Metaphysical Foundations of Spatiality in the Teachings of the Classical Mutakallims (VIII-XIII centuries)

Abstract

The article reviews Muslim mutakallimūn’s doctrines of VIII–XIII centuries about metaphysic basis of spatiality. Using a huge amount of Mutazili’, Ashari’ and Zaydi’ treatises, the author analyzes three the most significant conceptual blocks of physical theories of Muslim theologists – cosmologic, macro- and microspatial. The study shows, that pre-islamic time’s mythologems, which partially consist in a Muslim mythological corpus texti, specify basic theoretical coordinates of kalām cosmology. The latter, in its turn, bases on general Semitic intuition of hierarchy layout of metaverse. As for indigenous speculation of Mutakalimūn’s about tridimentional microspace, it has found its expression in elaborating the categories of makān and djiha – to denote virtual or real whereabouts of the entity and the void. In the end, Middle-East philosophers-atomists interpreted microspace – hayyiz predicatively connected with the sense of tiny matter particles, as geometrical unexpanse, which serves as ontology base both for one- or two-dimensionality and for three-dimensional complex entities. Separately the article offers original Mutakallimūn’s theories, which refer to the problems of reciprocity between spiritual entities and physical space.