One of the most important characteristics that differentiates humans from other living beings is their willpower. People use this willpower to make and achieve many decisions in both their individual and social lives. The question of whether and to what extent a metaphysical power, i.e. God, has an influence on these decision-making and implementation processes, and the consequences of this influence, have been discussed in various civilizations and religions from the past to the present. In Islam, this debate was caused by internal events such as the Battle of the Camel and the Battle of Siffin, which happened between Muslims in the early periods. The sect of the Qadariyya, which defended human free will, emerged during this period, especially against the efforts of the Umayyad rulers to legitimize their violent practices with divine destiny. The followers of this opinion were described as Qadarites, discredited, considered unreliable in the transmission of hadith, some of their opinions were ignored, they were called “Zoroastrians”, “heretics” and “followers of the Antichrist”, and even Maʿbad al-Juhanī and Ghaylān al-Dimashqī, who were considered pioneers of the human free will opinion, were killed for their opinions by the rulers of the time. In his work Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries Hijra and Between Hadith and Theology, the German orientalist Josef van Ess (d. 2021), the author of the opinions that form the cornerstone of our research, noted that the nomenclature qadarī has a quite confusing meaning. For this reason, he said that in order to use the term qadarī without hesitation, we must understand what the person who gave that name to a person - in such a case it is usually their opponent - meant by it. In fact, it was found in the course of this study that this term was used in the early period for those who held the view of human free will as well as for those who held divine destiny in the opposite sense, for those who propagated their views in hadith narratives, for those who emphasized the function and importance of reason in their narratives, for those who narrated about those who were considered qadarīs, for those who saw the source of evil in animals, and for those who criticized only the Umayyads. In this context, the observations and assessments of the German orientalist Josef van Ess in his books on the qadarī nomenclature, which emerged in the early period and was generally used for those who rejected divine destiny, are the subject of our research. This study aims to reveal the use of the term qadarī in the early periods through the opinions, evaluations, and findings of a name that has contributed many monumental works in the field of theology. Our study is significant in that its source is the works of Josef van Ess, who is of great importance in the Orientalist tradition and in the field of Kalām history, and in that it presents us with the assessments of an Orientalist perspective on the subject. In this study, which was created by determining Josef van Ess's comments on the topic from his books, qualitative research method was used used with the document analysis technique. * This paper is derived from Master's thesis entitled “Josef van Ess's Approach to the Formation of the Early Thought of Qadariyya and to the Attitudes of Anti-Qadariyya”, which is continuing under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Mehmet Akif Ceyhan at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University.