The Term “The Articles” and Its Ambiguities in the Corpus of Al-Milal wa al-Nihal: A Study of The Book of Articles by Abu Al-Qasim Al-Balkhi (d. 319 AH / 931 CE) as a Model

Abstract

This research addresses the term ‘Al-maqalat’ (articles) as one of the most frequently used terms in the corpus of ‘Al-Milal wa al-Nihal’ during the early Hijri centuries, which increased its ambiguity and made it difficult to define. This was clearly evident in the work of Abu Al-Qasim Al-Balkhi in his book ‘Al-maqalat’ (Articles). He did not approach this term cautiously; rather, he treated it as one of the concepts that required neither explaination nor definition, thereby depriving it of its distinctive meaning, which is "correspondence". He did so by making it synonymous with several related terms such as ‘Al-farqa’ and ‘Al-qawl,’ despite the differences in many specific connotations. However, acknowledging the shortcomings in Al-Balkhi's approach to the term ‘Al-Maqalat (articles)’ should not diminish his effort to classify the articles in terms of their types, numbers, and ranks according to the temporal criterion, which reflects their branching and interconnection. This reveals the author's partial liberation from the authority of the ‘Hadith of Separation’, as he did not subject reality to this hadith when determining the number of Islamic sects.