus, when God describes Himself as having two hands, two eyes, descending, sitting, etc., these attributes are correct – even though they pertain to created things – because God’s various loci of manifestation including physical things possess these attributes. Thus, God may be attributed with a face, two hands, and two eyes, insofar as some of the loci of manifestation of God’s Names such as human beings possesses these attributes; God descends and sits insofar as certain creatures, who are God’s loci of manifestation, descend and sit: ‘All things attributed to the locus of manifestation are attributed to Him, whether these be what are commonly considered attributes of imperfection or attributes of perfection and completion’ (Chittick 1989: 182).
Ibn al-ʿArabī mystical understanding of tawḥīd was incredibly influential to the point that his teachings provided the impetus for an entire ‘Abkarī tradition’ of Sufi metaphysics. His teachings were further interpreted, systematized, and expounded by numerous intellectually gifted mystical thinkers including Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 1274), Saʿīd al-Dīn al-Farghānī (d. 1300), Muʾayyad al-Dīn al-Jandī (d. 1300), ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Kashānī (d. 1330), and Dāʾūd al-Qayṣarī (d. 1350–51), and ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (d. 1424) (see Izutsu 1984; Murata 1992; Rustom 2005).
6 A return to divine simplicity: post-classical developments in theology and philosophy
The post-classical era of Islamic thought saw the considerable influence of both Ibn Sīnā’s philosophy and Ibn al-ʿArabī’s mystical thought upon Islamic thought in Ottoman lands, Persia, South Asia, and East Asia. Many Muslim thinkers in the Kalām and mystical traditions adopted Ibn Sīnā’s argument for God as the Necessary Existence in Himself. This argument became widely popular and was taught in Muslim madrassahs across Ottoman, Mughal, and Safavid lands. During this period, Kalām theology and Ibn Sīnā’s philosophy became so intertwined, such that Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) remarked that ‘the problems of theology (Kalām) have been confused with those of philosophy (falsafah). This has gone so far that the one discipline is no longer distinguishable from the other’ (Khaldūn 2015: 522).
One example of the synthesis between Kalām, falsafah, and Akbarī mysticism is how many post-classical Muslim thinkers refined their understandings of God’s attributes and embraced divine simplicity. As mentioned previously, classical Ashʿarī, Maturīdī, and Ḥanbalī theologies held that God has entitative attributes (ṣifāt maʿnawiyyah), which are numerically distinct from God’s Essence and one another. They hold that God’s attributes are neither identical to God nor separate from Him. Meanwhile, the Muʿtazilīs, Twelver Shīʿa, Ismaili Shīʿa, Zaydī Shīʿa, Ibādīs, Philosophers (falāsifah), Ishrāqīs, and Akbarī Sufis all uphold divine simplicity – the view that God transcends having entitative attributes that are distinct from His Essence. In the post-classical era, some Sunni theologians continued to profess the ‘entitative attributes’ position and tried to reconcile this belief with Ibn Sīnā’s teaching that God is the Necessary Existence in Himself. Al-Taftazānī (d. 1390) articulated his Ashʿarī theology of divine attributes in Avicennian terms: ‘The Necessary Existence through Itself (al-wājib al-wujūd li-dhātihi) is God, the Exalted, and His attributes, meaning that they [the divine attributes] are necessary due to the Essence of the Necessary, the Exalted, but they are contingent in themselves. There is no impossibility in the eternity of contingent beings since they subsist in the Essence of the Eternal, being necessary through Him’ (al-Taftazānī in Farhārī 2012: 268–269). Thus, for al-Taftazānī, God’s Essence is the Necessary Existence through Itself while God’s uncreated entitative attributes are contingent in themselves, eternally dependent upon God’s Essence and necessary due to God’s Essence.
On the other hand, a significant portion of post-classical Muslim theologians, philosophers, and mystics among the Sunnis went on to deny entitative attributes for God and uphold divine simplicity. The Sunni Akbarī followers of Ibn al-ʿArabī maintained an apophatic account of God’s Essence being identical to His attributes. Al-Qūnawī professed that God’s Essence transcends all names and attributes and that God’s attributes must be considered as identical with His Essence:
Within Him there is no manyness, composition [tarkīb], attribute, depiction [naʿt], name, impression, relation or ruling – rather, mere Wujūd. Rather, His name is identical with His attribute, and His attribute is identical with His Essence. His perfection is the same as His Essential Wujūd, fixed for Him by Himself, not by someone else. His life and His power are identical with His knowledge. (Chittick 2011: 122)
ʿAbd al-Rahmān Jāmī (d. 1492) reports that ‘as for the Sūfīs, they took the position that God’s attributes were identical to His Essence with respect to existence (bi-ḥasab al-wujūd) but other than It with respect to intellection (al-taʿaqqul)’ (al-Jāmī, 44). The Akbarīs held that God in His absolutely unconditioned Essence transcends names and attributes. However, the divine attributes become distinct and entified at the second level of conditioned or dependent reality known as Level of the Divinity or Inclusive Unity. Thus, al-Qayṣarī explained that:
At the Degree of Inclusive Unity (al-wāḥidiyyah) which is the level of the names and attributes, there are attributes, possessor of attributes, names and the named; it is the Degree of Divinity (al-ulūhiyyah) [...]. In the second level [Unity], knowledge is distinct from power and power is distinct from will. In this way, attributes become multiple, and through this multiplicity, the names and their manifestations become multiple. (Al-Qayṣarī 2020: 61–63, translation slightly modified).
Among Sunni philosophers and theologians, Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī (d. 1265) upheld Ibn Sīnā’s teachings on God’s Necessary Existence, the metaphysics of divine simplicity, and the eternal creation of the Neoplatonic Intellects in his famous work Ḥidāyat al-Ḥikmah. This work has been subject to numerous commentaries, super-commentaries, and glosses and was taught across the madrasah curricula; over eight hundred manuscripts of this work are extant in Turkey (Ahmed 2015: 18-19). ʿAḍud al-Dīn al-Ījī (d. 1356) in his al-Mawāqif stated that God’s attributes are only distinct in concept (mafhūm) but not in reality (ḥaqīqah), thereby upholding divine simplicity (Ījī [n.d.]: 280). Al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (d. 1413) in his Sharḥ al-Mawāqif affirmed divine simplicity as he stated that God’s attributes are only conceptually distinct and unitary in reality: ‘The Essence [of God] in this perspective is the reality (ḥaqīqah) of knowledge [...] and the reality of power. According to this, the Essence and the attributes are unified in reality (fī l-ḥaqīqah) [and] mutually distinct in concept (al-mafhūm)’ (Jurjānī 1998: VIII, 55).
The modern Punjabi Sunni theologian ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Farhārī (d. 1824) attests to the popularity of divine simplicity among modern Sunni scholars in his al-Nibrās: ‘The Sufis and some of the Ashʿarīs are of the view that the [divine] attributes are identical to the [divine] Essence and this [view] is immune to the difficulties that befall the followers of the earlier views’ (Farhārī 2012: 223). According to al-Farhārī, the Sunni verifiers (muḥaqqiqūn) affirm divine simplicity in accordance with the Sufi teachings of Ibn al-ʿArabī:
Many among the people of verification (ahl al-taḥqīq) are upon the belief in the identity (ʿayniyyah) of the [divine] attributes [and the Essence]. The Imām ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī said in al-Qawā’id al-Kashfiyyah that ‘His attributes are identical to His Essence and that no one attains to this except through spiritual wayfaring according to the shaykh. Spiritual wayfaring is necessary for you in order that He removes the veil from you.’ Some of the Sufis narrate from ʿAlī that he said: ‘The perfection of His [God’s] purity is that you negate from Him attributes.’ This means ‘super-added’ [attributes]. (Farhārī 2012: 258)
The Ḥanafī-Māturīdī verifier and Sunni traditionalist Muḥammad Bakhīt al-Muṭīʿī (1856-1935) – who served as the Grand Muftī of Egypt and Rector of al-Aẓhār – affirmed that the ‘correct’ theological position in Sunni Islam is that God’s attributes are identical with His Essence in agreement with the divine simplicity of the Muʿtazilīs, Sufis, and the Islamic Philosophers. In his super-commentary on Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Bayḍāwī’s Minhāj al-uṣūl and al-Asnawī’s commentary, al-Muṭīʿī refuted the classical Sunni position that God’s attributes are super-added to the Divine Essence and mildly criticized al-Taftazānī for affirming this view:
The verified view (al-taḥqīq) is that the position (madhhab) of Ahl al-Sunna is in agreement with what the Philosophers (falāsifah) and the Muʿtazilīs follow and this is also the position of the Sufis: the attributes of the Exalted (God) are not distinct from Him ontologically (wujūdan) and not identical to Him conceptually (mafhūman). (al-Muṭīʿī: IV, 79-80)
Finally, Aḥmad Riḍā Khān (d. 1340/1921), a renowned renewer (mujaddid) of Sunni Islam in modern times, presented divine simplicity as the ‘pure faith’ of the Sunni verifiers even while criticizing the Islamic Philosophers and the Muʿtazilīs at the conceptual level:
The verifiers (al-muḥaqqiqah) are the people of perfection among the spiritual gnostics. They believe that God, the Exalted, has attributes that are identical to the Essence through consideration of the matter according to what is upon Him that no one knows Him except God Himself and they [the attributes] are distinct from the Essence on account of intellectual considerations – and this is the pure faith. (Khān 2022: 112)
Khān subsequently offered his own position that God and His attributes are identical God’s Essence in reality: ‘They [the attributes] are nothing else except identical to the Essence (ʿayn al-dhāt) to the absolute exclusion of being super-added (ziyādah) [to It]. Understand and affirm [this]’ (Khān 2022: 116).
A strong contingent of Twelver Shiʿi philosophers, generation after generation, integrated the metaphysical ideas of Ibn Sīnā and Ibn al-ʿArabī to produce original syntheses. These include Ḥaydar Āmulī (d. 1385), Mīr Damād (d. 1631), Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1641), Hādī Sabzavārī (d. 1893), and numerous twentieth-century thinkers including Allāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1981), Rūḥullah Khumaynī (d. 1989), Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ḥusaynī Ṭihrānī (d. 1995), Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī (d. 1999), ʿAllāmah Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (d. 2005), and Ḥasan Ḥasanzādeh Āmulī (d. 2021). These Shiʿi philosophers upheld divine simplicity in the strongest terms while accepting Neoplatonic cosmological schemas resembling those of the Ibn Sīnā, the Ismailis or the Akbarīs. For example, Mullā Ṣadrā taught that God is the ‘the Necessary Existence that has neither description nor appellation except Its sheer Essence encompassing within Itself all states and the most beautiful and majestic descriptions through Its Unity and Its Singularity’. Ṣadrā demarcated three levels of modulated existence: the True Existence (al-wujūd al-ḥaqq) is God; Absolute Existence, otherwise known as Extended Existence (al-wujūd al-munbasiṭ) is God’s creative action corresponding to the first divine self-manifestation in Akbarī metaphysics; and Delimited Existence (al-wujūd al-muqayyad) – meaning contingent and conditioned existence – refers to originated beings beginning with the First Intellect (Shīrāzī 1981: II, 330–331).
The above examples attest that a significant contingent of post-classical Sunni and Shiʿi theologians, philosophers, mystics, and verifiers upheld divine simplicity and thereby denied that God has real-distinct or entitative attributes. Overall, Muslim scholars who affirm divine simplicity include the Muʿtazilīs, Twelver Shīʿa, Ismaili Shīʿa, Zaydī Shīʿa, Ibādīs, Philosophers (falāsifah), Ishrāqīs, Akbarī Sufis, and a significant number of post-classical Māturīdīs and Ashʿarīs. Despite claims to the contrary, divine simplicity was not a marginal position in the history of Islamic thought; a plurality of Muslim scholars across sectarian lines vigorously upheld and defended the doctrine of divine simplicity.
7 Allāḥ as the transcendent beloved: tawḥīd in Indo-Muslim devotional literature
The various perspective on tawḥīd explored thus far are expressions of the Arabo-Persian Muslim intellectual tradition. It is also important for this survey to account for local vernacular expressions of Islamic belief in regions like South Asia. Various Sunni Sufi and Shiʿi Ismaili pīrs (preacher-saints) composed epic poetry, ginān (‘gnostic hymns’), and sufiānā-Kalām (‘mystical-devotional utterances’). Their compositions facilitated the widespread popularity of Islam in South Asia among indigenous and non-elite populations. Indo-Muslim theo-poetic literature uniquely articulates Sunni Sufi and Shiʿi understandings of tawḥīd using the philosophical, theological, and devotional vocabularies drawn from Indic cultures and spiritual traditions. According to Ali Asani:
Those Muslims who interpreted their faith more esoterically or mystically, saw nothing wrong in adapting Islam to the local Indian environment, its mores and traditions, its languages and symbols [...] As part of this process, concepts are ‘Indianized’ or ‘indigenized’ and presented in terms that would be familiar and palpable to Indian audiences. (Asani 1991: 221)
The first example of tawḥīd expressed in Indo-Muslim vernacular comes from the famous Bengali Muslim epic poem by Sayyid Sultan (c. 1550-1648) titled Nabīvaṃśa (‘Lineage of the Prophet’). In this theo-poetic discourse, the Sayyid presents a theological and mytho-historical account of God’s self-manifestation in the form of the Light of Muhammad and the gradual manifestation of this Light through various Prophets culminating in the historical Muhammad. In doing so, the Sayyid freely incorporates Indic theological and mystical terminologies for God and His manifestations, such as Niranjana (the Unconditioned), Nirākāra (the Formless), Sunyata (the void), avatara, amsa, gunah, Rāma, Krishna, jīvātmān, etc. In doing so, the Sayyid merges seemingly ‘Hindu’ vocabularies with Islamic mystical terminologies to translate Ibn al-ʿArabī’s doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd and the Muhammadan Light into a South Asian milieu. For example, Sayyid’s poem includes the following verses:
Without Niranjana, the Immaculate One, nothing is created therein.
Within form, the formless form ever rests.
Even as the sun’s rays suffuse the moonlight,
so too does Niranjana permeate all things.
Even as butter inheres in cow’s milk,
So too is the Lord immanent in the world.
Having taken the form of Muhammad – his own avatāra –
Niranjana manifests his own portion (amsa) to propagate himself.
From time’s beginning to its end, the Creator
shall create messengers (paygāmbar) to rightly guide all peoples. (Irani 2021: 1–2)
Āhād, Āhmad, separated by the syllable ma:
know that within this syllable ma lies the triple world (tribhuvana).
The light (nūr) from Āhmad created the syllable ma.
Āhād and Āhmad are both of one body (kalevara).
When Āhād beheld the sight of Āhmad,
he looked closely at him, taking the form of a lover (bhāvaka).
When he saw himself within the form of Āhmad,
he meditated upon the form, becoming a spiritual aspirant (sādhaka).
Absorbed in the juice of love (pirīti rasa), the formless Lord
began to gaze upon Nūr Muhammad. (Irani 2021: 49)
The above verses from Sayyid’s poetry demonstrate how he interweaves various spiritual symbols from Indic spiritual traditions (Upanishads, Vedanta, Sant, Yoga, etc.) and Sufi metaphysical ideas from the tradition and heirs of Ibn al-ʿArabī. God is termed Niranjan (Unconditioned) and formless in accordance with the Akbarī teaching on the unmanifest Divine Essence; yet God is also said to pervade all things like butter in cow’s milk. This communicates the doctrine of God’s self-manifestation in all existents through the Divine Names using Indic tropes. The poem also integrates the Upanishadic cosmogony of God creating all things through the sacred syllable ‘Aum’ (‘Om’) with the Qur’anic doctrine of God creating through His word ‘Be’. Sayyid connects the divine logos, represented by ‘Aum’ and ‘Be’, to the emanation of the Light of Muhammad (nūr Muhamma) from God’s Essence – respectively referred to as ‘Aḥmad’ and ‘Aḥad’. The Light of Muhammad proceeds from God’s Essence as God’s self-image (svarūpa) in the manner of reflection within a mirror. Sayyid further describes how God and the Light of Muhammad gaze at each other with passionate love, which causes the Light of Muhammad to ‘sweat’. All creation then emanates from the ‘sweat’ of the Muhammadan Light (Irani 2021: 34–35).
Sayyid’s poem goes on to describe the details of creation and the earthly manifestation of the Muhammadan Light through the various ancestors of the historical Muhammad. In another example of integrating Indic religious symbolism and Arabo-Islamic motifs, Sayyid presents the seven famous avatāras of Lord Vishnu recognized in Vaishnavi bhakti (devotion) as pre-Adamic ancestors of Prophet Muhammad: the Fish (matsya), the Turtle (kūrma), the Boar (varāha), the Man- Lion (nr̥siṃha), the brahmin Dwarf, Paraśurāma, and Rāma (Irani 2021: 188). The lineage of ‘Hindu’ avatāras seamlessly connects to the ‘Islamic’ Prophets and the famous Arab forefathers of the Prophet to form one divinely favoured genealogy (Irani 2021: 38). The culmination of this narrative is the historical advent of the Prophet Muhammad, whom Sayyid terms as the ‘Muhammad avatāra’. The Muhammad avatāra, identified with the physical person of Muhammad, is the greatest manifestation of the Light of Muhammad who calls humankind to tawḥīd as the fulfilment of all prior religious scriptures, avatāras, and Prophets. Overall, Sayyid Sultan’s theo-poetic discourse in the Nabīvaṃśa supplants our modern dichotomous notions of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ (i.e. Arabo-Persian) with an Indo-Muslim synthesis: ‘This enables hinduāni peoples to see themselves as the original forebears of Islam, as part of an Indo-Islamic salvation history, wherein their scriptures predict the advent of the Muhammad avatāra, the avatāra of the kali age’ (Irani 2021: 349).
A second example of an Indo-Muslim gnostic-devotional account of tawḥīd is found within the gnostic hymns or gināns composed by the Shiʿi Ismaili pīrs. These pīrs were deputized by the Ismaili Imams in Persia from the thirteenth century onward to preach the Ismaili interpretation of Islam in various regions in India. In doing so, the pīrs composed didactic, devotional, and gnostic hymns called ginān. These gināns, similar to the Sunni Indo-Muslim Bengali literature examined, seamlessly integrate Shiʿi Muslim, Ismaili Neoplatonic, and Sufi Akbarī terminologies from Arabo-Persian vernacular with Vaishnavite, Vedantic, Sant, bhakti, Shavite, and Yogic vocabularies prevalent in South Asia. Overall, the Ismaili gināns dynamically translate the Ismaili apophatic tawḥīd and its Neoplatonic cosmogony into an Indic spiritual milieu.
The grounding principle of the Indic Ismaili mystical worldview is an apophatic theology framed through Indic nirgunī vocabularies. The Rūḥānī Visāl of Pīr Ḥasan Kabīr al-Dīn (fl. fourteenth century) opens with the phrase: ‘In the beginning there was God without attributes (ādam ād niriñjan), He who was without qualities (naraguṇ) and without form (āpe arūp)’ (Asani 2002: 153). Pīr Shams (fl. thirteen-fourteenth century) describes God prior to creation: ‘Then, the Unique Niriñjan was totally alone; And there were no sacred words of the Vedas’ (Kassam 1992: 258). These gināns effectively translate the Ismaili Neoplatonic apophatic view of tawḥīd into Indian vernacular.
The gināns also articulate Indo-Ismaili cosmogonies by integrating ‘Hindu’ creation stories with Qur’anic and Shiʿi Neoplatonic cosmogonies. The Khaṭ Niriñjan of Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn (fl. fourteenth century) presents a cosmogony in which the ineffable and transcendent God, the Niriñjan (Unconditioned), primordially originates the Divine Gnostic (gināni) as an expression of the Divine Gnosis (ginān):
Then there was neither earth nor heaven; yet Niriñjan (the Unconditioned) subsisted by Himself;
In the void, rapt in self-contemplation, through His perfect will He originated the Divine Gnosis (brahm ginān).
The Divine Gnostic (gināni) meditated on the Divine Gnosis (ginān), yet Niriñjan (the Unconditioned) subsisted by Himself. (Dīn 1919: verse 2–4)
The primordial Divine Gnostic, as the first origination of the absolutely transcendent Niriñjan, is the celestial Light of Imamate corresponding to the Universal Intellect, which the gināns identify as Lord Vishnu. The same ginān goes on the describe how the Divine Gnostic or Vishnu through self-contemplation causes the emanation of Lord Brahmā; this Brahmā goes on to create the spiritual and material Cosmos by the command and permission of Vishnu. Thus, some ginānic cosmologies depict a Vishnu-Brahmā creation myth in a way that closely parallels the Neoplatonic Universal Intellect and Universal Soul.
Accordingly, the gināns present each Shiʿi Ismaili Imam as the avatāra of Lord Vishnu, the first self-manifestation of God. The Indic doctrine of avatāra serves as the dynamic equivalent of the Sufi and Ismaili concept of the Imam as a maẓhar (the mirror or locus of manifestation) of the Divine Names of God’s First Origination. The gināns further present the Prophet Muhammad and each Ismaili pīr after him as the avatāra of Lord Brahmā, the second divine manifestation and cosmic demiurge. In the gināns, Vishnu and Brahmā cosmologically correspond to the Universal Intellect and Universal Soul of Ismaili Neoplatonic thought; the gināns identify these two metacosmic principles with the Light of Imamate (the eternal cosmic ʿAlī) and the Light of Prophethood (the eternal cosmic Muhammad) respectively. Accordingly, Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn proclaims this dynamic equivalence as follows: ‘Know that the primordial Vishnu is the Lord ʿAlī; Certainly, Gūru Brahmā is the Prophet Muḥammad’ (Dīn 1919: verse 456). Pīr Shams declares: ‘The avatāra of this fourth age is Nakalanka; Know that he is a Muslim [...] He has taken form (avatāra) as the man Islām Shāh’ (Kassam 1992: 192–193). Sayyid Abdūl-Nabī referred to the fortieth Ismaili Imam as the avatāra of the age: ‘The ever-living Lord (swāmī) and Master (shāh) has his seat in Kahak, manifest in the form (avatāra) of ʿAlī’ (Shackle and Moir 1992: 98–101). Just like Bengali Indo-Muslim literature, the gināns also present an uninterrupted lineage of Imams, Prophets, and pīrs, beginning with the first creation and encompassing the famous avatāras of Vishnu including Ramā and Krishnā, before culminating in the historical Muhammad and the historical ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and their lineal descendants, the Ismaili Imams (Khan 2005).
8 Contesting tawḥīd: intercessory prayer (istighāthah) in Islam
In the present day, it is commonplace to find lay Muslims claiming that Islam rejects all intermediaries between humanity and God, especially with respect to prayer and supplication. Some Muslims, especially those following the Wahhābi-Salafī school of thought, condemn anyone who evokes intermediaries in seeking God’s help as an idolator (mushrik) and an unbeliever (kāfir). Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (1703–1792), the founder of the Wahhābī-Salafī movement and Ibn Bāz (1912–1999), the former Salafī Grand Muftī of Saudi Arabia have written: ‘Calling upon the dead, asking for their help, or offering them gifts or sacrifices are all forms of shirk. Setting up intermediaries between oneself and God, making supplication to them, or asking their intercession with God is unbelief (kufr) by the consensus of the community’ (Rippin 2004: 134–135). There is a great irony in the Salafī condemnation of intercessory prayer as shirk and a violation of tawḥīd; the popularity of this belief among contemporary lay Muslims due to modern Salafī online daʿwah adds another layer of irony. This is because the historical majority of Sunni and Shiʿi Muslims, including the scholarly elite and the laity, regarded intercessory prayer as a permissible if not recommended.
The practice of supplicating the Prophet Muhammad, the Imams, or Saints (awliyā’ Allāḥ) for help in their capacity as intermediaries for God’s blessings is known as istighāthah, which I render here as ‘intercessory prayer’. The majority of premodern Muslims, both among the scholarly elite and in popular local contexts, accepted the permissibility of intercessory prayer. The late Shahab Ahmed has aptly described the popular Muslim practice of seeking the blessing of saints through visiting their shrines:
The near-universal pre-modern practice of the visitation (ziyārah) of Sufi tomb-shrines to benefit from the blessing of the spiritual power of the deceased saint is expressive of the recognition on the part of its practitioners of an Unseen cosmos of Revealed Truth in which Sufi practitioners were active participants and of which they were active conveyors. (Ahmed 2015: 20)
At the scholarly level, there is a steady stream of Sunni scholars, going back centuries and hailing from various legal and theological schools, who passionately defended intercessory prayer. Some of these famous Sunni defenders of istighāthah include: Ibn Qudāmah al-Maqdisī (d. 1223), Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 1355), Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī (d. 1566), Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Qasṭallānī (d. 1517), Shihāb al-Dīn al-Ramlī (d. 1550), ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1731), Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Qabbānī (fl. 1700s), ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Azharī al-Ṭandatāwī (fl. 1700s), Ibn Kīrān al-Fasī (d. 1812), Aḥmad Zaynī Daḥlān (d. 1886), Qāḍī Yūsuf al-Nabhānī (d. 1932) (see Lav 2021; Maqdisī 1990: 40; al-Ramlī: IV, 362; Nabhānī 2007: 213; Heck 2012).
Shihāb al-Dīn al-Ramlī (d. 1550), the Grand Imām of al-Azhar, Grant Muftī of Egypt, and Shaykh al-Islām, explicitly permitted intercessory prayer: ‘Seeking help (al-istighāthah) through the Prophets, Messengers, Saints, scholars, and the righteous is permissible because the Messengers, Saints, and the righteous grant help after their deaths because the miracles of the Prophets and the supernatural gifts of the Saints are not cut off with their death’ (Ramlī [n.d.]: IV, 362). Intercessory prayer is a well-established practice in Twelver and Ismaili Shiʿi communities as evidenced by the common Shiʿi greeting ‘Yā ʿAlī Madād’ (O ʿAlī help) and popular petitions that Shiʿi Muslims address to the Imams such as Nād ʿAlī (‘Call ʿAlī). On the whole, intercessory prayer is core feature of mainstream historical Islam in its popular and scholastic manifestations.
The pro-istighāthah position of the majority of Muslims and the anti-istighāthah position of the Salafīs are undergirded by very different theological visions. This debate is not merely about orthopraxy but ultimately concerns the correct understanding of tawḥīd. For example, the anti-istighāthah stance of the Wahhābīs and Taymīs is rooted in the theological views of Ibn Taymiyyah. Their doctrine of tawḥīd comprises at least two dimensions: tawḥīd al-ulūhiyyah and tawḥīd al-rubūbiyyah. The latter, tawḥīd al-rubūbiyyah, involves recognizing God as the absolute creator and sustainer of all creatures. For Ibn Taymiyyah and the Wahhābīs, the Meccan polytheists affirmed God’s rubūbiyyah. The tawḥīd al-ulūhiyyah, in their view, means directing certain practices and rituals exclusively to God; this was the distinctive message of the Prophets. In this paradigm, a supplication (duʿā’) should only be directed to God. According to Salafī and Taymī theology, supplicating a created being, including a Prophet or Saint, amounts to a violation of tawḥīd al-ulūhiyyah and registers as shirk (Bunzel 2023: 120–122, 128–130). Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb employed this ‘two tawḥīds’ framework to declare that all Muslims who practice intercessory prayer are truly mushriks (idolators) and kāfirs (unbelievers) outside of Islam (Bunzel 2023: 130–132). However, the tawḥīd theologies of most other Muslims greatly differ from the Wahhābīs and the Taymīs and their dichotomous tawḥīd; this is why most Muslims have historically accepted intercessory prayer as unproblematic. The Ashʿarīs argued for the permissibility of intercessory prayer through arguments rooted in their particular theology of tawḥīd. As mentioned previously, Ashʿarī theology holds that God is the sole agent and cause of all actions; human beings have no agency and they merely ‘acquire’ (kasb) actions that God creates within them. Thus, al-Subkī justified intercessory supplications directed to the Prophet as follows: ‘Thus Allāh is asked for aid, and the aid comes from Him in the sense of creation and existentiation; and the Prophet is asked for aid, and the aid comes from Him [in his capacity] as a non-causal medium by acquisition (tasabbuban wa-kasban)’ (Lav 2021: 267). Thus within Ashʿarī theology, the Prophet has no agency or independent power to grant anything; it is God granting the help by creating it and the Prophet functions as an instrumental intermediary who ‘acquires’ the created aid and dispenses it to the supplicant: ‘The Prophet, may Allāh’s blessing and peace be upon him, is an intermediary (wāsiṭah) between Allāḥ and the one asking for aid’ (Lav 2021: 268).
Meanwhile, Avicennians, Akbarī Sufis, mystical Twelver Shiʿis, and Shiʿi Ismailis ground the efficacy and legitimacy of intercessory prayer in their Neoplatonic understandings of tawḥīd. These Neoplatonic paradigms hold that the absolutely timeless and transcendent God necessarily emanates His blessing (barakah) and mercy (raḥmah) upon contingent beings without restriction; God’s blessings, mercy, and favours emanate through various spiritual intermediaries, including the purified souls of the Prophets, Imams, and saints, from whom the supplicant may attain God’s blessings:
The idea of the cosmic economy of barakah proceeds directly from the Neo- Platonic logic of emanation that underpins the Avicennan cosmos—indeed, an ordinary Muslim’s ziyārah to obtain the barakah that emanates from the tomb of a Sufi in a village or mountain pass in Morocco, India or Indonesia is precisely a de facto acknowledgment of and active participation in a cosmos organized and structured and experienced in Neo-Platonic, Avicennan, and Akbarian terms. (Ahmed 2015: 92)
Avicennian, Akbarī, and Ismaili understandings of tawḥīd envision what the late Shahab Ahmed calls a ‘cosmic economy of barakah’ in which every creature receives, participates in, and distributes a share of God’s blessings based on its receptivity and existential capacities. The souls of the Prophets, Imams, and saints are regarded as far more receptive to God’s ever-flowing blessings as compared to normal humans. Based on this logic, the practice of seeking help from the Prophet, Imams, or saints to alleviate one’s spiritual or physical needs is as intuitive and routine as seeking the aid of doctors, friends, or even material sustenance in everyday life. God’s barakah continuously ‘flows’ through all of His creatures, all of which are intermediaries dependent upon God. God alone is the independent source of all help. Thus, the act of praying to a human being for assistance does not contradict tawḥīd at all; rather, this practice affirms tawḥīd due to the supplicant’s recognition that all help and blessing comes from God, regardless of the intermediary one obtains them by.
9 Conclusion: ‘the Truth without trace or name’
The theological, mystical, and practical expositions of tawḥīd examined in this survey showcase the discursive understandings of Muslim intellectual elites. While discursive expressions of tawḥīd are certainly valuable and meaningful, it is perhaps more appropriate conclude this survey with a glimpse of the popular, vernacular, and gnostic-devotional expressions of tawḥīd.
One finds this in the popular Sufi poetry of the Punjabi Chishtī pīr Khwājah Ghulām Farīd (1845-1902). Khwājah Ghulām’s poems are popularly recited to this day among South Asian Muslims in various devotional settings and, more recently, on Coke Studio’s YouTube channel. In the below kāfī, titled Ḥusn-i Ḥaqīqī, the Khwajāh attempts to address God in a manner most befitting His greatness. In doing so, the poet rehearses the entire theological and mystical vocabulary that Muslims employed to conceive tawḥīd over the last millennium. In the end, every theological term, mystical doctrine, and devotional epithet uttered by the Khwajāh fails to describe God and melts away. Muslims have sought to conceptualize God through various articulations of tawḥīd; but in the end, God’s absolute unity eludes all attempts at theological conceptualization. God in His true reality is ultimately beyond tawḥīd.
Oh! Real-True Beauty (ḥusn-i ḥaqīqī), Beginning- less Light (nūr-i azal)!
Shall I call you ‘Necessary,’ (vājib) or shall I call you ‘Contingent-Possible’ (imkān)?
Shall I call you ‘Creator’ (khāliq), ‘Pre- Eternal Self- Essence’ (zāt-i qadīm)?
Shall I call you a ‘New Event’ (ḥādith)? Shall I call you a ‘Creation in this World’ (khalq-i jahān)?
Shall I call you ‘Absolute Pure Existence’ (muṭlaq mahḍ vujūd)?
[…]
Shall I call you ‘Dasrat,’ ‘Bichhman,’ or ‘Rām’?
Shall I call you ‘Sītā, my Darling One’? . . .
Shall I call you ‘Mahā Dēv’? Shall I call you ‘Bhagwān?’
[…]
Repent now Farid forever!
For whatever I may say is less,
Do I call you the pure (pāk alakh) and the humane?
The Truth (ḥaqq) without trace or name. (Ahmed 2015: 88–90)