The rationalist school that held God's unity and justice as its two principles, read the Qur'an's anthropomorphisms allegorically, and held the Qur'an created; the school the Ash'ari synthesis answered.
The Mu'tazila were Islam's first systematic theologians, dominant under the early Abbasid caliphs and then displaced by the Ash'ari and Maturidi synthesis. Their questions never left Sunni theology, and their texts survive largely through the Zaidi transmission in Yemen.
Mu'tazila Theology across the site
Sources
Primary
- Abd al-Jabbar, Sharh al-Usul al-Khamsa.
Secondary
- Richard C. Martin and Mark R. Woodward, Defenders of Reason in Islam (1997).