al-Shahrastani

Works

• 1127The Book of Religious and Philosophical Sects

  Survey in two parts: the communities with a revealed scripture – Muslims, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and dualists – and those who follow their own opinion, among them the Greek philosophers from Thales to Proclus, the Arabic philosophers, above all Ibn Sina, and the religions of India; doctrines are reported in their own terms before any judgement.

• c. 1140Struggling with the Philosopher

  Polemic against Ibn Sina planned in seven “bouts”, of which five were written: on the division of being, on the existence and unity of the Necessary Existent, on God’s knowledge and on the eternity of the world; Nasir al-Din al-Tusi answered it a century later.

Position

Al-Shahrastani is on the map as the author of the classic Arabic survey of religions and philosophies and as an Ashʿarite critic of Ibn Sina who also absorbed much of his thought. The Book of Religious and Philosophical Sects first sets out its method: each doctrine is reported as its adherents state it, without refutation, and the communities are ordered by their relation to revelation – those with a revealed book (Muslims, Jews, Christians), those with something like a book (Zoroastrians, Manicheans), and those who follow their own reasoning, from the Sabians and the Greek sages from Thales to Proclus to the Arabic Peripatetics, the pre-Islamic Arabs and the schools of India. Its long section on Ibn Sina is a careful summary, and the work became a main source for later Muslim and, from the nineteenth century, European scholarship on the history of religions. In “The Furthest Steps in Theology” he set out Ashʿarite theology in twenty questions while discussing the philosophers’ objections; in “Struggling with the Philosopher” he attacked Ibn Sina directly: the division of being into necessary and possible is unclear, the proof that the Necessary Existent is one fails, the account of God’s knowledge falls short, and the eternity of the world is not shown. Wilferd Madelung has argued that behind these objections stands an Ismaili theology of a God beyond being and non-being. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, a century later, defended Ibn Sina point by point in Wrestler’s Downfall.

Life & context

Abu l-Fath Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karim al-Shahrastani was born in Shahrastan, a town in Khurasan north of Nasa in present-day Turkmenistan, in 1086 or, by another report, 1076. He studied law and Ashʿarite theology in Nishapur with pupils of al-Juwayni, among them Abu l-Qasim al-Ansari. In 1116 he made the pilgrimage and then taught for three years at the Nizamiyya college in Baghdad. Back in Khurasan he served the Seljuq court at Merv, where the vizier Nasir al-Din Mahmud al-Marwazi was his patron; to him he dedicated the Book of Religious and Philosophical Sects (1127–28). Contemporaries suspected him of Ismaili leanings, which his late, unfinished Qur’an commentary “Keys of the Secrets” and a sermon preached in Khwarazm support. He died in his home town in 1153.

Further main works

• The Furthest Steps in Theology (Nihāyat al-iqdām fī ʿilm al-kalām)
• Keys of the Secrets and Lamps of the Righteous (Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār), unfinished Qur’an commentary