Then speculative theology (ʿilm al-kalām) gained the upper hand over him. Imām al-Shāfiʿī had forbidden him to engage in it, yet he did not heed him. Al-Shāfiʿī said, “For a servant to meet Allah burdened with every sin except shirk—idolatry—(1) is dearer to me than for him to meet Him burdened with ʿilm al-kalām.” Bishr met al-Shāfiʿī when the latter first came to Baghdad.
Judge Ibn Khallikān (2) relates: “He openly professed that the Qur’an is created; many repugnant statements are reported from him. He was of the Murjiʾah, and the Marīsiyyah branch of that sect is named after him. He maintained that prostrating to the sun or the moon is not disbelief in itself, but merely a sign of disbelief. He debated Imām al-Shāfiʿī, yet he had no command of Arabic grammar and made crude mistakes.”
He (3) also says: “It is reported that his father was a Jewish dyer in Kūfah who lived in Baghdad in the alley of al-Marīs (4). Among them, marīs is thin bread crumbled into ghee and dates. Marīs (5) is likewise a district in Nubia from which a cold wind blows in winter.”
I add (6): “Later Bishr al-Marīsī found favor with al-Maʾmūn; he was advanced at court, his previously unsalable wares found a market, and even his sluggish intellect came to be praised.
“When he died in Dhū al-Ḥijjah of this year—or, according to another view, the previous year (7)—a ḥadith scholar named ʿUbayd al-Shūnīzī led his funeral prayer. Some of the ḥadith scholars reproached him, whereupon he said, ‘Did you not hear how I prayed for him? I said: O Allah, this servant of Yours used to deny the punishment of the grave, so make him taste the punishment of the grave; he used to deny the intercession of Your Prophet, so deprive him of it; and he used to deny the vision of You in the Hereafter, so withhold Your Noble Face from him.’ They replied, ‘You have done well.’”
This is precisely what some of the early scholars meant when they said, “Whoever denies a particular blessing will never obtain it.”
[Also deceased this year] was ʿAbd Allah ibn Yūsuf al-Tannīsī (8).