MUSLIMS: DOCTRINESwho has been granted the gift of prophecy."54 Under 'Abd al-Malik,
the ruler and his officials also seem to have claimed to be the agents
or instruments of divine destiny (Ar. qadar). Such a claim could be
abused, and al-J:Iasan al-Ba~ri accused local officials in the time of
'Abd al-Malik of appealing to the qadar of God to excuSe their own
misdeeds. They interpreted the Qur'an to mean that qadar determined
the physical and spiritual destiny of a person, that people were re-
warded for acts they could not avoid doing and were punished for
those they were unable to prevent, and that deeds were performed
through people, not by them.^55 The implication was that the rulers
were not responsible for their actions in a way which would give a
religious sanction to revolt. There may have been more than a semantic
connection between determinism (Ar. jabriyya) and tyranny (Ar. ja-
bariyya).
The concept of Time (usually M. P. zamiin) as fate survived among
Muslims and non-Muslims in early Islamic Iraq. It was used to explain
unpredictable misfortunes or accidents.^56 However, Muslims tended
to subsume this concept of fate in the destiny decreed by God. Res-
ignation and dependence on God were expressions of ascetic piety
that asserted the omnipotence of a personal God instead of an im-
personal fate. 'Abdullah ibn Mas'iid was quoted by Zayd ibn Wahb
al-Juhani (d. 703 or 714), who also lived at Kufa, as saying that
everyone has a book in which an angel writes God's decision about
the sex, provision, term of life, and destiny for Heaven or Hell of the
embryo when it is still in the womb.^57 He was also among those who
are supposed to have said that one's spiritual destiny was inescapable,
that no matter how you spend your life you will finally be overtaken
by your book and your last acts will justify whether God rewards or
punishes yoU.^58
54 Thomson, "Early Islamic Sects," p. 92.
55 Dixon, Umayyad Caliphate, p. 127; J. Obermann, "Political Theology in Early
Islam; J:Iasan al-Ba~ri's Treatise on Qadar," JAOS 55 (1935), 145-47, 150; M. Schwarz,
"The Letter of al-J:Iasan al-Ba~ri," Oriens 20 (1967), 16, 18, 19,22,26,29-30; Mont-
gomery Watt, Formative Period, pp. 83-84,95. 'Abd al-Malik's Christian secretary,
Sham'al, is said to have compared the Commander of the Faithful and what he does
to dahr (Jahshiyiiri, Wuzara', p. 35).
56 A search of contemporary poetry for such expressions will be more productive
than looking for them in ~adlth.
57 Muranyi, Prophetengenossen, pp. 133-40; Montgomery Watt, Formative Period,
pp. 105, 113. This was turned into an ~ad,th in the eighth century.
58 Montgomery Watt, Free Will, pp. 18-19; idem, Formative Period, p. 105; Wen-
sinck, Muslim Creed, p. 55.