- Hishām ibn ʿAmr Abū Muḥammad al-Fuwatī—the Muʿtazilite from Kūfa, a client of Banū Shaybān.
A man of sharp intellect, relentless disputation, heterodoxy, and baleful consequence.
Among those who studied under him were ʿAbbād ibn Salmān and others.
He forbade the formula, “Hasbunallāh wa niʿma al-wakīl” (“Allah is sufficient for us, and what an excellent Guardian”), and asserted that Allah neither punishes an unbeliever with the Fire, nor revives the earth with rain, nor guides, nor leads astray.
He would explain: “They are tormented in the Fire, not by it; He gives life to the earth at the time of rain, not through the rain itself; and the phrase niʿma al-wakīl merely means ‘the One in Whom one places trust.’”
Al-Mubarrad relates the following exchange:
A man asked Hishām al-Fuwatī, “How many sanīn do you count?”
He replied, “From one up to more than a thousand.”
The man said, “That is not what I meant—how many teeth (sinn) do you have?”
He answered, “Thirty-two.”
The man continued, “How many years (sanīn) have you lived?”
He said, “They are not mine; they all belong to Allah.”
The man asked, “Then what is your sinn?”
He replied, “A bone.”
The man said, “Whose son are you?”
He answered, “The son of a mother and a father.”
The man asked, “How much has passed over you?”
He said, “Had anything passed over me, it would have killed me.”
The man exclaimed, “Woe to you! How, then, should I ask?”
Hishām said, “Say: How much of your lifetime has elapsed?”
I say: This is the sum of what these hair-splitting pedants possess by way of knowledge—phrases and empty flourishes to which Allah pays no heed. With them they have long distorted words from their proper places, past and present. We seek Allah’s refuge from speculative theology and its adherents.
And among them: