The biographer of Al-Ash‘ari, Ibn ‘Asakir (d. 571 A.H.), reports that Al-Ash‘ari wrote a treatise called Kitab al-Fusul, in refutation of the Materialists and the ‘philosophers,’ who professed the eternity of the universe, which as far as I am aware, is the earliest scholastic treatise dealing with the question of eternity in a systematic way, [...]

The Traditional argument of Kalam presupposes a preliminary thesis upon which the theological treatises place a considerable emphasis: the thesis of the newness or temporality of the universe (al-huduth). This circumstance explains the vehemence with which the opposite thesis of an eternal universe is combated by the advocates of Orthodoxy. Ibn Hazm, the Zahiri jurist [...]

If the argument from causality (cosmological or aitiological argument), initiated by Aristotle and developed by his followers throughout the centuries, is rightly regarded as the classical argument for the existence of God in the West, the argument a novitate mundi (dalil al-huduth), of which the argument a contingenti mundi, (dalil al-jawaz) is a mere variant, [...]

The introductory chapter of Usul, to which Wensinck has drawn attention and discussed in some length in The Muslim Creed, is thus of considerable importance for the understanding of the Islamic approach to the question of knowledge or science. We cannot dwell at length here on Baghdadi’s analysis of the divisions of knowledge (‘ilm), its [...]