the evolution of Divine Providence, from Kūfa school to appearance of Hilla school

From a historical perspective, theologians in Kūfa were the first Imāmī theorizers who relied on revelatory (waḥyānī) sources to deal with different theological issues, including the nature and the manner of the Divine Will. This intellectual effort resulted in the thesis according to which the Will was an Active Divine Attribute which exists independently of the Divine Essence and Action. Kūfī scholars, such as Hishām b. Ḥakam, emphasized that the will is a sort of “motion” and a matter of change, and thus, the Divine Will is an Active Attribute. In this school of thought, the existential, independent nature of the will is accounted for in terms of the theory of meaning in the cosmological system of Kūfī theologians. The meaning was known with the slogan, “neither is it He, nor is it otherwise”. It was considered as a created entity which was inseparable from the Divine Essence, although it does lie in the Divine Essence. Kūfī scholars particularly insisted to argue, in addition to the distinction between the will and the Divine Essence, that the will is also distinct from the Divine Knowledge. However, with the beginning of the Minor Occultation (al-Ghaybat al-Ṣughrā), the scholarship concerning the issue changed. The Imāmī Kūfī theology, which had declined for several reasons, began to widely interact with the Mu’tazilī theology. After this interaction and in the first step, some Mu’tazilīs joined the Imāmīyya. Thus, a new generation of Imāmī theologians appeared who were different from earlier Imāmī theologians. Thus, the issue of the Divine Will tended towards the Mu’tazilī conception. However, things changed again with the emergence of al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, and theories and methods of Kūfī theologians were once again considered as important. He distinguished Divine Will and God’s having a will and, in accordance with some hadiths, he identified the will with a “psychological act”. Moreover, he also emphasized that such an attribute cannot apply to God because it is impossible to apply the concepts associated with creatures to God, the Creator. The attribute is only discussed because it has appeared in religious sources and transmitted evidence. It is similar to the beliefs of some Mu’tazilīs of Baghdad, such as al-Balkhī al-Ka’bī. Al-Shaykh al-Mufīd admitted his identity with these theologians. Thus, al-Shaykh al-Mufīd’s ideas were in line with those of Kūfī scholars, but when al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā took over the leadership of the Imāmī theology (or kalām) in the School of Baghdad, the ideas of early Mu’tazilīs in Basra concerning the will found a central place among the Imāmī theologians in that school. Al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā and some of his students considered the will to be an incipient entity though not in location, which was the view of Jubā’is. In the Theological School of Rey, Imāmī theologians approached the Mu’tazilī theology once again, and later Mu’tazilī thoughts found their way to the Imāmī theology, leading to a conception of the will as motive, and the motive as knowledge. This happened while the views of Kūfī theologians and scholars of hadiths continued to be held in the late period of Presence (al-Ḥuḍūr) and the early period of the Minor Occultation in the School of Qom. It was reflected in the way al-Kulaynī and al-Ṣadūq organized the hadiths concerning the will.