Abstract

This study will examine how Dāvūd al-Qarṣī, an 18th-century Ottoman scholar, resolved the paradox between human freewill and God being the creator of everything in his work Risālâh fi’l-ikhtiyārāt al-juzʾiyyah wa’l-irādāt al-qalbiyyah. In addition, in this study, the critical edition and translation of the risālah will also be provided. The treatise which is the subject of the present study is a link in the series of works written under the title of human acts in the Islamic thought tradition regarding al-irādah al-juzʾiyyah, afʿāl al-ʿibād, khalq al-aʿmāl, qaḍā, and qadar. This risālah is one of the rare examples prepared with the method of “mamzūj annotation (sharḥ)”, which is a method in which “text” and “annotation” are intertwined. Qarṣī examines in detail a total of seven views, four of which are famous (mashhūr) and three of which are non-famous, about voluntary acts. Qarṣī interprets the approaches and views of the non-famous sects and includes them in the famous sects and allocates approximately 4/3 of the work to these sects. In the final stage of the work, the author states that the view of Māturīdīs is parallel with the predecessor’s (Salaf) view of “Neither jabr nor tafwīḍ; rather, it is merely a situation between these two approaches.” Qarṣī, who was inspired by Athīrī Maḥmad Afandī (d. 1092/1681), says that voluntary acts come about by the sum of “two powers (qudrat)”, “two wishes (mashīʾat)” and “one taqwīn”. Also, according to this, the first four of them are proximate causes, while the attribute taqwīn is the influencing factor. Qarṣī acts from the meanings of the term action (fiʿl) and the “theory of state (ḥāl)” in order to prove that human beings are true agents (fāʿil) on the one hand and to protect God’s attribute of creation on the other. In fact, the concept of “state (ḥāl)”, used in understanding divine attributes and some ontological issues, was applied to acts by the Māturīdī mutakallim Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa al-Thānī (d. 747/1346). Thus, a doctrine of action was developed, and this doctrine was accepted and used by the later period Māturīdī mutakallims. With reference to Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa, Qarṣī tries to justify the issue based on the meanings of the the term action and the modes of existence of these meanings. He says that action has two implications; one of them is the “infinitive meaning” (al-maʿnā al-maṣdarī) and the other is “the thing that comes with this infinitive meaning (al-ḥāṣıl bi-maṣdar)”. The infinitive meaning of the act constitutes the “non-thing aspect” of the action, and the meaning of the action that is created with the infinitive indicates “the thing aspect” thereof. Thus, because the aspect of the action that is not existentand therefore not a thing is not subject to creation, the agency and responsibility of human beings are grounded. Similarly, Qarṣī maintains that the mashīʾat, which means will, qaṣd and al-irādah al-juzʾiyyah, was not created because its existence in humans is in the form of succession and it is of a state-like (ḥāl) existenceOn this account. Qarṣī manages to preserve both human freewill and the absolute creativity of God due to the non-existent and non-thing aspect of the act on the one hand, and will (irādah), mashīʾat and qaṣd not being subjected to creation on the other.