Al-Farabi’s philosophy was an attempt to be politically safe, avoiding the
dynastic partisanship inherent in the various Sunni and ShiÀite theologies. In
this respect he moved onto MuÀtazilite turf, an earlier attempt at a religion of
reason and a neutral stance on dynastic issues. Increasingly powerful enemies
were now accusing the MuÀtazilites of heterodoxy. This was the final generation
in which anything creative would come from them in philosophy. Other
practitioners of kalam, notably al-AshÀari and his followers, were retreating
toward a more conservative position. The Neoplatonism of al-Farabi is the
kind of structure-driven creativity which emerges to fill an emptying slot in the
intellectual field as external political forces destroy their social bases. Al-Farabi,
like al-Kindi before him, attracted no notice from his contemporaries in the
networks of Muslim theology. This gave him a certain amount of safety; on
occasion he fled Baghdad to avoid political troubles. As the Christians disap-
peared and MuÀtazilites faded out in the next few generations, al-Farabi’s
philosophy was the one that survived and prospered. Later falasifa, as well as
their critics, came to regard al-Farabi as preeminent.
The Crystallization of Rational Theology in a Conservative Direction
For Muslim intellectuals, the big news of the early 900s would have been the
split which took place in the MuÀtazilite camp. Al-AshÀari, pupil of the head
of the Basra school, al-JubaÁi, denounced the MuÀtazilites in 912 and an-
nounced his reconciliation with the hadith scripturalists. Al-AshÀari now ad-
mitted that the QurÁan is not created; using the distinction of essence and ex-
istence, he met objections by showing that any particular copy of the QurÁan
is created, whereas its essence is eternal. There was some personal rivalry in
this move, as the Basra headship was passed at just this time to al-JubaiÁs son,
the acute metaphysician Abu Hashim. But the break was not merely personal,
as we can see by the fact that MuÀtazilite creativity more or less dried up at
this point, while the AshÀarite lineage prospered; its future generations would
include the important thinkers al-Baqillani, al-Juwayni, al-Ghazali, and al-
Sharastani (as we see in Figure 8.2). Moreover, among al-AshÀari’s contempo-
raries was al-Maturidi, in far-off Samarqand, who founded another lineage of
theological moderates, somewhat closer to the MuÀtazilites on the issue of free
will (Watt, 1973: 312–316). The theological factions were being revamped at
this time across the board, on both the Sunni and ShiÀite sides.
If the AshÀarites were the most prominent lineage philosophically, it was
because they had accumulated the intellectual capital of the MuÀtazilite de-
bates.^14 The AshÀarites firmly adopted time-atomism as their metaphysics. As
we have seen, this doctrine emerged only gradually and with many disagree-
ments in the MuÀtazilite camp; and in fact the strongest statement of time-
atomism by a MuÀtazilite came from al-KaÀbi (109 in Figure 8.1), a contem-
Tensions of Ideas: Islam, Judaism, Christendom^ •^411