ʿAbd Al-Jabbār

ʿAbd Al-JabbĀr

ʿABD AL-JABBĀR. Beginning his discussion of the eleventh generation of the Mu'tazilah, the biographer of al-Jushamī al-Bayhaqī (d. 494/1100) states:

Belonging to this generation, and in fact the foremost of them and the leader of them with regards to his excellence, is Chief Judge Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Hamadhānī.… I cannot conceive of any expression which will convey his status regarding his excellence or his elevated rank in [this] discipline [namely kalām]. He is the one who tore kalām open and spread it out, producing its major works as a result of which kalām spread far and wide reaching the East and the West. In these works, he put down the detailed arguments (daqīq) as well as the major theses (jalīl) of kalām in an entirely novel manner. (Sharḥ al-'uyūn, 365)

Life

ʿAbd al-Jabbār (Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn Aḥmad al-Hamadhānī, Qāḍī al-Quḍāt) was born in the town of Asadābād in the district of Hamadhān around 320/932. He began his study of the ḥadīth (traditions of the Prophet), fiqh (religious law) and other religious sciences with local scholars in Asadābād and Qazwīn. In 340/951 he departed for Hamadhān and five years later went to Isfahan to study there.

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