Sayf al-dīn al-Âmidī's hudūth defence

Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī is an important philosophical theology thinker who has written plenty of works on many disciplines such as kalām, philosophy, logic and Islamic jurisprudence. Due to the era that he lived in, understanding al-Āmidī's thought is quite significant in terms of intellectual history since it will contribute to reveal the characteristics of kalām which it has acquired throughout history. In the period of philosophical theology, kalām discussions took place intensely around philosophical issues, theologians showed a strong tendency towards philosophy and as a result they combined theology with philosophy. Hudūth or the problem of the world's origination is a valuable subject to examine within the scope of philosophical theology because it is one of the deepest issues that separates scholars of kalām from Islamic philosophers. Furthermore hudūth can be seen as a key criterion in determining whether a thinker is a mutakallim or a philosopher. For this reason, it is meaningful to reveal the extent of a thinker's commitment to kalām or philosophy within the scope of hudūth in a period that theologians became closer to philosophers and kalām turned into philosophical kalām. In this context, our thesis deals with a fundamental issue that aims to ascertain whether the theologian's worldview is closer to philosophers or to scholars of kalām. Our thesis consists of an introduction, two main chapters and a conclusion in order to achieve this aim. In the introduction, after drawing the technical framework of the research, we discuss al-Āmidī's life and scientific personality and the general context of the creation debate until the author's time. Then in the first chapter, we put forward and evaluate the author's position on the discussions about divine attributes which are related to hudūth. And in the second chapter, we examine how the author grounded his approaches to hudūth. Finally in the conclusion part, we employ a general evaluation on the author's views about hudūth and bring our conclusions into sharp relief about how close he is to the philosophy side and to the kalām side. Keywords: al-Āmidī, Creation, Emanation, Hudūth, Philosophical Theology, Pre-eternity.