Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
NAZARIYAT-JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCES, cilt.8, sa.1, ss.63-100, 2022 (ESCI)
Sadr al-Shari`a's (d. 747/1346) four premises (al-muqaddimat al-arba`), which were formulated to refute Fakhr al-Din al-Razi's (d. 606/1210) argument negating human volitional acts and to re-articulate the principles of the Hanafi-Maturidi tradition on the subject in a theoretical language, and Mehmed Birgivi's (d. 981/1573) later explanations on these premises have shaped the discussions on free-will and human action in the lands of Rum. Ibrahim al-Kurani, an Akbarian- Ash`ari scholar who operated in Hijaz during the 17th century and was influential in the lands of Hijaz, Damascus and North Africa, wrote numerous works on this subject. With his treatise Jila' al-AnUar, al-Kurani also got involved in the version of the discussion that occurred in the lands of Rum and analyzed the views of Sadr al-Shari`a and al-Birgiwi. Al-Kurani evaluated and challenged the dominant Hanafi-Maturidi tradition in his time and addressed various issues such as the possibility of proving human moral responsibility through the notions of particular will (alirada al-juz'iyya) and performance (iqa.), whether the states (ahwal) were subject to creation, and if the will needed a cause for making choices. Moreover, he focused on the establishment of a middle position between absolute freedom (tafwid) and absolute determinism (jabr). This paper aims to contextualize al-Kurani's views and criticisms within the related intellectual history by suggesting that, similar to the interactions he had with other intellectual circles, al-Kurani's interactions with the lands of Rum through his criticism of the dominant Hanafi-Maturidi tradition of the time was connected to his purpose of opening up space for his own intellectual position and views that had the ambition to reconcile the different schools of thought.