Murjiʼism of Bishr al-Marisi: an essay of contextual reconstruction

Abstract

In the present article, the author attempts to reconstruct the doctrine of Bishr al-Marisi, a Baghdаd’ mutakallim. A detailed analysis of the remaining sources allows him to arrive at the conclusion that Bishr's thinking had a systematic and synthetic quality in that it incorporated the elements of Mu'tazilite, of Djahmi, and also of traditionalist theories. The main result of this paper, which is the first comprehensive survey of al-Marisi's writing to appear in modern Islamic studies, consists in defining the 'transitional' value of his work as the evidence of theology gravitating from non-systematic freethinking of 8th century toward institutional 'scholasticism' of classical Arabic philosophy. Also, the author explores the background of Bishr's theological speculation, showing that while some elements of the latter's system (such as, e.g., the theory of 'appropriation' of acts) were indeed borrowed from the early mutakallimūn, the core postulates of his 'Murji'ite' doctrine are a genuine step forward in the development of the anti-anthropomorphist and providentialist paradigm of his predecessors. It is further demonstrated that Bishr's method dialectically combines the syllogistic pursuit of 'analogy' with an unquestionable acknowledgement of the primacy of a revelatory 'precedent'.