Resumen de The city of Kūfa and the debates about the delegation of divine powers ('tafwīḍ')
The city of Kūfa, which can be considered as the birthplace ofShīʿism, was in the first centuries of Islam the center of debates about tafwīḍ, the delegation by God of His powers to His first creature — the Prophet, theImam or Christ, all preexistent to the creation of the world — or, in a morerestricted form limited to human actions, to the whole mankind. These debateswent beyond the doctrinal borders between sects and movements, as they werefixed by heresiographers and the different Islamic orthodoxies that were progressively established. Our enquiry deals with Shīʿīs of all convictions — Imāmīs, Zaydīs, Ismāʿīlīs, 'ghulāt' such as Nu ṣayrīs and other related groups — Khārijīs, Muʿtazilīs and Sunnīs, but also Karaite Jews, all sharing similardoctrines of delegation, in what seems to be an attempt to overcome the pitfalls of Qurʾānic monotheism (God’s omnipotence versus human liberty and responsibility; divine transcendence versus anthropomorphism).
