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Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī

Savant

ʿAlī ibn Ismāʿīl, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī, was born in Basra in 260 AH (874) and died in Baghdad around 324 AH (936). He was descended from the companion Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī. From muʿtazilism to the Sunnah For nearly forty years, al-Ashʿarī was the student and close friend of Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī, great master of the Muʿtazilite school, who gave reason a preponderant place in understanding the faith. Around the year 300 AH, he publicly announced at the mosque of Basra that he was abandoning these doctrines. He devoted the rest of his life to defending the people's belief in the Sunnah, particularly against the Muʿtazilites, using the reasoning methods of kalām. His thoughts Al-Ashʿarī affirms the divine attributes mentioned by the Quran and the Sunnah, the uncreated character of the Word of God, the vision of God in the afterlife and divine omnipotence, while seeking a middle path between literalism and excessive rationalism. His legacy His disciples and their successors, such as al-Bāqillānī, al-Juwaynī, al-Ghazālī or Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, developed the Ashʿarite school, which became one of the two great schools of Sunni theology with the Māturīdite. In the Maghreb and West Africa, it is associated with Mālikite fiqh and Sufism of the path of al-Junayd, as recalled in the famous verse of Ibn ʿĀshir in al-Murshid al-muʿīn: “according to the belief of al-Ashʿarī, the fiqh of Mālik and the path of al-Junayd”. Photo: pages of a manuscript from Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn (National Library of France).