1 Covenant in the Qurʾān: Contractual Relations and the Promise of Salvation

A myth, in the simplest sense, is a traditional story that imparts meaning in the form of rules and provides a mode of ordering the universe. Such narratives reflect the human tendency – or even the human mind’s fundamental need – to order and find meaning in the universe.¹ The Qurʾān’s covenant verse (7:172) is no exception to these principles of myth, which can be most easily observed when one examines the verse in isolation from the authority of Muslim commentaries on the Qurʾān.² A.J. Arberry’s translation of Qurʾān 7:172 runs as follows:

And when your Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins, their seed, and made them testify touching themselves, “Am I not your Lord?” They said, “Yes, we testify” – lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection, “As for us, we were heedless of this,” or lest you say, “Our fathers were idolaters aforetime, and we were seed after them. What, wilt Thou then destroy us for the deeds of the vain-doers?”³

The covenant verse imposes a conception of how the world is ordered by alluding to a chronology of cosmic events that begins with the creation of human beings and ends with final salvation.⁴ As an aetiological myth that describes a primordial event in human history, the covenant verse relates how and when human beings came into existence. It further imposes a conception of how the world is ordered by alluding portentously to the final end of human beings in its final lines (“lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection …”).

The verse also imparts meaning in the form of rules by outlining an agreement of a set of terms between God and human beings. The divinely initiated covenant offers human beings the promise of salvation, but this promise is conditional and has a formulaic quality: only if human beings enter a contractual relation with God by testifying to His sovereignty is the reward of salvation attainable. In the process of imposing an obligation on human beings – to testify to God’s sovereignty and live in conformity with that ideal – God too places Himself under an obligation, which is to deliver on his promise of salvation at the end times.⁵ I will return to this theme in my final section of this article, when I will describe how the covenant verse serves as an opportunity for Zamakhsharī to forge a doctrine of salvation.

Izutsu proposed that the formulaic quality of the covenant reflects the nomadic ideals and ethos of ancient Arabia. He had referenced the poetry of Zuhayr to argue that the pre-Islamic virtue of loyalty was a strong moral force in “primitive nomadic religion.”⁶ And he suggested that the prophet transcended this moral force by configuring covenant as the basic form of relationship between God and man and by reconceptualizing the nature of tribal bonds. This basic form of relationship places these two parties under obligations; and Qurʾānic verses such as 48:10 (“The hand of God is over their hands”) suggest a ritual of covenant-making that reconfigured the pre-Islamic virtue of loyalty into a Biblical form of covenant, a form that considered loyalty to both God and the prophet as a virtue that would be rewarded at the end times.⁷

A number of scholars have made inroads into the covenant motif in the Qurʾān and into the divergent directions of interpretation that developed within schools of exegesis. In a rich article, Richard Gramlich mapped the contours of discussions on the covenant verse (7:172) by examining a wide range of tafsīr literature.⁸ He brought to light the ways that Sunnī and Shīʿī lines of exegesis intersected, and he highlighted the dynamic exchange of ḥadīths between schools of interpretation and traced the ways that certain theological ideas migrated between Sunnī and Shīʿī schools of exegesis.

Although Gramlich discussed the principal direction that Muʿtazilite interpretation took, he did not deal with the idea of covenant as it is expressed in the major Muʿtazilite commentaries that are extant and published. Nor did he give any attention to the vital role that the covenant verse plays in synthesizing Muʿtazilite anthropological and metaphysical ideas concerning the origins of man and his final salvation.

In a more recent essay devoted to primordial covenant in the Qurʾān, Wadad Kadi dismissed the Muʿtazilite mode of interpretation as not warranting investigation.⁹ Her anti-Muʿtazilite prejudice was evident in several bold and unusual claims: that the “rational scrutiny” of the Muʿtazilites handicapped them from grasping the implications of the covenant verse for understanding the Qurʾān’s vision of human history; and that by applying “rational scrutiny” to the verse, the Muʿtazila applied to the covenant an irrelevant criterion, taking away the awe that the dramatic encounter was meant to impart.¹⁰ What Kadi intended by saying that the verse means to impart is unclear, but absent from this kind of partisan research is the possibility that the Muʿtazilites developed a profound covenant theology on their own terms, one that is intelligible and meaningful in terms of Islamic institutions, concepts, principles, values, and ideas.

My fundamental aim in what follows is to describe how the Muʿtazilites invoked their ideals and called on their principles and methods to develop their own covenant theology; and to describe how the Muʿtazila related the idea of covenant to the social, anthropological, and juridical dimensions of their thought world as a means of interpreting the meaning of human history and salvation.

The three illustrious Muʿtazilite authors who are the focus of this study – ʿAbd al-Jabbār, (d. 415/1025), Jishumī (d. 494/1101), and Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) – are linked to one another by a loose form of teacher-student discipleship.¹¹ Jishumī was a student of al-Najjār (d. 220/835), who had studied under ʿAbd al-Jabbār, and Zamakhsharī studied theology under Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Isḥaq al-Khwārazmī, who may have been Jishumī’s student.¹² These three authors share exegetical principles, interpretive methods, and rhetorical devices that were transmitted through the aforementioned lines of transmission, exchanged within the Muʿtazilite scholarly network, and subsequently adopted by Sunnī commentators. A third aim of this study is to describe the nature and role of these principles, methods, and devices within Muʿtazilite covenant theology. I will chart the ways that later Sunnī theologians, including Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) and Bayḍāwī (d. 685/1286), adopted those elements within their Qurʾānic commentaries and further adapted them to render them normative Sunnī ideals.

Although ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Jishumī and Zamakhsharī share certain procedures and principles of exegesis that are characteristic of the Muʿtazilite school tradition, they differ profoundly in the concepts, institutions, interpretive methods and rhetorical devices they use to interpret the covenant verse. A fourth aim of this article is to illustrate how the individual approaches of these authors open a window into the different dimensions of the covenant – theological, juridical-ethical, metaphysical, anthropological, and social. The differences between these approaches suggest that the three authors were motivated by disparate issues, that they worked quite independently of each other, and that they forged contrasting conceptualizations of the covenant.

2 ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s Covenantal Discourse: The Purposiveness of the Divine Act

ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s Mutashābih al-Qurʾān marks the beginning of covenantal discourse within the extant tradition of Muʿtazilite commentaries on the Qurʾān. This work, which takes up the task of interpreting the ambiguous verses of the Qurʾān in accordance with the demands of the intellect, sets out basic procedures and principles of exegesis that were transmitted through the Muʿtazilite school tradition. The most important of these is suggested by ʿAbd al-Jabbār in the introduction to Mutashābih al- Qurʾān: If the Qurʾān is to retain its validity, it is necessary to interpret it in accordance with the demands of the intellect. But despite these shared procedures and principles, ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Jishumī and Zamakhsharī develop their interpretations of the covenant verse in quite different directions and have quite different motivations and concerns.

Exegesis of the covenant within Muʿtazilism is juridical-ethical discourse, and such discourse is circumscribed by theological parameters and has theological aims.¹³ ʿAbd al-Jabbār assumes an ethical-juridical dimension to the covenant, and the emphasis he places on this dimension is evident in the salient principles that provide the foundation of his interpretation. The divine initiative entails the imposition of responsibility on human beings (taklīf), making them responsible agents with the capacity to carry out the duties that God charges them with. ʿAbd al-Jabbār aims to ground this principle in Muʿtazilite anthropological principles and concepts. So, the task before us is to describe how ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s line of exegesis is shaped by ethical-juridical concerns and how those juridical-ethical concerns are shaped by Muʿtazilite anthropological discussions of the definition of a person.¹⁴ Only by carrying out this task will we be able to understand the role, place, and significance of the covenant idea within the broader thought world of the Muʿtazilites.

How is ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s exegesis of the covenant idea driven by ethical-juridical concerns?

ʿAbd al-Jabbār is motivated by the urge to bind the divine initiative (“Am I not your Lord?”) to the Muʿtazilite ideal of human agency and responsibility. He intends to argue that a person becomes a responsible agent at the beginning of his existence by way of the covenant, which he considers a divine act that imposes taklīf on human beings.

The focus of ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s exegesis is on the way that the divine initiative to establish a covenant with human beings is oriented towards human agents in their bodily conditions. The reason he stresses such conditions is that they serve as the defining attributes of a person; these defining attributes make it possible for an individual to receive divine commands and prohibitions and hence be praised or blamed for his acts. In the following passage from the Mughnī, ʿAbd al-Jabbār makes explicit that because a person has certain definitional attributes, God’s commands and prohibitions can be directed toward him and that he can be praised and blamed for acts.

The living, capable being (al-ḥayy al-qādir) is this corporeal body which is structured in this particular way by which it is distinguished from other animals, and is the one to whom commands and prohibitions, and blame and praise are directed.¹⁵

ʿAbd al-Jabbār underscores that attributes which define a person, including being alive and capable, serve as the pre-conditions for blame and praise. The importance of this idea will become clearer when I discuss Jishumī and Zamakhsharī, but for the moment, let me suggest that what our three authors wish to argue is that the divine initiative which imposes covenantal obligations on an individual can take place only against the ground of attributes that define him. Indeed, they wish to stress that nothing less than the full materialization of a human being – an extended body endowed with the attributes that define a person (i.e. sensing, perceiving, living, and knowing) will do for the realization of a covenant, which entails the divine imposition of human responsibility on an individual. In ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s exegesis, the aforementioned conjunction of attributes grounds the moral responsibility of human beings. In doing so, it ensures that the imposition of duties (taklīf) on God’s part is just.¹⁶

ʿAbd al-Jabbār is also motivated by the urge to uphold a foundational principle of the Muʿtazilites’ ethical system, namely the human intellect’s autonomous capacity to apprehend moral truths. His covenantal discourse draws on Muʿtazilite anthropology – notably the idea that “knowing” is one of the defining attributes of a person – to give the juridical-ethical aspect of the covenant a theoretical basis. Human responsibility, he suggests, can be realized only because an individual is endowed with intellect/capacity to know, as well as the other attributes that enable him to perform acts that he charged with: sensing, perceiving, and living. In the final part of this article, we will see how Zamakhsharī will later explicitly argue that intellect, the source that “distinguishes between guidance and error,” is divinely created and a natural source of knowledge.¹⁷ He will also institutionalize this principle into Muʿtazilism, establishing it as the conventional reading of the school tradition. The argument here parallels the Muʿtazilite principle that human intellect is a precondition for the acceptance of revelation.

The excerpt above constitutes an occasion when ʿAbd al-Jabbār calls on an elemental principle of Muʿtazilite anthropology – namely that intellect is a defining attribute of man – in order to underscore the juridical-ethical aspect of the covenant, i.e., the divine imposition of human agency and responsibility (taklīf). Within his exegesis, the covenant synthesizes Muʿtazilite anthropological and juridical-ethical ideas, and it explains how the act by which God endows man with intellectual capacity implies that man is obligated (mukallaf) to observe the duties of the divine law and hence a moral agent.¹⁸

3 Whence Human Beings? ʿAbd al-Jabbār Contra Traditionalism

When ʿAbd al-Jabbār and Jishumī (whom I will discuss below) elicit the meaning and work out the implications of the covenant verse, they were motivated by the urge to undermine the traditionalist mythology surrounding Adam and its predestinarian ideas, all of which were guided by prophetic traditions. Thus, to understand the Muʿtazilite approaches to the covenant verse, we must first grasp how the mythology of prophetic traditions surrounding Adam guided traditionalists to a predestinarian and universalist understanding of the covenant notion – the idea that God established a contractual bond with human beings as a totality.

The famous cluster of ḥadīths of predestination spread widely in traditionalist circles – both Sunnī and Shīʿī – and they dictated the ways that both Sunnī and Shīʿī traditionalists conceptualized the covenant verse. I say “traditionalists” since other leading Sunnī commentators, including most importantly Māturīdī (d. 333/944), did not invoke the authority of traditions. Indeed, Māturīdī does not cite a single ḥadīth in his discussion of the covenant verse. The interpretations he advances suggest that he and Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) were drawing on different sources and suggest that they were thinking about the covenantal relationship between God and man in radically different ways.¹⁹

The variant of the ḥadīth of predestination which circulated widely in Sunnī tafsīr links the narrative to Muḥammad through ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, and it runs as follows:

ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb said: I heard God’s messenger say: God created Adam, then he rubbed his back with his right hand and took offspring from him. Then he said: I created these for the Hell fire; and the people of the Hell fire will do their work. Then he rubbed his back and took from him offspring. And he said: I created this group for Paradise, and they will do their work.²⁰

Now, although the covenant verse itself does not speak of predestination, traditionalists invoked the aforementioned ḥadīth to explain its meaning and implications. Indeed, when the majority of both Sunnī and Shīʿī exegetes appealed to the ḥadīth of predestination to interpret the covenant verse, they considered the latter clarion evidence that human beings were genealogically tied to Adam – pulled out of his loins – and that their lots were foreordained before their earthly existence.

When Sunnī traditionalists elaborated on the covenant verse, they interpreted its content in a factual way. In their view, the covenant myth described real events, and it reported facts about the origins of human beings and their ends. That this mode of interpretation took as its starting point the famous ḥadīth of predestination is evident most conspicuously in the wealth of traditions and their variants that Ṭabarī enumerates in his Jāmiʿ al-bayān. Ṭabarī’s exegesis opens a window into the ways that the narratives of Adamic mythology, which relied on the authority of prophetic traditions, were invoked to formulate a conception of the meaning of the beginning and end of human history.

When Ṭabarī interprets the covenant verse, he is guided by the cluster of variants of the ḥadīth of predestination which (he thinks) imply that Adam pre-existed creation. He proposes that human life began when God took offspring from Adam’s back in pre-creation. Further, he suggests that the lots of human beings were determined at that act of divine creation. What is significant here is that although the ḥadīth of predestination speaks of the creation of human beings from Adam and the Qurʾān speaks of the Children of Adam, the ḥadīth was powerful enough to guide the early traditionists’ understanding of the covenant verse. It did so in such a way that many early Muslim authorities passed over this discrepancy, considering the verse a confirmation that Adam pre-existed the creation of human beings and a confirmation of a predestinarian conception of history.²¹

Several further elements and themes are worth noting here. Ṭabarī takes the covenant verse to mean that God established a contractual bond with human beings as a totality – and not with a single individual (Adam). This in itself is interesting, for covenant theologies within Christianity – notably the Reformed tradition – spoke of a covenant with Adam, and this covenant of grace became the basis of Puritanism.²² While the odd prophetic tradition does speak of a covenant that God took with Adam himself, and while the Qurʾān does mention a covenant with Adam alone at 20:115, the traditionalist mode of exegesis emphasized the covenant as the principle of a collective identity of human beings, and it anchored that principle in God’s foreordainment.²³

The tendency to universalize the covenant – that is, to see it as a contractual bond with human beings as a totality – is given prominence in a number of traditions ascribed to Ibn ʿAbbās (d. 68/687), the most important authority within Ṭabarī’s traditionalist Sunnī exegesis.²⁴ Among these traditions are the following:

Ibn ʿAbbās said: Your Lord rubbed Adam’s back, then every creature who came out of him was created until the Day of Resurrection. This took place at Naʿmān, which is behind ʿArafa.²⁵

Ibn ʿAbbās said: When God first sent Adam down He did so at Dahnā, which is in India. Then God rubbed his back, and then every creature who came out of him was created until the time of the Hour. Then God initiated a covenant with them.²⁶

Ibn ʿAbbās said: When God created Adam, He initiated His covenant that He is his Lord and He wrote His appointed time of death […] and He extracted his offspring like microbeings (dharr) and He initiated their covenant, and He wrote their appointed times of death, their boons and their misfortunes.²⁷

The traditions cited above locate the beginning of human life in pre-existence by affirming that all human beings were pulled out of Adam’s back in a divine act of creation (“when God first sent Adam down”) and then made to testify as a collective entity to God’s sovereignty.²⁸ Other universalizing traditions, when they describe the state of human beings in pre-existence, typically depict mankind as microbeings. This position, which insists that such microbeings could enter a contractual relationship with God before being endowed with life in bodily form, was contested by Muʿtazilites from the time of ʿAbd al-Jabbār onward as well as the Sunnī commentator Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī.

4 Covenant and the Remembrance of Sin

In ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s discussion, the principle that the divinely initiated covenant imposes human responsibility is fastened to another principle: that the fullness of the human intellect is a requisite for entering a covenant with God. From the remarks below, we can determine how ʿAbd al-Jabbār reasoned about the relationship between intellect and human responsibility, and we can discern how the covenant idea synthesizes these principles of his thought. ʿAbd al-Jabbār writes:

When the verse is interpreted in this way – that is, in agreement with its apparent sense and in accordance with the demands of human intellect – the purpose of entering the contract and undertaking the covenant is to make the person who has entered the contract remember it, so that the covenant became a remonstration against him when he is punished or when he begins to sin. This only befits a person endowed with intellect who is capable of discerning and remembering the divine address. Were the matter as they [the ḥashwiyya]²⁹ have claimed – namely that God initiated a contract with all the Children of Adam when they were in Adam’s back, then it would be necessary that they remember that contract in some ways. This is because a person endowed with intellect remembers his past states when he has the fullness of intellect, even if a long time has passed between such states. In spite of this, they [the ḥashwiyya] claim that God initiated a covenant and contract with them when he had not yet given them life, and we have clarified that that is absurd.³⁰

ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s line of exegesis in the passage above suggests that he viewed the covenant as an institution that stabilizes human beings within the domain of responsibility. He argues that the covenant is designed to serve as a reminder of the initial address when God established a contractual bond with human beings. He argues, moreover, that given the human propensity to sin – and to forget such sins – the covenant fulfills its role in human life by functioning as a remonstration against a person when he begins to sin or after he commits a sinful act for which he will be punished. Now, to elaborate on ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s reasoning: if we understand that the covenant is a stabilizing principle that deters human beings from sin, and that such an institution relies on our ability to remember the initial divine address, then not just the endowment of intellect but the fullness of intellect provides the ground for the possibility of covenant.³¹

I argued above, on the basis of Ṭabarī’s exegesis, that the traditionalist mode of interpretation postulated that all persons – even future generations – originated as microbeings when they were pulled out of Adam’s back before their creation on earth, and that that act of origination marks the beginning of human history. In what follows, I elaborate on the strategies that ʿAbd al-Jabbār devises to counter the traditionalist account of man’s beginnings. These are indispensable to understanding how, in his view, the covenantal formula provides a key to understanding man’s provenance and human history and salvation. This direction of ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s interpretation of the covenant verse is given in the following two passages, which are directed at traditionalists – here referred to by the label Ḥashwiyya. ʿAbd al-Jabbār writes:

The response to this is that the plain sense of the wording is at odds with the view to which the Ḥashwiyya cling, because they claim that God established the covenant with all of the progeny of Adam and that they occupy the place of microbeings in his back, and this contradicts the plain sense of the Qurʾān, for God states: And when your Lord took from the Children of Adam – from their backs – His progeny (7:172). That implies that “their” [backs] means the backs of the Children of Adam. This term cannot be applied to the composed parts in Adam’s back (al-ajzāʾ al-murakkaba fī ẓahri Ādam), and it implies that what is meant here is their backs – that is, the backs of the Children of Adam from which He extracted their progeny. This doctrine is at odds with what they claim. Because if all Adam’s progeny were in his back, then it would follow that the magnitude of his back would reach a degree that is opposite to what we have taught. And because God has made it clear that He created man from a sperm-drop (nuṭfa), and what this term can be applied to is the smallest of what God created of man.

As for the microbeings [in Adam’s back], if they are not living, then establishing a covenant with them is impossible, and the same goes for testifying, so how is it possible for [the Hashwiyya] to cling to what he mentioned?³²

ʿAbd al-Jabbār argues in these passages that the traditionalist reading goes against the apparent sense of the Qurʾānic wording. His aim to undermine traditionalist mythology surrounding Adam and to expunge the covenant notion of its anthropomorphic implications invokes the authority of grammar. His interest here is in the traditionalist idea that human beings pre-existed their bodies as living entities – as microbeings in Adam’s back. Focusing his attention on the Qurʾānic wording, “from the Children of Adam – from their backs – His progeny,” he draws attention to the Qurʾānic wording, “from the Children of Adam – from their backs – His progeny,” and on the discrepancy between such wording and the phrase Adam’s back, which traditionalists had taken from the widely circulated ḥadīth of predestination. ʿAbd al-Jabbār is quick to point out that the Qurʾān makes no mention of Adam’s back here. He reads the phrases, “from the Children of Adam,” and “from their backs,” in apposition so that the referent “their” refers to the backs of the Children of Adam and not to Adam’s back.

Later Sunnī commentators, too, argue that the Qurʾān’s covenantal formula runs contrary to the grammar of the Qurʾānic phrasing at 7:172. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, who amplifies ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s argument, draws attention to this discrepancy. Although he sides with the Muʿtazilites on this issue against Sunnī traditionalists, he argues that the verse speaks neither for nor against the idea that human beings emerged from Adam’s loins.³³ Traditionalist commentators like Ṭabarī were evidently not bothered by the incongruity described above. And it was likely the overpowering social force of prophetic tradition that led Ṭabarī to pass over the discrepancies between Qurʾānic wording and the ḥadīth of pre-destination.

A second strategy ʿAbd al-Jabbār devises to combat the traditionalist mode of interpretation is evinced in the second paragraph translated above. Here he proceeds on a methodological postulate already established in the introduction to Mutashābih al-Qurʾān and which he applies throughout the work: If the Qurʾān is to retain its validity, it needs to be interpreted in accordance with the demands of intellect and the implications of human reasoning. Furthermore, if one fails to abide by the rules of grammar, then one will fail to discern the congruities between the covenant verse – especially its anthropomorphic elements – and the demands and implications of human reasoning.³⁴

As I argued above, when ʿAbd al-Jabbār defines man he proceeds by identifying the attributes necessary for a person to receive taklīf. The attribute “life,” he reasons, is a bodily pre-condition which a person requires to enter a contractual bond with God. In the second passage translated above, ʿAbd al-Jabbār argues that if one accepts that the definitional attribute “living” can be predicated of man only in his bodily form – after he originates in the womb – then the idea that microbeings not yet endowed with life could receive a covenant in pre-existence is impossible. This is because, in his view, such a contractual relationship can take place only when human beings become agents, and this requires the presence of the attribute life – not to mention the other definitional attributes which are essential to human agency or to the divine imposition of human responsibility.³⁵

The force of this argument relies on Muʿtazilite anthropological principles concerning smallest parts. ʿAbd al-Jabbār argues that the Qurʾānic locution, “Children of Adam” cannot refer to parts or beings assembled in Adam’s loins. For if we understand Adam’s progeny to include all future generations of human beings (pulled out as a collective from Adam’s loins in pre-existence), then his back would not have the magnitude to encompass such beings. Adam’s back, ʿAbd al-Jabbār emphasizes, is finite, meaning that it is composed of a part or parts that cannot be further subdivided. Therefore, it lacks the capacity to hold the totality of all the generations of human beings in the form of microbeings – a totality that is infinite.³⁶

ʿAbd al-Jabbār wants to underscore the rational impossibilities that resulted when traditionalists failed to see the congruity between the implications of intellect or human reasoning on one hand and the ideas conveyed by the covenant verse on the other. After ʿAbd al-Jabbār, this argument became standard within the Muʿtazilite tradition, and Rāzī, recognized it as one of ten principal arguments advanced by Muʿtazilites. He writes:

The sum total of created beings whom God created from Adam’s offspring are a great number. Indeed, the total among those living entities amount to a great degree in magnitude and extent, but it is impossible for Adam’s loins due to their smallness to encompass that sum total.³⁷

ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s argument, which is rehearsed here by Rāzī, is designed to rule out the possibility that the human collective existed in Adam’s loins. ʿAbd al-Jabbār asks: even if the sperm-drops of human beings from all generations were gathered in Adam’s loins, how could such a finite entity encompass the sperm-drops of all human beings from the beginning of time until the end of time? He continues: Adam’s loins are of limited extent, and as such cannot possibly accommodate the totality of all human generations at the beginning. For this reason, ʿAbd al-Jabbār rhetorically asks how such entities can receive a covenant and testify to God’s lordliness and unity when they exist only in the form of non-living microbeings?

Yet a third strategy to combat the universalizing mode of exegesis that prevailed among traditionalists can be gleaned from ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s exegesis. ʿAbd al-Jabbār presses into service Muʿtazilite anthropological principles and concepts – notably the definitional attributes of man which are pre-conditions for a contractual relationship between God and man – and he sets them within a Qurʾānic physiological framework. His aim here is to argue that the Qurʾān supports the Muʿtazilite conception of a person – since it refers to the smallest part of man necessary for a person to be qualified as “living.” By giving a more complete explanation of the anthropological dimension of covenant, ʿAbd al-Jabbār also provides a theoretical basis for the Muʿtazilite juridical-ethical ideal of taklīf.

Of central importance to ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s argument is the key term, sperm-drop (nuṭfa), which the Qurʾān uses on a number of occasions to describe man’s origins and physiological development.³⁸ ʿAbd al-Jabbār argues that when the Qurʾān describes man’s physiological development from sperm-drop to blood-clot to embryo to an upright being, it names the sperm-drop as the smallest part of man: “And because God has made it clear that He created man from a sperm-drop (nuṭfa), and what this term can be applied to is the smallest of what God created of man.”³⁹ ʿAbd al-Jabbār infers from this verse that the sperm-drop – the smallest part of man named by the Qurʾān – qualifies man with his defining attribute “living.” This principle, ʿAbd al-Jabbār proposes, serves as a pre-condition for the realization of the covenant, for the divine initiative that imposes human responsibility can take place only when that principle which renders man a living and unified entity is present.⁴⁰

An additional passage from Mutashābih al-Qurʾān casts light on the ways that ʿAbd al-Jabbār conceptualized the covenant verse precisely. The following terse but important remarks provide major clues to understanding how ʿAbd al-Jabbār draws on his anthropological principles to interpret the covenant verse and how he situates his interpretation of the covenant verse in relation to the Qurʾānic conception of history as well. Like the comments I analyzed above, ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s remarks disclose yet another aspect of the countervailing narrative he developed to combat the traditionalist mode of understanding the beginnings of human history, and they point to the ways that he formulated a conception of history and theory of salvation. He writes:

The intended meaning of this verse is that God the exalted established a covenant in fact with a group of Adam’s offspring who are extracted from the backs of the Children of Adam and created from their loins, for God sent them messengers and made them aware of that before them with proofs (bi-l-ḥujaj). Then He made it clear that they refused to abide by it, and that they on the Day of Resurrection will plead heedlessness.⁴¹

It is apparent from this excerpt that there was a lot at stake in how one interpreted the Qurʾānic locution, “And when your Lord took from the Children of Adam – from their backs, their progeny.” The clue to understanding ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s exegesis of this verse lies in the referent of their “backs.” In the passages cited above, he underscores that the pronominal suffix of the third person plural in the clause – their progeny – refers to the Children of Adam. ʿAbd al-Jabbār proposes that to say that the Children of Adam – the Qurʾānic term for all human beings – are descended from their own seed is to say that human beings are created from the loins of their fathers and descended from their own offspring. He intends to underscore with this line of exegesis that the covenant verse implies that human beings propagate themselves from one generation to the next, each person having his origin in the loins of his or her father.⁴²

In the passage above, ʿAbd al-Jabbār also develops his exegesis by particularizing the covenant verse, stating that “God the exalted established a covenant in fact with a group of Adam’s offspring.” To understand the significance and role of this claim – how it relates to ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s interpretation of the Qurʾān’s conception of history and salvation – is the aim of the following discussion.

5 ʿAbd al-Jabbār on Past Covenants, Broken Promises, and the Possibility of Salvation

Since the covenant verse referred not only to man’s provenance but also to the Day of Resurrection, it became a site where the meaning of man’s salvation was discussed and contested. The certainties that human history would end and that the promised salvation comes with entering a covenant with God are suggested by the Qurʾānic locution: “lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection – ‘As for us, we were heedless of this,’ or lest you say, ‘Our fathers were idolators aforetime, and we were seed after them. What wilt Thou then destroy us for the deeds of vain-doers?’”

To understand how ʿAbd al-Jabbār develops an initial theory of salvation in his covenant discourse, it is necessary to grasp how he relates the parts of the covenant verse to one another, since this syntagmatic approach to the covenant verse is absent in the traditionalist mode of exegesis. Equally importantly, it is crucial to grasp how the Qurʾānic motif of past covenants and broken promises, which is central to Qurʾānic view of human history but played no role in the ways that traditionalists conceptualized the covenant idea, shapes the way that ʿAbd al-Jabbār interprets the covenantal formula outlined by the Qurʾān at 7:172.

Let us first consider again the passage discussed in the previous section. ʿAbd al-Jabbār interprets the covenant verse within the Qurʾān’s narrative of history, which speaks of the covenants that God made with past prophets and with the communities that failed to keep their promises. The important interpretive claim he makes here is that the covenantal formula refers to a contract which God established with “a group of Adam’s offspring who are extracted from the backs of the Children of Adam and are created from their loins.” When ʿAbd al-Jabbār made this claim, he particularized the covenant. By doing so, he placed himself in direct opposition to traditionalist universalism, which insisted that the covenant idea served as a principle of collective identity of human beings, since it bound them all together at a moment in pre-creation.

We can understand the motivation for ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s line of reasoning if we consider how his exegesis is shaped by the Qurʾānic motif of past covenants and broken promises. ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s conceptualization of the covenant encompasses communities in the past that the Qurʾān recognizes as belonging to the Children of Adam. These ideas are grounded in the Qurʾān’s conception of human history. Adam’s progeny were promised messengers (Q. 7:35), and past communities entered into covenantal relationships with God by means of prophets. Covenant in the strict sense is with the prophets whom God sends to those communities: “And when We took compact from the Prophets, and from thee, and from Noah, and Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, Mary’s son; We took from them a solemn compact, that He might question the truthful concerning their truthfulness; and He has prepared for the unbelievers a painful chastisement” (Q. 33:7).

ʿAbd al-Jabbār also relates that people of scripture or “those who had been given the Book” (Q. 3:187) broke their covenants in the past (Q. 4:154). When he particularizes the covenant, he intends that a group among the offspring of the Children of Adam entered a contractual relationship with God after being sent prophets, but they broke their covenantal bond by refusing to cling to it. It is that group among the Children of Adam whom ʿAbd al-Jabbār means to single out as unbelievers on the grounds that they broke their promise to fulfill the covenantal obligation. He writes:

God the exalted mentioned at the end of the verse that the intended meaning of the verse is the unbelievers, for it is not fitting that believers would say, “As for us, we were heedless of this,” because anyone who is neglectful that God is his lord and master is not a believer, and all of this renders impossible the folly that they [sc. the Ḥashwiyya] stated.⁴³

If we consider what ʿAbd al-Jabbār has to say in the above passage, we can see how he elicits meaning from the covenant verse by relating its parts to one another. He places the Qurʾānic locution, “As for us, we were heedless of this,” in the mouth of unbelievers from earlier communities that went astray by failing to abide by covenants which God had established with the prophets of their communities. He further proposes that this final plea (“As for us, we were heedless of this”) will be articulated at the end times by communities that broke the promises of their covenants. This suggests the following line of exegesis and explanation for the plea: it is unbelievers among Children of Adam who entreat God for salvation after breaking a promise to adhere to covenant.

I shall have occasion to return to the significance of this plea when I discuss the interpretation of Zamakhsharī, whose focus on intellect leads him to develop the theme of salvation in a different direction. I shall also have occasion to show that Zamakhsharī binds the fate of communities ultimately to natural reason – specifically to the human intellect’s naturally endowed capacity to grasp empirical evidence for God’s unity and sovereignty.

6 Jishumī and the Covenant as Natural Obligation in the Womb

Jishumī studied with al-Najjār, who in turn had been ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s student. It may be tempting to assume that Jishumī’s Qurʾān commentary, the Tahdhīb, greatly influenced Zamakhsharī’s monumental Kashshāf, but this case study indicates that these two illustrious Muʿtazilite commentators shared only the most basic approach to the covenant notion and that the two applied hermeneutical tools in divergent ways to the covenant verse.⁴⁴

Recent scholarship by Mourad has given the field an entry into Jishumī’s methodology of tafsīr. And now a published edition of Jishumī’s Tahdhīb is available and will make it possible to say more about how Muʿtazilite commentaries relate to one another and in what sense the commentaries that they wrote belong to a school tradition.⁴⁵

Like his predecessor ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Jishumī aimed to counter the traditionalist Adamic mythology that located the provenance of human beings altogether in Adam’s back in pre-existence. He also stressed the juridical-ethical dimension of the covenant by arguing that the divine initiative imposes human responsibility, and he lodged this idea in Muʿtazilite anthropological principles.⁴⁶

Whether Jishumī relied on ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s Mutashābih al-Qurʾān when he composed his commentary on this verse remains an open question. It is certainly possible that Jishumī developed his line of exegesis without having recourse to his predecessor’s work. His individualist approach, however, suggests that he did not invoke the exegetical principles of his school tradition or appeal to earlier patterns of exegesis, but that he developed his own line of exegesis by relating the covenant idea in different ways to the broader thought world of Muʿtazilism.

That Jishumī, like ʿAbd al-Jabbār before him, intended to combat the traditionalist understanding of the covenant is evident from his introductory remarks:

Interpreters differed about the meaning of this verse, the meaning of extraction and bearing witness. Some of them transmitted an unsound ḥadīth from God’s messenger – prayers and peace be upon him – which does not conform to the apparent sense of scripture, such that the people of metempsychosis and a group among the atheists (mulḥida) cling to it.⁴⁷

Given that the ḥadīth of predestination had circulated widely and had become the dominant direction of interpretation for traditionalists, it is quite certain that Jishumī has the well-known prophetic tradition in mind when he refers to an unsound ḥadīth that runs contrary to apparent sense of the Qurʾān.⁴⁸ At the outset of his exegesis of Q. 7:172, Jishumī labels the traditionalist interpretation heretical on the grounds that it implies a belief in metempsychosis. His line of reasoning here is amplified and clarified by Rāzī: the claim that human souls existed as living entities in Adam’s back is tantamount to metempsychosis, since it implies that such souls pre-existed their bodies.⁴⁹

ʿAbd al-Jabbār had already underscored that bodily conditions must be realized in order for a person to enter a contractual relationship with God. As I illustrated above, he insisted that the divine act which makes human beings responsible agents presupposes the existence of attributes that define man: sensing, perceiving, living, and knowing. Jishumī, too, underscores the juridical-ethical dimension of the covenant, confirming that the purpose of the divine act is to endow human beings with the responsibility to obey divine commands and prohibitions. His approach, however, grounds this juridical-ethical ideal – the conviction that man is mukallaf – within the Qurʾān’s teaching on man’s origin and physiological development in the womb. He writes:

A group of commentators claimed that God the exalted extracted offspring, and they are the children from the loins of their fathers. And the meaning of that extraction is that they were a sperm drop; then extracted to the womb of their mothers, then He made them a blood-clot, then an embryo such that He created them living upright/straightened human beings obligated to the law (mukallafan). For He made His creation the effects of that extraction from their loins, because their origination emerges from it, then He made them testify to the evidences of His unity, the wonders of His creation, and the marvels of His creation from among the members of the body that he fashioned and sense perception, external and internal limbs, and nerves and veins and other such things, as anyone who reflects upon the body will learn.⁵⁰

By Jishumī’s time, it was customary for Muʿtazilites to read the Qurʾānic phrase, “And when your Lord took from the Children of Adam – from their backs – His progeny,” to refer to the natural propagation of children from the loins of their fathers. Jishumī evidently did not see the need to argue for this conventional Muʿtazilite interpretation, and he instead focused his attention on establishing a theoretical basis for Muʿtazilites’ juridical-ethical ideals in Qurʾānic physiological descriptions. For Jishumī, the bodily pre-conditions that ʿAbd al-Jabbār had considered indispensable to the divine imposition of taklīf which makes human beings responsible agents – and to the human reception of the covenant – are already here modeled in the physiological process described by the Qurʾān.

In the excerpt cited above, Jishumī underscores that the binding contract between God and human beings which makes man mukallaf is realized when man reaches his final stage of development in the womb. Appealing to Qurʾānic anthropology, especially verses that describe man’s physiological progression from sperm-drop to blood-clot to embryo, he infers that when man is endowed with the definitional attribute “living” (which makes man capable of sense perception) so that man becomes a “perfect creation,” the divine imposition of taklīf is realized and human beings become agents with responsibility for the divine commands and prohibitions.

The excerpt above also casts light on the ways that Jishumī relates the act of attesting to the covenant to the broader thought world of Muʿtazilism. He emphasizes that the evidences of God’s unity are present in the wonders and marvels of the created world, and he underscores that the ways that the human organism functions, including a physiological process through which God extracts offspring and propagates the human race (which is suggested by the covenant verse) are among the wonders and marvels of God’s creation.

Jishumī’s understanding of what it means for human beings to testify to God’s unity and sovereignty is intelligible only in light of his conviction that the world is endued with visible evidences of God’s unity and that the Qurʾān exhorts its audience to reflect upon such evidences, including man’s physiology. When he further elaborates on the covenant verse, Jishumī underlines that human beings attest to God’s unity and sovereignty and enter a contractual relationship with God by reflecting on wonders and marvels of the created world. Jishumī writes:

Since God arranged man in such a way, whenever one apprehends Him, His attributes and His unity, then the bearing witness of such evidences becomes as though He made them attest to His speech/words. And He said, “Am I not your Lord?” and they, with respect to the effects of his creation that God made manifest, it became as though they said “indeed,” even though there was no any speech or statement with the tongue there.⁵¹

This passage casts further light on the ways in which Jishumī calls on standard Muʿtazilite rhetorical devices to expunge the covenant verse of its anthropomorphic elements. These devices will later be retooled by Zamakhsharī to resolve interpretive difficulties inherent in the covenant verse. Jishumī interprets both the divine address (“Am I not your Lord?”) and the human reply to it (“indeed”) using the simile (tamthīl), interpreting these expressions figuratively. To paraphrase Jishumī, when human beings apprehend the evidences of God’s unity and attributes, which God arranged in their created being, and when they apprehend the wonders and marvels of His creation, it is as though He made them attest to Him. Furthermore, when human beings witness the effects of God’s creation that He made manifest, it is as though human beings replied with an affirmation by saying “indeed.” Finally, to impress on his reader that he wishes to have nothing to do with any interpretation that smacks of anthropomorphism, Jishumī states that there is no actual speech here – i.e., that the divine initiative entails no articulation of letters or sounds.

7 The Figurative, the Real, and the Imaginary in Zamakhsharī’s Covenant Theology

Zamakhsharī cannot be counted as a direct disciple of Jishumī in tafsīr, but these two illustrious commentators are nonetheless linked to one another by the social institution of teacher-student discipleship. Jishumī’s student, Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Isḥāq al-Khwārazmī, was Zamakhsharī’s teacher in theology. Zamakhsharī studied with al-Khwārazmī in Jishumī’s hometown after he died. He also transmitted a work of Jishumī’s through al-Khwārazmī. There is no evidence, however, that Zamakhsharī relied on Jishumī’s commentary when he composed his own commentary, the Kashshāf. The relationship between these two commentaries needs further investigation, but for the moment, it is doubtful that Zamakhsharī had Jishumī’s Tahdhīb in front of him when he composed the Kashshāf. It is also unlikely that he had ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s Mutashābih al-Qurʾān, with which he became familiar through the literary transmission of Jishumī’s teachings, in front of him when he composed the Kashshāf.⁵²

To be sure, Zamakhsharī appeals to the theological ideals and exegetical principles of the Muʿtazilite school tradition, and there are fairly obvious parallels between his line of exegesis and the arguments developed by ʿAbd al-Jabbār and Jishumī. For instance, Zamakhsharī takes the verse, “And when your Lord took from the Children of Adam – from their backs – His progeny,” as a description of the natural propagation of human beings one from another. Unlike his Muʿtazilite predecessors, he does not cite other Qurʾānic verses to support his position, nor does he mention the conventional anthropological and physiological Muʿtazilite principles that both ʿAbd al-Jabbār and Jishumī considered keys to understanding the meaning and implications of the covenant. Such an absence suggests that Zamakhsharī did not rely closely on either of his predecessors when he developed his exegesis of the Qurʾān’s covenantal formula and that he thought quite independently of his school tradition.

That Zamakhsharī interpreted the aforementioned verse along lines already traced by his Muʿtazilite predecessors is apparent in the following passage. He writes:

“From their backs” is in apposition to “the Children of Adam” in the way of the part for the whole, and the meaning of God’s taking their progeny from their backs refers to their extraction from their loins as offspring.⁵³

Zamakhsharī understands the Qurʾānic phrase, “And when your Lord took from the Children of Adam – from their backs – His progeny,” to refer to the natural process by which human beings produce their offspring. He appeals to the grammatical analysis that had already served as the basis for Muʿtazilite interpretation, reading “from their backs” in apposition to “the Children of Adam.” He further specifies “backs” of the “Children of Adam” as a relation of the part for the whole or an extraction in which a part, namely “backs,” stands in for the whole, that is, humans. Zamakhsharī’s grammatical analysis guides him to an interpretation that takes the verse to refer to the natural propagation of human beings one from another and from one generation to the next. When God extracts the progeny of the Children of Adam from their backs, He extracts their offspring from themselves.⁵⁴

But the parallels between Zamakhsharī and his predecessors in the Muʿtazilite school tradition stop there. Zamakhsharī applies altogether different hermeneutical tools in his exegesis, and he works with unconventional Muʿtazilite principles. Principally interested in using the hermeneutic tool of takhyīl (imaginary or make-believe interpretation, to use Heinrichs’s terminology) to explain the Qurʾānic covenantal formula’s visual imagery, Zamakhsharī took the final steps to demythologize the anthropomorphic elements of the covenant verse. By doing so, he fundamentally altered the elemental principle of covenantal relationship between God and human beings was conceptualized for the Muʿtazilites.

Heinrichs has already given us an understanding of how Zamakhsharī applied the hermeneutical device of takhyīl to Qurʾānic verses in a way that was unprecedented in Islamic exegesis. He suggested that Zamakhsharī offered “a program for the use of the notion of takhyīl as a hermeneutical tool.”⁵⁵ Heinrichs also observed that Zamakhsharī introduced this hermeneutical device into the discipline of Qurʾānic commentary to expunge the stark anthropomorphism from interpretation of the Qurʾān and to dissuade his reader from assuming metaphors in the Qurʾān.⁵⁶

To understand how Zamakhsharī presses takhyīl into service in his exegesis of the covenant verse, we need first to discuss the factors that motivate him to apply this device; and we need to grasp how takhyīl as an instrument of interpretation relates to elemental principles of exegesis (including metaphorical exegesis) and to the concepts and categories Zamakhsharī works with in the Kashshāf.

Of central importance to Zamakhsharī’s basic hermeneutical program is the distinction between figurative interpretation (majāz) and imaginary interpretation (takhyīl) as well as the distinction between different kinds of the latter type of interpretation. Zamakhsharī stresses the importance of takhyīl as a hermeneutical tool in his commentary on Q. 39:67, a starkly anthropomorphic verse which he considers an opportunity to distinguish between figurative interpretation and imaginary interpretation: “The earth altogether shall be His handful on the Day of Resurrection, and the heavens shall be rolled up in His right hand.” When Zamakhsharī treats this anthropomorphic verse and discusses its depictions and the abstract notions that stand behind them, he stresses that the verse needs to be understood without taking its anthropomorphic images into the realm of either the literal or the figurative: “This is a depiction (taṣwīr) of His majesty and putting before our eyes the essences of His majestic nature and nothing else, without taking the ‘handful’ or the ‘right hand’ into the realm of the literal or that of the figurative.”⁵⁷

Zamakhsharī thus warns his reader against assuming a figurative or metaphorical sense, for here there is no single-term topical equivalent for the figurative expression. Contrast this with the following example: to describe a person who never sticks to one opinion, one says that he puts one foot forward and the other back. In this case, one establishes an analogy between the person’s “swaying and vacillating between two opinions and failing to proceed according to one of them with another person’s hesitating in his walking and not getting his feet together to move forward.”⁵⁸ In this instance, Zamakhsharī insists that for an analogy to take place, the subject and the object of the analogy must belong to the categories “correct” and “well-known.” Because such a tamthīl is carried out with verifiable (real) things, it is classified as a tamthīl taḥqīqī.

Now, Zamakhsharī also teaches that a tamthīl may be carried out with hypothetically imagined things that can also be the objects of an analogy. In his commentary on the Qurʾān’s “trust” verse (Q. 33:72) Zamakhsharī establishes an analogy to illustrate how the hermeneutical device of tamthīl takhyīlī can be applied. According to this verse, “God offered the trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused to carry it and were afraid of it; and man carried it.” Zamakhsharī points out that in this instance, “offering the trust to an inanimate being and its refusal and fear are absurd in themselves and not straightforward.”⁵⁹ Given that there is an absence of topical equivalents for figurative expressions, and because hypothetically posited things can be imagined just as verified things can, it is appropriate to apply the hermeneutical tool of tamthīl takhyīlī.

In this instance, Zamakhsharī proposes that man’s state of being burdened by obedience to the law (subject) is analogically compared to the hypothetical state of such a burdening (object): if the trust were offered to the heavens, the earth and the mountains, they would refuse to carry it and be afraid of it.⁶⁰ As Heinrichs notes, Zamakhsharī sees the trust episode as hypothetical (if it were …). Zamakhsharī also recognizes that this hypothetical thing can be used in the analogy because it can be imagined. Later, Jurjānī, in his gloss on the Kashshāf, classifies this method of interpretation as non-figurative, since it involves the hypothetical positing of real meaning that is neither figurative nor false.⁶¹

We can clarify how Zamakhsharī interprets the covenant verse by considering his remarks in the following excerpt against the backdrop of the above principles that dictate how to interpret the Qurʾān’s visual images using the hermeneutical device of tamthīl takhyīlī. He writes:

God’s words, “Am I not your Lord? They said, indeed we testify” falls in the class of simile (tamthīl) and imaginary representation (takhyīl). The meaning of this is that God showed them evidences (al-adilla) for His sovereignty and unity, and their intellects and faculties of discernment attested to those evidences which He erected. He created those intellects and faculties of discernment as capable of distinguishing between error and guidance. Thus, it was as though God made them testify and made them acknowledge Him. When He said to them, “Am I not your Lord?” it was as though they said “Indeed, you are our Lord, we testify to your unicity.”⁶² The field of simile is employed extensively in God’s speech, and in the words of His messenger and in the language of the Arabs. The words of God the exalted are similar to this: “If We wish it then we say to it, Be and it is” and “He lifted Himself to heaven when it was smoke, and said to it and the earth, ‘Come willingly, or unwillingly!’” They said, “We come willingly.”

In this passage, Zamakhsharī refers to two Qurʾānic verses which he classifies as instances of tamthīl takhyīlī. When he glosses these verses, he explains that their anthropomorphic elements need to be interpreted using the hermeneutical device of takhyīl. Q. 41:11 refers to an occasion when heaven and earth together reply “We come willingly” to God’s command that they come willingly or unwillingly.

To understand the mode of exegetical reasoning which Zamakhsharī uses in the covenant verse, we need to turn to his commentary on the above verses, for these contexts elucidate a rule for how to apply tamthīl takhyīlī. When Zamakhsharī glosses Q. 41:11, he states that obedience can be used correctly with reference to cosmic bodies. Further, in his commentary on the Qurʾān’s “trust” verse mentioned above, Zamakhsharī argues that the obedience of the cosmic bodies (inanimate heavens, earth and mountains) to God are visualizations. Because these are hypothetically supposed by the Qurʾān (“if the trust were offered to the heavens …”), they belong in the category of the imaginary. The interpretive principle Zamakhsharī designs and underscores here is that when one interprets the visualizations as imaginary (but not as false) by applying the hermeneutic device of tamthīl takhyīlī, one escapes positing a literal understanding that anthropomorphizes God. Moreover, one steers clear of reducing such visualizations to a figurative sense.⁶³

Now consider Zamakhsharī’s remark that the visualizations expressed by the covenant verse are imaginary representations. It is plausible that Zamakhsharī intends his reader to understand that one cannot be certain that there is a single-term topical equivalent for such visualizations. The imaginary representations – testifying to and acknowledging God, for instance – cannot be analogized to things that are well known or verifiable. Consequently, he would argue, it is not permissible to reduce the visualizations to a figurative sense, even though they are depictions.

It is certainly plausible that when Zamakhsharī establishes the exegetical principles which we have described above – principles that direct the reader to avoid taking the visualizations within the domain of either the literal or the figurative – that he intends to retain the true sense of the images evoked. And that consequently, he intends his reader to understand them as imagined but also truthful in such a way that the imaginary do not imply falsity, as they would for Fārābī (more on this below).

This interpretation is corroborated by Ibn al-Munayyir, whose authoritative glosses on the Kashshāf amplify what Zamakhsharī means to say about images evoked in the Qurʾān.⁶⁴ In the context of explaining that Zamakhsharī intends the starkly anthropomorphic verse (Q. 39:67) to be taken into neither the figurative nor the literal realm, he writes, “By the expression al-takhyīl here, he [Zamakhsharī] only means to convey that this word refers to an analogy (tamthīl), but the expression on this occasion is not proper in any way whatsoever to it as something make-believe to be disowned.”⁶⁵ Ibn al-Munayyir’s gloss suggests that when Zamakhsharī describes takhyīl as a kind of analogy (tamthīl) in the Kashshāf, he means to convey that the images evoked by the Qurʾān are imagined but also true (unlike a metaphor), since to say that God’s word evokes images that are untrue is repugnant.⁶⁶

We can further clarify how Zamakhsharī applies the hermeneutical device of tamthīl takhyīlī to unlock the meaning of the covenant verse if we consider his exegesis against the backdrop of the above principles of interpretation. In addition to claiming that the images evoked by the Qurʾān are imagined but also true, Zamakhsharī also insists that such images hide abstract notions.⁶⁷ The task before us is thus to grasp the analogues of the visualizations by discerning the attributes shared by the images and abstract notions, i.e., the intellectual principles and concepts which are their subjects.

There are two principal visualizations in the above excerpts. In the first depiction, the meaning of the divine initiative is that God makes his unity and sovereignty known by the address, “Am I not your Lord?” This depiction, which personifies God by giving Him the human attribute, speech, is analogized to the act whereby God “shows [human beings] evidences (al-adilla) for His sovereignty and unity.” This analogical interpretation already presupposes Zamakhsharī’s principle described earlier in his exegesis of the covenant verse – namely that intellect (here also called discernment and insight) is the instrument through which human beings can attain knowledge of God’s unity and attributes.

The second depiction is the affirmative response uttered by human beings, which is suggested by the Qurʾānic word, “Indeed, you are our Lord, we testify to and we affirm your unicity.” Here the affirmative response (“Indeed”) is analogized to the human act that attests to those divinely constructed evidences with their intellects and faculties of discernment – an idea that is enforced when he asserts that God “set up observable evidences” in such a way that “their veracity conforms to the intellects.”⁶⁸ This analogical interpretation already presupposes a further Zamakhsharian principle described earlier – namely, that the human intellect is originated in such a way that it can grasp the divinely constructed evidential proofs of God’s sovereignty and unity.

The above line of exegesis, which relies on the principle that Qurʾānic images evoked in the covenant verse have analogues in conceptual and abstract notions, suggests that when Zamakhsharī applies the hermeneutical device of tamthīl takhyīlī to the visualizations of the covenant verse, he intends that the contractual bond between God and human beings is cemented within the domain of the intellect. Indeed, what the analogues identified in his commentary indicate is that Zamakhsharī considers the events described in the covenant verse as intellectual processes that take place within the intellect.

Zamakhsharī’s efforts to ground his exegesis of the covenant verse in the intellect left a lasting imprint on Sunnī tafsīr and fundamentally altered the way that Sunnī commentators understood and explained the origins of human beings. It was Bayḍāwī, Zamakhsharī’s excellent expositor, who took steps to naturalize Zamakhsharī’s conceptualization of the covenant into the Sunnī worldview.⁶⁹ In his work, Anwār al-tanzīl wa-asrār al-taʾwīl, Bayḍāwī takes the Qurʾānic phrase, “And when your Lord took from the Children of Adam – from their backs – His progeny,” to mean that God extracted offspring from the Children of Adam such that they propagate from one generation to the next – that is, he understands the verse to refer to the natural process through which human beings produce their offspring from one generation to the next. Like Zamakhsharī, Bayḍāwī reads the Qurʾānic phrase in this way on the grounds that the Qurʾānic term backs in this instance is a part that stands in for Children of Adam as a whole.

Bayḍāwī also adopts a second major aspect of Zamakhsharī’s exegesis, which is that the human act of attestation takes place as an intellectual operation so that the covenantal bond is cemented within the domain of the intellect. When he comments on the covenant verse in his Anwār al-tanzīl, Bayḍāwī writes:

God constructed evidential proofs of His sovereignty for human beings. And he arranged in their intellects what He summoned them to recognize by their intellects so that they reached a status of one who says to them, “Am I not your Lord? They said, indeed.” God made it possible for them to have knowledge of those evidential proofs. He also made possible their mastery of that knowledge to the status of witnessing and acknowledgment in an analogical way (ʿalā ṭarīqat al-tamthīl).⁷⁰

In this passage, Bayḍāwī tersely paraphrases and endorses Zamakhsharī’s use of tamthīl takhyīlī in his commentary on the covenant verse. He proposes that God formed human intellects in such a way that they have the capacity to recognize and to confirm the evidential proofs he constructed for them. Moreover, he proposes that when the Qurʾān depicts human attestation of God’s unity, such an attestation is accomplished in this manner when the intellect affirms divinely constructed evidential proofs.

I mentioned earlier that Bayḍāwī – under Zamakhsharī’s influence – embraced the idea that the covenant verse communicated the propagation of human beings one from another (and from one generation to the next). And I mentioned that this adoption led him to reject the universalist and predestinarian conceptualization of the covenant that guided traditionalist – both Sunnī and Shiʿī – lines of exegesis.

Under Zamakhsharī’s influence, Bayḍāwī also regarded the visualizations of the covenant verse as an instance of tamthīl, and he proposed that the covenantal bond is cemented within the domain of the intellect, although he does not raise the important question whether the images evoked by the verse are true or have only the veneer of truth. And although it is not possible to determine his stance on this issue, his motivation to interpret the visualizations along Zamakhsharian lines suggests that the Muʿtazilite method of symbolizing mythic events of the covenant to intellectual processes – and perhaps also the underlying Muʿtazilite cosmology and anthropology – had gained control of traditionalist conceptualizations of the contractual bond between God and human beings.

8 Intellect as the Vehicle to Salvation

Zamakhsharī developed a theory of salvation for the Muʿtazilite tradition, establishing conviction in salvation as a Muʿtazilite ideal within his discourse on the covenant. Adopting an individualist approach that departed considerably from those taken by ʿAbd al-Jabbār and Jishumī, he anchored his interpretation of this dimension of the covenant in his conception of intellect. My aim in the following discussion is to explain how Zamakhsharī, who was refining Muʿtazilite doctrine – not combating traditionalist universalism like his predecessors – particularized the notion of a contractual bond between God and human beings by arguing that salvation is attainable for only a group among the Children of Adam.

When Zamakhsharī formulated this theory and established intellect as the means to attaining salvation, he intended to find a criterion that would distinguish believers from unbelievers: the human intellect’s capacity to comply with the covenantal contract by fulfilling the natural purpose of the intellect – a purpose which God made known to human beings by way of the covenant at natural conception – filled precisely this role. It was by assuming these principles and embracing this interpretive method that Zamakhsharī explained a central aspect of the Qurʾān’s conception of history, namely the failures of past communities to abide by the covenants that God established with their respective prophets. And it was by this method that he specified the factions within Islam that warrant the label unbelievers. I will return to this implication of his theory later, but for the moment, I will focus on situating this aspect of Zamakhsharī’s interpretive method with respect to the Qurʾānic conception of history.

To understand how Zamakhsharī particularizes the covenant and how he argues that human reason serves as a means to salvation, we need first to understand how he interpreted the Qurʾānic motif of past covenants and broken promises. The theological principle that a community’s salvation depends upon the act of fulfilling a covenant is instanced several times in the Qurʾān. The Qurʾān speaks of a covenant (mīthāq) that God established with the Children of Israel to whom messengers were sent (Q. 5:70). On another occasion, it goes so far as to list demands of the covenant which are requisites for that community’s salvation: “perform the prayer, and pay the alms, and believe in My messengers and succour them, and lend to God a good loan, I will acquit you of your evil deeds, and I will admit you to gardens underneath which rivers flow” (Q. 5:12). Here the Qurʾān outlines an agreement of a set of terms, implying that if the Children of Israel enter a contractual relation with God, then He will deliver on his promise of salvation at the end times. Qurʾān 5:12 also stresses that when this past community (the Children of Israel) broke its covenant, by “kill[ing] the prophets” and by “disbelieving in the signs of God” (Q. 4:154).

For our purposes, what is important here is the Qurʾānic principle that salvation was foreclosed to the Children of Israel because they broke their covenant. This is crucial to understanding what Zamakhsharī means to say: that the purpose of the divine initiative mentioned in the covenant verse is to preempt such a foreclosure for the Children of Adam and to insist that salvation is still a realizable possibility. The Qurʾānic verse which guides Zamakhsharī’s argument is the following:

They said, “Yes, we testify” – lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection – “As for us, we were heedless of this,” or lest you say, “Our fathers were idolators aforetime, and we were seed after them. What wilt Thou then destroy us for the deeds of vain-doers?”

Zamakhsharī holds that this verse is intended to avert the Children of Adam from having to confess on the Day of Resurrection that they were “heedless” of God’s sovereignty and unity (“As for us, we were heedless of this”); and to avert the Children of Adam from having to confess that by associating partners with God, they were simply following their ancestors (“we were seed after them”). In the context of the discussion mentioned above, Zamakhsharī introduces the theme of intellect as the pivot of his covenantal theology. He writes:

What we mean to imply by saying lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection – “As for us, we were heedless of this” is that: the meaning of our saying that is that we set up observable evidences whose veracity is attested to by the intellects. We did that in order to turn you away from saying “As for us, we were heedless of this.”⁷¹

In the terse statement cited above, Zamakhsharī anchors his interpretation of this verse in his conception of intellect. He argues that the intellect’s attesting to divinely constructed observable evidences can lead to the attainment of salvation; and he means to imply that that operation serves as the means by which the Children of Adam can escape the fate of earlier communities. Crucial to Zamakhsharī’s argument is the Qurʾānic phrase, “lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection,” which he takes as evidence that God preempted the Children of Adam from salvation’s foreclosure and made salvation attainable for them.

To draw out the implications of the interpretation of the covenant verse just presented, Zamakhsharī proposes that God averted the Children of Adam from salvation’s foreclosure by lodging intellects in them and by causing those intellects to attest to the observable evidences – evidences which serve as proof of God’s unity and sovereignty. On the basis of these principles, he then draws a fundamental distinction between believers and unbelievers: it is only this group among the Children of Adam that deserves the label believers, for only they fulfilled the natural purpose of the intellect that God made known to them by way of a “natural” covenant in the womb.

To develop further the principles described above, Zamakhsharī focuses his attention on the Qurʾānic verse, “As for us, we were heedless of this.” For Zamakhsharī, this verse implies that unbelievers are those who broke their covenants by rejecting intellect’s divinely sanctioned role, which is to call on their intellects to attest to the observable evidences that serve as proof of God’s unity and sovereignty. In his view, the remainder of the Children of Adam failed to live up to the demand which the covenant places on human reason, and for this reason they warrant the label unbelievers.

Zamakhsharī thus gives the final lines of the covenant verse (beginning with “As for us, we were heedless of this”) a vital role in explaining the Qurʾānic motif of past communities who broke their covenants. He builds on an interpretation already advanced by ʿAbd al-Jabbār, who took the Qurʾānic term “heedlessness” as evidence that this line is expressed by unbelievers on the Day of Resurrection.⁷² Zamakhsharī too projects the final lines of this Qurʾānic verse into the future, proposing that it is voiced by the unbelievers facing the divine judgment. Importantly, however, his interpretation of these lines underscores the role of intellect in the attainment of salvation. What he proposes is that those communities among the Children of Adam that failed to live up to the demand that the covenant places on their intellect will find themselves on the Day of Resurrection entreating God for salvation. Moreover, what the Qurʾānic text means is that it is that group which offers excuses for having associated partners with God, saying that they were simply imitating their ancestors (“we were seed after them”).

9 Conclusions

What do the various attempts to interpret the covenant verse disclose about Muʿtazilite approaches to Qurʾānic interpretation?

The three commentators who are the focus of this study – ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Jishumī, and Zamakhsharī – applied procedures and principles of interpretation as well as rhetorical devices to elicit meaning from the covenant verse. Yet the approaches we have examined betray individualist attitudes and independent motivations. Each author called on his intellectual and anthropological concepts as a means of developing his own multi-dimensional conceptualization of the covenant – conceptualizations which shaped and gave meaning to the Muʿtazilite understanding of human history.

It is Zamakhsharī, however, who should be credited with developing a full-fledged comprehensive exegesis of the covenant verse that finally resolved the difficulty of how to understand its mythic nature and significance. As suggested above, he pressed his conception of human intellect into service and applied the device of takhyīl – a device he institutionalized into the genre of tafsīr – as a means of interpreting the anthropomorphic elements of the covenant verse and resolving the difficulty of how to interpret its visual imagery. Rather than rejecting the truth of the myth by deploying the conventional Muʿtazilite device of figurative interpretation, Zamakhsharī employed the device of tamthīl takhyīlī to retain the true nature of images evoked by the covenant without falling into the trap of anthropomorphism.

Zamakhsharī regrettably does not elaborate on the relationship between visual images and truth, but a brief comparison with Fārābī’s philosophical theory of images will clarify one important aspect of his approach to Qurʾānic interpretation. Heinrichs pointed out that Zamakhsharī’s discussion of images and truth seems to come close to Fārābī’s philosophical theory, which also holds that images are visualizations of abstract notions. Such images, Fārābī held, are invented by the prophet’s exceptionally powerful faculty of imagination; and they have only the veneer of veracity, since the philosopher-prophet clothes philosophical essences in the garments of images. Zamakhsharī holds that Qurʾānic images are conceived by God’s word – not the prophet’s imagination (as Heinrichs points out). And if we follow Ibn al-Munayyir, Zamakhsharī’s commentator who has outstanding credentials, it is plausible that Zamakhsharī intends to advocate for the truth of the imaginary while not taking such images into the realm of the figurative or the literal. Zamakhsharī’s Kashshāf played the pivotal role of institutionalizing these ideas about the truth of the imaginary into the genre of Qurʾānic commentary, and future research in this area will examine the wealth of glosses on Zamakhsharī’s Kashshāf and disclose more about this process of institutionalization.⁷³