Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi's vievs on the names and attributes of god

In this study, 'Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi's views on the names and attributes of God are examined. Baghdadi, who has an important place in the systematization of Ash'arî theology within Sunni Islam and the development of Sunni Islam identity, is also an important al-Asma' al-Husna commentator. He introduced a new method by removing the commentaries of al-Asma' al-Husna from a broad dictionary form and combining it with the matter of attributes in kalam and evaluating al-Asma' al-Husna as the expression Sunni Islam creed. With this perspective and the accumulation of various disciplines related to the subject, Baghdadi has, directly and indirectly, influenced the later al-Asma' al-Husna commentaries and has changed both the framework and the content of them. The author attached importance to '99 names' narratives and argued that al-Asma' al-Husna is revealed by Allah and fixed by the divine law. However, he mentioned that the names are much more than that. On the other hand, as a theologian, he argued that the verbal nouns combining many names within them refer to themselves and presented them in three categories as attributes of the Essence, positive attributes, and attributes of action. He insistently defended the real authenticity of the attributes and emphasized that they are eternal alongside with the attributes of the Essence. He considered the attributes of action as 'hadith' (created later) and thought that they could not be eternal because they were created by a 'hadith' act. Baghdadi followed Ibn Furak in anthropomorphic qualifications of God, which are evaluated in the khabari attributes' category and included them into one of the three categories by interpreting them following the concept of transcendence.