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operation, and he draws upon the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ and Avicenna whilst advocating aṢūfī hermeneutics.There is a neat parallelism in the structure of parts one and two. Each begins with achapter on al-Ghazālī on theology, progresses with a chapter on philosophy andfinally ends with a chapter on al-Ghazālī and Ṣūfī hermeneutics. The economy andprecision of the organisation of the book is certainly to be commended. The rathershort conclusion summarises the chapters and draws together two key points. First, therelationship between theory and practice in hermeneutics is often tenuous. Second,al-Ghazālī does not have a singular hermeneutics. Whittingham acknowledges theal-Ghazālī debate by stating that the study of hermeneutics does not decide hisrelationship to the Ashʿarī school. However, one can discern elements of a unifiedhermeneutical theory as discussed in the books: first, interpretation has its limits andone has to possess the requisite training and ability to interpret texts; second, there iscomplementarity between reason and revelation and the Qur’an and philosophy worktogether in the exposition of truth; and finally, the goal of the seeker is certainty andthe acquisition of knowledge that yields it. Of course, whether these points placeal-Ghazālī outside the Ashʿarī school or not is debatable. What they do indicate is theprocess of the ‘philosophisation’ of theology in medieval Islam. There is much tocommend in Whittingham’s brief study but one would want to see more, a greatercontextualisation of the intellectual tools and learned culture as well as a discussion ofhermeneutics as it developed in theory and practice in medieval Islam. In amonograph, one would also wish to see a bolder path struck, a critical evaluation ofthe literature but also more of the author and where he places himself within the al-Ghazālī debate, or even beyond it. Throwing aside the caution of the dissertation’sformat would make for a more interesting read. What the book does demonstrate isthat there is still much work to be done on al-Ghazālī.SAJJAD H. RIZVIDOI: 10.3366/E1465359109000278§Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism in Medieval Islam. Texts and Studies on theDevelopment and History of Kalam, Vol. I. By Richard M. Frank. Edited by DimitriGutas.1 Aldershot: Ashgate, Variorum, 2005. Pp. x+ 392. £62.50. Early IslamicTheology: The Muʿtazilites and al-Ashʿarī. Texts and Studies on the Develop-ment and History of Kalam, Vol. II. By Richard M. Frank. Edited by DimitriGutas.2 Aldershot: Ashgate, Variorum, 2007. Pp. xii + 384. £62.50.The academic work of Richard M. Frank has long been recognised for its outstandingcontribution to modern scholarship’s appreciation of the philosophical theology136 Journal of Qur’anic Studiesassociated with the early and classical intellectual tradition of Islam. Frank isconsidered to be one of the foremost Western authorities in the field of classicalIslamic theology and exemplifying this accolade is the fact that the VariorumCollected Studies Series has dedicated three volumes to his published articles.3 Thefirst of these volumes is devoted to articles which examine not only issues germane to‘both the lexical and intellectual context of kalām’ but also aspects of theology’snexus with philosophy and mysticism. It comprises fourteen articles in addition to anintroductory piece entitled ‘Yā kalām’ (listed as ‘Article I’) in which Frank offers avery modest account of his career-long devotion to the study of Islamic philosophicaltheology.4 This brief introductory piece is followed by a selection of articles whichfocus on Frank’s initial interest in the philological etymology of Islamic philosophyand the text and terminology of Graeco-Arabic translations. Included among thesearticles are ‘Some fragments of Isḥāq’s translation of the de Anima’ (1958–9, ‘ArticleII’); ‘Some textual notes on the Oriental versions of Themistius’ paraphrase of Book Lof the Metaphysics’ (1958–9, ‘Article III’); ‘The origin of the Arabic philosophicalterm ʾannīya’ (or inniyya) (1956, ‘Article IV’); and, a later paper which examines‘The use of the Enneads by John of Scythopolis’ (1987, ‘Article V’). Interestingly,this volume features two other articles which examine the issue of terminology,although this is broached within the context of the Arabic and kalām traditions:‘Meanings are spoken of in many ways: the earlier Arab grammarians’ (1981, ‘ArticleXII’); and ‘“Lam yazal” as a formal term in Muslim theological discourse’ (1995,‘Article XIII’). The early development of Islamic theology and its applied modes ofthought are reviewed in a number of pieces, including ‘The neoplatonism of Jahm IbnṢafwān’ (1965, ‘Article IX’), which was one of the first papers by Frank on thesubject of kalām; ‘Remarks on the early development of the kalām’ (1967, ‘ArticleVI’); and ‘Reason and revealed law: a sample of parallels and divergences in kalāmand falsafa’ (1978, ‘Article VII’).5 Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 555/1111) is the primarysubject of a number of articles: these include ‘Al-Ghazālī on taqlīd. Scholars,theologians, and philosophers’ (1991–2, ‘Article X’) and ‘Al-Ghazālī’s use ofAvicenna’s philosophy’ (1987–9, ‘Article XI’). Aspects of the Ghazālian cosmologyare also reviewed in ‘Currents and countercurrents [in the Muʿtazila, Ashʿarīs andal-Ghazālī]’ (1997, ‘Article VIII’). Intriguingly, the fact that studies on al-Ghazālīfeature in this particular volume seemingly intimates the significance that Frankattaches to this scholar’s ‘brand of neo-platonising theology’. Two short editions andtranslations of Ashʿarī theological tracts by the mystic Abū’l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī(d. 465/1074) entitled Lumaʿ fī’l-iʿtiqād (1982, ‘Article XIV’) and al-Fuṣūl fī’l-uṣūl(1983, ‘Article XV’) form the last two contributions.The second volume of collected articles examines early Islamic theology, theMuʿtazilīs, and al-Ashʿarī, featuring nine individual pieces of research: five of whichreview early kalām and key conceptual constructs defined by leading BasranBook Reviews 137Muʿtazilīs. These include: ‘The metaphysics of created being according to Abūl-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf: a philosophical study of the earliest kalām’ (1966, ‘Article I’),which was originally published as a short monograph; ‘The divine attributes accordingto the teaching of Abū l-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf’ (1969, ‘Article II’); ‘Several fundamentalassumptions of the Basra School of the Muʿtazila’ (1971, ‘Article III’); ‘Al-maʿdūmwal-mawjūd: the non-existent, the existent, and the possible in the teaching of AbūHāshim and his followers’ (1980, ‘Article IV’); and ‘Abū Hāshim’s theory of ‘states’:its structure and function’ (1971, ‘Article V’).6 The remaining four articles constituteseminal pieces on the theological thought associated with the eponym of Ashʿarism,Abū’l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935). They include ‘Elements in the development ofthe teaching of al-Ashʿarī’ (1991, ‘Article VI’); ‘The structure of created causalityaccording to al-Ashʿarī: an analysis of the Kitāb al-Lumaʿ’ (1966, ‘Article VII’);‘Al-Ashʿarī’s conception of the nature and role of speculative reasoning in theology’(1972, ‘Article VIII’); and, finally, ‘Al-Ashʿarī’s Kitāb al-Ḥathth ʿalā’l-Baḥth’ (1988,‘Article IX’), which was previously published in Richard McCarthy’s The Theologyof al-Ashʿarī, under the ‘spurious’ title Risālat istiḥān al-khawḍ fī ʿilm al-kalām.Frank’s edition is derived from the work of Abū’l-Qāsim al-Anṣārī (d. 512/1118)entitled al-Ghunya fī’l-kalām in which the original text of al-Ashʿarī is preserved.7It is in the introductory article comprised in the first volume of this series that Frankreminisces over how he came to devote himself to the study of kalām and how hiscomprehension of the discipline matured over the years. The account is a humble yetrevealing survey of a life-long quest to draw attention to the rich stock of materialoffered by the discipline of Islamic theology together with the discourse, ideas andinfluences which lay at the heart of its theoretical compass. As an undergraduate Frankstudied some philosophy (Plato and Aristotle), reading al-Fārābī’s Compendium ofPlato’s Laws with the distinguished Italian scholar Francesco Gabrieli. The earlieststudies he produced on Islamic philosophy were essentially philological endeavourswhich weighed up the etymology of terminology and the lexicon of Muslimphilosophical texts. Such early investigations led Frank to conclude that there existedevidence of the influence of Syriac on some early Arabic philosophical works. Thestandard Ashʿarī theological texts associated with the formative period of Islamictheology subsequently attracted his attention: these included al-Shahrastānī’s Kitābal-milal wa’l-niḥal, which he originally read as a student with Giorgio Levi dellaVida; and the seminal works associated with the Ashʿarī school, including al-Ashʿarī’s Maqālāt and his Lumaʿ; al-Baghdādī’s al-Farq bayna’l-firaq and his Uṣūlal-dīn; and al-Bāqillānī’s Tamhīd al-awāʾil. He notes that prevalent among hisOrientalist colleagues, and indeed scholars of falsafa, had been the view that thediscipline of kalām was a somewhat unsophisticated vehicle for the defence ofreligious dogma; yet, Frank’s acquaintance with the theological materials preserved insuch treatises confirmed to him that kalām was ‘a rich and largely uncultivated field’138 Journal of Qur’anic Studiesand that it warranted critical academic attention; much of his career has been devotedto pursuing this end.Frank’s introduction also makes mention of the fact that reading a lot of literaryArabic prose and poetry enabled him to nurture a profounder ‘knowledge andexperience of the classical language’. It was his view that such knowledge was crucialfor anyone wishing to delve into the fields of kalām and falsafa; he emphasises thatthe literature of the early Arabic grammarians was likewise critical in this respect asboth kalām and naḥw had developed in the same intellectual environment. ClassicalArabic lexicons such as al-Zabīdī’s (d. 1206/1791) Tāj al-ʿarūs were also viewed asbeing indispensable tools for the student of kalām. While Frank devoted a number ofarticles to the theological thought of the Muʿtazila (and indeed a monograph), it wasAshʿarism and its distinctive brand of theology which featured prominently in muchof his later academic work. Although scholars such as George Makdisi had taken theview that the association between religious orthodoxy and Ashʿarism was notaxiomatic, Frank believed it to be critical to the formation of Sunnī theology andconsistently endeavoured to identify the school’s eponym, al-Ashʿarī, with thescholastic kalām championed within later forms of Ashʿarism.It was through studying the seminal Ashʿarī texts, many of which Frank had read inmanuscript form while in Egypt and Turkey, that he took an avid interest in the worksof al-Ghazālī (d. 555/1111). He was struck by his direct use of Avicenna’s ideas andthe fact that much of this philosopher’s cosmology was of major significance toal-Ghazālī’s synthesis of theological thought. Many of his arguments regardingal-Ghazālī were fleshed out in his monograph entitled Al-Ghazālī and the AshʿarīSchool, particularly the view that al-Ghazālī’s commitment to Ashʿarī theology was‘tenuous in the extreme’ and that he espoused a cautiously constructed Neoplatonictheology which he considered to be superior to that of his Ashʿarī cohorts; thisbecame evident to Frank from his study of al-Ghazālī’s position on the concept oftaqlīd.8 It is true that a number of his arguments concerning al-Ghazālī have beenchallenged, but Frank’s contribution to modern scholarship’s understanding ofclassical Ashʿarism and the position of al-Ghazālī in respect of this school remainscritical.9 The subsequent pieces of research produced by Frank set about makingavailable the large quantity of data he had accumulated over the years on the subjectof the basic metaphysical teaching of Ashʿarī kalām and the technical terminologiesrefined among the school’s luminaries. Such studies confirmed to him the ‘highintellectual acuity of the major Ashʿarī masters’. (Most of the articles relating to laterAshʿarī thought are featured in Volume 3, Classical Islamic Theology: TheAshʿarites, published in 2008.) It should be said that the gamut of research producedby Frank over the years reveals not only the extent of his sophisticated contribution tothe academic study of classical Islamic theology, but also justifies his devoting hiscareer to a discipline that many of his peers originally considered to be ‘unworthy ofBook Reviews 139serious study’. Along with the accomplishments of many other notable scholarsworking in the field of Islamic theology, including individuals such as Joseph van Essand Wilferd Madelung, it will be some time before such Western academicendeavours are matched or even surpassed. In the words of Dimitri Gutas, who wrotethe foreword for each individual volume, ‘the collected articles in this and thefollowing volumes form an indispensable introduction and methodological orientationto the serious study of kalām’ (p. ix). Few would contest this view.MUSTAFA SHAHDOI: 10.3366/E146535910900028XNOTES1 The detailed index for Volume I was prepared by Racha Omari.2 The detailed index for Volume II was prepared by Alexander Treiger.3 These include monographs such as: Beings and Their Attributes: the Teaching of the BasrianSchool of the Muʿtazila in the Classical Period (Albany: State University of New York Press,1978); Creation and the Cosmic System: al-Ghazālī and Avicenna (Heidelberg: Carl Winter,Universitätsverlag, 1992); Al-Ghazālī and the Ashʿarite School (London: Duke UniversityPress, 1994). Richard Frank is Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of America.4 This paper was originally prepared for the Cambridge conference held in honour of Frankback in 2002. The papers from those proceedings were published in James Montgomery (ed.),Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy. From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration ofRichard M. Frank (Leuven: Peeters, 2006). Frank was unable to attend the conference, andthe paper he prepared for the occasion was published in the aforementioned volume; a completebibliography of his works is included in this text.5 A more recent study was published under the title ‘The Science of Kalām’, Arabic Sciencesand Philosophy 2:1 (1992), pp. 7–37. Frank consistently emphasises the theoreticalassumptions and methodological premises which separate philosophy from kalām. See alsohis ‘The Kalâm, an Art of Contradiction-Making or Theological Science? Some Remarks on theQuestion’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 88:2 (1968), pp. 295–309, a review articleof Michel Allard, Le Problème des attributs divins dans la doctrine d’al-Ašʿarî et de sespremiers grands disciples (Beyrouth: Imprimerie Catholique, 1965).6 Also relevant to this theme of the thoughts of leading Baṣran luminaries is Frank’s ‘TheAutonomy of the Human Agent in the Teaching of ʿAbd al-Ǧabbār’, Le Muséon 95 (1982),pp. 320–33, and included in volume 3 of the Variorum series.7 Frank discusses the title of this work in detail in ‘Elements in the Development of theTeaching of al-Ashʿarī’, attempting to disprove Makdisi’s argument that the work was notauthored by al-Ashʿarī.8 Frank’s view is that al-Ghazālī’s position on efficient causality, occasionalism, acquisition,and the orthodox notion of resurrection cannot be reconciled within the doctrines of the Ashʿarīschool. Conversely, Frank disagrees with Makdisi and argues that the theological doctrinesassociated with the developed forms of Ashʿarism can be readily associated with the school’seponym, al-Ashʿarī. For the background to these arguments see George Makdisi, ‘Ashʿarī andthe Ashʿarites in Islamic Religious History: Part I’, Studia Islamica 17 (1962), pp. 37–80;George Makdisi, ‘Ashʿarī and the Ashʿarites in Islamic Religious History: Part 2’, StudiaIslamica 18 (1963), pp. 19–39; and Frank’s ‘Elements in the Development of the Teaching of140 Journal of Qur’anic Studiesal-Ashʿarī’, Le Muséon 104 (1991), pp. 141–90, reproduced in volume 2 of the Variorumseries (no. 6). Frank states that it was al-Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn which confirmed hisreservations concerning his commitment to Ashʿarism.9 Richard Frank, Al-Ghazālī and the Ashʿarite School, p. x. Two great influences in his life,Gardet and Anawati, were of the view that although al-Ghazālī upheld the central theses of theschool, he adopted key theological positions which were in conflict with the school’s teachings.See p. 3. Cf. Herbert A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect: TheirCosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect (USA: OxfordUniversity Press, 1992), and Michael E. Marmura, ‘Ghazālī and Ashʿarism Revisited’, ArabicSciences and Philosophy 12 (2002), pp. 91–110, which offers a different perspective as doesTobias Mayer’s review article in Journal of Qur’anic Studies 1 (1999), pp. 170–81. Mayerargues that the higher theology which Frank infers from al-Ghazālī’s theology is essentially aform of higher Ashʿarism. The article by Frank which sets out the Ashʿarī angle on taqlīd is his‘Knowledge and Taqlīd: The Foundations of Religious Belief in Classical Ashʿarism’, Journalof the American Oriental Society 109 (1989), pp. 37–62.Book Reviews 141

Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism in Medieval Islam. Texts and Studies on the Development and History of Kalam, Vol. I ; Early Islamic Theology: The Muʿtazilites and al-Ashʿarī. Texts and Studies on the Development and History of Kalam, Vol. II

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Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism in Medieval Islam. Texts and Studies on the Development and History of Kalam, Vol. I ; Early Islamic Theology: The Muʿtazilites and al-Ashʿarī. Texts and Studies on the Development and History of Kalam, Vol. II

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