Necessity of divine grace and powerlessness of the Imam: a Shi’i-Mu‘tazili apology for Imam ‘Alī by Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī
Résumé
In a brief treatise of kalām entitled Raf‘ al-khilāf wa-l-munāza‘a, Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī (dead after 1385), best known for his works in Twelver Shi‘i mystical gnosis, develops a rational apology for the attitude of ‘Alī at the succession of the Prophet, i.e. for his quietism and his apparent passivity towards the three first califs. Āmulī’s argument is based on several fundamental principles borrowed from Mu‘tazilite theology as incorporated by the school of Ḥilla, such as the necessity of divine Justice (‘adl) and grace (luṭf). However, the originality of the text is to support both the necessity of the imamate and the imam as a divine grace, on the one hand, and the almost constant powerlessness (‘ajz) of the imam (‘Alī and his successors) throughout history, on the other hand. Based on the analysis of this hitherto unknown text, I intend to study the extent, the limits and the tensions caused by the Mu‘tazilite influence on Twelver Shi’i imamology.
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