Salvation and Hell in Classical Islamic Thought

✍ Scribed by Marco Demichelis

• Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Salvation and Hell in Classical Islamic Thought uses classical Islamic sources to trace the development of Islamic eschatology during the formative centuries of Islamic intellectual history. Marco Demichelis draws on classical Islamic scholars, including Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, to bring together concepts from Islamic philosophy, theology and mysticism – including proto-Sufism – to examine the interplay of these concepts between these traditions. The doctrines of salvation from Hell are examined in depth, in particular the theory of the annihilation of Hell, which proposes the idea that there will be a time when Hell will be empty and no longer inhabited.

This is the first book to examine Islamic eschatology in the classical period, and adds to the growing scholarship on Islamic views on salvation and the eternity of Hell. It will be essential reading for scholars of Islamic intellectual history, theology, and comparative religion.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Contents
Acknowledgements
Notes on Dates and Transliteration
Introduction
The state of the art
Previous ideas on the annihilation of the aft erlife in theA brahamic traditions
Qur’ā n and Sunna: a hermeneutic prologue on Hell
1 Islamic Piety and Annihilation
Islamic pietism and the early temporary nature of Hell
Towards the creation of an Islamic eschatological ‘character’
From al-H. ā rith al-Mu h. āsib ī (d. 857/242) to Al- Junayd(d. 910/297): extinction (fanā’) and durability (baqā’), the mystical canonization of annihilation
2 Kalām and the Eschatological Interpretation of the Material and the Empyrean
The Mu‘tazila ethical awareness of the aft erlife
Ash‘arī, Abū al-H.asan (d. 936/324) and the early Orthodox point of view on the Annhilation
Al-Māturīdī (d. 944/332) and Maturidism: Fanā’s paradigm
3 Islamic Philosophy (Falsafa) and the Annihilation of the Non-Body Rationally Explained
Al-Kindī and an early philosophical understanding of eschatology
Al-Fārābī (d. 950/338), his virtuous city, his ‘virtuous happiness’ and his annihilation
Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037/428) and the return to God (ma‘ād)
4 The Islamic Definitive Understanding of the Fanā’ al-Nār Neo-Ash‘arism and Neo-H.anbalism’s Elucubrations (Twelft h–Fourteenth Centuries)
The fate of others as God’s mercy: Al-Ghazālī (d. 1111/504) and the hereafter of compromise
The fate of others in later H.anbalism (fourteenth century)
Conclusion
For an intra-Abrahamic dialogue on salvation
Notes
Bibliography
Index