ABSTRACT
This chapter is very much preliminary to a proper, fuller and more nuanced reading of al-Jhåi©’s (c.160-255/c.776-868 or 9) Kithb al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn, ‘The Treatise on Clarity and Clarification’: the ideas which I shall present are tentative and exploratory. The thrust of my approach is to move away from the consideration of Jhåi© as an adjb (man of letters) with a penchant for Mu‘tazilj theology whose works can be sifted and mined for the information they convey about early Mu‘tazilj theology and theologians, to a reading of his works in general, but this work in particular, as instantiations of the theories and methodologies of Jhåi©’s own brand of Mu‘tazilj theology in the realm of subjects which are generally considered not to have been the preserve of speculative theology.1
