Jahm bin Safwan

Jahm bin Safwan was an Islamic theologian active during the Umayyad period, and his name became the basis for the label "Jahmiyya." He aligned himself with the rebel Al-Harith ibn Surayj, a dissident in Khurasan, and was executed in 745 by Salm ibn Ahwaz. What little is known about him comes from later sources that were hostile to him.

Born in Samarkand, Jahm was either of Persian descent or a non-Persian client of the Banu Rāseb tribe, but he settled in Khorasan, specifically Merv. He studied under al-Ja'd b. Dirham, a teacher of the last Umayyad caliph, Marwan II. Al-Ja'd was branded a heretic (a Dahrī and Zindīq) for being the first to claim that God does not speak, and thus that the Quran is created. He also rejected that Abraham was God's friend or that Moses spoke with Him. Jahm's name would later—possibly incorrectly—be attached to the theological movement known as Jahmism.

Jahm served as an assistant to Al-Harith ibn Surayj during his revolt against the Umayyad governor Nasr ibn Sayyar. He was killed in the first attempt to capture Merv in 746, though the rebellion significantly weakened Umayyad power and indirectly helped the Abbasid Revolution succeed.

Establishing Jahm's actual teachings is difficult, since they survive only in abbreviated form in later polemical works that cannot be verified. It is said he taught that only a few attributes—such as creation, power, and action—can be applied to God, while others like speech cannot. He therefore held that it was wrong to speak of the Quran as eternal, since God, in his view, is not a speaker. He also advocated extreme determinism, arguing that human actions are only metaphorically attributed to people—just as the sun is said to set, when in fact God makes it set.

Jahm's ideas about God and His attributes were later used in criticisms of the Mu'tazila, who were sometimes called Jahmites by their opponents. The Mu'tazila agreed with Jahm that the Quran was created. Jahm left no writings, but many Muslim scholars wrote about his doctrines, and a few modern scholars have studied him.

Among his contemporaries, Muqatil ibn Sulayman, an early Quran commentator, was especially critical. They engaged in a heated theological and political debate in the mosque of Marw over divine attributes and two political figures they were linked to. Each wrote a book refuting the other, and Muqatil used his political connections to have Jahm expelled from Balkh and sent to Termez. However, Muqatil himself was condemned by scholars like Abu Hanifah and Makki ibn Ibrahim. Abu Hanifah reportedly declared Jahm a disbeliever.

Later, the theologian Uthman ibn Sa'id al-Darimi wrote refutations of Jahm and of a prominent Jahmite named Bishr al-Marisi, whom he declared a kafir. The Sunni hadith scholar and ascetic al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi also wrote a response. Many hadith scholars, including Ahmad ibn Hanbal and his students al-Bukhari and Abu Dawud as-Sijistani, wrote refutations of Jahm's doctrines. Later Sunni theologians like Abu Hasan al-Ash'ari and Abu Mansur al-Maturidi continued to criticize him, and he is still mentioned in later Ash'ari and Maturidi heresiology works.