Sufis and Sharīʿa: The Forgotten School of Mercy 9781399508582

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SUFIS AND SHAR ĪʿA The Forgotten School of Mercy Samer Dajani

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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Samer Dajani, 2023 Cover image: Schools Leading to Paradise image courtesy of the author’s collection. Cover design: Andrew McColm Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f ) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/15 Adobe Garamond by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 3995 0856 8 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 3995 0858 2 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 3995 0859 9 (epub) The right of Samer M. K. Dajani to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgementsvi Introduction: The Sufis and Legal Theory 1 The Sufis and Uṣūl al-Fiqh2 Part 1  Mysticism, Traditionalism and the School of Mercy 1 The Schools of Law 11 Ijtihād and the Science of Legal Theory 11 Ḥadīth versus Sunna15 Rationalists versus Traditionalists 19 The Traditionist-Jurisprudents 25 The Great Synthesis and the Four Madhhabs29 The Ẓāhirīs31 2 Sufis and Traditionalism 39 Sufis and Fiqh43 Affinities between the Mystics and Traditionalists 47 Conceptions of Sainthood among the Traditionalist Movement 49 The Mystics and the Schools 53 3 Al-Tirmidhī’s Critique of Rationalism 68 A Brief Sketch of Tirmidhī’s Life and Intellectual Upbringing 68 Tirmidhī and Jurisprudence 70 Ḥikma: The Spiritual Wisdom behind the Divine Prescriptions 71 Tirmidhī’s Conception of Ijtihād78

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The Law is Mercy 90 Conclusion93 4 Ibn ʿArabī’s Traditionalism 100 The Life of Ibn ʿArabī101 The Intellectual Environment in Andalusia 101 The Influence of Eastern Mystics and Sufis 112 Mysticism, Traditions and Traditionalism 115 Ibn ʿArabī and the Works of Ibn Ḥazm120 5 The Akbarī Madhhab: Ibn ʿArabī’s School of Mercy 129 Ibn ʿArabī and Ẓahirism130 Original Licitness and the Ease Principle 136 Divine Pardon and Mercy 141 Ibn ʿArabī’s Position on Ijtihād143 Taqlīd, Pluralism and God’s Mercy 150 Summary156 Did Ibn ʿArabī Have his Own Madhhab?157 6 Loyalty to the Akbarī Way: ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī167 ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī170 Shaʿrānī’s Writings on Ibn ʿArabī171 The Removal of the Fog 177 Part 2  Mercy in Flexibility: A Path for All Mankind 7 The All-comprehensive Nature of the Sharīʿa: From    Tirmidhī to Suyūṭī187 The Early Concept of Leeway 189 The Position of the Four Madhhabs191 Ibn Ḥanbal and the Traditionalists 192 Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī 193 Ibn ʿArabī196 Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī 199 Al-Suyūṭī201 Difference of Perspective 203 8 The ‘Scale’ of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī213 The Scale 214

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contents  |  v The Sufi Ideas Underlying the Theory 218 The Concept of Leeway versus the Concept of Abrogation 223 Shaʿrānī’s Defence of the Madhhabs227 Why Shaʿrānī Wrote the Mīzān237 The Problem of Talfīq244 Part 3 The Akbarī Madhhab in Practice and its Influence on the Modern World  9 Aḥmad ibn Idrīs and the Implementation of Ibn ʿArabī’s    Jurisprudence in the Nineteenth Century 253 The Importance of Aḥmad ibn Idrīs 254 His Education 254 Ibn Idrīs as Teacher 257 Ibn Idrīs as Heir to Ibn ʿArabī258 Ibn Idrīs’s Study of the Jurisprudential Sections of the Futūḥāt262 Conclusion273 10 The Teachings and Influence of Aḥmad ibn Idrīs 280 The Teachings of Ibn Idrīs on Ijtihād280 The Idrīsī Tradition and Beyond 288 Conclusion298 11 From Ibn ʿArabī to the Salafīs 301 The Hijaz Revival 301 Shah Walī-Allāh and the Indian Ahl-i Hadith Movement 305 The Iraqi and Moroccan Revivalists 312 The Damascene Salafiyya 315 Maḥmūd Khaṭṭāb al-Subkī’s al-Jamʿiyya al-Sharʿiyya321 Conclusion: The Spirit of the Law – Competing Visions

332

Appendix: The Classical Juristic Debate on Whether Every Mujtahid was Correct

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References352 Index372

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Acknowledgements

My deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to my parents for the boundless support they gave me while working on this project, and for their belief in the value of this work. Secondly I cannot thank my wife Nishat enough, not only for her constant moral support, but also for all the hours she put into reviewing and improving this work in its multiple iterations. A big thank you to my sister Dina for encouraging me to reach the finish line. My heartfelt thanks to my parents-in-law for their continuous support and encouragement. Thank you to Cambridge Muslim College who awarded me a Fellowship to work on this project. The city, the college, the staff, students and my colleagues made that year one of the most peaceful and beloved years of my life. I want to specifically thank my CMC colleagues Ramon Harvey and Harith Bin Ramli for the many fruitful conversations we had. After my Fellowship at CMC ended I carried on my work at another blissful institution, Mei Leaf teahouse in Camden Town, where my thoughts were fuelled by the best tea in London. I want to thank, too, my PhD supervisor Dr Ayman Shihadeh, who is the model academic and who taught me to analyse things at a deeper level, leading to great insights. Dr Timothy Winter and Dr Kazuyo Murata gave me very helpful comments on the earliest version of this work, while the two anonymous reviewers gave helpful feedback on its last recension. My dear friend Ömer Faruk Yeni supplied me with scans of different manuscripts from Istanbul’s libraries over the years. Shaykh Ashraf Makkawi of the Azhar vi

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acknowledgements  |  vii allowed me to visit his home on a daily basis so he could explain to me the difficult chapter on ṭaswīb al-mujtahidīn from Ghazālī’s al-Mustaṣfā (which is summarised in the Appendix). He not only gave from his time until we finished the whole chapter, but also cooked me food himself and enriched me through his company in so many ways. Not only do I think he is one of the greatest intellectual giants of the Muslim world today, but also one of the most noble human beings I have had the honour to meet. As I attended the lectures of Dr Akram Nadwi over the years, I was often taken aback by the congruence of so many of his teachings with the material I was writing about in this book. Sometimes the way he explained certain concepts helped me explain the material I am presenting here more clearly. I am very fortunate to be publishing this work with EUP, whose team has been so supportive and brilliant to work with, and who gave my manuscript to the best copy-editor I could ask for, Nina Macaraig. To all of the above and to so many others who I have not mentioned by name, I am truly thankful.

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Introduction The Sufis and Legal Theory

I

slamic legal theory provides the framework for the production of the laws, both spiritual and legal, that govern the lives of Muslims all over the world. For example, a Muslim woman planning a trip to America would have to consider a number of issues such as: 1) is she allowed to travel all by herself, 2) can she perform her prayers on the airplane while seated, or 3) if she finds herself in a restaurant in Louisiana, can she order Cajun Fried Alligator? The answers to all these questions, and a multitude of others, depend on the legal methodology that she follows. But the importance of legal theory goes far beyond that. All scholars’ legal principles are, consciously or unconsciously, built upon a foundation. This foundation is a set of assumptions about the very nature of the sharīʿa itself, and if we go further, each scholar’s assumptions about the nature of the sharīʿa go back to his or her beliefs about God and God’s intention and purpose in creating the sharīʿa. Each group’s beliefs about the nature of God and His attributes – whether they saw God as primarily merciful or not, gentle or harsh, whether He prioritised justice or forgiveness – shaped their view of the purpose of the sharīʿa and its inner workings. Each scholar’s set of legal principles, then, was not simply a way to find out what God and His Messenger were telling us through Revelation: they were also competing visions about the very heart and soul of Islam. The different legal theories that are proposed involve answers to questions such as: is the sharīʿa rigid or flexible? Does it accept diversity or insist on 1

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uniformity? How much does it interfere in people’s lives, and how much scope for freedom does it allow? Is it only there as a test of obedience, or does it serve a function? We will look at all of these questions as we explore the different legal theories of the major Sunni imāms and a number of the most important Sufis in Islamic history. The Sufis and Us. ūl al-fiqh Sufis have a long history of contributing to the science of uṣūl al-fiqh. One need only mention al-Ghazālī whose work al-Mustaṣfā, thought to be the last book he penned before his death, became the basis of most future works in the field. Soon after Ghazālī, in fact, the majority of Sunni scholars would become affiliated with a Sufi path, and many of those who wrote works of uṣūl were very much practising Sufis. However, when they wrote in this field, they put on their jurisprudent (uṣūlī) hats, writing strictly as jurisprudents, for scholars at the time wore many hats but rarely mixed fields in their writings. Works of legal theory, fiqh manuals, theological books and the like all became standardised, and Sufi ideas rarely showed themselves in such works. If a jurisprudent like Ghazālī was to wear more than one hat when writing on legal theory (and he did), then his other main hat would have been that of the theologian, for there had always been a very strong connection between the sciences of theology and legal theory. Theological doctrine was often hiding under the surface of many legal discussions, and this is the reason, often unnoticed, behind many of the different positions of the madhhabs on legal theory.1 In fact, a non-specialist going through works of legal theory would be surprised to see that almost all the authorities mentioned in these works are more famous as theologians rather than as jurists and that the names of theologians even from the extinct and (from the Sunni point of view) un-orthodox Muʿtazilī sect were regularly invoked. One of the main reasons for the connection between theology and legal theory is their shared concerns, such as epistemology, as well as the theological implications of holding certain legal doctrines. For example, are God’s rulings based on a wisdom, and does that mean God had to make certain rulings in keeping with that wisdom?2 When the science of legal theory was in its earliest stages, jurists were often unaware of the theological implications of their legal doctrines, and consequently there existed a great variety of opinions within

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introduction  | 3 each school of law. As the theological implications of legal positions became clearer, there was much greater uniformity within each school, and many early positions were abandoned.3 Another reason for the connection between theology and legal theory rests on the fact that the uṣūl al-fiqh genre seems to have first been invented and extensively developed by Ḥanafī jurists and Muʿtazilī theologians in a number of works that did not survive.4 Many of the earliest works that did survive (and became the basis for all future works) were written by prominent theologians from the Muʿtazilī, Māturīdī and Ashʿarī schools. Theological doctrines shaped the very questions that were asked in works of legal theory, and these questions came to influence the range of answers that would be offered, as we will discuss below. In a pioneering study, Scott C. Lucas highlighted the existence of one small tradition of contributors to legal theory outside the mainstream theologianled tradition. This was a tradition of scholars from a background mainly in ḥadīth rather than theology. Some, like Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī were fully independent mujtahids, while others like al-Bayhaqī (Shāfiʿī), al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (Shāfiʿī), Ibn Ḥazm (Ẓāhirī) or Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (Mālikī), were each affiliated with one of the major Sunni schools. Nonetheless, they all shared a devotion to ḥadīth transmission and criticism, as well as the opinions of the Salaf (scholars of the first three Islamic centuries). Lucas showed, for example, that these scholars ‘restricted their post-prophetic authorities to the scholars of the first three centuries of Islam, from the Caliph Abū Bakr (d. 13/634) to the independently-minded Shāfiʿī jurist al-Muzani (d. 264/878)’ and that their books ‘contain virtually no references to any 4th/10th-century jurist, and rarely refer to anyone after al-Muzani’. This was in stark contrast to the uṣūl al-fiqh works of the mainstream tradition which ‘contain copious references to 4th/10th century authorities’, mostly theologians, ‘along with some 3rd/9th century authorities, and virtually no one earlier than Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767)’.5 In his conclusion Lucas reminded the reader that, while the mainstream tradition of Sunni uṣūl al-fiqh may have remained dominant for the past millennium, it was not unchallenged.6 This work will highlight another tradition of writings on legal theory outside the mainstream tradition. Many Sufis also dealt with questions of legal theory in Sufi works, or otherwise in works combining Sufism with

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jurisprudence in a way that did not fit into the standard format. It is in these works that we see Sufis writing on legal theory while donning their Sufi hats (or turbans). These important contributions have not received the study they deserve, and it is the aim of this work to do just that, with a focus on one particular tradition of thinkers. Many scholars have long argued that Sufism promoted pluralism in Islamic law by belittling the differences between the legal schools as ultimately unimportant in comparison to the Sufi focus on attaining mystical nearness to God.7 While this may be true with regard to many Sufis, many others would take issue with the idea that they belittled the legal output of the schools and consider a close following of the legal minutiae of their chosen school of law a necessary foundation upon which to build their spiritual progress.8 A more significant but overlooked contribution of Sufism is the influence of Sufi ideas on legal theory itself, ideas which promoted legal pluralism, not by belittling the differences between the legal schools as unimportant, but by explaining these differences as arising from an in-built flexibility within the sharīʿa itself, a flexibility rooted in the vast mercy of God that these Sufis claimed to know experientially. This study will show a continuous transfer – and development – of ideas relating to the merciful nature of the sharīʿa among a number of prominent Sufis and mystics from the third Islamic century until the nineteenth century. The jurisprudential thought of each of these figures was shaped by that of their predecessors directly (via the jurisprudential thought of their predecessors) and indirectly (via the Sufi views of their predecessors which in turn influenced their jurisprudential thought). However, following a strictly chronological order will make it very hard for the reader to keep track of all the major ideas shared by these figures and how they developed over time. I will therefore follow a format inspired by the books of legal theory that we are studying: a thematic division. The book will be divided into two major parts on legal theory and one part on the application and influence of these theories. Part 1, ‘Mysticism, Traditionalism and the School of Mercy’, will situate this line of Sufis on the map of different schools and legal methodologies. It will compare them to the major Sunni schools of jurisprudence. It will show how their mysticism influenced their choices of legal theory, and why they chose to align themselves with the Traditionalist movement. It will look at how these figures connected

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introduction  | 5 the Traditionalist jurisprudential approach to mercy in the sharīʿa – how they thought Traditionalism would preserve the simplicity of the sharīʿa and keep the fiqh from overburdening believers with obligations and prohibitions that God did not intend for people. Chapter 1 will give a summary of the main interpretive approaches within Sunni Islam and the major schools of law. Chapter 2 will situate the mystics on the Rationalist-Traditionalist spectrum, showing their connections to the early schools and what aspects of thought brought them closer to the Traditionalist camp. The chapters thereafter will look first at al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (d. ca 298/910), a major early influence on Ibn ʿArabī, followed by Ibn ʿArabī, and then ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī (d. 973/1565), one of Ibn ʿArabī’s greatest followers. Chapter 5 will provide the first detailed study of Ibn ʿArabī’s own legal methodology. It will demonstrate that Ibn ʿArabī created his own independent and unique madhhab and show how he purposefully fashioned a madhhab based on his belief that the sharīʿa is a source of mercy to the worlds. Part 1 is roughly akin to the treatment of the place of reason in general and analogical reasoning in particular in books of legal theory. This chronological order will repeat itself in Part 2, ‘Mercy in Flexibility: A Path for All Mankind’. This part roughly corresponds to chapters on legal theory dealing with conflicting pieces of evidence and how jurists have to deal with that. It also relates to the question of whether there could be more than one correct answer at the same time. It will look again at how these issues were treated first by Tirmidhī, then by Ibn ʿArabī and finally by Shaʿrānī. More figures will be discussed in this part between Ibn ʿArabī and Shaʿrānī, followed by examples of those who came after Shaʿrānī. Part 2 will examine how these figures gradually built on their predecessors’ ideas, leading to a new theory about the nature of the sharīʿa as a path created with an in-built flexibility to suit all mankind. It will also consider what these figures thought of the diversity of opinion among scholars on matters not covered by the sharīʿa itself, and whether all opinions were valid or equal. This topic is related to another question asked in books of legal theory: ‘Is every mujtahid correct?’ However, this question is deceiving in the way in which it is worded, and the question it covers is not the same as in Part 2, where the divergence of opinions among jurists is discussed. For this reason, the question of whether every mujtahid is correct will be explained briefly in the Appendix, in order to remove the possibility of equating the two subjects.

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Part 3, ‘The Akbarī Madhhab in Practice and Its Influence in the Muslim World’, focuses on the influence of Tirmidhī, Shaʿrānī and especially Ibn ʿArabī on major revival and reform movements that changed the Muslim world in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will show for the first time how some of the most influential pre-modern revivalist movements and Sufi paths were directly and heavily influenced by the thought of Ibn ʿArabī and trace the influence of these movements until the rise of the global Salafī movement. The concluding chapter, ‘The Spirit of the Law: Competing Visions’, will assess the major underlying differences between the legal methodologies of the Textualist and Traditionalist Sufis who are the focus of this book and the similarly Textualist and Traditionalist Salafī reform movements. These differences point to major implications of the ultimate success of the global Salafī movement over the Sufi revivalist movements. One issue which I will not discuss directly in this work is mystical epistemology, or the place of mysticism in the ijtihād process. The role of spiritual insight in reaching the correct answer will come up in more than one chapter of this book, particularly when discussing Tirmidhī’s critique of analogical reasoning as a tool of ijtihād; however, it will also be briefly brought up elsewhere. This topic deals not only with the role of spiritual insight, but also with how much weight or authority is given to its results in comparison to the results reached by a jurist via regular channels of inquiry. I have already dealt with this topic at length in my doctoral dissertation, and the discussion there is useful for showing how much each of the main thinkers discussed in this present work were influenced by each other’s writings, in terms of their views on sainthood and mystical knowledge, as well as of legal thinking. Still, I have shown in this work that each of the major figures discussed here were strongly influenced by their predecessors, but this will be even more apparent for those who see how much they were influenced by each other’s writings on sainthood and mystical epistemology. Here, I have chosen to focus only on those Sufi teachings that relate to the nature of the sharīʿa itself, teachings that would be of value to everyone, even those who do not believe in Sufi claims of mystical knowledge. Those who are interested in Sufi claims to direct mystical knowledge of the sharīʿa, as opposed to ‘regular’ ijtihād, and the different modes and degrees of mystical inspiration can consult my doctoral dissertation which is listed in the References.

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introduction  | 7 Notes   1. See, for example, Zysow, ‘Mu’tazilism and Māturīdīsm in Ḥanafī Legal Theory’; Gleave, ‘Refutations’; A. Kevin Reinhart, ‘Like the Difference between Heaven and Earth’; all in Weiss (ed.), Studies in Islamic Legal Theory.   2. For examples of connections between legal theory and theological doctrine, see the three studies mentioned in the previous footnote.   3. See Reinhart, Before Revelation, 10–28.   4. Stewart, ‘Muḥammad b. Jarir al-Tabari’s al-Bayan’, 341–49.   5. Lucas, ‘Legal Principles’, 322–23.   6. Lucas, ‘Legal Principles’, 324.  7. Winter, Society and Religion, 181.  8. Zarrūq, Qawāʿid, 42.

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Part 1 Mysticism, Traditionalism and the School of Mercy

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1 The Schools of Law

Ijtihād and the Science of Legal Theory

I

t is narrated that, after the Prophet Muḥammad had passed away, his close Companions and successors Abū Bakr and ʿUmar went to visit the old Abyssinian woman Umm Ayman, just as the Prophet used to visit her in his lifetime. During their visit Umm Ayman cried. ‘Do not cry over the death of God’s Messenger’, they tried to comfort her, ‘for he has gone to a better place’. That is not why I cry’, she replied. ‘I know he is in a better place. I cry because revelation has been cut off from the Heavens’. This made them cry, too.1 Knowing how to be a good Muslim was relatively easy during the Prophet’s lifetime, as one could simply observe the Prophet’s actions or ask him questions, but after his death there was bound to be uncertainty and disagreement. Of course, there were times even during the life of the Prophet when the Companions could not refer to him. In one famous incident, the Prophet gave his Companions instructions to hurry on to a specific location, telling them not to pray their mid-afternoon prayer except there. As they travelled there in groups, many of the Companions realised that by the time they arrived at that location the time for the mid-afternoon prayer would have passed. Some took the words of the Prophet literally and only prayed upon reaching the location, even though that entailed performing the prayer after the end of its designated time, while others performed it on time before 11

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reaching the specified location, understanding the Prophet’s command as an exhortation to hurry. In this incident, the Prophet did not criticise either group, and nothing is narrated about whether he revealed to them which course of action was more correct.2 The Prophet also sent commanders in charge of military expeditions to enemy fortresses, and if a truce or treaty were to be signed, he was not there to supervise. Therefore, it is narrated that he instructed his commanders: ‘If they ask you to deal with them as per God’s decree regarding them, do not do so, rather tell them that you will deal with them according to your own judgement, for you do not know if your judgement will match the judgement of God’.3 Likewise, the Prophet would send representatives to govern faraway lands or tribes, and these governors had to adjudicate between people in financial, criminal, or other fields that are covered by the sharīʿa, as well as answer people’s questions on ritual practice. Of course, there would have been instances in which they would have had to make a judgement without knowing how the Prophet would have done in their situation, and of course the Qurʾān had not yet been completely revealed.4 These instances in which people had to do their best to reach an answer when they had no direct guidance from God or His Messenger came to be known as ijtihād (exertion of effort). In this regard, all the canonical Sunni Ḥadīth compilations contain the following Ḥadīth attributed to the Prophet: ‘If a judge exercised his ijtihād and reached the correct result, he is rewarded twice; if he was wrong then one reward’.5 After the death of the Prophet, things would have surely become more difficult. Many of the Prophet’s Companions, when faced with issues for which they knew of no clear guidance, asked other Companions if they had heard something from the Prophet, for it often happened that many Companions had heard or witnessed what others, even those closest to the Prophet, had not. Stories tell of caliphs such as the Companion ʿUmar giving directions to the people and then being corrected by others or reminded that a verse of the Qurʾān implied otherwise. Sometimes the Companions differed in how they understood certain verses or ḥadīths, or in what they heard or witnessed from the Prophet. These Companions moved to cities in Iraq, Syria, North Africa, Persia and beyond, each sharing what knowledge they had, based on their understanding.

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schools of law  | 13 When it came to the generation that followed that of the Companions, known as the Followers, and then those who followed them (Followers of the Followers), ijtihād became much more complicated yet. Firstly, they needed answers for matters that were not covered by the Qurʾān and ḥadīth, much like the Companions did after the passing of the Prophet. Secondly, they were often faced with divergent teachings: while one Companion may have taught his students one way of doing things, a different Companion may have taught his students a different way to do the same thing, each attributing his teachings to the Prophet Muḥammad! As a result, Muslims had to figure out how to deal with seemingly contradictory statements or practices attributed to the Prophet. A third problem was the issue of the interaction between the Qurʾān and the statements of the Prophet, and the relative authority of each. For example, what happens if a Qurʾānic statement appears to have a general application, but a ḥadīth limits or restricts the verse in scope? What happens if a ḥadīth purportedly replaced a Qurʾānic injunction (what is known as abrogation)? The problem here is the following: does the ḥadīth carry the authority to abrogate, limit, or add to what the Qurʾān says? And how authoritative is the judgement of a Companion? These are just some of the many questions and factors that were involved in the process of ijtihād for later generations and that became the subject-matter of the science of legal theory, known as uṣūl al-fiqh. The aim of the process of ijtihād is to arrive at a correct understanding of God’s guidance, to know God’s ḥukm (ruling or judgement) regarding any action. According to the scholars, every action is categorised as either obligatory, recommended, permitted, disliked, or forbidden, and therefore the purpose of ijtihād is to arrive at the correct categorisation of an act. There are also other types of categorisations, such as whether something is valid or invalid: for example, one may perform the obligatory prayer but do it incorrectly in such a way that it is invalid and needs to be repeated, or one may make a purchase via an invalid type of contract, because of which no transfer of ownership is accepted. The science of uṣūl al-fiqh deals with the theory of how to arrive at the correct rulings. This body of rulings, which is the product of ijtihād, is called the fiqh (often translated as positive law). The word fiqh, however, literally means ‘deep understanding’, and the possessor of this knowledge is known as a faqīh – that is, ‘one possessed of deep

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understanding’ – a word usually translated as jurist. An expert in uṣūl al-fiqh is a jurisprudent. The word uṣūl can mean (at least) two things, sources/foundations, or principles, and both meanings apply here. The term uṣūl al-fiqh could be translated as ‘the sources of jurisprudence’ because this science investigates which sources are acceptable for deriving a correct judgement on any issue; for example, it evaluates the place of the Qurʾān, sunna, consensus of the Companions, or their individual judgements, consensus of future scholars, reasoning, the public interest, local custom and the like in the ijtihād process. The term could also be translated as ‘the principles of jurisprudence’, as it evaluates the principles and mechanics of the interaction between the above-mentioned sources, as well as the correct hermeneutics (how to understand the language of the texts, interpret them correctly, and deduce or infer information from them). Eventually, different schools of jurisprudence (madhhabs) emerged, each with its own list of acceptable sources of law and preferred hermeneutical or deductive principles. Each school therefore championed a unique methodology, and they also possessed their own body of legal judgements that were purportedly the result of that methodology. Differences in legal theory began before the rise of the schools, however, and started as early as the Prophet’s Companions who had different approaches to solving questions of jurisprudence. After the passing of the Prophet, his Companions spread far and wide, and several Companions of exceptional knowledge and understanding settled in major cities of the fast-expanding Muslim lands, such as Mecca and Medina in the Hijaz, Basra and Kufa in Iraq, Damascus and Homs in Syria, and Fustat (Old Cairo) in Egypt. Groups of learned Followers emerged in these and other major cities, many of whom had spent a fair amount of time receiving knowledge from their teachers until they came to think like them and teach like them. Ibn Masʿūd, one of the most learned of the Prophet’s Companions, created such a circle of close students in Kufa, while Ibn ʿAbbās, the young cousin and Companion of the Prophet, created a circle of students in Mecca. Medina had many major Companions and wives of the Prophet teaching at the same time, and so the teaching there was not as uniform in the earliest generations. These learned Followers travelled to other lands in search of knowledge and in order to fulfil their Pilgrimage and visit the holy cities, and they

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schools of law  | 15 took from the Companions and Followers of those other lands they visited. Despite the Followers learning from different Companions, we do find in certain cities such as Kufa, Mecca and Medina a strong loyalty to the teachings of the Companions who lived and taught there in particular. This is understandable, as the influence of these Companions would have been stronger and more lasting than that of Companions with whom the Followers studied briefly in their travels. This led to many similarities in the fiqh of these localities, even though the scholars in those lands were by no means uniform. Therefore, it is incorrect to describe a ‘Kufan School’ or ‘Medinan school’, as within each city scholars had considerable differences both in methodology and in rulings; yet, there were certain rulings, some gaining a degree of controversiality, others more mundane, that seemed to outsiders to be unique to certain regions or were shared by scholars of certain cities. This is understandable due to the influence of the early authorities who had lived and taught in each locality. No formal schools of jurisprudence existed yet during the second/eighth century, but there was a number of scholars who rose to prominence for their knowledge and piety and developed their own personal approaches or legal doctrines for the process of ijtihād. These doctrines were not binding for those who chose to adhere to them and apply them.6 Starting mainly from the middle of the third/ninth century, the schools of jurisprudence began to emerge based on the doctrines of some of these scholars and their students. Ḥadīth versus Sunna One of the most critical concepts that emerged at this time was the distinction between sunna (the way and example of the Prophet Muḥammad which is to be emulated) and the ḥadīth (the individual narrations conveying the words and actions of the Prophet Muḥammad and his Companions). This division became necessary in order to make sense of the great differences between the practices of Muslims in different parts of the Islamic world, each of which they traced back to the Prophet Muḥammad via the Companions who taught in those lands. For many scholars at the time, the ḥadīth conveyed the sunna, but was not equal to it. A ḥadīth was a report that might represent something the Prophet had said one time to a particular individual or describe what someone had seen him do on one

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particular occasion or in a rare circumstance, but that might not represent his standard teaching or praxis. A ḥadīth may represent something that the Prophet used to do, but not what he did later in his life. A ḥadīth may have an authentic chain, but there could still be a hidden fault somewhere in its content. As a result, different scholars came up with different methodologies to assess the true sunna. Imām Awzāʿī in Beirut was an esteemed traditionist, but he judged the sunna on the basis of the rulings of the Companions, especially the fatwās of the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs; from his point of view, the teaching or praxis implemented by the Prophet’s successors would surely represent the final teachings of the Prophet and help separate the sunna from the earlier teachings that might survive in the ḥadīth. Imām Abū Ḥanīfa in Kufa judged the sunna through the teachings of his teacher’s teacher, the great Follower Ibrahim al-Nakhaʿī. Nakhaʿī inherited the knowledge of the great Companion Ibn Masʿūd via his closest students, and he also travelled abroad and studied under Companions in the Hijaz. From the point of view of these Kufans, Ibn Masʿūd understood what truly represented the Prophet’s teachings, while many ḥadīths that contradicted Ibn Masʿūd’s teachings came from young Companions who had not studied from the Prophet directly, or from Bedouins and other less prominent Companions whose understanding could not compare to that of Ibn Masʿūd. If a ḥadīth contradicted the teachings that the great Nakhaʿī distilled from Ibn Masʿūd and the other great authorities from whom he and his teachers had learned, then there surely was some hidden mistake in those contrary teachings. If the people of other cities were to claim that perhaps Ibn Masʿūd missed the ḥadīth that contradicted the teachings of the Kufans, they would counter that Ibn Masʿūd’s students had studied under the authorities of the Hijaz as well. Even if it were conceivable that Ibn Masʿūd was unaware of a ḥadīth, surely his students were aware of it. Therefore, if Ibn Masʿūd’s great students still went against the ḥadīth, it must be that they knew something that the people of the Hijaz did not, even if that knowledge or insight was not recorded in books. Abū Ḥanīfa argued that sometimes it was anomalous or non-normative information that survived in the ḥadīth, whereas the sunna was captured by Ibn Masʿūd and his students. The writings of Abū Ḥanīfa’s students show very clearly this trust in the knowledge of Ibn Masʿūd and Nakhaʿī.

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schools of law  | 17 Imām Mālik in Medina judged the sunna by the praxis of the scholars of Medina. Mālik’s teachers taught him that a practice which thousands of Medina’s inhabitants took directly from thousands of Followers there (their own parents, elders and teachers), who in turn had taken it from hundreds if not thousands of Companions there, was a greater guide to the sunna than a single transmission of so-and-so from so-and-so. Therefore, a ḥadīth, no matter how strong its chain of transmitters, had to be judged by the consensus of the great scholars of Medina and their praxis. Similarly, the understanding and fatwās of the scholars of Medina served as a guide for Mālik for the proper interpretation of Qurʾānic injunctions. The early Traditionalist leader ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī (d. 198/814) pointed to this distinction between sunna and ḥadīth when he said: ‘Sufyān al-Thawrī was an imām in the ḥadīth but not an imām in the sunna; Awzāʿī was an imām in the sunna but not an imām in the ḥadīth; Mālik was an imām in both’.7 Earlier scholars such as Awzāʿī, Thawrī, Abū Ḥanīfa and Mālik also accepted ḥadīths from some Followers, even when these Followers did not name the links between them and the Prophet. They trusted that these Followers did not name the Companions from whom they had learned if they were many. Such a disconnected ḥadīth (mursal) may even be stronger than a connected one in that the Follower, because he took it from so many Companions, was so sure of his teaching that he could confidently say ‘the Prophet said such and such’ without putting the onus on a Companion. Conversely, in a ḥadīth in which a Follower named one Companion as his link to the Prophet, the Follower is essentially putting the onus of the ḥadīth on the shoulders of his source and cannot guarantee its accuracy. The followers of these early schools often amassed and quoted any mursal traditions that supported their positions. Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī saw limitations in Mālik’s and Abū Ḥanīfa’s way of judging the sunna. Al-Shāfiʿī was one of Mālik’s greatest students, and he also studied under Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī, one of Abū Ḥanīfa’s two greatest students and the author of the most authoritative early works on Abū Ḥanīfa’s school. Al-Shāfiʿī argued that, as the Prophet’s teachings were passed from one generation to another, they were liable to change and outside influence which escaped recording. He made the same argument regarding the disconnected ḥadīths upon which

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these scholars relied, as they did not guarantee a direct link to the Prophet and could hide a series of unknown narrators – there was always the possibility of incorrect teachings being inserted. For al-Shāfiʿī and his followers, all these methods which different parties such as the Ḥanafīs and Mālikīs claimed to provide the best understanding of the sunna gave conflicting answers. Al-Shāfiʿī also believed that his predecessors sometimes made claims based on the praxis of Medina or the teachings of the early Kufans, which belied the great disagreement amongst the early Medinan and Kufan scholars. Sometimes inaccurate claims of consensus were used to justify certain positions at the expense of others. During al-Shāfiʿī’s time, some minor groups questioned the validity and authenticity of the ḥadīth altogether. As a result, al-Shāfiʿī launched a strong defence of the ḥadīth, not only against those who denied ḥadīth altogether, but also those who rejected ḥadīth in favour of claims of sunna preserved in disconnected ḥadīths or the praxis or fatwās of scholars. Al-Shāfiʿī held that any such claim to the sunna must also be accompanied by at least one ḥadīth with a fully authentic chain. An authentic ḥadīth can never be abandoned for the saying of another authority if that other authority does not have another ḥadīth to back his position. Nor is it permissible to assume that this authority did know a supporting ḥadīth which is lost to posterity. Al-Shāfiʿī noted that his teacher Mālik often used single ḥadīth transmissions as a basis for his rulings, even when these narrations did not have external validation; in these cases, Mālik acted as if ḥadīth transmissions were authoritative on their own. In other cases, however, Mālik abandoned ḥadīth transmissions for the opinions of great Medinan authorities. Al-Shāfiʿī saw an inconsistency in this: if a ḥadīth transmission was authoritative on its own in some cases, it should be just as authoritative in every case. The fact that some great authorities of the past did not act upon this ḥadīth cannot be used to discredit it (otherwise, the natural conclusion would be that single ḥadīth transmissions on their own carried no weight and relied on external validation, and this was a very dangerous implication). Al-Shāfiʿī insisted that every authentically transmitted ḥadīth must be respected on its own. If there were seemingly contradictory authentic ḥadīths, this did not mean that one of them was in fact inauthentic; rather, it was either a case of abrogation, or there was a way to use each ḥadīth in different circumstances. This was a major turning point in which the tide

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schools of law  | 19 began to turn in favour of ḥadīth against the authority of revered scholars and against forms of reasoning that the earlier schools had also developed. Rationalists versus Traditionalists Doctrines such as the ‘praxis of the people of Medina’ or the reliance on the rulings of trusted predecessors were not seen by their proponents as antiḥadīth; rather, they were believed to be the best way to discover the sunna of God’s Messenger from the mass of seemingly conflicting narrations and practices. These were essentially methods to solve the question of what to do about the different narrations attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad, as well as to find the most correct interpretation of the injunctions in the Qurʾān and ḥadīth. Another method that jurists used in order to support one interpretation of the sources over another was the doctrine of Consensus (ijmāʿ). Awzāʿī was among the first great jurists to appeal to this concept. For example, in a rebuttal of Abū Ḥanīfa’s opinion he said: ‘The imāms of guidance have all agreed that a fighter killed in battle is given a share of the spoils (for his heirs)’.8 Mālik often referred to the consensus of the scholars of Medina, and he wrote in a letter to Imām al-Layth that no one may go against a well-known praxis of the people of Medina.9 There was no strong textual or rational proof for the doctrine of Consensus, beside the belief that it was impossible for the entire Muslim ummah to be in error and that there must always be at least some people who are rightly guided on any one issue. From this basic idea came the doctrine that, if all Muslim scholars of a single generation agreed on a certain position, then it must be true and gained unassailable status. This presented problems, however, such as defining whose opinion counted in this consensus – clearly, Awzāʿī did not count Abū Ḥanīfa’s position on the division of spoils, and the Ḥanafīs in turn rejected Awzāʿī’s claim to consensus on that matter. Some scholars held that it was not necessary to have a complete consensus, and that a consensus of the majority sufficed. This position could not be sustained by the idea that the entire ummah could not agree on an error, precisely because it was always possible that only a very small minority would be rightly guided on some issues. It was also difficult to claim that every single learned individual expressed their opinion on a matter, and so the doctrine of Tacit Consensus was developed: if an opinion was widespread and held by a majority,

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then it was the duty of anyone who disagreed to voice their disapproval. If no disapproval was known, then it must be assumed that everyone agreed. Despite several other problems in proving the doctrine of Consensus and in how the existence of consensus could be proven on any issue, the doctrine gained ground and became widely accepted by most Sunni schools.10 Early schools such as those of Abū Ḥanīfa and Mālik also had to deal with questions not covered by the Qurʾān or ḥadīth at all. In order to discover God’s ruling on issues which had no direct answer in the Qurʾān or ḥadīth, the school of Abū Ḥanīfa heavily relied on qiyās – that is, analogical reasoning. As Jonathan Brown explains, . . . Abū Ḥanīfa developed a systematic form of analogical reasoning, called qiyās, to extend the ruling of one situation to another based on a shared legal cause (‘illa) – that feature for which God or the Prophet had judged the situation in a certain way. By understanding what lay behind the rulings of the Qurʾān and Hadiths, these rulings could be extended to unknown situations that shared the same legal causes [. . .] Of course, qiyās was a precarious process. The Qurʾān and Hadiths rarely explained clearly the legal cause of a ruling, and it was left to scholars like Abū Ḥanīfa to derive it from context. Important to Abū Ḥanīfa’s method for deriving law from scripture was the concept of Istihsan, or ‘seeking the best’. Sometimes the systematic application of qiyās led to a result that Abū Ḥanīfa and his circle considered unjust or harmful. So an alternative analogical manoeuvre was sought out [. . .]. In effect, Istihsan presupposed a scholar referencing some notion of equity or justice outside the boundaries of the literal texts of the Qurʾān and Hadiths. But the whole point of analogy was extending the wisdom of these scriptures to new situations while remaining true to the revealed truth of the Prophet’s message. What place did an outside standard of fairness have in restricting this process? This would be a great cause of later controversy.11

Mālik used a method of extension similar to qiyās, but one which some later traditionists considered to be more conservative and more directly guided by the Qurʾān and ḥadīth. This method would become known as al-taʿlīl bi l-qāʿida. Rather than discovering the cause of a single ruling and then extending it to similar cases, this method involved the formulation of general rules that are inferred from the study of countless rulings. When these

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schools of law  | 21 rulings are studied together and a general rule (qāʿida fiqhiyya) is inferred from them as governing all similar cases, new questions could be classified and categorised based on the rulings under which they would fit. We will see below how al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī compared both methods, and the examples he gave will make the difference between them clearer. Mālik also used istiḥsān, albeit somewhat differently from the Ḥanafīs.12 Another method developed by Mālik was sadd al-dharāʾiʿ – that is, ‘blocking the means’. This method meant that, if something was technically permissible but would lead to something impermissible, it could be prohibited in order to block the path for the occurrence of that which is impermissible. Mālik mostly used it to prevent people from doing things that were technically permissible but, in reality, were done to get around a sharīʿa prohibition. For example, because lending with interest (usury) was prohibited, people came up with a double-sale technique to effectively get around this prohibition, which Mālik said was invalid; he similarly prohibited sales of weapons during times of civil strife because they would most likely be used inappropriately. This was therefore a prohibition of something originally licit, based on suspicion of ill intent. Another example consists of the suspicion of a man’s motive for marrying a dying woman, because of the possibility that he is marrying her in order to receive the husband’s share of inheritance. Mālik allowed such a marriage to take place, but if the woman was to die from her present illness, the husband would be barred from his right to inheritance. This was because, if he were to receive the husband’s portion, he would be usurping the portion that would have gone to the woman’s legitimate heirs.13 He used this and similar principles, such as public interest (maṣlaḥa), in order to achieve what he felt was in the best interests of society. Al-Shāfiʿī rejected the use of such reasoning to prohibit what the sharīʿa did not prohibit. The sale of weapons was permissible, and this could not change during civil strife because of suspicion of intent, nor can a technically legal sale be rejected because it was part of an elaborate double-sale to commit usury. Similarly, if a critically sick woman agreed to marry a suitor, that was her God-given choice, and scholars had no right to prevent her husband from his rightful share of her inheritance because of suspicion of his motive. A later scholar following such a textualist commitment only prohibited the sale of weapons to someone who in all certainty was going to use them during

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strife, as well as the sale of grape juice to someone who was certainly going to make wine out of it, because he had textual evidence for prohibiting such sales when the outcome was certain: ‘Do not help one another toward sin and hostility’ (Q 5:2).14 In defending and raising the status of the ḥadīth, al-Shāfiʿī criticised the application of such non-textual sources. He also limited – in fact, almost erased – the applicability of the doctrine of Consensus. He said: ‘Neither I, nor any person of knowledge, will claim that something is agreed upon, except regarding those matters that every scholar you would ever meet would accept, and would tell you that all previous scholars also accepted. It is only matters (as basic and universally agreed upon) as the noon prayer consisting of four cycles and wine being prohibited and the like’.15 His student Ibn Ḥanbal agreed and took this even further by saying: ‘Anyone who claims consensus (on anything) is a liar, for it is always possible for some people to have differed on the matter. One should only say: “We are not aware, or it has not reached us, that there is disagreement on the matter”’.16 Al-Shāfiʿī also wrote a treatise against the concept of istiḥsān, arguing that whoever used istiḥsān was usurping the role of law-giving that was reserved for God and His Messenger.17 Al-Shāfiʿī was at the forefront of a new movement that would come to be known as the Traditionalists (ahl al-ḥadīth), seen as critics of the Rationalists (ahl al-raʾy). The title ‘ahl al-raʾy’ had been used for different groups at different times, but by then had come to be associated with the Ḥanafīs in particular.18 By the beginning of the third/ninth century, the term raʾy itself became associated mainly with qiyās. The Ḥanafīs were not the only people to use qiyās and other methods of rational inference. However, Abū Ḥanīfa and his school were criticised for using analogical reasoning as an external test for the validity of ḥadīth. Abū Ḥanīfa believed that fiqh should be consistent and that, if a ḥadīth were to be acted upon, it needed to agree with the result of analogies based on the Qurʾān and what the Ḥanafīs deemed to be strongly established ḥadīths. Awzāʿī said: ‘We do not take issue with Abū Ḥanīfa for his use of raʾy, for we all use raʾy. We take issue with him because ḥadīths of God’s Messenger reach him, but he goes against them for the sake of something else’.19 Therefore, the Traditionalists could be defined as those scholars who prioritised the derivation of the sunna from texts over

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schools of law  | 23 consistency in legal analogy and who judged the authenticity of the ḥadīth through the emerging science of ḥadīth criticism, not through external standards such as the praxis of early authorities or qiyās.20 The Rationalists, however, prioritised consistency in legal analogy and judged ḥadīth accordingly. They also expressed preference for one ḥadīth over another, using methods that were more at home in legal theory than in ḥadīth science, such as comparing the Companions who narrated conflicting ḥadīth for their legal acumen or whether they would have been directly affected by the ḥadīth they narrated.21 The term Traditionalist should not be confused with traditionist (muḥaddith), someone who studies and transmits ḥadīth; the latter may belong to either of the two camps. Someone could be a Traditionalist in legal theory, without being a ḥadīth transmitter himself, while another may be a prolific ḥadīth expert but a Rationalist in legal methodology. Despite al-Shāfiʿī leading the pro-ḥadīth movement, he himself had a strong rationalist tendency. He still accepted the use of qiyās, but more often applied another rational type of inference called mafhūm al-mukhālafa. As we will see in the section on the Ẓāhirīs below, mafhūm al-mukhālafa is essentially a mirror image of qiyās, using the same type of reasoning but in the opposite direction. Al-Shāfiʿī would be criticised for using both of these types of reasoning, by the people he himself had inspired. In effect, al-Shāfiʿī came at a point of transition between the Rationalists and Traditionalists, and he himself fell somewhere in between the two. As scholars have noted, ‘his willingness to apply analogy to the hadith reports of the Prophet rather than to rely on the opinions of the Companions, together with his willingness to examine and lay down rules for the practice of jurisprudence, separated his practice from the traditionalists’.22 Al-Shāfiʿī’s brilliant juristic mind was constantly in search of standardisation and consistency, in a way that brought him closer in spirit to the Rationalists and the method of his teacher Shaybānī, Abū Ḥanīfa’s student. While the Ḥanafī school was famous for its use of raʾy in opposition to ḥadīth, the Shāfiʿī school would come to use raʾy to make a considerable number of additions to the rulings found in the Qurʾān and ḥadīth, something that Traditionalists would criticise (see Chapter 6). The leader of the pro-ḥadīth movement after al-Shāfiʿī was his greatest student, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 241/855). Ibn Ḥanbal was one of the leading traditionists of the time, and he was in awe of the service that al-Shāfiʿī

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had rendered to the defence and elevation of the status of ḥadīth, despite al-Shāfiʿī being more of a jurist than a traditionist. Ibn Ḥanbal valued his teacher mainly for this reason: his arguments in service of ḥadīth. Despite Ibn Ḥanbal’s great love for his teacher, he did not fully agree with him in his criticisms of Mālik’s methodology in legal theory. Ibn Ḥanbal saw the Medinan school as part of the Traditionalist movement and would have considered Mālik’s reliance on praxis as a method for discovering the sunna, akin to chains of transmission.23 Unlike al-Shāfiʿī, he is not known to have criticised Mālik for his reliance on Medinan praxis.24 He accepted Mālik’s principles of blocking the means and other means of achieving the common good that was the purpose of the sharīʿa. Like Mālik, he considered the purpose and wisdom behind the sharīʿa, and not just its texts. It was imperative to him, however, to always differentiate between what the scriptures said and what jurists such as Mālik added to them in order to achieve the common good, as well as not to elevate the words of any one scholar, even Mālik, to the level of scripture. The Ḥanbalī school’s principles and sources of jurisprudence are in effect the same as those of Mālik.25 The late Ḥanbalī giant Ibn Taymiyya even went so far as to say that Mālik’s principles of jurisprudence were the most correct, and that all Ibn Ḥanbal did was to perfect them.26 Ibn Taymiyya wrote about his acknowledgement, in principle, of the value of Medinan praxis, but limited its operative scope and classified it into categories of different strengths.27 What Ibn Ḥanbal thus did was to add a wealth of ḥadīth transmissions beyond those that had reached Mālik in Medina; therefore, he vastly expanded the sunna and added flexibility to it through the varied narrations of the Companions scattered in different Muslim lands. Ibn Ḥanbal diverged from Mālik’s opinions based on those ḥadīths to which he had access, where he saw that Mālik’s positions were not based on solid ground, as opposed to the loyal Mālikīs who assumed that every opinion of Mālik could be traced back to Medinan praxis. Unlike al-Shāfiʿī, Ibn Ḥanbal trusted the rulings made by the leading Companions as more representative of the sunna than logical inferences made from the ḥadīth. Ibn Ḥanbal went further in his rejection of qiyās than his teacher al-Shāfiʿī. Many quotations have Ibn Ḥanbal rejecting the use of qiyās completely, such as his statement that ‘there is no qiyās to be made for the sunna’; many of his followers continued to hold this

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schools of law  | 25 position into the tenth century,28 but many later Ḥanbalīs claimed that Ibn Ḥanbal was willing to use it in cases of absolute necessity.29 It is clear, then, that the Traditionalist movement spearheaded by al-Shāfiʿī was not uniform. Within the diverse strands of the Traditionalist movements, two groups in particular are of great importance to the study of Sufis and the Law: the Ẓāhirīs and the Traditionist-Jurisprudents. Even the latter group was not uniform in its approach, as we will now see. It was within the Traditionalist movement, especially the Ẓāhirīs and the Traditionist-Jurisprudents, that most Sufis and mystics found their home. It is therefore of utmost importance to pay more attention to these two groups and to understand their approach to ijtihād, because the Sufis we will consider have much in common with them and will put their arguments to good use. The Traditionist-Jurisprudents One of the most important works of the fourth/tenth century was the Fihrist (catalogue) of Ibn al-Nadīm (fl. 377/987–88), in which this scholar left for us a record of every work that he knew of in his time. When it came to listing the different schools of jurisprudence (which we today would count as Sunni), he classified them as such: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5)

The Mālikīs Abū Ḥanīfa and his followers, the Iraqis or Rationalists (asḥāb al-raʾy) Al-Shāfiʿī and his followers Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī and his followers The Traditionist-Jurisprudents (fuqahāʾ al-muḥaddithīn) whom he also calls the People of ḥadīth (asḥāb al-ḥadīth) 6) Ṭabarī and his followers30 This group which Ibn al-Nadīm called the Traditionist-Jurisprudents emerged as a distinct movement in the lifetime of Ibn Ḥanbal. The main catalyst for their formation was the pro-Rationalist anti-Traditionalist miḥna or religious persecution that had been instigated by the Abbasid Caliph al-Maʾmūn and carried on by his successor al-Muʿtaṣim in the years 218–32/833–47.31 Ibn Ḥanbal was the hero to emerge from this trial and became the figurehead of this group which made loyalty to the ḥadīth its

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main objective. The group itself must have had internal variation but was distinguished in that its members consisted of jurisprudents who were primarily ḥadīth specialists. They expended their efforts on the learning and transmission of traditions in order to provide an authoritative text for every problem that was posed. This methodology did not come about only at this time – it had existed from the first generations of Islam – but at this time a self-conscious group identity began to form as a reaction to the persecution by the ultra-rationalist Muʿtazila and the Ḥanafīs who were closely connected to caliphal power. The leaders of this group were Ibn Ḥanbal himself in Baghdad, his friend and colleague Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh (d. 238/853) in Khorasan and ʿAbdullāh al-Ḥumaydī (d. 219/834) in Mecca. Ḥumaydī, the most outspoken in his criticism of the Rationalists in general and Abū Ḥanīfa in particular used to say: ‘As long as I remain in the Hijaz, Ibn Ḥanbal in Iraq and Isḥāq in Khorasan, no group will defeat us’.32 Their most prominent successor was Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870), a student of all three but particularly close to Isḥāq and Ḥumaydī. Many Meccan scholars appear to have viewed Bukhārī as their imām in jurisprudence after his teacher Ḥumaydī.33 Bukhārī was joined by Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī (d. 275/889), whose work al-Sunan was specifically designed to be consulted by independent mujtahids in their ijtihād, and Ibn Khuzayma (d. 311/923), who had his own followers known as the Khuzaymiyya.34 Another great figure was Muḥammad ibn Naṣr al-Marwazī (d. 294), who in many of his works presented himself as an independent mujtahid from amongst the asḥāb al-ḥadīth. Marwazī presented the opinions of his fellows from this group as well as other famous imāms, and, like Bukhārī and Tirmidhī, he avoided mentioning Abū Ḥanīfa by name, only calling him ‘the leader of the ahl al-raʾy’. A similar figure in Andalusia was Baqī ibn Makhlad (d. 276/889) who, like Marwazī, wrote works on the different positions of the schools and gave fatwās according to the ḥadīth, which caused him problems with the Mālikī jurists of Andalusia.35 Others who have been counted among this group are ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/826), Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shayba (d. 235/849), ʿAbdullāh al-Dārimī (d. 255/869), Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj (d. 261/875), Aḥmad ibn Shuʿayb al-Nasāʾī (d. 303/916), Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī (d. 279/892), Abū Bakr al-Athram, Ibn Mājah (d. 273/887), Ibn Ḥibbān al-Bustī (d. 354/965)

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schools of law  | 27 and Abū Bakr al-Bazzār (d. 292/904-5). The latter group were not of the same calibre as the first four in terms of being fully independent mujtahids, but were generally similar to each other in methodology and rulings, and many of them self-consciously identified as being among the ‘partisans of ḥadīth’, following different leaders from this movement without imitating any one in particular.36 Most of these names are, of course, instantly recognisable as the authors of the most famous Sunni collections of ḥadīth, and most of them organised their ḥadīth collections by topic of jurisprudence, much like books of jurisprudence. Some, like Bukhārī and Tirmidhī, made their own positions clearer than others, but the positions favoured by many of these authors could be deduced from their section headings, comments, or the arrangement of their material.37 Among the distinguishing features of this group were the following:38 1) They preferred not to give a definitive answer where they found no clear answer in the texts. 2) They rejected taqlīd (to follow the opinion of any previous scholar without knowing his or her evidence). Some, like Ibn Ḥanbal, did allow taqlīd of the Companions but not later generations. 3) Due to their aversion to taqlīd, they had an aversion to fiqh compendia or dedicated fiqh works that suggested that the author was writing as an authority to be followed. 4) They authored works of sunan where ḥadīth reports were organised by fiqh topics, so that they could answer fiqh questions through the ḥadīth. This includes works known as Jāmiʿ (such as those of Bukhārī, Muslim and Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī), which incorporated sunan as well as other topics, such as creed, Qurʾānic exegesis, the life of the Prophet, heartsoftening traditions (raqāʾiq) and the like. 5) An aversion to qiyās. Some of these scholars rejected qiyās completely, while others only allowed it in rare cases of necessity. When it comes to Ibn Ḥanbal, some of his students narrated several categorical condemnations of qiyās from him, but there are other narrations suggesting that he may have accepted it only in cases of necessity.39 Some of these Traditionist-Jurisprudents and other traditionists made their aversion to qiyās clear, such as al-Dārimī in his Sunan and Bukhārī in his Ṣaḥīh.

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Dārimī gathered eleven reports against qiyās in the introduction to his Sunan, in a section titled bāb taghayyur al-zamān wa-mā yaḥduthu fīh (Section on the Changing of the Times and What New Things Will Arise). Bukhārī’s rejection of qiyās appears in two section headings in his Kitāb al-iʿtiṣām bi-l-kitāb wa-l-sunna (Chapter on Holding Firmly to the Book and sunna): bāb mā yudhkar min dhamm al-raʾī wa takalluf al-qiyās (Section on What is Mentioned Containing Censure of Raʾy and Bothering with Qiyās) and the section that follows it on how the Prophet never used raʾy or qiyās when asked about something he did not know. Ibn Mājah also had a section that grouped together ḥadīths against qiyās. A famous case that added fuel to the fire was Abū Hanifa’s position on intoxicants. By faithfully using a strict application of qiyās, Abū Hanifa was led to the position that all intoxicating beverages other than wine (such as beers, ciders, mead and the like) were permissible until the point of intoxication, and only then did they become impermissible. This did not earn the method of qiyās many friends and was spectacularly damaging to the reputation of the Rationalists, resulting in a host of refutations, such as Bukhārī’s Chapter on Drinks (Kitāb al-Ashriba) in his Ṣaḥīḥ.40 Anti-qiyās ḥadīth fabrications came into circulation around this time, such as: ‘God’s Messenger said: My ummah will split into seventy-odd groups. The most damaging of them are those who will apply analogy according to their opinion and thereby permit what is impermissible and forbid what is permissible’ (narrated by al-Ḥākim in al-Mustadrak).41 6) One of the most important features of the thought of Ibn Ḥanbal and many of the Traditionist-Jurisprudents was their refusal to choose between seemingly contradictory ḥadīths attributed to the Prophet, as long as they were all authentic and acted upon by the Prophet’s Companions. In such cases, Ibn Ḥanbal refused to choose a ‘correct’ answer and allowed the practice of any of the different narrations.42 Many Traditionist-Jurisprudents also included the practice of the Companions as authoritative in the absence of ḥadīth and would accept the variety that may have come from whatever was authentically transmitted from the Companions. This also gave their fiqh, especially that of Ibn

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schools of law  | 29 Ḥanbal, a flexibility and an ability to ‘accommodate conflicting points of view in the name of tradition’.43 Ibn Ḥanbal was asked: ‘If the Companions of God’s Messenger differed on a matter, are we permitted to investigate their statements to discover who is correct and then follow him?’ He said: ‘It is not permitted to decide between the positions of the Companions of God’s Messenger’. The questioner pressed: ‘What are we to do then?’ Ibn Ḥanbal replied, ‘Follow whomever of them you wish’.44 This group was not uniform in their approach. As we have seen, among its greatest figures were Ibn Ḥanbal and Bukhārī. Ibn Ḥanbal, although a staunch critic of raʾy, had a moralistic approach to fiqh that is ultimately closer in spirit to Mālik’s type of reasoning. Iṣḥāq ibn Rāhawayh and Bukhārī, however, agreed with al-Shāfiʿī in refusing to prohibit what God did not prohibit; their strict formalist tendency was closer to the Ẓāhirī method.45 The Great Synthesis and the Four Madhhabs At first, these madhhabs began as general methodologies around which different jurisprudents rallied and which they applied independently, but eventually schools formed in which the methodologies as well as the individual rulings ascribed to an imām were being taught and transmitted from one generation to the next. In other words, an institution came into existence for the formation and certification of jurisprudents. This process, with its focus on studying a set of rulings ascribed to a specific school, was faster and more efficient at producing jurists, but gave way to taqlīd – that is, the imitation of and trust in the doctrines of the founding imām at the expense of independent ijtihād. Even though al-Shāfiʿī, Ibn Ḥanbal and their immediate students had rejected taqlīd, the Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī schools eventually formed based on taqlīd. There was a similar rift between the approaches of Mālik’s students, some being TraditionistJurisprudents who refused to simply imitate their teacher, while others such as Ibn al-Qāsim and other Egyptian students of Mālik were Rationalists and favoured taqlīd; it was the Rationalists among Mālik’s students who led to the formation of a Mālikī school.46 There came to be what has been termed a ‘Great Rationalist-Traditionalist Synthesis’ in which the Rationalist and Traditionalist schools approached each other, meeting halfway. Traditionalists such as the Shāfiʿīs and Ḥanbalīs

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came to accept and use taqlīd along with a frequent reliance on qiyās and claims of consensus, all of which were rejected or severely restricted by their very founders. Yet, the Ḥanafīs and Mālikīs sought to back much of the opinions they had inherited from their intellectual ancestors with ḥadīth narrations, and sometimes they abandoned the positions of their teachers when they appeared to contradict narrations in the most authentic sources. Some schools were absorbed by bigger ones that were similar to them, and often the fortunes of some schools (at the expense of others) could be closely and directly linked to the support of the political authorities.47 This synthesis led Shāfiʿī scholars to strengthen the rationalist tendency for consistency and standardisation, which was already latent in the thought of al-Shāfiʿī himself, bringing the Shāfiʿī school even closer in spirit to the formalistic tendency of the Ḥanafīs. The Ḥanbalī school in some sense remained closer to the Mālikī school. Many Ḥanbalī scholars were influenced by the Shāfiʿī school’s adoption of qiyās and the search for technical consistency, but the late Ḥanbalī reformer Ibn Taymiyya often supported those of Ibn Ḥanbal’s opinions that were more in line with the ‘common-sense’ approach of Mālik. Paradoxically, it was the more rationalistic Shāfiʿī and Ḥanafī schools that accepted what was technically valid, even if it went against the spirit of the law, whereas the conservative and more traditionalist Mālikīs and Ḥanbalīs did not accept positions that were technically valid according to the letter of the law, if they deemed that they produced results at odds with the purpose and aims of the law.48 Those schools that came to accept taqlīd were better able to produce future followers and, therefore, to survive, whereas the Traditionist-Jurisprudent approach demanded fully independent ijtihād by those subscribing to it, thus severely limiting the number of its adherents and preventing the formation of a school in the sense of a body of jurists with standard teaching texts and a unified body of rulings. Of course, this very enterprise of creating a unified and standardised set of rulings with ‘authoritative’ positions was antithetical to the Traditionist-Jurisprudents. As a movement, the Traditionist-Jurisprudents faded from view and the names of its pillars were claimed by the biographers of the four madhhabs as having belonged to them. The Ẓāhirī madhhab was the only Traditionalist madhhab that remained committed to its anti-taqlīd, anti-rationalist method.

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schools of law  | 31 The Ẓāhirīs The Ẓāhirī legal tradition was founded by Dāwūd ibn Khalaf (d. 270/883) who was born in Kufa but later resided and taught in Baghdad.49 He was a Shāfiʿī at first, even composing two works on the virtues of al-Shāfiʿī, and he studied with some of the latter’s direct students, including the eminent Abū Thawr who founded his own madhhab. It is worth noting here that Abū Thawr had another student even more famous than Dāwūd: al-Junayd al-Baghdādī, the leader of the Baghdadi circle of Sufis and forever after known as the ‘shaykh al-ṭāʾifa’ (shaykh of the ‘group’, meaning all Sufis). Dāwūd also studied with the eminent Traditionist-Jurisprudent Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh, who also had another student more famous than Dāwūd and who was very similar to him in legal method: the famed traditionist Bukhārī. According to the early Shāfiʿī Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī, Dāwūd eventually became the greatest scholar of Baghdad, and among the hundreds attending his lessons there would be around 400 of the city’s distinguished scholars and judges.50 The often misunderstood and much maligned Ẓāhirī tradition deserves to be better studied. The greatest misunderstanding begins with its very name, which comes from ‘ẓāhir’ (outward/exterior) and which is often taken to mean ‘literal’. A long line of contemporary scholars has made the mistaken assumption that the Ẓāhirīs were literalists, without investigating the origin behind the name. This is not accurate. We should rather call them textualists.51 To the Ẓāhirīs, ‘ẓāhir’ meant ‘what the text actually states’. It is a rejection of any kind of investigation of the underlying cause or purpose of the text (which could be called its bāṭin or interior).52 To reject any investigation into the cause or purpose of a text also means to reject any kind of deduction or inference from it, whether by way of direct analogy or a more general type of inference. To make an inference from the text would amount to endowing it with a new meaning that the text does not actually say. Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī states that the ẓāhir is the very text that gives a Divine ruling.53 Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī stated that he followed al-Shāfiʿī’s critique of the Ḥanafī method of istiḥsān to its logical conclusion and found that it led to the complete rejection of qiyās as well. Therefore, he believed that, by rejecting qiyās, he was simply being more consistent in applying al-Shāfiʿī’s method than al-Shāfiʿī himself. Dāwūd said: ‘The first to use qiyās was Iblīs (Satan)’. Iblīs’s use of rational argument led him to disobey God’s command to prostrate to

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Adam: ‘God said, “What prevented you from bowing down as I commanded you?” He said, “I am better than him: You created me from fire and him from clay” (Q 7:12)’.54 This statement, as we will see, was repeated by mystics such as Jaʿfar al-Sādiq, al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī and others. Furthermore, Dāwūd and his followers argued that, even though al-Shāfiʿī limited the application of qiyās in comparison to Abū Ḥanīfa, he committed a similar error by using a rational inference that followed the opposing logic: the mafhūm al-mukhālafa (negatively implied meaning, also known as a contrario argument). This principle was a rational inference that took the direction opposite to qiyās. In qiyās, an assumption is made that, when the Revelation assigned a ruling to something, it intended this ruling to be extended to all similar things. The negatively implied meaning makes the assumption that, when the Revelation assigned a ruling to something, it was to single it out as different from all other cases. As the contemporary German jurist Paul Oertman explained, . . . Legal science has at all times provided two opposite tendencies for establishing new rules: analogy and the argument a contrario [. . .] it is always possible to reason both ways, that is to say, either since a and b are expressly regulated by the law, but c is not, the law does not wish c to be treated in the same manner as a and b; or to say, since the law has regulated a and b in a definite manner, one may conclude that it intended the similar case c to be handled in the same manner.55

Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī had noted the same, too. Each of these methods was a reverse of the other, and both were equally logical. This showed the falsity of rational expansions to the law. Both methods also entailed unlawfully adding to God’s prescriptions.56 Because the Shāfiʿīs limited the use of qiyās, they expanded their use of the negatively implied meaning instead, whereas the Ḥanafīs, because of their strong reliance on qiyās, rejected it.57 A useful example is the value of women’s testimony. According to the Qurʾān, financial loans should be notarised in the presence of two witnesses: two males, or one male and two females. The Ḥanafīs made the assumption that God was using this as an example to be extended by qiyās and concluded that women’s testimony was worth half that of a man in all situations. Al-Shāfiʿī made the assumption that women were only mentioned as witnesses in the

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schools of law  | 33 Qurʾān’s instructions on loan transactions in order to teach us that women’s testimony was only valid when notarising loans (he also accepted the testimony of four women instead of two men in exclusively female domains such as childbirth, out of necessity). Women’s testimony was worthless (inadmissible) outside of these two situations: they could not be witnesses to the writing of a will, for example, and they could not bear witness to a crime in court.58 Ibn Taymiyya and his student Ibn al-Qayyim, two Ḥanbalī revivers of the Traditionist-Jurisprudent method, disagreed with both inferences. Using a strictly textualist argument in line with the Ẓāhirī method, they held that the Qurʾān only required two women as a substitute for a man in the case of witnessing loans. In all other cases, women’s testimony was not just admissible, but equal to that of men.59 Ẓāhirī jurisprudence was therefore strictly tradition-based and accepted the Qurʾān, ḥadīth and the consensus of the Companions as the only sources of law. The consensus of the Companions was only accepted because it was seen as an indication of an unrecorded sunna, for how could it be conceivable that all the Companions agreed if they had not seen or heard the same thing? It was therefore nothing but the transmission of an undocumented sunna. As for the idea that the consensus of the scholars of any generation after the Companions was a guarantee of truth, this was rejected as it was not based on the assumption of conveying a sunna. The texts of the Qurʾān and sunna, however, are limited. The position of the majority of jurists is that the sharīʿa must contain a ruling for every possible act in existence. Due to the limited number of Qurʾānic verses and ḥadīths, as well as the unlimited number of issues, they first resort to extracting more from the texts by analysing different types of meanings that could be inferred from the language of the texts, such as its allusions and implications. When they have no texts to work with, they resort to analogical reasoning and other methods of reasoning, according to the different methodologies of the schools.60 The use of such rationalist methods is based on the idea that there is a cause for each ruling in the Qurʾān and ḥadīth, as well as a general wisdom and higher principle that the sharīʿa aims to achieve. These scholars thus aim to discover the wisdom in the sharīʿa and its rulings, in order to be able to increase the number of rulings, whether they be judgments of obligation, prohibition, or permissibility, as new issues arise.61

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According to the Ẓāhirīs, this entire enterprise is misguided because there is, in fact, a text that covers everything: God said in the Qurʾān that ‘He created all that is on the Earth for you’ (Q 2:29); therefore, everything is permissible except what God specifically forbade. Accordingly, ‘He has explained for you in detail what He has made prohibited for you’ (Q 6:119). Hence, there are no matters about which the Qurʾān or sunna did not speak. If the Qurʾān and ḥadīth did not clearly command something, it cannot be obligatory, and if they did not clearly prohibit something, it cannot be prohibited. To either obligate or prohibit something by using qiyās, negatively implied meaning, blocking the means, or claims of scholarly consensus is to transgress against God’s rulings.62 Ẓāhirī textualism also influenced their interpretation and implementation of revealed texts. For example, there was an early debate on whether phrases in the imperative form (commands and prohibitions) signified obligation or recommendation (or, in some cases, even permissibility). The majority of jurists eventually came to hold the position, like the Ẓāhirīs, that the imperative signified obligation/prohibition rather than recommendation/dislike.63 However, the four main schools accepted a wider range of indicators that could shift the interpretation of commands and prohibitions from the realm of obligation to the realm of recommendation or permissibility. The Ẓāhirīs, however, only accepted evidence from revealed texts. Therefore, while in principle the Ẓāhirīs appear to be in agreement with the other schools on this matter, a significant difference appears in their rulings where many more commands were considered obligatory as opposed to recommendations.64 The Ẓāhirī madhhab continued to have a following until the end of the ninth/fifteenth century, after which it is believed to have ceased to exist. It is important to note, however, that when it is said that only four Sunni schools of law survived to this day, this should not blind us to the fact that individual scholars continued to follow the methodologies of the Ẓāhirīs and Traditionist-Jurisprudents throughout the history of Islamic civilisation until the modern day, even if there was no continuous uninterrupted line of followers for these schools.65 In fact, modern times have seen a strong resurgence in Ẓāhirī and Traditionist-Jurisprudent methodology. It could be argued that the Ẓāhirī tradition, as a method, never really died out, and that the surviving Sunni schools are not four, but five if we include the Ẓāhirīs, or

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schools of law  | 35 even six if we include Traditionist-Jurisprudents (although this latter movement represents a broad umbrella of like-minded scholars rather than a single clearly defined methodology). We will now turn to the early mystics and Sufis of Islam to see their relationship to the early schools of jurisprudence. Notes  1. Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Kitāb faḍāʾil al-saḥāba, min faḍāʾil Umm Ayman; see also Dajani, Reassurance for the Seeker, 176.  2. Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-maghāzī, bāb marjiʿ al-nabī min al-aḥzāb wa makhrajihi ilā Banī Qurayẓa wa muḥāṣaratihī iyyāhum.  3. Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Kitāb al-jihād wa-l-siyar, bāb taʾmīr al-imām al-umarāʾ.   4. On the early governors and proto-judges during and shortly after the time of the Prophet, see Hallaq, Origins, 34–40.  5. Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-iʿtiṣām bi l-kitāb wa l-Sunna, bāb ajr al-ḥākim idhā ijtahada fa aṣāba aw akhṭaʾa.   6. Hallaq, ‘From Regional to Personal Schools of Law?’ 21.  7. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik, 1:153.   8. Abū Yūsuf al-Qāḍī, al-Radd ʿalā siyar al-Awzāʿī, 23.   9. Abū Zahra, Mālik, 128, 354. 10. On this issue, see Zysow, Economy of Certainty, 113–58. The writings of Ghazālī and Juwaynī evince these later giants’ unease about the arguments offered for the doctrine of Consensus, and Juwaynī comes close to negating its possibility (see ibid, 120, 128). 11. Brown, Misquoting Muhammad, 27–28. 12. Abū Zahra, Mālik, 375–84; Wymann-Landgraf, Mālik and Medina, 161–70. 13. Wymann-Landgraf, Mālik and Medina, 170–74; Brown, Misquoting Muhammad, 29–30. 14. ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 345–52; Abū Zahra, Ibn Ḥanbal, 244–57. 15. ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 298. 16. ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 298. 17. Al-Dihlawī, al-Inṣāf, 41. 18. On the equating of the Ḥanafīs to the Rationalists, see Melchert, ‘TraditionistJurisprudents’, 385. On the dating of this school, see Stewart, ‘Structure of the Fihrist’, 374. 19. ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 60 (quoting Ibn Qutayba, Taʿwīl mukhtalaf al-ḥadīth). 20. Brown, ‘Did the Prophet Say it?’ 260.

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21. See Melchert, ‘Traditionist-Jurisprudents’, 392–93. 22. Melchert, Formation, 70. 23. Al-Matroudi, Ḥanbalī School, 43. 24. Melchert, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, 64. 25. See Abū Zahra, Ibn Ḥanbal, 230–57. 26. Al-Matroudi, Ḥanbalī School, 41. 27. See Ibn Taymiyya, Tafḍīl, 39–50; Majmūʿ fatāwā, 20:303–18. 28. Melchert, Formation, 10, 188. 29. Al-Matroudi, Ḥanbalī School, 32–35. 30. Melchert, ‘Traditionist-Jurisprudents’, 385. I have thus omitted from his list the Shīʿī and Khārijite jurisprudents. 31. ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 127. 32. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 10:619. 33. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 12:425. 34. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Iʿlām al-muwaqqiʿīn, 2:202. 35. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 13:285–96. 36. See Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ al-fatāwā, 20:40; ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 127–39, 284–331; Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist, 277–85; Melchert, ‘Traditionist-Jurisprudents’, 383–406. 37. ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 284–331. 38. For points 1–6, see ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 284–331; Melchert, ‘Traditionist-Jurisprudents’, 383–406. 39. For Ibn Ḥanbal’s statements against qiyās, see Ibn Abī Yaʿlā, Ṭabaqāt, 1:31, 241, 2:19. On his statements to the effect that qiyās may be resorted to in cases of necessity, see al-Matroudi, The Ḥanbalī School of Law and Ibn Taymiyyah, 32–35. 40. For an explanation of this, see Chapter 3. 41. Dhahabī found that this ḥadīth must be an error from the Kufan ʿĪsā ibn Yūnus (d. 188 ah), which means that it came into circulation not long before then (Al-Dhahabī, Mīzān al-iʿtidāl, 4:268). 42. Melchert, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, 78; Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ al-fatāwā, vol. 22:66. 43. Wymann-Landgraf, Mālik and Medina, 160 n250. 44. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Mukhtaṣar Jāmiʿ bayān al-ʿilm, 353. 45. ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 345–52; Spectorsky, Chapters on Marriage and Divorce, 7; Melchert, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, 78. 46. On the Rationalism of Ibn al-Qāsim, see the words of the Traditionalist Mālikī Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr in al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik, 3:245. As Ibn Taymiyya noted, Ibn al-Qāsim often made rationalist analogies based on Mālik’s teachings

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schools of law  | 37 to answer questions that Mālik had not answered, and his answers often agreed with the school of Abū Ḥanīfa (Ibn Taymiyya, Ṭafḍīl, 70). Al-Qadī ʿIyāḍ narrates that Ibn al-Qāsīm would warn the Andalusian Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā about acting upon the ḥadīths narrated by Mālik’s Traditionalist student Ibn Wahb, and Ibn Wahb would in turn warn Yaḥyā about following Ibn al-Qāsim’s raʾy-based opinions. Yaḥyā claims to have taken the best of both approaches (al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik, 3:387), but he directed his students to give preference to Ibn al-Qāsim’s narrations and answers over those of Mālik’s Traditionalist students (Ibn Taymiyya, Ṭafḍīl, 71). This did not mean that Traditionalists were necessarily against Ibn al-Qāsīm, and al-Nasāʾī admired him greatly. 47. On the ‘Great Synthesis’ and the formation of the Sunni schools of law, see Hallaq, Origins, 122–77; Melchert, Formation, 1; idem, ‘Traditionist-Jurisprudents’, 383, 391, 406. 48. Several more examples are provided in Chapter 3. 49. Melchert, Formation, 179; Osman, History and Doctrine, 10–11. 50. Osman, History and Doctrine, 13. 51. See Osman, History and Doctrine, 8, 226–27. 52. ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 265. 53. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 1:42. Therefore, if the word ẓāhir as used by the early Ẓāhirīs were to be explained by another term, I propose that it is what Shāfiʿī jurists (and those who followed them) came to term the manṭūq, that which is expressed, rather than the mafhūm, that which is inferred. The manṭūq is defined as ‘that which a vocable indicates at the point of expression’; its opposite, that which is not expressed at the point of expression, is the mafhūm (see Gleave, Islam and Literalism, 53, quoting Ibn al-Ḥājib; Subkī, Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ, 22; Kamali, Principles, 177–79). The manṭūq could either be taken literally or figuratively, depending on the context or evidence. 54. Al-Ḥajwī, al-Fikr al-sāmī, 385. 55. See Zysow, Economy of Certainty, 103. 56. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 8:102. 57. See Zysow, Economy of Certainty, 103. 58. Al-Shāfiʿī, al-Umm, 7:50. Ibn Ḥanbal and Mālik also rejected the admissibility of women’s testimony in criminal cases. Among the main madhhabs, the Ẓāhirī madhhab was unique in accepting women’s testimony in every field, including criminal cases. This position was held by pre-madhhab authorities, especially in the Meccan school of Ibn ʿAbbās’s students, and later by Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim.

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59. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, al-Ṭuruq al-ḥukmiyya, 1:400–1. Ibn Ḥanbal also accepted a single woman’s testimony in a number of situations, but not all. 60. Al-Ḥajwī, al-Fikr al-sāmī, 389–93. For the different textual implications that could be extracted by the jurists, see Kamali, Principles, 167–86. 61. Abū Zahra, Ibn Ḥazm, 342. Ashʿarī theology, however, maintained that ‘man is incapable of knowing the wisdom behind [God’s] commands and that God is not obliged to command what is good for His subjects.’ They therefore maintained that ‘the legal cause embodied in the ratio legis is nothing but a sign which signifies the legal rule but does not actually “effect” it but could be seen as more of an occasioning factor’ (Hallaq, History, 136). There was something of a contradiction in the acceptance of legal causes by Ashʿarī theologians. 62. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 4:140, 8:13–18. 63. Brown, Misquoting Muhammad, 86. 64. Abū Zahra, Ibn Ḥazm, 296–302; ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 288–94. 65. The contemporary author of Ṭabaqāt Ahl al-Ẓāhir could not find entries on Ẓāhirī scholars in biographical compendiums after the ninth/fifteenth century. In that century he found entries on sixteen Ẓāhirīs in the Eastern lands, mostly in the Levant and Egypt, and none in the West (see al-Buḥṣalī, Ṭabaqāt Ahl al-Ẓāhir, 19). In his introduction to Muḥammad al-Muntaṣir-billāh al-Kattānī’s Muʿjam fiqh Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī, the editor Muḥammad Ḥamza al-Kattāni lists a number of scholars from the Western lands (Maghreb) from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries ah who were either Ẓāhirīs, ‘or were influenced by them, or at least claimed to be independent mujtahids’ (1:iv); this is too broad to be useful.

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2 Sufis and Traditionalism

B

efore turning to the relationship between the Sufis and the schools of law, it is important to speak about the terms sharīʿa and Sufism first. The English word Sufism, from the Arabic taṣawwuf, is a term that refers to the dominant school of mysticism in Sunni Islam. Mysticism can be defined as a theory or praxis that hopes for the attainment of direct knowledge of God.1 The term taṣawwuf was preceded by the term ṣūfī which most probably meant ‘wool-wearer’ (from the word ṣūf, meaning wool). Woollen clothes were coarse and signified detachment from the world, and the term ṣūfī was used to identify a number of individual mystics from Kufa and Basra, two of the most important cities in the early centuries of Islam.2 The first known cohesive group of Sufis was a circle of prominent mystics led by Abū Ḥātim al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 260s/874–84) who taught in the Grand Mosque of Basra. Although they were called ‘the Sufis of the Mosque (of Basra)’, their leader Abū Ḥātim was critical of those mystics who wore wool. He accused them of making an outward statement about their purported inward states and distinguishing themselves from other Muslims. Ironically, then, the practice of wearing wool appears to have already started dying out by the time the first cohesive group of Muslims came to be known as ‘Sufis’. The mystics of this circle had students from Baghdad, where a circle of Sufis then appeared and gained great prominence. The most famous of the Sufis of Baghdad was al-Junayd al-Baghdādī, who acquired the title ‘shaykh al-ṭāʾifa’ – that is, the leader of the group (the Sufis).3 39

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The members of these Basran and Baghdadi circles of Sufis were distinguished by the emphasis in their discourse on topics such as love of God and an intimate spiritual relationship with Him, as well as experiential knowledge of God. Early authors described them as the first in their lands to discourse on matters such as attaining a pure state of remembrance of God and uniting all of one’s aspirations into one – namely, the desire for God, love and longing for God, as well as achieving nearness to Him and a feeling of intimacy with Him.4 They are sometimes also described as the first to speak a language of allusions and to discourse on hidden spiritual realities, using new terminology to describe God’s unity (tawḥīd) as they saw and experienced it directly.5 The appellation ‘Sufi’ was projected retroactively by later compilers of Sufi manuals to include these two circles’ contemporaries from different lands where this term was not yet in use, as well as many similar pious figures from earlier generations.6 These authors extended the title to those who placed emphasis on the achievement of certainty or love of God, or who had prioritised the purification of the heart and the achievement of sincerity in worship over other endeavours or sciences, even if they did not necessarily speak in mystical terms. While many early mystics were not known as Sufis at the time, they did leave a lasting influence on Sufism as we know it today, and it would not be entirely inaccurate to describe them as Sufis. The word sharīʿa is often translated as ‘Islamic law’, which can be misleading. The Arabic word sharīʿa was used by the Arabs to refer to a path of descent into a permanent source of water, such as a slope leading down to a large watering hole or to the bank of a large river. Imām al-Layth ibn Saʿd (d. 175/791), eponymous founder of one of the major schools of law and one of the great early authorities on the Arabic language, said: ‘It is from these [paths of descent into water] that God gave the name sharīʿa to what He instructed His servants to do of fasting, prayer, pilgrimage, marriage, and the like’.7 The verb form of the word was used for animals reaching a water source via such a path, a usage that also appears in the ḥadīth literature.8 It could also be used for the action of bringing water to one’s mouth to drink, and the Companions and Followers used it to refer to the action of taking water from containers and washing their body parts with it during ritual ablutions.9 Thus, the word sharīʿa evokes images of drinking from a permanent water source or coming to a source of water, which to the Arabs at the time of

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sufis and traditionalism  | 41 Revelation signified life. The Qurʾān itself states: ‘From Water did We create every living thing’ (Q 21:30). The opposite of the verb form sharaʿa – to enter the water source or put one’s head down to drink from it – is qamaḥa, used for an animal that raises its head, refusing to drink from the water source. Remarkably, this word is used in the Qurʾān only once, at the beginning of Chapter Yā Sīn which focuses on the themes of life and revivification. There it describes those who refuse to accept God’s message as muqmaḥūn: unable to lower their heads in order to drink from the water of life (Q 36:8). There exists then a symbolic parallel between an animal putting its head down to drink and the submission required of a Muslim to God’s teachings in order for his or her heart to come to life, a parallel that takes physical shape during the acts of bowing and prostration in prayer.10 The Qurʾān uses the word shirʿa (another form of the word sharīʿa) to mean a divinely created path and equates this path with following God’s rulings and revelation. In the context of the teachings of the Qurʾān, Torah and Bible, the Qurʾān addresses Muḥammad: ‘Judge between them according to what God has sent down [. . .]. We have made a path (shirʿa) and a way of life (minhāj) for each of you’ (Q 5:48). Many of the earliest Muslims, like the Prophet’s cousin Ibn ʿAbbās, explained the word sharīʿa as sabīl, another word for path.11 The word is likewise connected to the related idea of opening a door or embarking upon something new. The sharīʿa was therefore a body of teachings that brought one to life, and a path set down or illumined by God’s revelation. This is an eminently spiritual image: ‘Is he who was dead and then We gave him life and made for him a light with which to walk among people, the same as he who is in darkness upon darkness from which he is unable to emerge?’ (Q 6:122); ‘Believers, respond to God and His Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life and know that God comes between a man and his heart and that you will be gathered to Him’ (Q 8:24). The Qurʾān gives allegorical descriptions of those who disbelieve as ‘dead’ and ‘buried’ and those who believe as ‘living’ (Q 35:22), and it likens the way in which hearts soften upon hearing the Truth to the revivification of the dead earth after rainfall (Q 57:16–17). The scholars used the term al-shāriʿ, usually translated as the Lawgiver, to refer to the one who brought the sharīʿa, but perhaps ‘the Guide’ or ‘the Path-Maker’ are more faithful translations to capture the image of bringing one to water or to life. Therefore, the use of

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words such as law, lawgiver, or legal theory in this work is only for the sake of convenience and convention, at the expense of accuracy and depth. Even the acts of worship prescribed by the Qurʾān were given highly spiritual – even mystical – names and descriptions. The wuḍūʾ, translated as ritual ablutions, literally means illumination or shining, and the Prophet had said that his followers will be shining with bright light on the Day of Judgement because of the effects of their wuḍūʾ.12 The ṣalāt, translated as ritual prayer, begins with an act that mimics the throwing of the world behind oneself, after which one enters the state of iḥrām (sanctity), akin to the sanctity of the ḥaram (sacred precinct) that houses the Kaʿba, and the Prophet said: ‘When one of you stands to pray, God is before him when he prays’.13 The very word for ṣalāt comes from a root word that denotes coming together or unity.14 The verb form ṣallā was used by the Arabs to refer to straightening something in the fire, and it was used in the Qurʾān to refer to exposure to, or entry into, a fire. Hence, mystics and Sufis as early as in the third century understood the word ṣalāt to mean ‘to expose oneself to divine light when entering God’s presence’, as one exposes himself to the warmth of fire.15 Even the word zakāt, translated as obligatory charity, means ‘growth and purification’, as God addressed Muḥammad in the Qurʾān: ‘Take from their wealth a charity that cleanses them and through which you can purify them, and pray for them, for your prayers for them bring tranquillity to them’ (Q 9:103). The sharīʿa certainly covers much more than what we can call ‘law’, in that it teaches a moral code and gives instructions on how best to worship God. Could one describe instructions to pray or fast as ‘law’, for example? Some have argued that this could be the case, so long as these are instructions of obligation or prohibition. Bernard G Weiss said: We may in fact fittingly call the divine categorisations of acts as obligatory or forbidden rules of law, for rules after all, are fundamentally statements about what we are or are not to do; they order behaviour in a manner that leaves individuals with no choice but to comply. The categorisations of acts as recommended or disapproved, on the other hand, do not have this demanding character; such categorisations seek to influence behaviour while giving the option of noncompliance. They are therefore decidedly unlike rules of law.16

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sufis and traditionalism  | 43 However, most of what is obligatory or forbidden according to the sharīʿa is not enforced from above by a state or some coercive power, but rather directed to the heart and mind of the Muslim. The sharīʿa only prescribed penalties called ḥudūd – meaning the highest limits beyond which human conduct could not go – for a very small number of social crimes, whereas personal guidance and worship was a matter between the Muslim and his or her Lord.17 However, the teachings of the sharīʿa were solidified into legalsounding prescriptive language when scholars felt compelled to categorise every divine instruction into the five categories of obligatory, recommended, permissible, disliked and impermissible. They similarly felt compelled to take spiritual acts – such as the ritual prayer, ablutions, fasting or pilgrimage – and categorise their different parts or acts into lists of integrals (arkān), requisites (wājibāt) and the like. Sufis and Fiqh The above discussion regarding the meanings of the term sharīʿa shows that the division between spirituality or mysticism on one hand and the sharīʿa on the other is an artificial one that in many ways runs counter to the spirit of the Qurʾān’s teachings. As Eric Geoffroy noted, ‘[t]he legalism attributed to Islam does not come from the Koranic text but rather from the development of a legal casuistry [. . .] As it moved away from the light of the Koranic Revelation, the message of Islam, which was primarily spiritual, solidified into prescriptive language’.18 For many Sufis, this artificial division was not merely incorrect but harmful, for they viewed true fiqh (understanding of God’s guidance) as wholly reliant upon the purity of one’s heart. Did not the Prophet say: ‘The body contains a lump of flesh which, if rectified, the whole body is rectified, and if corrupted, the whole body is corrupted: it is the heart’?19 Did he not make one’s spiritual faculties a guide to what is right and wrong when he said: ‘A bad act is that which agitates your soul’?20 Therefore, according to them the true faqīh was not he who memorised rote knowledge or a list of rulings, but he whose illumined heart gave him deep understanding of what was right and wrong. The most famous and loved of all the scholars among the generation of the Followers was al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728), whom the Sufis took as an exemplar and predecessor. He was once asked a question by his student

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ʿImrān al-Qaṣīr, a respected ḥadīth transmitter. After hearing Baṣrī’s answer to his question, Qaṣīr protested: ‘But the fuqahāʾ [sing. faqīh] say suchand-such instead!’ Baṣrī retorted: ‘And have your eyes ever set sight on a faqīh? Only he is a faqīh who is detached from worldly things, possesses piercing insight into the affairs of his religion, and is constant in worship of his Lord’.21 Imām Mālik ibn Anas had famously said: ‘One does not become knowledgeable by the number of his narrations. Knowledge is a light that God places in the heart’.22 Mālik’s contemporary Wakīʿ, a scholar who had multiple connections to the circles of mystics from among Baṣrī’s students, had said something similar, as immortalised in the oft-quoted verses usually attributed to Imām al-Shāfiʿī: I complained to Wakīʿ about my weak memory so he guided me to abandon sins He taught me that knowledge is in truth light and God’s light is not gifted to the sinner.

ʿAlī ibn Maymūn al-Fāsī (d. 917/1511), a late Sufi author, wrote that fiqh and taṣawwuf were two sides of the same coin, pointing to a singular reality. It was impossible for a real Sufi not to be a faqīh or for a real faqīh not to be a Sufi, and those who lacked one or the other were only would-be-Sufis and would-be-fuqahāʾ.23 Ibn Maymūn – who also authored a work in praise of Ibn ʿArabī – rejected the common misconception of a dichotomy between a legalistic ritualistic fiqh and mystical theory and praxis.24 The Sufis believed that what ultimately distinguished them from other Muslims was their priorities. The Qurʾān tells us that the Prophet Abraham and his son Ishmael made a prayer to God as they were building the Holy Kaʿba, wishing that from their progeny would emerge a nation of people who would surrender themselves to God (are muslims). They then said: ‘Lord, and send to them a Messenger from amongst them, to recite to them Your signs, to teach them the Writ and the Wisdom, and to purify them . . . ’ (Q 2:129). In three other places in the Qurʾān, God speaks of how He answered this prayer: ‘We have sent to you a Messenger from amongst yourselves to recite to you Our signs, to purify you, and to teach you the Writ and the Wisdom’ (Q 2:151; see also Q 3:164; Q 62:2). It is peculiar that in these three verses,

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sufis and traditionalism  | 45 where it is God speaking of His favour upon the Arabs, the descendants of Ishmael, the ordering of Muḥammad’s functions is different from that in Abraham’s request. Here, the Prophet Muḥammad’s mission is to bring God’s revelation first, then to purify his followers and, finally, to teach them the Writ (what God prescribes for them) and the Wisdom. The great theologian al-Bayḍāwī (d. 685/1286) in his classic commentary on the Qurʾān said that Abraham put knowledge before purification, in consideration of the practical ordering: one learns first what is right and wrong and then acts upon it in order to achieve spiritual growth and purity. However, when God Himself spoke, He placed purification first to show that it is the very goal and purpose, and that God’s injunctions are the means to achieve it.25 One way to understand how the early Sufis and mystics fit among the early competing groups of Muslims is this idea of prioritisation. While most, if not all, early movements had their share of learning Qurʾānic exegesis, ḥadīth, jurisprudence and supplementary sciences such as Arabic and the like, different groups or individuals may have chosen one of these sciences as their lifelong preoccupation, and the mystics are those who made the purification of the heart their lifelong occupation. In many, but not all cases, this focus on the heart and on achieving sincerity in worship above all else took an outward manifestation in the creation of the first known centres dedicated to those like-minded seekers of nearness to God. Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s student ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Zayd (d. after 150/767) is one early figure who represented this devotion to the cultivation of the inward above all other preoccupations, and several of his students built the first known centres for spiritual seekers. One of his students built centres in Syria, another built one in Basra, and yet others congregated on a small island near Basra called Abadān, later a known centre for Sufis. Abadān came to serve as a famous location for spiritual retreat and would be visited by many prominent traditionists and jurisprudents such as Wakīʿ, Hammād ibn Salamah and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal. Other traditionists and Ḥanbalīs would spend time under the tutelage of the mystic Sahl al-Tustarī who lived first in Tustar, north of Abadān, and then in Basra. However, for many of these traditionists, spending time with those Sufis and mystics was a temporary affair that did not take them away from their main preoccupations, whereas for the Sufis it was the learning of ḥadīth and other sciences which

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was a temporary affair that should not distract from a lifelong devotion to spiritual training. It is important here to repeat that not all early mystics were known as Sufis. This appellation was first confined to a group of major figures in Basra and Baghdad before spreading to other Muslim lands. For example, at the time al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī was not considered one of the Sufis of Basra or Baghdad, but later compilers would count him, and many other figures from outside that group, as such.26 Tirmidhī had visited Basra and shared many of the characteristics and concerns of those Basran and Baghdadi Sufis.27 Although he himself was not called a ‘Sufi’, it would not be incorrect to count him as a Sufi in the later definition of the term. Tirmidhī did not use the word ‘Sufi’ in his writings, but later Sufis considered his writings foundational. Yet, if one were to insist that Tirmidhī was not a Sufi, they would also be correct. Tirmidhī had his own method and goals that often differed from those of Sufism as it later developed. For example, Sufism as we know it today came to emphasise the central role of a spiritual guide on the path to God, whereas Tirmidhī insisted that one should not seek guidance from any human being and ask God alone for direct guidance.28 Sufism may have taken much of Tirmidhī’s writings on sainthood, but many of the metaphysical teachings that came to dominate the world of Sufism, including the spiritual stations and states that they described and aimed to achieve, were absent from his teachings. We have seen how Sunni Islam knew several madhhabs or schools of jurisprudence, four of which came to dominate the Sunni world and to survive until today (or five, if we count the Ẓāhirīs). We should think of Sufism as one madhhab (either in the sense of a school, or in the sense of a method) among the madhhabs of spirituality, purification of the heart, or mysticism in Sunni Islam. The difference, however, is that, while the four Sunni schools each had a fair share of followers among Sunnis, Sufism came to be the dominant school of mysticism and spirituality among Sunnis, to the extent that it would become equated with the very concept of mysticism and spirituality in Islam. To most Sufis (and many outsiders, too) Sufism is simply Islamic mysticism or spirituality. That, however, is incorrect. There were always Muslim outsiders to the Sufi tradition who had their own methods to achieve nearness to God or purification of the heart and who

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sufis and traditionalism  | 47 laid claim to this nearness in their own terms. We could count Tirmidhī as example of an early school that existed while Sufism was still on the rise. The Ḥanbalī critic of Sufism Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1201) wrote many works on the purification of the heart, including abridgements and corrections of Sufi classics. Even as Sufism was beginning to dominate the spiritual landscape, there were still other schools of mysticism such as the Andalusian school of muʿtabirūn of whom we will speak when we study the thought of Ibn ʿArabī. A late school of spirituality was that of the Damascene Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350) and his teacher Ibn Taymiyya, who in many ways were outsiders to Sufism but incorporated many of its terms and commented on a number of Sufi works, in an attempt to influence and reform Sufism. Their writings on the spiritual path have influenced countless Muslims and continue to be popular today, especially among those who have reservations about Sufism.29 Affinities between the Mystics and Traditionalists Some of the early mystics belonged to Traditionalist schools of law, while others rejected all schools completely, but there were rare cases of mystics who had been trained in the Ḥanafī school or the rationalist branch of the Mālikī school.30 The affinity between the mystics and the Traditionalists is understandable: both gave precedence to that which was revealed from God over what the mind believed must be true, even when something appeared to go against the mind’s conclusions (hence the definition mentioned above of Traditionalists in jurisprudence as those who gave preference to ḥadīth over rational or logical consistency in fiqh). These two groups looked to revelation for guidance on theology and jurisprudence and were suspicious of using reason to achieve such knowledge. The difference is that the Traditionalists usually limited revelation to the Qurʾān and ḥadīth, whereas Sufis expanded this to include their own personal insight and direct knowledge of God. Of course, the Ḥanbalīs did not deny the possibility of inspiration or revelation. Ibn Ḥanbal is reported to have advised his great student al-Marrūdhī who would succeed him as leader of the Ḥanbalīs: ‘If a statement reaches you from Maʿrūf (al-Karkhī) regarding the news of the heavens, accept it!’ And it was Ḥanbalīs like Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya who in their jurisprudential writings were most willing to consider the place of inspiration in ijtihād.31

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The Rationalists tended to emphasise God’s transcendence above all else, based on the rational conclusion that God cannot in any way be like His creation, whereas the Traditionalists and Sufis tended to emphasise a God closer to His creation. The Traditionalists did so by refusing to explain away all the anthropomorphic images of God in the ḥadīth literature, a God who is pleased or angry, who loves and who dislikes, and so on; the Sufis did so through their belief in having experiential knowledge of God through which they could form a relationship of love and nearness to Him. The Rationalists were consequently more likely to conceive of God as a sort of cosmic justice machine, hence the Muʿtazilite emphasis on God’s justice (ʿadl), whereas the Sufis and Traditionalists were more likely to emphasis God’s grace and favours (faḍl) through which He may honour those whom He loves beyond what they deserve.32 The Muʿtazilites and many early Ḥanafīs thus denied the possibility of karāmāt (miracles appearing at the hands of saints), while this was widely accepted among the Traditionalists and Sufis. The Rationalists denied the idea of Muslims benefitting from the works of others for them, hence the Muʿtazilite rejection of intercession in the afterlife, which was championed by the Sufis and Traditionalists. The Rationalists, including Abū Ḥanīfa, rejected the similar doctrine of tawassul, where one would ask God to fulfil their needs by appealing to God’s love of a more pious person. Tawassul was practised and recommended by the Sufis and the Ḥanbalīs, who had many ḥadīths to support it and who also related ḥadīths on people benefitting from the blessings of the pious.33 Another branch of this debate was the idea of sharing the rewards of one’s pious acts with the dead, which was either denied or severely limited by more Rationalist figures, whereas Ibn Ḥanbal and al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, for instance, allowed it absolutely with regard to every type of pious act.34 All of these differences return to the difference in emphasis on divine justice versus divine grace, which in turn was tied to whether God was conceived as an abstract unknowable God or a near, loving God. These are but some examples to show how it was only natural for mystics and Traditionalists to agree and be closer to each other than they would be to the Rationalists. Yet, the Sufis were not as fully committed to a literal acceptance of anthropomorphic expressions about God in the revealed sources as were the Traditionist-Jurisprudents. There appears to have been strong links between

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sufis and traditionalism  | 49 the early Sufis and the Ashʿarī school of theology which interpreted anthropomorphic expressions in the revealed sources as allegorical, whereas many Traditionist-Jurisprudents tended to accept them at face value. This is especially true after the efforts of Qushayrī (d.465/1072).35 This again showed that the Sufis were their own group: many were closer in theological doctrine to the doctrines adopted by most Shafiʿīs, Mālikīs and Ḥanafīs (whose Māturīdī school was similar to that of the Ashʿarīs), but they were closer in jurisprudence to the methods of the Traditionist-Jurisprudents.36 Of course, this was not always the case, and ʿAbdullāḥ Anṣārī of Herat (d. 481/1089) exemplifies a Sufi who was an anti-rationalist Ḥanbalī in jurisprudence and theology (he dedicated a work to denouncing the Ashʿarī and Māturīdī schools). Conceptions of Sainthood among the Traditionalist Movement In his outstanding work Sufism: The Formative Period, Ahmet Karamustafa reminded the reader that ‘the notion of friendship with God, which later came to be associated primarily with Sufism, was cultivated in the first few centuries of Islam and beyond equally by renunciants and traditionalists in general’.37 ‘Friendship with God’ is one popular way to translate the term walāya, literally ‘proximity to God’. The term walāya has many related meanings, such as friendship, nearness, support and alliance. Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) gave a good explanation of the term, clarifying its meaning by way of its opposite. He wrote that ‘walāya is the opposite of enmity. The origin of walāya is love and nearness, and the origin of enmity is hatred and distance [. . .] the walī is one who is near’.38 I have chosen to translate this term as ‘sainthood’ for pragmatic reasons, even though it is not ideal. Sufis and Traditionalists alike used the word awliyāʾ to refer to a general class of the spiritual elect, those who were near to God. They also used the word abdāl (also budalāʾ), ‘substitutes’, to refer to an even smaller circle of God’s elect who were always in a fixed number, most often forty. Whenever one of them died, another was raised from the general circle of awliyāʾ to replace him. The term, in fact, was taken from ḥadīth traditions in the collections of famed traditionists such as Ibn Ḥanbal, Abū Dāwūd, Abū Nuʿaym, Ibn Abī al-Dunyā and al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī. According to one tradition in the Musnad of Ibn Ḥanbal, the Prophet stated: ‘The abdāl will be in the land of Shām, and they will be forty in number. Whenever one of them dies, God

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will replace him with another. Through them rain could be sought from God and victory given over enemies. (God’s) punishment will be averted from the land of Shām because of them’.39 Although the word abdāl means ‘substitutes’, different explanations have been given as to its meaning. According to some, it refers to the fact that, whenever one of them dies, he is replaced by a substitute, as the ḥadīth above suggests. According to Tirmidhī himself, however, and after him al-Kalābādhī (another prominent Sufi traditionist), the term refers to the function of the abdāl as heirs to the Prophets. They held that the Earth is in constant need of pure hearts to function as loci of divine remembrance, and after the line of Prophets ended with Muḥammad, God made sure that there will always be forty abdāl on the Earth as a substitute for the existence of Prophets on Earth.40 Although the traditions about the abdāl were considered weak (unreliable) by the master ḥadīth critics, many of the major figures of the Traditionalist movement – be they jurists such as al-Shāfiʿī,41 or scholars of ḥadīth such as Ibn Ḥanbal,42 Bukhārī,43 Abū Dāwūd,44 al-Nasaʾī,45 Ibn Mājah,46 Abū Ḥātim47 and Abū Zurʿa48 – referred to some of their colleagues or predecessors as abdāl, or as having been counted among the abdāl by previous figures of the Traditionalist movement. They often attributed miracles to them and other saintly figures, just as the Sufis did to their own predecessors. Bukhārī said of one of his teachers from whom he narrated in his Ṣaḥīḥ: ‘I have never seen the like of ʿAbdullāh ibn Munīr’; this was a man whom the traditionists counted among the abdāl, and believed was able to miraculously cross the Oxus River with one step, a type of karāma known as ṭayy al-arḍ.49 Bukhārī’s teacher Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh, one of the main pillars of the Traditionist-Jurisprudent movement, was asked: is one allowed to go into desolate lands without taking any provision (to rely on God to save one from starving)? He said: ‘If he was like ʿAbdullāh ibn Munīr then he may’.50 Within the general Traditionalist movement, traditionists and renunciants would count each other’s members as saintly figures. Ibn Ḥanbal counted the renunciant Maʿrūf al-Karkhī as one of the abdāl. When someone in Ibn Ḥanbal’s presence stated that Maʿrūf was not a man of great learning, Ibn Ḥanbal responded: ‘Hold your tongue! Is the purpose of knowledge but to attain what Maʿrūf has reached?’ As we have just seen, Ibn Ḥanbal said to his great student al-Marrūdhī who would succeed him as leader of the Ḥanbalīs:

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sufis and traditionalism  | 51 ‘If a statement reaches you from Maʿrūf regarding the news of the heavens, accept it!’51 Ibn Ḥanbal also showed great respect to a renunciant from the island of Abadān, where the students of ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Zayd had set up a retreat for mystics, and exclaimed that this man reminded him of the abdāl.52 On their part, Basran mystics counted ʿAbdullāh ibn Maslama al-Qaʿnabī, a major traditionist upon whom Bukhārī relied heavily in his Ṣaḥīḥ as the link between himself and Mālik ibn Anas, among the abdāl.53 Qaʿnabī was also important to the Traditionist-Jurisprudents and Ẓāhirīs because he related that he visited Mālik toward the end of his life and found him crying out of regret for his use of raʾy, wishing that he could be whipped for every question he had answered with raʾy.54 Renunciants and Sufis would count al-Shāfiʿī as one of yet another class of saints, the awtād, ‘pillars (of the Earth)’, and Ibn Ḥanbal as one of the ṣiddīqūn.55 The awtād were often conceived of as a category of the elect even higher than the abdāl, only four in number.56 The name may have been inspired by a ḥadīth also narrated by Ibn Ḥanbal, which states: ‘Mosques have pillars (awtād) whose sitting companions are the angels. If they are absent from the mosque, the angels will miss them. If they are ill, the angels will visit them, and if they are ever in need, the angels will assist them’.57 The ṣiddīqūn are a category of people that the Qurʾān placed below the Prophets and above the martyrs in rank: ‘Whoever obeys God and the Messenger will be among those He has blessed: the Prophets, the ṣiddīqūn, the martyrs, and the righteous’ (Q 4:69).58 In other places the title is given to some Prophets such as Abraham, Joseph and Idrīs. It is also given to Mary (Q 5:75) who was considered a Prophet by many but a non-Prophet by the majority,59 and it is of course a title or rank that was given by the Prophet Muḥammad to his Companion Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq.60 The word ṣidq, from which ṣiddīq derives, could mean truthfulness or sincerity, and according to the ḥadīth literature the rank of ṣiddīq could be attained by those who possess two complementary qualities of strict truthfulness and firm faith in the truthfulness of the Prophet.61 Two of the earliest known authors on the subject of sainthood were Iraqi contemporaries of Tirmidhī, one a traditionist and the other a Sufi. Ibn Abī al-Dunyā (d. 281/894) was primarily a traditionist who authored a large number of small ḥadīth collections, each on a single topic or theme. One of these was al-Awliyāʾ, which collected the statements of the Prophet

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Muḥammad on the awliyāʾ, followed by stories and statements of early saintly figures.62 Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz (d. 286/899) was a Sufi who wrote more than one work on mysticism, including Kitāb al-kashf wa-l-bayān, which discussed issues such as the superiority of the Prophets over the saints, the difference between the miracles of the Prophets and those of the saints, and whether saints could receive inspiration. His works were much simpler and smaller in size than those of Tirmidhī.63 No contemporary or predecessor of Tirmidhī is known to have discussed this issue as systematically or to the same extent and degree of sophistication.64 Hujwīrī tells us that the works written on the subject prior to Tirmidhī were rare and soon became lost.65 The mystics and the Traditionalists shared beliefs about divinely inspired knowledge. One source of inspired knowledge that they both accepted was the veridical dream which, according to a ḥadīth found in all major ḥadīth collections, constituted a type of prophecy that was granted to non-Prophets and that would continue even after the Prophet Muḥammad’s death. Both the mystics and Traditionalists gave great importance to dreams in Islam, and each of the collections of the Sunni ḥadīth canon contains a considerable chapter on dreams.66 The traditionist Ibn Abī al-Dunyā’s dedicated work on dream visions is full of the dreams of Sufis and mystics, while the Sufis in their work also preserved dreams attributed to earlier scholars of ḥadīth and jurisprudence. Although the Sufis of Basra and Baghdad often traced their intellectual and spiritual lineage back to al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, the latter had a younger contemporary called Ibn Sīrīn (d. 110/729) who also left a great legacy in Basra. While Baṣrī was ultimately more popular, Ibn Sīrīn was more highly respected as a traditionist. Ibn Sīrīn was known for his ability to interpret dreams, and many of his dream interpretations were preserved and collected, together with their chain of transmission, by a Sufi called al-Khargūshī (d. 406–7/1015–16), whose work is now erroneously attributed to Ibn Sīrīn himself. Khargūshī was not only a major Sufi figure, but also counted among his disciples al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, the first to author a work on ḥadīth science and the author of the Mustadrak, one of the most important Sunni ḥadīth collections after the ‘canonical six’. The traditionists also narrated a ḥadīth about an even higher and more authoritative type of inspired knowledge, even though its exact nature was not very clear. This type of knowledge was also known as ‘ḥadīth’, but here

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sufis and traditionalism  | 53 meaning ‘divine address’ rather than the teachings of the Prophet. According to the ḥadīth report in question, there existed pious people who could be addressed by God, even though they were not Prophets, who were known as ‘muḥaddathūn’ (those who are spoken to).67 The belief in such types of inspired knowledge is a major, but not the only factor in the mystics’ shunning of Rationalist schools and their preference for tradition-based (in other words, revelation-based) schools. Mystical critiques of rationalist inquiry appeared very early in Islam. The early Medinan scholar Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. 114/733) and his son Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765) held that only an inspired muḥaddath could be counted as a true faqīh.68 Ṣādiq (d. 148/765) interrogated Abū Ḥanīfa about his use of qiyās and also critiqued rational reasoning from a mystical point of view, showing the superiority of spiritual insight over rational reasoning, as we will see at the end of this chapter.69 The Mystics and the Schools One day in third/ninth-century Baghdad, Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī was teaching one of his regular classes. At that specific time, Dāwūd was the greatest jurist in all of Baghdad, and his classes attracted thousands of students, including hundreds of the city’s distinguished nobility. Baghdad itself was at the time the greatest centre of knowledge in the greatest empire in the world. A Sufi by the name of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sharīṭī (or al-Shurayṭī), dressed in two Sufi cloaks, arrived from Basra, where he had learned from the students of ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Zayd. Abū Yaʿqūb went up to Dāwūd and sat himself beside him, as if he also wanted to teach. Dāwūd was rightly offended and upset by this inappropriate act and attempted to put the man in his place. ‘Ask what you wish, young man’, said Dāwūd to him, implying that he could have only come up close to learn from Dāwūd. But the defiant Sufi invited Dāwūd to ask him a question instead. ‘And what shall I ask you about,’ said Dāwūd, now visibly more upset, ‘wet cupping (ḥijāma)?’ This was another attempt by Dāwūd to imply that this mystic in woollen clothing should not presume to be able to teach ḥadīth or jurisprudence but might know something about traditional healing practices. Abū Yaʿqūb responded by reciting with his own chains of narration the most contentious ḥadīth reports about wet cupping and explained the disagreements regarding their chains of narrations and their authenticity. He then spoke of which jurists acted upon each

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ḥadīth and which jurists rejected it or claimed that it was abrogated. He then narrated the most important ḥadīth reports about wet cupping in order of authenticity. He discussed the weak ḥadīth narrations claiming that wet cupping was better on specific days and less effective on others, and what medical doctors said regarding that practice. After fully displaying his mastery of ḥadīth sciences and fiqh, Abū Yaʿqūb continued to show his deep knowledge of medicine by speaking of what the doctors had said about the benefits and applications of wet cupping, before concluding that wet cupping originated in Isfahan (Dāwūd’s place of origin). Dāwūd was thoroughly impressed by the knowledge of this Sufi and said: ‘I will never look down upon another man again!’70 Abū Yaʿqūb’s brazen behaviour in sitting himself beside Dāwūd and effectively challenging him in his own gathering is perhaps an extreme example of how the different schools of jurisprudence, theology and mysticism were competing for prominence in the eyes and hearts of the Muslims at that very time in which they were beginning to form and see themselves as separate groups. Although there already existed an established Sufi circle in Baghdad – established, in fact, by Dāwūd’s ‘schoolmate’ al-Junayd (both having studied together with Abū Thawr) – Abū Yaʿqūb surely knew the fastest way to draw the attention of the Baghdadis to himself and to ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Zayd’s Basran school of mysticism. In that crucial formative century, each school of thought was claiming superiority over the others and authoritativeness of their knowledge and practice. That is why al-Qushayrī (d. ca 465/1072), in the conclusion to al-Risāla, his classic introduction to Sufism, warned that it did not befit the Sufi to adhere to any legal schools, stating that Sufis rose above both the Traditionalists and the Rationalists. The Sufis had spiritual insight and certainty; therefore, they could plainly see what was hidden from the jurists who had to search for it by way of either traditions (naql and athar) or rational thought (ʿaql and fikr). As for the seeker who had not yet attained such a level of insight, he was counselled to ask scholars without attachment to any school.71 The Sufis needed to assert their independence and the self-sufficiency and superiority of their method. However, we have seen above how the Sufis were closer to the Traditionalist camp than they were to the Rationalists, and the following section will give an overview of the close connections formed between the early Sufis and mystics, on one hand, and the Traditionalist schools, on the other.

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sufis and traditionalism  | 55 Abū al-Najīb al-Suhrawardī (d. 563/1168) was a pivotal Sufi of the sixth/ twelfth century. He lived at the cusp of Sufism’s great institutionalisation and popularisation through the medium of Sufi tarīqas, a process in which his nephew and disciple ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234) would play an instrumental role. Writing about the Sufis, past and present, as Sufism’s formative period was coming to an end, he said: ‘[The Sufis] chose from amongst the madhhabs that of the Traditionist-Jurisprudents (fuqahāʾ asḥāb al-ḥadīth), which represents the way of the earliest generations of Muslims (al-salaf   )’.72 This was of course a madhhab of no-madhhab, a school that represented a particular approach in which no ultimate authority was invested in anyone but God and His Messenger, a school through which the Sufis retained their claim to self-sufficiency and superiority. Writing around the same time (between 574/1178 and 588/1192), Ibn Munawwar made a similar claim in his biography of his famous ancestor Abū Saʿīd ibn Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049). Ibn Munawwar claimed that not only Abū Saʿīd but all Sufi masters since the time of al-Shāfiʿī were from the Ahl al-Ḥadīth and that even those who had belonged to a different school of jurisprudence became members of the Ahl al-Ḥadīth movement after attaining sainthood.73 What follows will be a brief survey of the attitude of some of the major mystics from Sufism’s formative period to the schools of jurisprudence, which will help us understand where the claims of these two sixth/twelfth-century Sufi authors came from and the extent of their accuracy. The first Sufis of Basra and Baghdad ‘clearly formed an intellectual elite who were highly literate and learned in the Qurʾān, the ḥadīth, and much else besides’.74 It was because they denied the use of human reason in the attempt to attain knowledge of God that they were often sceptical, if not dismissive, of rational and philosophical approaches to jurisprudence and theology.75 As Laury Silvers put it, Sufism developed in an ‘Ahl al-Hadith culture’ that united a ‘myriad of interpretive communities’ who shared the ‘interpretive conviction that the chief source of religious authority was the Qurʾān and the sunna of the Prophet [. . .] While these communities shared a common culture of authority, they could disagree on nearly everything else, including the methodological frameworks they used to establish authoritative interpretations’.76 What distinguished the Sufis was their ‘appeal to the authority of direct knowledge from God as a source of knowledge complementary to the

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Qurʾān and Hadith’. They did not deny transmitted knowledge but held that their ‘direct knowledge affirms transmitted knowledge and offers insight into it that is unavailable to exoteric scholars’.77 We have seen that the Baghdadi school of Sufism had its origins in Basra, among the followers of Abū Ḥātim al-ʿAṭṭār. Abū Ḥātim and his students were known as the ‘Sufis of the Mosque’ – that is, the Mosque of Basra – where they taught. They were described as strict followers of the sunna and ḥadīth (ahl al-sunna wa-l-ḥadīth), who ‘ordered what is good and forbade what is evil’, and who had great weight and prestige in the city. They were the teachers of some of the founding figures of Baghdadi Sufism.78 Among those ‘Sufis of the Mosque [of Basra]’ was the known traditionist Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim (d. 287/900), believed to have authored nearly three-hundred works, mostly in ḥadīth, including one of the largest ḥadīth collections. He was known to be a ‘ẓāhirī’ jurist who rejected qiyās. Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim’s ẓāhirism, however, did not necessitate loyalty to his contemporary Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī, and he authored a work on establishing the authenticity of forty ḥadīths which Dāwūd had claimed were not authentic.79 Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, then, like his contemporary al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, is a prominent example of those early textualist and anti-qiyās jurists and Sufis who were not associated with the Dāwūdī school (as some called it at the time). The Ẓāhirī-Dāwūdī school eventually attracted most textualist and anti-qiyās scholars into its fold and created a fully developed formal methodology. In Baghdad, where Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī taught, there seems to have been a circle of Sufis closely connected to the Ẓāhirīs, which also traces its roots to Basran teachers.80 Among them was al-Junayd al-Baghdādī (d. 298/910), a student of Abū Thawr (d. 240/855).81 Abū Thawr had been a Rationalist until he met al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) and became one of his students. He later founded his own Traditionalist school.82 Dāwūd was also one of the closest students of Abū Thawr and narrated from al-Junayd,83 which indicates that they may have been colleagues under Abū Thawr. Among Dāwūd’s students was Ruwaym ibn Aḥmad (d. 303/915–16), a wealthy judge from Baghdad and one of the leading Sufi figures of his age. He was also a close friend of al-Junayd.84 Ruwaym was remembered as one of the most distinguished early Ẓāhirī scholars, and there is an indication that he authored on the subject tracts that were available in al-Andalus a century and a half after his death.85

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sufis and traditionalism  | 57 The Ẓāhirī Abū Saʿīd ibn al-Aʿrābī (d. 340/951 or 341/952) was a student of al-Junayd, and in his age he was highly regarded as both Sufi master and scholar of ḥadīth.86 The highly influential and extensively travelled Ibn Khafīf al-Shīrāzī (d. 371/982) had close links to the Ẓāhirī tradition of his main teacher Ruwaym.87 Dāwūd’s son who succeeded him as leader of the Ẓāhirīs was inseparable from his childhood friend Ibn Sumnūn al-Ṣūfī (‘the Sufi’).88 These early Sufis of Basra and Baghdad often made alliances with the Traditionalists against shared opponents. Abū Ḥātim al-ʿAttār and the ‘Sufis of the Mosque (of Basra)’ used to speak out against Muʿtazilite factions that claimed to be followers of Abū Ḥanīfa.89 During the Miḥna Inquisition (218–33/833–47) initiated by the Abbasid Caliph al-Maʿmūn at the behest of the Muʿtazilites, Ibn Ḥanbal and al-Shāfiʿī’s student al-Buwayṭī found themselves in the same prison as the early Basran mystic Aḥmad ibn Ghassān (d. ca 230/845), the teacher of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sharīṭī, the Sufi who had sat himself next to Dāwūd. They were both impressed by his demeanour and speech.90 Ibn Ḥanbal’s close student Abū Bakr al-Marrūdhī (d. 275/888) went to visit Dhu l-Nūn in prison, and Dhu l-Nūn, who was senior in age to Ibn Ḥanbal, asked him: ‘How is our chief [Ibn Ḥanbal] doing?’91 The Ḥanbalī Sufi Ibn ʿAṭāʾ (d. 309/921–22) led a Ḥanbalī social protest movement against the ‘fiscal monopolists and dishonest public officials who were responsible for famines’, chief among them the Abbasid vizier Ḥāmid. Ḥāmid ordered the execution of both Ibn ʿAṭā’ and the mystic al-Ḥallāj (d. 309/922) for their involvement in this movement, nine days apart from each other.92 Another incident involved the popular preacher Ghulām Khalīl (d. 275/888), who riled up the people of Baghdad against the Sufis, leading to the Sufi Inquisition of 264/877–78. Ghulām Khalīl was despised by a number of prominent ḥadīth scholars who accused him of prolific ḥadīth fabrication, including Abū Dāwūd who described him as a ‘the charlatan (dajjāl) of Baghdad’.93 The trial of the Sufis was headed by the chief Mālikī judge of Baghdad Ismāʿīl ibn Isḥāq (d. 282/896) who put several Sufis in prison and forced others to hide or flee the city. This is the same judge who also exiled Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī from Baghdad for his rejection of qiyās.94 Outside this circle of Sufis from Baghdad we find Yaḥyā ibn Muʿādh al-Rāzī (d. 258/871) who accused the jurists of following madhhabs that deviated from the ‘Muḥammadan way’.95 He also criticised legal devices

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that jurists used for evading clear injunctions (ḥiyal), most often associated with the Ḥanafī school. This is something which Tirmidhī himself criticised in more than one work.96 Tustarī’s followers, the Sālimiyya, would become one of the earliest known schools of mysticism in Islam. The late Ḥanbalī author Ibn Taymiyya saw the Sālimiyya as ‘followers of two great imāms of the sunna: Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal and Sahl ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Tustarī’,97 while the early Ḥanbalī leader Abū Muḥammad al-Barbahārī (d. 329/941) had in turn spent some time as a disciple of Tustarī.98 In Isfahan, the mystics ‘were closely associated with traditionalist and pietist Ḥanbalīs and Ẓāhirīs, while the “rationalist” Muʿtazilīs were aligned with Zaydis against traditionalists, Sufis and renunciants’.99 There were sometimes close relationships of discipleship or friendship between the most prominent Sufis and mystics such as Tustarī, Sulamī and Khargūshī, with some of the most distinguished collectors and critics of ḥadīth such as Abū Dāwūd, the famed ḥadīth critic al-Dāraquṭnī (d. 385/995), al-Ḥākim, al-Bayhaqī (d. 458/1066) and Abū Saʿīd al-Khashshāb (d. 456/1064).100 With regard to later prominent authors on Sufism, Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj (d. 378/988), whose Kitāb al-lumaʿ may have been the first written introduction to Sufism, placed the Sufis outside the framework of the madhhabs. Sarrāj stated that the Sufis ideally achieved the same learning as the jurists and traditionists, thereby not needing to refer to these groups in knowing the sacred law. However, should any Sufi fall short in his knowledge of the law, then the ‘madhhab of the Sufis’ would be to evaluate the different opinions of the jurists and to choose the ‘better and more fitting’ opinion, which he explained would be the one that was more cautious – that is, the one furthest from what God prohibited and most reverential to what God prescribed.101 This position was mirrored by Abū Bakr al-Kalābādhī (d. ca 380/990) in al-Taʿarruf li-madhhab ahl al-taṣawwuf where he wrote that the Sufis followed ‘the more cautious (aḥwaṭ) and well-established (awthaq) position’ in what jurists disagreed upon.102 By using a word such as ‘well-established’, Kalābādhī may have intended to suggest that the methodology of the Sufis was closer to the ḥadīth-based approach of the Traditionalists in choosing what was more strongly based in traditions. His statement also implied that Sufis had the ability to know which of the different positions held by the jurists were more correct.

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sufis and traditionalism  | 59 Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 386/996) – a follower of the Sālimiyya group of mystics – wrote in Qūt al-qulūb that it was a blameworthy innovation in the religion to study, follow and give verdicts according to the madhhab of a single scholar.103 He referred to qiyās in a negative sense and held that deep study of it was also a blameworthy innovation.104 He held that true fiqh came from certainty and belonged to the ahl al-qulūb, those of illumined hearts.105 Makkī himself was not associated with any one school of law, and his circle of teachers, associates and students shows strong traditionalist leanings and close contact with Ḥanbalī and Shāfiʿī jurists and traditionists.106 He claimed that the Sufis supported the Traditionalists against the Rationalists and that, in theology, they refuted the rationalist theologians through their science of certitude, while, in jurisprudence, they refuted the science of raʾy through their knowledge of the sunna.107 Some Sufi traditionists such as al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī (d. 405/1014) and Abū Nuʿaym (d. 430/1038) implied their rejection of qiyās by incorporating anti-qiyās material in their works. Ḥākim narrates the well-known ḥadīth that the Muslim community will split into more than seventy sects, with the addition that the biggest of these sects will be a group which uses qiyās, thus turning the permissible into impermissible and vice versa.108 In Abū Nuʿaym’s Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq’s statement that Satan was the first to use qiyās is elevated to a Prophetic ḥadīth that Ṣadīq is simply quoting!109 Furthermore, as Karamustafa notes, Abū Nuʿaym’s biographical compendium of the saints includes ‘all the foundational figures of fiqh [. . .] but not the “rationalising” Abū Ḥanīfa!’110 Concluding the formative period of Sufism, al-Hujwīrī (d. ca 465/1072), the author of the early Persian manual on Sufism Kashf al-Maḥjūb, may have been the first to include Abū Ḥanīfa in his list of the eminent ‘imāms of the Sufis’, along with al-Shāfiʿī and Ibn Ḥanbal. The Persian Hujwīrī, who settled in the Ḥanafī-dominated Indian Subcontinent – his tomb is in Lahore, modern-day Pakistan – referred to Abū Ḥanīfa as the ‘imām of the imāms and the exemplar of the Sunnis [. . .] and a great authority on the principles of Sufism’.111 This may not only be a product of Hujwīrī’s Ḥanafī environment, but also an outcome of the rapprochement that was taking place between the madhhabs. This also fit into the effort of biographers such as Hujwīrī to present a unified image of Sufism that incorporated all the different mystical schools which had been at variance with each other, along with the imāms of

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the schools of jurisprudence, in a way that would solidify Sufism as an integral part of Islam and as the name for Islam’s mystical dimension. This survey confirms the close association that Ibn Munawwar and Suhrawardī made between the most prominent early Sufis and the Traditionalists, including the Traditionist-Jurisprudents in particular. It would not be fully accurate to claim, as Suhrawardī did, that all Sufis chose the madhhab of the Traditionist-Jurisprudents, but his words do capture to a large extent the close relations between the two and the fact that many Sufis did indeed choose their way. What Suhrawardī most likely meant was that the Sufis were mostly Traditionalists and that they prioritised the implementation of authentic ḥadīth over allegiance to any particular school. Not long after Suhrawardī wrote those words, the Traditionist-Jurisprudent school would die out in the Eastern lands of Islam; yet, as we will later see, their method would survive among a number of prominent mystics and Sufis in Andalusia. Although many early Sufis and mystics rejected rationalism in legal and theological disciplines, none beside Tirmidhī are known to have written a detailed critique of analogical reasoning or other rational methods used by the jurists. However, a brief criticism attributed to the early Medinan jurist and mystic Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq bears resemblance to the later and more sophisticated arguments put forth by Tirmidhī. Ṣādiq claimed that the first to use qiyās was Iblīs (Satan) when he compared himself to Adam and said: ‘I am better than him: You created me from fire and him from clay’ (Q 7:12). This statement would be repeated after him by Dāwūd and Tirmidhī. It should be noted here that the word qiyās literally means comparison or measurement. Ṣādiq argued that Iblīs’s qiyās was a faulty type of qiyās, claiming that there was a real qiyās, which if Iblīs had known, he would have recognised the superiority of Adam over himself. Iblīs had stopped at the surface and compared his constitutional element of fire with Adam’s mud, but if he had looked deeper beneath the surface and compared the light of Adam with the light of his own fire, he would have seen that Adam’s light was purer and greater than his.112 This is the same type of argument that would be used by Tirmidhī. Tirmidhī argued that Iblīs looked at the mud of Adam, which came from darkness, and found it inferior to his own fire, which was made of light. Iblīs’s mistake was in his failure to look at the origin of mud. He knew that the Earth at one point did not exist, and neither did its origin, water. Had this

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sufis and traditionalism  | 61 occurred to Iblīs, he would not have assumed that mud came from darkness. The reason that Iblīs could go no further to see the true origin of Adam’s mud was that he did not have the spiritual power to penetrate beneath the surface and go all the way back to the origin of things. Only the Prophets and saints had the ability to penetrate through the surface of things and see their origin in the realm of God’s decrees. Tirmidhī also believed that the correct understanding of the sharīʿa, as well as having certain knowledge of its precepts, could only be achieved through divine inspiration and attainment of what he called ‘supreme wisdom’. We will now look in more detail at Tirmidhī’s mystical critique of analogical reasoning in jurisprudence. Notes   1. Ohlander, ‘Early Sufi Rituals’, 53 n1; Melchert, ‘Origins and Early Sufism’, 14.   2. Among those was the Basran Follower, Farqad al-Sabakhī (d. 131/729), who was criticised by some contemporaries for his wool-wearing. Junayd placed him on his chain of Sufi masters linking him back to the Prophet, the first known Sufi silsila. According to Junayd’s disciple Jaʿfar al-Khuldī (d. 348/959), Junayd took the path from his uncle Sarī al-Saqaṭī who took it from Maʿrūf al-Karkhī who took it from Farqad al-Sabakhī who took it from al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī who took it from the Companion Anas ibn Mālik (see Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist, 229). On Farqad being criticised for wearing wool, see Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ, 3:44 (criticism by al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī) and 4:221 (criticism by Ḥammād ibn Abī Sulayman).   3. See Melchert, ‘Basran Origins’, 234–40; Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-islām, 6:461–62.  4. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-islām, 6:461–62; idem, Siyar, 13:284. Their contemporary Transoxanian mystic al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī also records in his autobiography that he was opposed in his land for discoursing on love (al-Tirmidhī, Budū shaʾn, 18).  5. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 12:187.   6. Sviri, ‘Ḥakīm Tirmidhī’, 592–96; Karamustafa, Sufism, 103.   7. Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿarab, 8:175.   8. Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿarab, 8:175–76; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, kitāb al-zuhd wa l-raqāʾiq, ḥadīth Jābir al-ṭawīl.  9. Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, kitāb al-iʿtiṣām bi l-kitāb wa l-Sunna, bāb ma dhakar al-nabī wa ḥadda min ittifāq ahl al-ʿilm . . . ; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, kitāb al-ṭahārah, bāb istiḥbāb iṭālat al-ghurra wa l-taḥjīl fi l-wuḍūʾ. 10. Aourid, Rawāʾu Makka, 145.

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11. See the discussion of the terms shirʿa and minhāj in Ibn Kathīr’s commentary on this verse in his Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿadhīm. 12. Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, kitāb al-wuḍūʾ, bāb faḍl al-wuḍūʾ. 13. Narrated by Mālik through his ‘golden chain’ in al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, kitāb al-ṣalāt, al-nahī ʿan al-busāq fi l-qibla. It was also narrated by al-Bukhārī and Muslim in their Ṣaḥīḥ collections via the Muwaṭṭaʾ. 14. Al-Fayrūzābādī, al-Ṣilātu wa-l-bushar, 5–19. 15. Al-Tirmidhī, Taḥṣīl naẓāʾir al-Qurʾān, 71–73. 16. Weiss, The Search for God’s Law, 3. 17. See Hallaq, ‘What is Sharīʿa?’ 151–80. 18. Geoffroy, Introduction to Sufism, 36. 19. Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, kitāb al-īmān, bāb man istabraʾa li-dīnihī. 20. Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, kitāb al-birr wa l-ṣila wa l-ādāb, bāb tafsīr al-birr wa l-ʾithm. 21. Ibn Abī Shaybah, al-Kitāb al-Muṣannaf, 7:186 (no 35188). 22. Al-Jawharī, Musnad al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, 87–88. 23. ʿAl-Ghumārī, Bayān ghurbat al-Islām, 46–49. 24. Titled Tanzīh al-ṣiddīq ʿan waṣf al-ẓindīq, four manuscripts of which exist in the Ẓāhiriyya Library in Damascus. 25. Bayḍāwī, Anwār al-tanzīl, commentary on Q 2:151. 26. Sviri, ‘Ḥakīm Tirmidhī’, 592–96. 27. Karamustafa, Sufism, 51. 28. In Tirmidhī’s Jawāb kitāb min al-rayy, he responded to someone who complained to him of losing his prior spiritual station after taking someone as a spiritual guide. Tirmidhī replied: ‘This is what happens when one seeks the Creator by means of the created. A true seeker on the path seeks his Lord by means of Him, not by means of other than Him’. See Radtke, Drei Schriften, 172 (from the Arabic text of Tirmidhī’s Jawāb kitāb min al-rayy); Sviri, ‘Ḥakīm Tirmidhī’, 610. Sufis sometimes accepted guidance without a living shaykh, but usually substituted this with guidance from the spirit of a deceased shaykh or Prophet. Sufis rarely allowed for direct guidance from God alone, with the notable exception of the majdhūbs, those who were ‘pulled to God (in one instant)’ but who were portrayed as unstable people not to be taken as exemplars or guides. 29. Ovamir Anjum refers to Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim’s school as ‘Sufism without mysticism’, which is certainly one correct way to describe their method, based on a wider understanding of Sufism, and a more specific definition of mysticism (Anjum, ‘Sufism Without Mysticism?’ 161–88). Yet, if one were to accept a wider definition of mysticism as the belief in experiential knowledge of

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sufis and traditionalism  | 63 God and a narrower definition of Sufism, one could also correctly identify their school as ‘mysticism without Sufism’, in the sense that they did not follow the mainstream teachings of Sufism, even though they may have respected the early exemplars of Sufism and adopted some Sufi concepts and terminology. 30. See the examples of Ḥanbalī, Shāfiʿī, Mālikī and Ḥanafī Sufis of Baghdad in Karamustafa, Sufism, 22. 31. Abū Yaʿlā, Ṭabaqāt, 1:382. 32. I have taken the expression ‘cosmic justice machine’ from Khalid Blankinship. He wrote that the Muʿtazilite view of God presented God ‘as a kind of cosmic justice machine, rather than a free and conscious being. In other words, Mu’tazilism tended to lean towards portraying God as a dharmic force, rather than the personal deity most Muslims conceived Him to be’ (Blankinship, ‘The Early Creed’, 50). 33. This includes ḥadīths such as that of the abdāl, which will be discussed below, as well as ḥadīths in more authoritative sources such as Bukhārī and Muslims about victory in battle being granted to the Muslims on account of the ‘meek’, which Bukhārī explained to mean the pious in his ‘Section: Those who seek support in battle from the meek and the righteous (ṣāliḥīn)’; and the ḥadīth of victory being granted in battle for the sake of one person who had been the Prophet’s Companion, or, in the next generation, a Companion of the Companion, and so on for generations. 34. We will see examples of this when studying Tirmidhī’s criticism of qiyās. 35. See Karamustafa, Sufism, 97. 36. The same is true of the Ẓāhirīs: their theological doctrine is somewhere between the Ashʿarī and Muʿtazilī schools. 37. Karamustafa, Sufism, 90. 38. Ibn Taymiyya, al-Furqān, 9. See Chodkiewicz, Seal, 21–25, for an excellent discussion on this term. 39. Ibn Ḥanbal, al-Musnad, 2:231. 40. al-Tirmidhī, Nawādir al-uṣul, 1:262 (under aṣl, 51); al-Kalābādhī, Baḥr al-fawāʾid, 1:138. 41. Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb, 11:198. 42. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-islām, 5:1013. 43. Al-Bukhārī, al-Tārīkh, 7:127. 44. Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, Kitāb al-kharāj wa l-imāra wa l-fayʾ, bāb fī bayān mawāḍiʿ qasm al-khumus. 45. Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb, 10:95. 46. Ibn Mājah, Sunan, kitāb al-aṭʿimah, bāb khubz al-shaʿīr.

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47. Ibn Abī Ḥātim, al-Jarḥ, 6:39; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb, 6:276. 48. Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb, 7:253. 49. Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-Bārī, 1:484; this quote by Bukhārī is also preserved in some manuscripts of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī as a comment made after one ḥadīth and appears in the picture of a manuscript in Joel Blecher’s Said the Prophet of God, 6, Figure 1. On Ibn Munīr being counted among the abdāl, see al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 12:316–17. 50. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 12:317. 51. Abū Yaʿlā, Ṭabaqāt, 1:382. 52. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-islām, 5:1013. 53. On Qaʿnabi being counted among the Abdāl, see al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 10:262. 54. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 10:264; Ibn Ḥazm, Mulakhkhaṣ Ibṭāl al-qiyās, 88. 55. Al-Qushayrī, al-Risāla, 49. 56. For Ibn ʿArabī’s conception of the awtād, see Chodkiewicz, Seal, 89–102. 57. Ibn Ḥanbal, al-Musnad, 15:248. 58. On these four ranks, see Ibn al-Qayyim, Miftāḥ, 80. 59. Among those who considered Mary to be a Prophet (and allowed that women could be Prophets) were al-Ashʿarī, Ibn ʿArabī, Ibn Ḥazm, Bukhārī and his commentator Ibn Ḥajar, and many Andalusians such as Qurṭubī. 60. See Ibn al-Qayyim, Miftāḥ, 80. 61. In a canonical tradition, the Prophet states that those who are very careful to speak only the truth will be granted this appellation in the sight of God (Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 4:2013). Abū Bakr was given his title for immediately believing in the Prophet’s account of his night journey and ascension (Lings, Muḥammad, 103). 62. Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, al-Awliyāʾ, 9–49. 63. Radtke, ‘Wilāya’, 483–86. 64. Radtke, ‘Wilāya’, 48; McGregor, Sanctity, 9. 65. Al-Hujwīrī, Kashf, 212. 66. Except for the Sunan al-Nasāʾī, which is an abridgement of the original larger work, which did include such a chapter on dreams. Nasāʾī removed several nonfiqh-related chapters for his abridgement. 67. For a detailed discussion of this idea and how Tirmidhī and Ibn ʿArabī developed it, see Dajani, ‘Ibn ʿArabī’s Conception of Ijtihād’, 11–36, 61–76. 68. Al-Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, 1:102, 1:161–62; Kohlberg, ‘Muḥaddath’, 44. 69. Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya, 3:197. 70. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād, 16:588. 71. Al-Qushayrī, al-Risāla, 2: 571–73. 72. Al-Suhrawardī, Ādāb al-murīdīn, 26.

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sufis and traditionalism  | 65 73. Madelung, Religious Trends, 46. Ibn Munawwar used the label ‘Shāfiʿīs’ rather than ‘ahl al-ḥadīth’, as this was the name given in Khorasan and Central Asia at the time to the Ahl al-Ḥadīth movement (See Madelung, Religious Trends, 26–27). The conflict between the Ahl al-Ḥadīth and Ahl al-Raʾy was presented as that of the ‘Shāfiʿīs versus Ḥanafīs’. We should not misunderstand Ibn Munawwar and assume that he was talking about the Shāfiʿī madhhab, which in fact took a strongly rationalist turn and was based on taqlīd. A number of contemporary scholars have classified the traditionist-jurisprudents of Khorasan as a distinct Khorasani school of Shāfiʿīs who were ‘only loosely Shāfiʿī in jurisprudence’ (Melchert, Formation, 98; see also Madelung, Religious Trends, 26–27), but they referred to themselves as ‘ahl al-ḥadīth’. As one scholar noted, figures from this movement were often ‘barely distinguishable from the followers of Ibn Ḥanbal’; some of them would later be claimed by both the Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī schools and also classified as independent mujtahids by others (see Bin Ramli, ‘Early Sufism’, 28–29). It was also simply not true at all to claim that the Sufis followed the Shāfiʿī school, and hardly any major figures were known to be adherents of that school. 74. Karamustafa, Sufism, 21. Cf. Melchert, ‘Early Renunciants’, 407–18. 75. Karamustafa, Sufism, 21. 76. Silvers, Soaring Minaret, 2. 77. Silvers, Soaring Minaret, 6–7. 78. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh, 6:461; Melchert, ‘Basran Origins’, 234–40. 79. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 13:430–31, 437. 80. Osman, ‘History and Doctrine’, 30. 81. Karamustafa, Sufism, 21. 82. Melchert, Formation, 72; Osman, History, 32. The school of Abū Thawr shares many positions with his teacher al-Shāfiʿī’s ‘old’ Baghdadi madhhab and with his student Dāwūd’s Ẓāhirī madhhab; it may represent a midway point between the two. 83. Osman, ‘History and Doctrine’, 30–31. 84. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 14:235–36, al-Hujwīrī, Kashf, 136. 85. In his treatise on the virtues of al-Andalus, the great Ẓāhirī Ibn Ḥazm mentioned Ruwaym as one of the greatest scholars of the Muslim East when attempting to show that al-Andalus produced scholars of equal calibre (see Osman, History, 96). Based on this, Adang believed that his works must have been available to Ibn Ḥazm (see Adang, ‘Beginnings’, 123). 86. Karamustafa, Sufism, 73; Osman, History, 61. Al-Qushayrī wrote a very brief entry on him in al-Risāla, 1:132.

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 87. Karamustafa, Sufism, 57.   88. Ibn al-Najjār, Dhayl Tārīkh Baghdād, 2:8.  89. Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh, 6:461.  90. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 9:408. Aḥmad ibn Ghassān was a student of ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Zayd. Ibn Zayd’s students were the first to establish centres dedicated to spiritual seekers, and Aḥmad ibn Ghassān was one of those who did so. Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sharīṭī, also a Basran, narrated the pattern-chain (musalsal) ‘Ḥadīth of Asking about Sincerity’ from Ibn Ghassān, in a chain that went back through ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Zayd and then al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. It is quoted in Qushayrī’s Risāla and other major Sufi works.  91. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 11:195.  92. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 14: 256–57; Massignon, Ḥallāj, 48–50. Ḥallāj had close connections to the Iraqi Ḥanbalīs during the social unrest leading to his death. Ḥallāj had for some time associated with the Sufis of Baghdad, but he broke away from his teachers and travelled to Khurasān, Transoxania and India. Whether he could still be counted as a representative of Sufis is highly questionable (see Karamustafa, Sufism, 25–26, 57).  93. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 13:173.  94. Melchert, Formation, 172. An eleventh-century story containing fanciful elements typical of late Sufi works states the Qadi Ismāʿīl was so impressed by Nūrī during his questioning that he proclaimed: ‘If these people are heretics, then there are no monotheists left on Earth!’ (al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 14:71). However, a tenth-century report by the Sufi biographer Ibn al-ʿArābī states that Nūrī was forced to flee to Raqqa, while many of the Sufis either fled or were imprisoned (al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 13:283). As Melchert noted, ‘there should have been no need to flee, then stay away for fourteen years, had the Qadi pardoned him. In other words, it is more probable that Ismail prosecuted the Inquisition with all the rigour he could muster’ (Melchert, Formation, 172).  95. Goldziher, Ẓāhirīs, 165.   96. On Tirmidhī’s attacks on ḥiyal, see Baraka, al-Ḥakīm, 1:98–99.   97. Ibn Taymiyya, Sharḥ ḥadīth al-nuzūl, 118.  98. Böwering, Mystical Vision, 82.  99. Karamustafa, Sufism, 58. 100. See Dajani, ‘Sufi Contributions to Ḥadīth Commentary’ (forthcoming). 101. Al-Sarrāj, al-Lumaʿ, 28. 102. Al-Kalābādhī, al-Taʿarruf, 57. 103. Al-Makkī, Qūt al-qulūb, 325, 327. 104. Al-Makkī, Qūt al-qulūb, 335, 353.

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sufis and traditionalism  | 67 105. See Bin Ramli, ‘Early Sufism’, 139; al-Makkī, Qūt al-qulūb, 244. 106. See Bin Ramli, ‘Early Sufism’, 27–42. 107. Al-Makkī, Qūt al-qulūb, 353–54. 108. Al-Ḥākim, al-Mustadrak, kitāb al-fitan wa-l-malāḥim. 109. Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilya, 3:196. Abū Nuʿaym provides two chains to this story and the ḥadīth quoted within it, both of which contain unknown figures and one of which includes someone rejected as a liar by all major Ḥadīth critics. A Ẓāhirī known as Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Manṣūrī narrates the statement attributed to the Prophet through a third chain that does not pass through al-Ṣādiq or mention the story of his meeting with Abū Ḥanīfa. His chain passes through ʿAbd al-Razzāq, from Maʿmar, from al-Zuhrī, after which it joins the other chains at ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn. Dhahabī accuses al-Manṣūrī of fabricating this chain to support the Ẓāhirī madhhab (al-Dhahabī, Mīzān, 1:132–33, 144). 110. Karamustafa, Sufism, 90. Abū Nuʿaym’s Ḥilya quotes a number of condemnations of Abū Ḥanīfa by Mālik, Thawrī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī and the traditionist Ḥammād ibn Zayd, in their respective entries. Ibn Ḥanbal also appears as a critic through his role as the main transmitter of Mālik’s criticisms. Ibn Mahdī was Mālik’s most important successor as a Traditionalist imām in the eyes of al-Shāfiʿī and Ibn Ḥanbal. Ḥammād ibn Zayd was Mālik’s contemporary and also a teacher of Ibn Mahdī. However, Abū Nuʿaym also compiled a collection of the ḥadīths that Abū Ḥanīfa narrated, which begins with quotations in praise of him. It is possible that these two works reflect different stages in Abū Nuʿaym’s thought, or he himself may have been neutral or suspended judgement on Abū Ḥanīfa. The Musnad al-imām Abū Ḥanīfa survives in only one manuscript and has been published in 1994 in Riyadh by Maktabat al-Kawthar. 111. Al-Hujwīrī, Kashf, 92. 112. Ṣādiq’s rejection of analogical reasoning and his statement that Iblīs was the first to use it are well attested in Shīʿī sources (see Gleave, ‘Refutations’, 267– 68). Early Shīʿa thought therefore rejected qiyās and the concept of ijtihād as a whole and was predicated instead on the guidance of inspired interpreters of the Qurʾān. After their line of imāms suddenly came to an end, they had to turn to elaborate a system of ijtihād, although this was not universally accepted. See Madelung, ‘Authority in Twelver Shiism’, 163–68.

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3 Al-Tirmidh ī ’s Critique of Rationalism

A Brief Sketch of Tirmidhī’s Life and Intellectual Upbringing

A

bū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī, known as al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, was born between 205/820 and 215/830 in Tirmidh, present-day Uzbekistan, where he also died around 298/910.1 He therefore lived a long life that covered most of the third Islamic century. Tirmidhī composed works in most Islamic disciplines, such as Qurʾānic exegesis, ḥadīth, Sufism, jurisprudence, theology and the Arabic language. Many of his works fused several of these disciplines together in a unique and innovative manner, making them difficult to classify. His greatest legacy is in the field of Sufism, as he is remembered mostly as a Sufi, but he is also counted among the well-known traditionists because of his ḥadīth collection and commentary Nawādir al-uṣūl. Al-Munāwī (d. 1031/1621), the Ottoman-era Sufi biographer and traditionist, said of him: ‘He was distinguished among the Sufis by the amount of his narrations and the shortness of his chains of narration’.2 Tirmidhī was without doubt one of the most influential early figures of Sufism, his influence coming mostly through his writings which were very popular. He was ‘by far the most prolific author during the whole period of classical Islamic mysticism’.3 The early Sufi biographer Hujwīrī described the wide circulation of Tirmidhī’s writings among scholars and theologians in the fifth/eleventh century.4 The great popularity of Tirmidhī’s works until this day and their large distribution in the libraries and publishing 68

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 69 houses of the Muslim world gives evidence of his lasting influence on Sufi thought.5 It is difficult to create a clear chronology of Tirmidhī’s life and education. We know that he began his studies at the age of eight, learning ḥadīth and Ḥanafī jurisprudence under the direction of a shaykh.6 He dedicated himself wholly to these two fields of learning until the age of twenty-seven.7 Tirmidhī also studied traditions at the hands of both his parents and narrated from them as well as from other scholars from his hometown. Sometime before the year 230/844, when he was still under the age of twenty-five, Tirmidhī began his travels for the acquisition of traditions. He travelled to Balkh in present-day Afghanistan where he took from three great traditionists, including the most illustrious of his teachers, the traditionist and jurist Qutayba ibn Saʿīd al-Thaqafī al-Balkhī (d. 240/854). Qutayba was a student of Mālik ibn Anas, al-Layth ibn Saʿd and Sufyān ibn ʿUyayna, among others, and taught the likes of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Bukhāri, Muslim, Abū Dāwūd and Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī. In Balkh, Tirmidhī also met the great Sufi of the age, Abū Turāb al-Nakhshabī. Tirmidhī accompanied two famous Sufis who were close companions of Nakhshabī, Aḥmad ibn Khaḍrawayh and Yaḥyā al-Jallāʾ, to Iraq where he met more Sufis and more traditionists.8 The latter, Yaḥyā, was called al-Jallāʾ, ‘the polisher’, because his exhortations used to polish clean the hearts of his listeners. At the age of twenty-eight, Tirmidhī performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, and there he had a spiritual experience or vision that changed his life. Tirmidhī decided to dedicate himself first and foremost to the spiritual path, dedicating his time to the memorisation of the Qurʾān and spending his nights in prayer. Tirmidhī was on the course to becoming a Sufi first and a traditionist second, rather than the other way around. That is, the spiritual path now became his first and foremost concern. He seems to have joined a group of young mystics who, like himself, were attempting to purify their souls, and he found a Sufi treatise whose advice and instruction he followed. Ultimately, however, he did not find the guidance he was looking for with any groups or shaykhs and attributed his guidance to God directly. Tirmidhī soon became a teacher with a circle of followers and gained fame in his hometown. Rival scholars aroused public opinion and the governor of Balkh against him, but the persecution ended, likely with the change of

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governor, and Tirmidhī stated that he emerged even more popular after that.9 The Sufi biographer and traditionist Sulamī recorded that Tirmidhī was persecuted a second time toward the very end of his life, and this time exiled from the city because of his two works Khatm al-awliyāʾ and ʿIlal al-sharīʿa. In this final persecution, Tirmidhī left to the city of Balkh where he was received and accepted because its people agreed with his views; there, he was to acquire a large following.10 The presence of his tomb in his hometown of Tirmidh indicates that Tirmidhī returned once more sometime before his death, but led some researchers to doubt the story of that second exile altogether.11 Whether Tirmidhī returned to Tirmidh after exile or never left it, he must have died loved and revered by his townsfolk, as Hujwīrī relates in the present tense that he was known in Tirmidh as al-Ḥakīm (the sage) and that he had followers in that region known as the Ḥakīmīs.12 Tirmidhī and Jurisprudence Tirmidhī was born at a time when the anti-rationalist movement was on the rise, and most of the third/ninth century in which he lived was dominated by the careers and legal doctrines of Ibn Ḥanbal and Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī.13 Tirmidhī authored a treatise titled On the Two Types: The Rationalists and the Traditionalists, in which he made his allegiance to the Traditionalist school very clear. In his treatise on the two camps, Tirmidhī gave his appraisal of both schools based on the effects that their methods exerted on the state of the human heart. He started by stating that humans needed to hear reminders and exhortations in order to prevent their souls from being occupied, tainted and burdened by people’s desires. The Traditionalists were constantly exposed to such beneficial reminders in their study of the ḥadīth material. Their main preoccupation was in narrating and studying the words of the Prophet about love and fear of God, descriptions of Heaven and Hell and the Day of Judgement, and the virtues of asceticism and piety. They would read about what constitutes beautiful character and hear the stories and examples of the Prophet and other earlier moral exemplars who displayed great humility, self-sacrifice, piety and other virtues. They would furthermore study about the wisdom of the Qurʾān, its exhortations, subtleties and wonders. By being constantly exposed to this, the hearts of the Traditionalists would inevitably become softened and purified, and their egos and souls would be

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 71 subdued, whether that was intended or not. However, none of this is found in the books of the Rationalists such as Abū Ḥanīfa and his followers Abū Yūsuf, al-Shaybānī, Zufar, al-Ḥasan ibn Ziyād al-Luʿluʿī, Yūsuf bin Khālid al-Samtī and Asad ibn al-Furāt.14 Tirmidhī criticised the Rationalists because their books were wholly concerned with jurisprudential matters related to worldly dealings, especially the people’s ‘deceits and treacheries’, and solving disputes between people related to murder, personal injury, theft, financial transactions and the like. Furthermore, the people’s need for their rulings on these issues and the subsequent authority that people invested in them allowed their egos to grow, leading to problems such as pride. This was compounded by these jurists’s envy and greed as they competed for positions of leadership and respect amongst the people. These jurists also often became aides to kings and political leaders and found tricks to allow them to continue in their unjust ways.15 The above-mentioned treatment on the difference between the two camps is, in fact, an expansion of something that Tirmidhī must have heard from his ḥadīth teacher Qutayba ibn Saʿīd. Qutayba was known to often quote similar words from a man he met, called Yūnus ibn Sulaymān al-Saqatī whom he described as a trustworthy narrator but who otherwise is an unknown figure.16 Tirmidhī expanded on those pro-Traditionalist anti-Rationalism words he heard from his teacher and added the example of Abū Ḥanīfa and his followers. This pietistic appraisal of the two camps echoes the sentiment of the early saintly Kufan figure ʿAmr ibn Qays al-Mulāʾī (d. 146/763–64) who said: ‘One ḥadīth that softens my heart and helps me reach my Lord is more beloved to me than fifty of the judgements of Shurayḥ’.17 In saying so, he referred to the judge famous for his brilliant judgements. The focus on how the material that each camp worked with affected their hearts also points to the fact that in truth Tirmidhī ultimately belonged to none of the schools of jurisprudence, but to the early Sufi and mystical groups that aligned themselves, for the most part, with the Traditionalists, yet were not wholly identical to them. Ḥikma: The Spiritual Wisdom behind the Divine Prescriptions Tirmidhī’s nickname al-ḥakīm (the sage) was undoubtedly the result of his constant insistence on the vital importance of ḥikma, or wisdom. What

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he meant by that term was that there was a wisdom behind the injunctions and prescriptions of the sharīʿa which must be understood, especially by the mujtahid. There are very few discussions in legal works linking the concept of wisdom to legal knowledge or practice among early scholars or mystics. However, the two concepts of wisdom (ḥikma) and legal judgement (ḥukm) are intimately connected, as they both come from the same trilateral root ḥ-k-m. The Qurʾānic exegete Ṭabarī even argued that ‘ḥikma’ refers to an instance or act of ḥukm – in the same way that in Arabic jalsa (a sitting) is an instance of julūs (sitting down) – and so wisdom is an act or instance in which truth and falsehood are differentiated. When the Prophet Muḥammad was alive, he was the ultimate Lawgiver. However, he also appointed some of his companions as judges or arbiters (ḥukkām; sing. ḥakam) in faraway lands such as the Yemen. That is why, when the process of ijtihād is mentioned in the early ḥadīth literature, it is linked to the activity of these judges. A prime example can be found in the following: ‘When a judge exercises ijtihād and gives a right judgement, he will have two rewards, but if he errs in his judgement, he will still have earned one reward’.18 These early judges often functioned as arbiters, ‘men deemed to be in possession of experience, wisdom, and charisma [. . .] to whom tribesmen resorted to adjudicate their disputes’.19 Therefore, there is a strong link, both linguistically and contextually, between the concept of wisdom and the legal process. Some early authorities and exegetes explained ḥikma as deep understanding of the religion and its laws.20 For the Qurʿānic authority Jābir ibn Zayd (d. 93/711), a student of Ibn ʿAbbās, it was a super-rational faculty for understanding the religion: ‘ḥikma is something that God places in the heart to give it light through which to see’.21 One connection between the word ḥikma and the law was made by Tirmidhī’s contemporary Ruwaym ibn Aḥmad, the Ẓāhirī Sufi and judge (qādī). Ruwaym suggested that wisdom’s role was in understanding how to apply the law – that is, to know which judgement, or which ḥadīth, to apply in which circumstance.22 One of Tirmidhī’s greatest Transoxanian contemporaries was the Traditionist-Jurisprudent Bukhārī, whose work al-Jāmiʿ al-musnad al-ṣaḥīḥ (also known as Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī) was to become the most authoritative canon of ḥadīth in Sunni Islam. Bukhārī came from the nearby city of Bukhārā, also in modern-day Uzbekistan, and

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 73 he shared with Tirmidhī his rejection of qiyās and the role that they assigned to wisdom in ijtihād. Going further than the above-mentioned authorities who linked wisdom to the pronouncement of legal judgements, Bukhārī seemed to give wisdom a role in the process of ijtihād itself, the very discovery of the law, as Tirmidhī would also do. In the Chapter on Holding Firm to the Book and Sunna in his Ṣaḥīḥ, Bukhārī commented on the acceptability of different tools of ijtihād. Here, Bukhārī included sections on the censure of qiyās (Sections 7 and 8) and on how the Prophet would not make a judgement from his mind or use qiyās but would wait until God showed him the answer (Sections 8 and 9). In Section 13, he came to the question of how judges themselves should rule in lieu of the Prophet. He stated that judges should rule by what God revealed and that the Prophet praised those who possessed wisdom. If they did not know, judges should not attempt to come up with an answer using their own minds, for the Rightly Guided Caliphs used to consult others in search of a prophetic precedent. The above-mentioned ḥadīth that he quoted in this section states: The Messenger of God said: ‘Envy is permitted only in two cases: a man whom God grants wealth and then directs him to spend it in the cause of the ḥaqq (the truth/what is right/the rights of God or His servants), and a man whom God grants wisdom (ḥikma) through which he judges, and which he teaches’.23

Here it is telling that Bukhārī placed wisdom – which he understood to be a divine gift different from rational understanding – as a source of guidance and gave it second place after the Divine Revelation that was given to the Prophet.24 Two of Tirmidhī’s contemporaries were also given the title of ‘ḥakīm’. This led some scholars to believe that the ‘ḥakīm’ was a social type particular to the north-eastern Islamic lands of Khorasan and Transoxania, a title given to persons who possessed spiritual knowledge. All three figures who possessed this title were also learned in jurisprudence, theology, Qurʾānic exegesis and traditions, indicating that the title might have been reserved for people who mastered a host of different religious sciences and combined

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them with spiritual insight.25 One of those was Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar Abū Bakr al-Warrāq al-Ḥakīm (d. 280/893), a student of Tirmidhī. He said, . . . He who thinks theology is enough, without fiqh and zuhd {cutting the heart’s attachment to worldly things] will become a heretic; whoever think that zuhd is enough without theological and jurisprudential learning will commit blameworthy innovations; whoever thinks jurisprudential learning is enough without zuhd and theological learning, will become impious; whoever masters all these is saved.26

A similar statement is found in a work attributed to Tirmidhī himself: The exterior aspect of the religion is rectified by, and built upon, knowledge of the sharīʿa, but its interior is rectified by and raised upon the knowledge of the ḥaqīqa [spiritual reality]. The evidence for that is that the religion is only rectified through real God-consciousness (taqwā), and the Messenger of God said ‘Taqwā is here’ and pointed to his heart. Therefore, he who uses the exterior knowledge as his source of taqwā but denies the interior knowledge is a hypocrite, and he who uses the interior knowledge as his source of taqwā but does not learn the exterior knowledge in order to uphold the sharīʿa and who denies its importance is a heretic, and his interior knowledge is not real knowledge but Satanic whisperings.27

Studies have therefore suggested that there was a tradition in those lands of ahl al-ḥikma (the People of Wisdom) who insisted on combining spirituality with the other Islamic sciences. This was especially true for al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī who had the concept of ḥikma (wisdom) at the core of all his teachings. As we will see in more detail, wisdom to him was a more profound understanding of the Qurʾān, ḥadīth and the law, which is gained through spirituality. Another possibility is that Tirmidhī himself started this tradition. The evidence for this is that Warrāq treated Tirmidhī as his teacher, and whatever is preserved of his teachings is almost identical to those of Tirmidhī.28 As for the third person, Abū l-Qāsim Isḥāq ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥakīm al-Samarqandī (d. 342/953), he was in turn the student of Warrāq.29 Al-Ḥakīm al-Samarqandī appears to have commented on and expanded an earlier work by Tirmidhī, which shows an allegiance and

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 75 dedication to al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī and a continuation of his legacy.30 This lineage may therefore be the backbone of what Hujwīrī referred to as the Ḥakīmī school or tradition that was carried forth by students of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī.31 Yet, Tirmidhī’s older contemporary Bukhārī may be evidence that the Ḥikma tradition preceded Tirmidhī. It is unfortunate that Bukhārī never explained his position in greater detail, and so we cannot conclusively say whether he was part of a Transoxanian tradition of ‘People of Wisdom’ like Tirmidhī and other great mystics from his region. Tirmidhī authored several texts with the aim of illuminating the wisdom behind God’s laws based on his inspired understanding. The most important of these works are the following: 1) Nawādir al-uṣūl. This is Tirmidhī’s most voluminous and best-known work, in which he narrated and used ḥadīth as a starting point for his discussions of a wide range of topics. In this work, Tirmidhī wanted to show that the words of the Prophet point to great spiritual realities and were therefore based on immense wisdom. What Tirmidhī was ultimately doing in this work was to lay out his grand vision of the spiritual realities of God’s created universe, as well as the place of the Prophets and saints in this scheme. He wished to highlight the importance of the heart and of spiritual wisdom. He therefore chose those traditions that he could employ to create such access points to his vast and comprehensive worldview.32 2) Kitāb al-ṣalātu wa maqāṣiduhā. In this work, Tirmidhī explained the wisdom behind the ritual daily prayers and their spiritual function. 3) Kitāb al-ḥajj wa asrāruh. This work is similar to the one above, except that it deals with the rites of pilgrimage. Tirmidhī referred to it in his refutation of analogy in al-Furūq. The surviving manuscript with this name, which is attributed to Tirmidhī, appears to have been commented upon, and expanded, by a later author.33 The manuscript has a core that undeniably consists of the work of al-Ḥakīm Tirmidhī, containing chains of transmission that are very much like those he uses in his other works (starting with the same teachers), as well as multiple passages that bear his unmistakable themes, expressions and style. However, many other passages are clearly not his work, as they use several later Sufi expressions

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that he never used, such as fanāʾ as one example. These passages also include quotations from later Sufi figures that he never quoted in any of his works, many of whom were his contemporaries, whereas Tirmidhī usually limited himself to quoting early pious figures. There is also some fiqh content which is not in his usual style of organisation and bears the style of an author who authored traditional fiqh texts. There also exist several references to the positions of Abū Ḥanīfa and his students, which is again not typical of Tirmidhī. One clue as to its authorship is a passage which begins with ‘Abū l-Qāsim al-Ḥakīm says . . . ’34 This is Abū l-Qāsim al-Ḥakīm al-Samarqandī, the student of Tirmidhī’s own student Warrāq, who was a Ḥanafī judge and theologian. It is therefore most likely that he, or even one of his students, was the author of this expansion on the original work by Tirmidhī. Quotations of the original work begin with ‘Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī/Muḥammad al-Tirmidhī/Abū ʿAbdallāh said . . . ’ These are always followed by ‘May God have mercy on him’, another indication that this was a later commentary. It seems that the later author(s) added a more organised fiqh content, including the Ḥanafī fiqh references, and expanded the Sufi discussions using the language of later Sufism – that is, language that seems to be influenced by Baghdadi Sufism, which by that time would have made felt its influence on Khurāsānian and Transoxanian mysticism. 4) Kitāb al-manhiyyāt. This is a work devoted only to the ḥadīths that deal with prohibitions. In it, Tirmidhī explained more than 800 ḥadīths (most of them spurious) to show that the prohibitions in them are based on truth (ḥaqq), and that they are to prevent the believer from harm on his path to his Lord. He frequently gave the wisdom for these prohibitions. He used the word ‘adab’ or propriety as the reason behind a great deal of the sharīʿa’s teachings and explained that not all prohibitions dealt with sinful or destructive matters. 5) Al-Furūq wa manʿ al-tarāduf. The last, and longest, chapter of this work is dedicated to Tirmidhī’s views on ijtihād and analogy. Here, Tirmidhī explained the difference between wisdom-based ijtihād, on one hand, and the legal analogies employed by most jurists, on the other. He gave detailed examples of faulty analogical reasoning and what he proposed was the true understanding of the jurisprudential matters that he discussed.

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 77 We will look at his arguments in depth below. This is Tirmidhī’s lengthiest treatment of legal theory. 6) Kitāb ithbāt al-ʿilal. In this work, Tirmidhī aimed to show the wisdom behind different rituals in the sharīʿa, covering all the five pillars of Islam as well as other commandments, prohibitions and sunna practices. He began the work by defending the view that everything in the sharīʿa has a purpose, probably a refutation of the Dāwūdī Ẓāhirīs. It is also one of the two works, the other being Khatm al-awliyā’, which are said to have resulted in his persecution and caused him to leave his hometown of Tirmidh. A summary of this book’s introduction will give us a good starting point for discussing his defence of mysticism and his criticism of rationalism in jurisprudence. In his introduction to Kitāb ithbāt al-ʿilal, Tirmidhī gave his arguments in support of the existence of legal causes behind the divine injunctions and built his case for the ability of the People of Wisdom to discover theses causes. Tirmidhī wrote Kitāb ithbāt al-ʿilal in response to a request that he speak on a matter that had divided the people of his time: whether or not there was a cause behind each of God’s commands and prohibitions, and, if these causes did exist, to explain them.35 He began by proving the existence of causes by quoting Qurʾānic verses in which explanations were given for some commandments in the sharīʿa. He then argued that, even if the commands and prohibitions were only there to test people’s obedience, as some claimed, then they either would have to be arbitrary, or there was still a wisdom behind them. Since no one would dare say that God’s commands and prohibitions were simply arbitrary, and thus more akin to play, then there must be a wisdom behind them; those who denied this were simply deprived of knowing this wisdom. Tirmidhī discussed why most people were deprived of it and how it may be obtained. Tirmidhī went on to define wisdom in this context as the knowledge that underlies the law, like a kernel within the shell; it is from the kernel, not from the shell, that one derives benefit, he wrote.36 In order to support his understanding of wisdom, Tirmidhī quoted two Qurʾānic verses showing that wisdom is not given to everyone, but rather to God’s chosen ones who ‘struggled against their own selves for the sake of God, emptied their chests from love of the self and its desires, and so deserved

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His mercy and were supported by light. When the light shone in their chests, they were able to see the wisdom with the eyes of their hearts’.37 He began with the verse that says: ‘He grants wisdom to whom He wills, and he who is given wisdom has been given a lot of good’. This established that wisdom is not given to anyone. The verse then continued to say: ‘None will remember except those of understanding’ (Q 2:269). The word for understanding, or mind, lubb, is the same word as for kernel, and the verse could be understood to mean ‘the people of the kernel’. The verse ‘We have given wisdom to Luqmān’ (Q 31:12) further confirmed that God only gives wisdom to His chosen ones. Tirmidhī used two sayings of the Prophet Muḥammad about the Qurʾān to further support this. The first states: ‘For each of its verses there is an exterior and an interior’.38 In the other tradition, the Prophet was asked by his Companions why they found such pleasure in listening to his recitation of the Qurʾān in prayer and did not find the same pleasure when they recited it in their own homes. The Prophet is said to have replied: ‘That is because you recite it for its exterior, and I recite it for its interior’.39 Tirmidhī explained that ‘when (the Prophet) used to recite the Qurʾān he would be viewing the wisdom (behind its words). The listener would find pleasure from his recitation because it was a recitation that was clothed with the light of wisdom’.40 The final step for Tirmidhī was to apply this understanding of wisdom to the sharīʿa. A quote by al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī served his purpose excellently in proving that the wisdom of the sharīʿa’s rulings could be discovered: ‘Those legal causes that we understood by way of wisdom, we spoke about and clarified the wisdom behind them [. . .] That which remained hidden from us, we simply accepted it, and we preserved our servanthood in acting upon it’.41 With this evidence, Tirmidhī began his task of explaining the legal causes or wisdom behind the sharīʿa and its practices.42 Tirmidhī’s Conception of Ijtihād Tirmidhī’s conception of ijtihād appears in his criticism of qiyās and the group that used it the most, the Rationalists (ahl al-raʾy). The term raʾy means opinion, and among some early jurists it carried a positive connotation, meaning a considered and valuable opinion. Mālik’s main teacher was known as Rabīʿat al-Raʾy: ‘Rabīʿa famed for considered opinion’ (d. ca 136/753).43

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 79 However, just as Mālik would later respectfully criticise his teacher’s reliance on rational arguments, the Traditionalists would come to use the term raʾy in a negative sense to refer to reliance on qiyās and other rational tools instead of ḥadīth. Tirmidhī added a Sufi voice to the Traditionalist criticism of raʾy. He correctly stated that the term raʾy had its origin in ruʾya: vision or perception. Like in English, one’s opinion was one’s mental perception or view. Tirmidhī insisted that real raʾy, here meaning a trusted and valuable opinion, was one based on vision, not rational thought. True raʾy had no place for guesswork, but instead was the product of the vision or perception of the heart, through the light of the heart. God addressed the Prophet in the Qurʾān: ‘We have sent down the Scripture to you with the truth so that you can judge between people in accordance with what God has shown you (arāka)’ (Q 4:105). Here, the word arāka shares the same root with the word raʾy. However, those who called themselves the ahl al-raʾy possessed no such spiritual perception because their hearts were darkened by their intellectual pride and their desire for respect among people. They considered themselves people of fiqh, but true fiqh was the piercing (faqʾ) of the veil that covers the eye of the heart so that the heart could perceive things that others could not.44 Through his usual style of root comparison and analysis, Tirmidhī thus connected fiqh (literally, deep understanding; root: f-q-h) with the verb ‘to pierce’ (root: f-q-ʾ), as he often argued that one out of the three root letters may be substituted with another similar letter without changing the general meaning of the words. In the same way that Tirmidhī redefined raʾy and fiqh, he would come to redefine qiyās and the process of ijtihād. The Arabic word ‘qiyās’ means to measure or compare. Tirmidhī rejected the process of qiyās as jurists practised it and wanted to replace it with a different process. Therefore, he used the term qiyās to mean ijtihād – two terms that have often been used interchangeably. In order to do this, Tirmidhī, who believed that the root letters of Arabic words held within them the secrets to understanding them, held that ‘true qiyās’, or the process of ijtihād as it should be, was found in the anagram of the word qiyās: siyāq.45 This connection was made because of the two major root letters, the consonants sīn and qāf, which both words have in common.46 Siyāq means ‘to drive something’, and to Tirmidhī it meant to drive something back to its ‘origin’. For him, the qiyās of the jurists was not qiyās (according to his new definition), but

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what he called ‘mushākala’ and ‘mushābaha’: a drawing of similarities and resemblances between different things. The word mushākala could, in fact, be a more accurate Arabic word for the English ‘analogy’ than the word qiyās. Therefore, to avoid confusion, rather than holding on to Tirmidhī’s division of ‘true qiyās’ versus mushākala, it would be simpler to translate mushākala as ‘analogy’. As for Tirmidhī’s ‘true qiyās’ or ‘siyāq’, I will translate it as ijtihād. Jurists used the metaphor of a tree for the terms they used to describe the process of analogical reasoning: each new case they called a branch (farʿ), and the original case to which they linked it they called a stem (aṣl). Tirmidhī argued that, in reality, the process of analogy was that of comparing two branches of a tree, not a branch with a stem. Jurists took a new case (branch) that needed a value judgement and searched for an existing value judgement on another matter (branch) which they then named a stem. He admonished the jurists by saying ‘You took knowledge of this matter from the middle, not from its source’ and told them that their ijtihād must reach the ‘source’ of the matter.47 In Tirmidhī’s opinion, the best way to describe the process of ijtihād was through the metaphor of intertwined grape vines, not a tree of different branches. With the tree metaphor, jurists simply compared different branches without going back to any origin and falsely claimed that one of these branches was an origin or a stem. With grape vines, however, there are multiple sources or vines that extend and intertwine with each other. The act of ijtihād here is to trace each vine to its original source. Not everyone has the ability to trace each vine to its original source, but only by going to the source could one discover the ruling. Jurists, then, need to go from the furthest tip of a grape vine to its beginning, and not compare one vine or one branch to another. He argued that this source, whence all of God’s rulings come, was the realm of God’s decrees and apportionment. Only those saints endowed with spiritual insight could access this realm through penetrating wisdom (ḥikma bāligha). By using this light of wisdom in their hearts, these saints could gaze at a case and penetrate through it until they drove it back to its origin in the realm of God’s decrees and apportionment.48 The best way to understand Tirmidhī’s process of ijtihād is to see it as a holistic conceptualisation of the act for which a judgement was needed. The legal cause was not to be found within each act, but rather by stepping outside of it and looking at

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 81 its true nature. When one understood the true nature of any act, one could assign it a value judgement without recourse to another case for comparison. The following examples will clarify this. One example used by Tirmidhī is the ruling on performing worship on behalf of the dead. He stated that there were ḥadīths establishing that one may perform ḥajj or give charity on behalf of someone who was dead, so that the reward of this act was passed on to them. Scholars have differed in this regard. One group (the Ḥanbalīs and some Ḥanafīs) said that, if charity and ḥajj were accepted on behalf of the deceased, then all other acts of worship like fasting and prayer must be accepted, too. Another group (the early Mālikīs, Shāfiʿīs and most Ḥanafīs) said that the only reason why ḥajj was accepted on behalf of the dead was because it required the spending of money, like charity. They therefore believed that the Prophet only allowed it because of its similarity to charity, because in both cases one was spending their wealth on behalf of the deceased. Fasting and prayer, however, were not similar to charity because they did not include a financial element.49 According to Tirmidhī, those who accepted prayer and fasting on behalf of the dead were correct, but only by chance, as they did not know the cause for which all these actions were accepted – they simply gave them the same ruling as the ḥajj. Likewise, they only accepted the ḥajj to be performed on behalf of others because of the statement of the Prophet, without which they may not have accepted it. As for the other group, they were mistaken in thinking that the acceptance of these actions had anything to do with money, and they were mistaken in not accepting actions such as prayer and fasting. Here we have the same tool, qiyās, leading jurists to two different conclusions, one which was incorrect and one which was only correct by chance. In Tirmidhī’s understanding, ḥajj on behalf of others was accepted because it was like a debt owed to God, for the Qurʾān says: ‘Pilgrimage is a duty that men owe to God’ (Q 3:97). In fact, this cause was clearly specified by the Prophet himself when he explained why ḥajj could be performed on behalf of the dead. He said in a well-known ḥadīth: ‘If your father left a debt behind, would you not repay it on his behalf? Fulfil the debt owed to God, for God has more right that debts to Him are fulfilled’. The legal cause was thus clearly stated by the Prophet himself for why ḥajj was accepted on behalf of others, and yet the jurists did not even see it and chose instead to liken ḥajj to charity, in that it could only

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be done by spending money. Had scholars returned the case of ḥajj back to its origin, they would have seen that it is a debt owed to God and can thus be fulfilled by others on behalf of the deceased.50 What Tirmidhī was doing in this example was not to look within prayer or fasting to find elements similar to those found within ḥajj and charity (like financial expenditure), but to step back and gain a full conceptualisation – in other words, a categorisation – of these acts as a whole. Each of them was an act of worship that had been prescribed by God, and its fulfilment was therefore a debt owed to God. Anything that constituted a debt owed to God could be fulfilled by someone else on behalf of those who died and could not fulfil their own duties. Through this process, jurists would not even need to have any Qurʾānic verse or ḥadīth on ḥajj or charity. Even if there was nothing known about offering ḥajj or charity on behalf of the dead, a true mujtahid would have understood that these are acts of worship that have been prescribed and therefore debts owed to God. Thus, anything still owed to God could be fulfilled by others. Let us look at another example. Most scholars – except for the Mālikīs – hold that, if one who is fasting eats out of forgetfulness, his fast is not broken, as clearly stated in an agreed upon ḥadīth. It is narrated that Abū Ḥanīfa said: ‘If it were not for that ḥadīth, I would have, by use of analogy, said that it broke the fast’. Tirmidhī stated that Abū Ḥanīfa here made an analogy based on comparison (mushākala). Abū Ḥanīfa compared fasting to other acts of worship where forgetfulness was not an excuse, such as sexual relations during the pilgrimage (according to the vast majority of scholars) and speech or laughter in prayer (according to some schools). Tirmidhī stated that a real mujtahid would have returned this matter to its origin and ruled that eating by mistake did not invalidate the fast, even if there was no ḥadīth on the subject. They would have ruled so because they understood that a person’s sustenance has been apportioned by God from pre-eternity, and God promised in the Qurʾān to deliver it to His servants. In this case, so Tirmidhī explained, God’s promise to deliver sustenance to His servant might sometimes clash with the servant’s promise to keep his fast on the same day. In order to fulfil His promise, God makes the servant forget his own oath and then feeds the servant and gives him drink. This forgetfulness, then, is from God Himself and, therefore, does not break the fast. According to Tirmidhī, this would be known by the people

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 83 of true ijtihād, the People of Wisdom, and is in agreement with the saying of the Prophet that ‘[w]hoever forgets while fasting, and eats or drinks, let him continue his fast, for it was only because God fed him and gave him to drink’.51 This is unlike speaking during prayer or intercourse during ḥajj and fasting, as speech and intercourse are not things that God promised in the Qurʾān to deliver to His servants, and so the forgetfulness that led to them would have been from Satan. Satan would have had to work on a person for a sustained period to make him speak during his prayer or have intercourse during ḥajj or while fasting. It is because of these workings of Satan that these acts of worship become invalid.52 Tirmidhī continued to criticise the jurists, using Abū Ḥanīfa as their representative, for saying that intercourse due to forgetfulness did not nullify the fast, as with food and drink. The jurists should not have extended the words of the tradition regarding eating or drinking to other matters such as intercourse. In the end, they neither relied on a tradition, nor were they successful in their analogy.53 In the above example, Tirmidhī’s ijtihād was to arrive at the following insight: what determines whether a mistake invalidates one’s act of worship is whether this mistake was caused by God or by Satan. He did not simply look at the fact that a mistake was made during an act of worship due to forgetfulness, in which case the act would be invalidated, no matter what type of worship it was. Rather, he understood that the forgetfulness that leads to eating while fasting is caused by God in order to deliver to the servant the sustenance that was decreed for him from pre-eternity. Again, the process of ijtihād was not dependant on comparison to other cases, but on reaching a true and complete understanding of each individual case on its own. The final example to be discussed is the act that begins the ritual prayer, which is to utter the phrase ‘Allah is greater (than all else)’, known as the takbīr. Abū Ḥanīfa accepted other statements in which God is praised or glorified as replacements for the takbīr to begin the prayer, and his student Shaybānī followed him in this matter, but his other great student Abū Yūsuf disagreed with his imām because of a ḥadīth that states the following: ‘[The prayer] begins with the takbīr and ends with the taslīm’. Tirmidhī criticised Abū Ḥanīfa for his opinion and explained at length why only the takbīr was accepted by the People of Wisdom. Tirmidhī also criticised Abū Yūsuf for only leaving his teacher’s opinion due to the presence of a ḥadīth on the

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matter, saying that, if Abū Yūsuf was able to know the inward reality of the matter, he would have disagreed with his teacher, even if the ḥadīth did not exist.54 Tirmidhī gave many other examples and concluded that Abū Ḥanīfa ‘was from the people of outward knowledge, and did not possess the knowledge of the ahl al-bāṭin (those who perceived the interior wisdom), as far as we can see’.55 It is clear that Tirmidhī’s ijtihād did involve the search for a legal cause, but this was attained by gaining insight into the nature of a situation, without recourse to analogical reasoning. The cause was not a property of an act which linked it to a value judgement. In the case of doing acts of worship on behalf of others, one would not look within the acts of worship to see if they shared certain properties such as the expenditure of wealth, but rather at the act as a whole and understand that it was a debt owed to God. Similarly, with acts that invalidate acts of worship, one would not simply look at the fact that the act was caused by forgetfulness, but have to categorise the act of forgetfulness: was it forgetfulness caused by God or by Satan? Tirmidhī’s Ijtihād and the Legal Precepts If we carefully study this ijtihād process described by Tirmidhī, we realise that it is essentially the same as a process called ‘the application of general rules to particular cases’. This was one of the most important tools of ijtihād used by Mālik ibn Anas.56 Mālik often invoked general legal principles or precepts as the arbiter over new cases – for example, ‘his repeated reference in inheritance law to the precept that “inheritance may only be distributed on the basis of certainty”’.57 These rules were found by inductive inference from the study of many similar sharīʿa rulings.58 Tirmidhī’s older contemporary Bukhārī studied Mālik’s Muwaṭṭāʾ; he treated it with utmost reverence and in a sense based his own Ṣaḥīh on it. He, too, used the same type of reasoning. We have already seen that Bukhārī, like Tirmidhī, rejected analogical reasoning but accepted wisdom as a tool of ijtihād. Bukhārī also mentioned an acceptable type of reasoning based on the comparison of one case that had been clarified by the Lawgiver to another one that had not. Bukhārī used two ḥadīths as examples of this process. One ḥadīth is the same that Tirmidhī used about performing the ḥajj on behalf of the deceased. In the other ḥadīth, a man told the Prophet that his wife gave

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 85 birth to a black son and that he therefore did not accept the child as his own. The Prophet reminded the man that, among a pack of red camels, some camels will be born grey due to a hereditary trait and that, likewise, it is possible that he would have a son who would be born black due to a hereditary trait.59 Bukhārī was careful to call each case an aṣl (an original case, literally root), rather than use the term farʿ (new case, literally branch) for the new case, as is done in analogical reasoning. These two cases presented by Bukhārī appeal to more general legal principles. In the case of performing pilgrimage on behalf of the deceased, the Prophet reminded the questioner that every debt that is owed to God could be paid off by being done on behalf of the deceased. In the case of the black child, the Prophet reminded the questioner of the general principles that offspring do not always look like their parents due to the possibility of hereditary traits. The questioners were to apply these general principles to new cases. There was no use of analogical reasoning here. No quality within the act of pilgrimage, such as the fact that it is an act of worship that involves financial expenses, was linked to one of the five possible legal rulings, as jurists of some madhhabs had done in their analogical reasoning. Likewise, no quality of the child, such as the colour black or white, was itself the cause of the ruling. Instead, this is in effect a deduction based on legal precepts, which would come to be known as qawāʿid fiqhiyya (major/general legal precepts) or ḍawābiṭ fiqhiyya (minor/restricted legal precepts). A major legal precept is one that may cover many areas of the law, such as the precept that ‘certainty is not superseded by doubt’, while a minor legal precept is usually restricted to one field, such as ‘water does not become impure unless one of its qualities changes’, or Mālik’s above-mentioned precept on inheritance. Knowledge of these general rules allowed the jurist to do ijtihād. Where Bukhārī differed from Mālik, however, was that he insisted that the general precept itself must be mentioned by the Lawgiver rather than inferred from the sources, much like some Ẓāhirī scholars would only accept qiyās if it was based on a legal cause specified by the Lawgiver.60 Tirmidhī’s process was essentially that of discovering the broader category or ruling under which a new case was to be classified. This conception of the ideal way to extend the sharīʿa’s value judgements to new cases is not exclusive to him. In fact, the great Shāfiʿī jurisprudent al-Zarkashī (d. 794/1392),

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whose works on uṣūl al-fiqh and qawāʿid became indispensable classics in their respective fields, declared – and Ibn Nujaym al-Ḥanafī (d. 970/1563) concurred – that the field of major/general and minor/restricted legal precepts ‘is in reality the (real) uṣūl al-fiqh!’61 However Tirmidhī’s conception of it was perhaps unique in two respects. Firstly, Tirmidhī suggested that, when one understood the reality of any case, the value judgement would become self-evident. In other words, the general precepts that would appear to cover the case are self-evident, at least to the man of spiritual insight, and do not rely on prophetic precedent or deduction from other cases. Yet, the legal precepts as used by the jurists were deduced from a detailed study of known cases, in order to be able to cover new cases.62 The second difference between Tirmidhī and his predecessors was his insistence that spiritual insight was necessary to ensure that one reached the right understanding and thereafter the right conclusion. Only the People of Wisdom, through their penetrating insight, understood ‘the real foundations which underlie the legal prescriptions. The wisdom of God which is concealed in the order of creation is manifest in these foundations . . . ’63 It is important to realise that in the backdrop of these discussions and debates about qiyās there was the notorious case of intoxicants, which had caused a strong reaction against the Ḥanafī school and their use of qiyās, especially from the Traditionist-Jurisprudent movement. The classical Ḥanafī method of qiyās looks for a property or character within an object that is the cause of the ruling, as with financial expenses in pilgrimage in the example above. They saw that God forbade wine (khamr) and concluded that the character (waṣf   ) that caused the ruling was its power to intoxicate. It was not simply the existence of alcohol, because even fruit juice contained trace amounts of alcohol, including naqīʿ, a drink beloved to the Prophet Muḥammad, which is made by soaking dates in water over night. Rather, it was only when a drink had the power to intoxicate that it became impermissible. Therefore, the Ḥanafīs concluded that the ruling of impermissibility could not be attached to any drink or substance unless it had the power to intoxicate. This meant that, if someone had the ability to drink three cups of an alcoholic beverage such as mead, beer or cider before being intoxicated, then it was permissible for them to drink two cups and three-quarters. Without the existence of the character or property in the drink that would make

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 87 it impermissible, here being the power to intoxicate, one could not extend the ruling of impermissibility to it. It was only wine that was impermissible, even in non-intoxicating amounts, because the Qurʾān said to stay away from it in absolute terms. This conclusion on the permissibility of drinking alcoholic beverages was the result of a strict and faithful application of qiyās as developed by the Ḥanafīs, and it was not to the liking of the TraditionistJurisprudents. The Ḥanafīs eventually had to abandon this position due to the success of the Traditionist-Jurisprudent movement. This is reflected in the works of Tirmidhī himself: his harshest attack on Ḥanafī qiyās can be found in a chapter he dedicated to refuting their position on intoxicants. To drive further his point against their rationalising, he also attacked their position on starting the prayer with something other than the takbīr and ending it with other than the salām, calling them ‘stupid sheep’ (al-buhm al-ghanam).64 The methods practised by Mālik, Bukhārī and Tirmidhī would not have used such a technical process. They would have simply seen khamr as an example of a broader category of intoxicating beverages that cloud the mind (taken from the word khamr, which means to cover, meaning to cloud the mind). If khamr was wholly forbidden, then so would be those other drinks. This is what Bukhārī did in his Ṣaḥīḥ, when he quoted the Caliph ʿUmar as stating: ‘al-khamru mā khāmara l-ʿaql’ (khamr is that which clouds the mind). They did not understand khamr to refer only to wine, as Arabs used the word, but to a category of drinks based on the etymology of the word.65 This is also the late Ḥanbalī scholar Ibn Taymiyya’s understanding of ‘correct qiyās’, and the one he believed Ibn Ḥanbal allowed, as opposed to the Ḥanafī version.66 Ḥanafīs here might protest and say that even fruit juice could intoxicate in very large amounts (if those large amounts did not kill first), but the Traditionist-Jurisprudent movement was not as concerned with technical thinking of this sort.67 They would have simply understood that the verse is referring to a category of drinks that are traditionally used for intoxication and had the power to intoxicate in reasonable amounts, and they would surely say that, if someone tried to get intoxicated from too much fruit juice or naqīʿ, then they would be falling into sin. These two different approaches to the matter of intoxicants might go against one’s initial expectations. One would have assumed that the Ḥanafīs, because of the importance they assigned to analogical reasoning, would have

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readily extended the ruling of prohibition from wine to other intoxicants, and that the Traditionist-Jurisprudents, with their aversion to analogical reasoning, would have struggled to do the same. This is not the case. The Traditionist-Jurisprudents relied on linguistic arguments to make the case that the word khamr referred to all beverages intended for intoxication, even though this category relied on common sense and not on a technical definition. They objected to the Ḥanafī method of qiyās, which they saw as overly technical and which, although it was more logically sound, went against what a layperson reading the Qurʾān should have naturally understood from its words. Paradoxically, the Ḥanafī insistence on logical consistency made them, in a sense, more loyal to the ‘letter’ of the law, whereas many Traditionist-Jurisprudents, especially Ibn Ḥanbal, cared more about the moral outcomes and the ‘spirit’ of the law and less about a mechanical methodology and logical consistency. In his study of the Ẓāhirīs, Amr Osman argued that the Ḥanafī prioritisation of qiyās was their own way of being loyal to the texts and mirrored the textualism of the Ẓāhirīs which, although it rejected qiyās, it did so for the same reason of loyalty to the texts. Both the Ẓāhirīs and Ḥanafīs aimed to create a coherent, almost mechanical system for deducing the law, unlike the morally inspired reasoning of the likes of Mālik and Ibn Ḥanbal.68 After all, Ḥanafī qiyās relies on authentic texts as the base from which they made analogies. The reason that the Traditionalists had attacked the Ḥanafīs was that they believed the Ḥanafīs had more confidence in the results of their qiyās, which could be faulty, over the ḥadīth. The Shāfiʿī school also shares a very technical, formalist nature with the Ḥanafīs and Ẓāhirīs. An example of this has already been given in Chapter 1 with the double-sale intended to get around the prohibition of usury, which the Ḥanbalīs and Mālikīs did not allow, but the Ḥanafīs and Shāfiʿīs did. Another prominent example consists of the issue of marriage to a muḥallil. The Qurʾān ordained that a man may divorce and then re-marry his wife two times. It warned that after divorcing her a third time, he would not be able to marry her again until after she had married and consummated her marriage with another man and after that other marriage then had come to a natural end. Only then could the first husband marry his wife a fourth time. This was intended to stop men from the habit of recklessly divorcing their wives every time they became angry. Yet, the Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī school allowed a

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 89 divorcee in this situation to marry a second man, based on the unwritten agreement that he divorced her after their marriage was consummated, so that she could remarry her first husband. The Mālikī and Ḥanbalī schools did not allow this, even though it was technically valid, on the basis that it went against the intention of the sharīʿa and was an abhorrent act.69 Tirmidhī criticised those jurists who used such technically valid means to allow a businessman to deprive his business partner of his God-given right to pre-empt a sale that could harm him (the right known as shufʿa or preemption) – once again, his target was mainly the Ḥanafīs, but this was also allowed by the Shāfiʿīs, while it was not accepted by the Mālikīs and Traditionist-Jurisprudents Ibn Ḥanbal and Ibn Abī Shayba.70 The most notorious Shāfiʿī example of technical, formalist thinking was that they allowed a man to marry his own biological daughter begotten from an illegitimate relationship. This was because, from their point of view, an illegitimate daughter did not meet the sharīʿa definition of a ‘daughter’ (for example, she does not inherit from him), and if the sharīʿa did not recognise the girl as the man’s daughter, then the sharīʿa had no grounds to prohibit such a marriage.71 The Ḥanbalī, Shāfiʿī and Ẓāhirī schools may have some superficial similarities, in the same way that the Mālikī and Ḥanafī schools do, because of the former group acting upon certain ḥadīths that the latter group discounted based on early praxis. However, when one looks deeper into the legal methodologies of the two groups, one finds that the Ḥanbalī and Mālikī schools were closest to each other in that their Traditionalism did not stop them from looking toward achieving the spirit of the sharīʿa, based on inductive inference from the texts, whereas the Shāfiʿī, Ḥanafī and Ẓāhirī methodologies were more technical and deductive in their textual analysis. It sometimes appears as if Mālikī and Ḥanbalī jurisprudents were dealing with a loving, personal God who took into consideration the worshipper’s intentions, whereas Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī scholars conceived of a God more akin to a slot machine that only accepted the right-size coin. The former group’s positions were often more straightforward and common-sense, while the Shāfiʿī’s and Ḥanafī’s positions often turned fiqh into a practice in measurements, mathematics, logic or even chemistry. Tirmidhī’s rejection of qiyās may superficially point towards affinities with the Ẓāhirī tradition, when in fact his approach to fiqh appears closer to that of Mālik and Ibn Ḥanbal.

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The Law is Mercy In his book on the secrets of the pilgrimage, al-Ḥajj wa asrāruh, Tirmidhī went into a very important discussion on the nature of the sharīʿa as understood by the People of Wisdom. Here Tirmidhī argued that the sharīʿa was sent to mankind as a source of mercy and salvation and that no obligation should cause excess hardship. It is important to remember here that the word sharīʿa itself was originally used to refer to a path of descent into a watering hole; therefore, for the Arab speaker it was a word that conveyed meanings of life and salvation. The Qurʾān clearly presents the message and mission of Muḥammad as primarily a ‘mercy to the worlds’ (Q 21:71). Islam’s sacred texts present it as a religion of mercy to such an extent that this ‘self-image’ may come second only to it being the religion of the purest form of monotheism.72 One expression of this mercy is the Qurʾān’s repeated claims that it brings ease and wishes to cause no difficulty or problem for its followers. The Qurʾān also presents the sharīʿa of Muḥammad as removing any hardships that had either originally existed in the laws of Moses and Jesus or been added to these laws by Jews and Christians (Q 7:157). Early jurists and theologians associated this removal of hardship with the lifting of certain punishments, prohibitions and dietary restrictions. While this is doubtlessly true, the Qurʾān repeatedly stresses that it also removes hardship from people by being flexible in the way in which it accommodates people’s circumstances, and this is what Tirmidhī wanted to emphasise. The context of Tirmidhī’s treatment of this subject was the discussion of the obligation to go on the ḥajj. The Qurʾān states that ‘pilgrimage to the House is a duty owed to God by people – those who find a way (sabīl) to do it’ (Q 3:97). Therefore, it is only an obligation for those who are able to go, but the discussion of the jurists revolved around the timing of when a person reached the point to be able to go. Some scholars followed a ḥadīth – which they admitted was weak – in which the Prophet was asked this very question, and he defined the ‘sabīl’ (way or means) as a mount and provisions.73 According to this position, only those who owned a mount that could take them to Mecca, as well as sufficient provisions of wealth and food, were obliged to perform this duty. Other scholars held that, as long as one had the physical health and strength to make the journey by foot, no matter how

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 91 long it took them, then they were obliged to go. They did not need a mount nor sufficient provisions, as they could find a way to earn a living on their journey, stopping in different cities to work and earn enough for the next leg of the journey. Tirmidhī rejected this second opinion because wisdom (knowledge of the underlying roots of the sharīʿa) agreed with the content of the above-mentioned ḥadīth on the subject. Tirmidhī’s discussion began by laying a foundation to understanding the role of the sharīʿa, outwardly and inwardly. The sharīʿa has an exterior science (al-ʿilm al-ẓāhir) with which the jurists dealt, but there is also knowledge of its interior (al-ʿilm al-bāṭin). In other words, there is much happening beneath the surface of the sharīʿa, at its very foundation, which can only be understood through spiritual insight. The foundation beneath the sharīʿa is God’s governance and ordering (tadbīr) of His creation. This ‘is the foundation upon which all things are built’, and it emerges out of God’s pure favour (minna). First, through His favour, God gave His creation existence, as a gift. Then, through His favour, God gifted them guidance. All of this happens beneath the surface. It is only thereafter that we reach the level of the exterior of the sharīʿa, where God then gifts His believers sincerity with which to act upon that guidance. These are the points around which the exterior of the sharīʿa revolves: sincerity and truthfulness in following it. Therefore, the root of the very existence of creation – and the root of their guidance as well as the basis behind the following of the sharīʿa – is God’s favour and blessings. God’s favour is the source at every level. The sharīʿa, which is a branch, cannot go against the favour of God and His blessing, which is the root and origin; it can only be an extension and manifestation of that favour. In other words, the sharīʿa cannot cause undue hardship. After having explained this foundation, Tirmidhī continued to explain the nature and role of the sharīʿa in this world. He wrote: Had [this scholar] turned toward the interior of life in this world (dunyā), he would have seen that it was founded upon hardship and hard work. As for the religion, it was founded upon ease, gentleness, and care. This is because the world is originally a place of punishment, and religion was then sent as a source of salvation and mercy [. . .]. Therefore, this religion is built upon ease and gentleness [. . .]. When we saw that this is what God arranged for us in life and in the religion, we accepted difficulties in our bodies and the hardship

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and hard work that are necessary in order to live and earn our livelihood. We accepted God placing us in this situation and praised Him for the way He made things, because this is what this life is about, and this is the foundation it was built on [. . .] We then obtained ease and gentleness from our Lord in the affairs of our religion. We thank Him, and we gave preference to what He preferred for us and wanted for us (of ease in the religion).74

The Qurʾān shows that God never allowed any religious obligations to cause excess hardship. When it came to the obligation of fasting, God excused travellers from having to fast in Ramadan and revealed: ‘God wants ease for you, and does not want hardship for you’ (Q 2:185). When it came to the obligatory ritual purification before prayer, God excused those who did not have water, or due to illness would be harmed by water, and allowed them to do tayammum (lightly touching the earth) as a substitute; God then said: ‘God does not wish to place you in any difficulty’ (Q 5:6).75 Furthermore, the Prophet said: ‘I was only sent to bring ease’. He instructed his Companions to ‘[m]ake things easy for people. Do not create difficulty for them’. ʿĀʾisha stated: ‘Whenever the Prophet was given a choice between two matters, he always chose the easier option’. Quoting also the statements of early authorities such as Ibn ʿAbbās, Tirmidhī concluded that the sharīʿa’s definition of ‘ability’ is not ‘ability with extreme difficulty’ but rather ‘ability with ease’. He emphasised that one must choose for people what God and His Messenger chose for them: ease, not hardship.76 Those who can use their spiritual insight to gaze into the inner workings of the sharīʿa, its root in God’s favour and its purpose as a source of salvation, would understand that God would never impose excess difficulty on people. Even without the existence of the ḥadīth defining the minimum ability requirement for the pilgrimage, the People of Wisdom would have judged similarly to what the ḥadīth had said. When God made the pilgrimage obligatory for those ‘who are able’, this does not mean ability with undue hardship, but would only apply to those who had a mount and sufficient financial ability. It is possible to see in the discussion above a clash of two approaches: the first is based on a literal understanding of the Qurʾān, guided purely by one’s rational powers, and it interpreted the Qurʾān in a way that created undue burden on the believers. The second approach is guided by wisdom. This wisdom could come from the Prophet who is the supreme source of spiritual

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 93 insight and guidance, for the leading Traditionalist al-Shāfiʿī had identified the ‘wisdom’ that is mentioned repeatedly in the Qurʾān as the sunna. Or this wisdom could come from the saints, the People of Wisdom, who could reach similar conclusions themselves because they, like the Prophet, had direct spiritual insight and vision. Tirmidhī identified wisdom as the interior of the Qurʾān, which is accessed by the Prophet and those who follow him. The Qurʾān commands the Prophet: ‘Say to them (O Muḥammad), this is my path: I call to God upon clear insight, I and those who follow me’ (Q 12:108). ‘This insight’, wrote Tirmidhī, ‘is only for those who follow Muḥammad, and those who follow him are those whose hearts travel to God upon the same path that he did’.77 Conclusion Tirmidhī, like many mystics and Sufis of his age, rejected rationalism in the legal and theological disciplines and allied himself with the traditionalist stance. However, unlike the Ẓāhirīs, he did not reject the existence of wisdom behind God’s prescriptions and instead was a very strong advocate of the existence of greater aims behind the rulings. This is perfectly in line with the mystics’ understanding of the sharīʿa as a path to life-giving water, or as a spiritual elixir. For Tirmidhī, each prescription in the sharīʿa had a wisdom and purpose behind it, but the sharīʿa as a whole also had a grand purpose, which was to be a source of mercy and salvation. This mercy meant for him that the sharīʿa must be gentle and easy and that it cannot be a source of undue hardship. Some three centuries later, an intellectual inheritor and successor of Tirmidhī, Ibn ʿArabī, would find that Tirmidhī’s traditionalist and anti-qiyās approach to jurisprudence in itself was the best means to achieve a simpler, gentler, easier and more merciful understanding and application of the sharīʿa. Notes   1. Radtke, ‘Wilāya’, 483–84. This means that he lived for about eighty-three to ninety-three years, a very long life in that age. Ibn Ḥajar estimated a life of around ninety years based on a report by Ibn al-Najjār that someone heard Ḥadīth from Tirmidhī in the year 318/930 (Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān, 5:310). Dhahabī showed that Ibn al-Najjār had him confused with another Tirmidhī and estimated a life span of around eighty years (Tadhkira, 2:171).  2. Al-Munāwī, al-Kawākib, 2:130.

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  3. Radtke and O’Kane, Concept, 2.  4. Al-Hujwīrī, Kashf, 141.  5. Baraka, al-Ḥakīm, 1:198.   6. Melchert assumed that Tirmidhī’s mention of having studied raʾy in his youth is an ancient example of when the word raʾy carried positive connotation (see Melchert, ‘Traditionist-Jurisprudents’, 387), but that is not the case. Tirmidhī was a strong critic of raʾy, and if anything, his mention of having studied raʾy in his youth is an indication of how he had later been guided to Traditionalism and in a sense gives his critique of Rationalism more authority.   7. Tirmidhī does not name this shaykh who gave him his earliest guidance, but Hujwīrī mentioned that Tirmidhī studied jurisprudence at the hands of one of Abū Ḥanīfa’s close disciples (al-Hujwīrī, Kashf, 141). Nicholas Heer understandably found that difficult to accept, considering Abū Ḥanīfa’s death in the year 150/767, which meant that the shaykh would have had to be over the age of seventy-five to have studied under Abū Ḥanīfa and to then have begun teaching Tirmidhī in the year 213/828 (see Baraka, al-Ḥakīm, 1:37). I propose a simple explanation for Hujwīrī’s confusion. Tirmidhī in his books frequently narrated traditions from ‘al-Jārūd’, whose full name was al-Jārūd ibn Muʿādh al-Sulamī (d. 244/858) and who lived in Tirmidh (see al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb, 4: 476–78, where al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī is mentioned as one of his students). Hujwīrī, who was a follower of the Ḥanafī school of law, might have assumed that this ‘al-Jārūd’ was al-Jārūd al-ʿĀmirī al-Nīshāpūrī (d. 206/821), one of the most distinguished of Abū Ḥanīfa’s students. Tirmidhī’s remarks that he studied jurisprudence (what he called raʾy) from a young age at the direction of a shaykh may have helped Hujwīrī make this mistaken assumption.  8. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 13:440.   9. Al-Juyūshī (ed.) in al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 26; al-Tirmidhī, Budū shaʾn, 21–22. 10. See al-Juyūshī (ed.) in al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 30–31. 11. Radtke and O’Kane, Concept, 1. 12. Al-Hujwīrī, Kashf, 141. Contemporary historians struggled to explain why some manuscripts of Tirmidhī’s works had notes on them describing him as ‘the Shaykh of the Shāfiʿī scholars in Iraq’ (Baraka, al-Ḥakīm, 37). Whoever wrote these notes must have confused our Tirmidhī with another Muḥammad al-Tirmidhī who died in 295/907, whereas our Tirmidhī most likely died in 298/910. This Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Naṣr al-Tirmidhī al-Shāfiʿī was invariably described in his biographical entries as ‘the Shaykh of the Shāfiʿī Scholars in Iraq’ and was also known as an ascetic. For more on him see al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 13:545–47.

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 95 13. Hallaq, History, 32. 14. Asad studied under the students of both Abū Ḥanīfa and Mālik; his Mudawwana, also known as the Asadiyya, would become the basis of Saḥnūn’s Mudawwana in Mālikī jurisprudence. His prior study with Abū Ḥanīfa’s circle contributed to the emergence of a strong rationalist and taqlīd-based school of Mālikism. 15. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Ṣinfayn, 30a–31b. 16. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Sharaf, 75. 17. Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifat al-ṣafwa, 2:72. 18. Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-iʿtiṣām bi l-kitāb wa l-Sunna, bāb ajr al-ḥākim idhā ijtahada fa aṣāba aw akhṭaʾa. 19. Hallaq, Origins, 35. 20. Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, verse 2:129. There is more discussion of this word in Qurʾān commentaries than in legal works. 21. al-ḥikmatu al-ʿaqlu fi-l-dīn [. . .] wa-l-ḥikmatu shayʾ yajʿalhu-Llāh fi-l-qalb yunawwir lah (al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, verse 2:129). 22. See Chapter 5. 23. Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, Kitāb al-iʿtiṣām bi-l-kitāb wa-l-Sunna, section 13 (bāb mā jāʾa fi ijtihād al-quḍā bi-mā anzala-llāh [. . .] wa madḥ al-nabī (s) ṣāḥib al-ḥikma ḥīna yaqḍī bihā wa-yuʿallimuhā wa lā yatakallaf min qibalih . . . ) 24. Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, Kitāb al-iʿtiṣām bi-l-kitāb wa-l-Sunna, sections 7, 8 and 13. See also Lucas, ‘Legal Principles’, 296–97. It is worth noting that Bukhārī and al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī shared at least three Transoxanian teachers of ḥadīth. 25. Karamustafa, Sufism, 47. 26. Al-Sulamī, Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya, 180. 27. Al-Tirmidhī, Bayān al-farq, 29. This work is attributed to Tirmidhī, and its contents bear great similarity to the works of Tirmidhī. However, there are minor differences in style and classification which have caused some scholars to doubt its attribution to him, and some have suggested that it may have been written by the Sufi al-Nūrī instead. Considering the similarity of their teachings, as well as the great similarity of teachings between Tirmidhī and his student Warrāq who is known to have authored very popular works on Sufism, none of which have survived, it is much more probable that this actually is one of Warrāq’s works, if the attribution to Tirmidhī is in fact incorrect. These two statements of Warrāq and Tirmidhī must be the origin of a statement that almost a millennium later would be incorrectly attributed to Imām Mālik: ‘Whoever adopts Sufism without jurisprudence will become a heretic and whoever adopts jurisprudence without Sufism will become impious’ (first attributed to Mālik by Aḥmad Zarrūq).

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28. See the teachings of Warrāq, as preserved in al-ʿAṭṭār, Tadhkirat al-awliyāʾ, 537–44. Unfortunately, the works of Warrāq are now lost (Radtke, ‘Wilāya’, 495). Radtke does not agree with the portrayal of Warrāq as Tirmidhī’s student, but rather sees him as a compatriot. However, the way in which Warrāq narrated stories about Tirmidhī reflects the attitude of a loving student. 29. On this figure, see Karamustafa, Sufism, 47; al-Laknawī, al-Fawāʾid, 44. 30. See the discussion below on Kitāb al-ḥajj was asrāruh. 31. Al-Hujwīrī, Kashf, 141. 32. Until the Dār al-Minhāj edition of 2015, all previous printed editions of the work were of the abridgement of this work. This abridgement was likely made by the author himself and is one-third the size of the original. Much of this is due to removing the chains of transmissions for the narrations, but the abridgement even removes some of the narrations themselves, as well as some of the commentary (see the conclusions of the editor to the Dār al-Minhāj edition in Nawādir, 1: 91–92, 105. Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Kattānī had also noted the existence of two versions in al-Risāla al-mustaṭrafa, 56–57). 33. This work was published as al-Ḥajj wa-asrāruh in Cairo in 1970 by Ḥusnī Nasr Zaydān. Radtke and O’Kane came to what is essentially the same conclusion when they said that it is one of the works ‘incorrectly attributed to Tirmidhī, at least in their present form’ (Radtke and O’Kane, Concept, 3). The core of the work is definitely that of Tirmidhī, but the final form, and a great deal of the content, was by a later author. 34. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥajj, 90. 35. Al-Tirmidhī, Ithbāt al-‘ilal, 67. 36. Al-Tirmidhī, Ithbāt al-‘ilal, 69. 37. Al-Tirmidhī, Ithbāt al-‘ilal, 75. 38. The wording ‘for each verse there is an exterior and interior’ is narrated by ʿAbd al-Razzāq as a statement of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (ʿAbd al-Razzāq, al-Muṣannaf, kitāb faḍāʾil al-qurʾān, bāb taʿāhud al-qurʾān wa nisyānih). The wording attributed in several works to the Prophet himself states: ‘Each verse of the Qurʾān was revealed upon seven letters, for each letter an exterior and an interior . . . ’ (see, for example, al-Ṭabarī’s introduction to his Qurʾān commentary: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 1:22). 39. This tradition is also quoted in Nawādir al-uṣūl. The editor of the Dār al-Minhāj edition, a traditionist and ḥadīth critic, states that it was narrated by Tirmidhī’s contemporary Muḥammad ibn Naṣr al-Marwazī (d. 294/906) in qiyām al-layl with a ‘chain of trustworthy narrators’ to the Follower ʿUmayr ibn Hāniʾ. The

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 97 latter related it on the authority of many Companions without naming any in particular. 40. Al-Tirmidhī, Ithbāt al-ʿilal, 75. The Medinan scholar Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765) is reported to have preceded Tirmidhī in attributing different layers of meaning to the Qurʾān. He stated that the Qurʾān’s clear expressions were for the laymen, its allusions were for the scholars, its subtleties were for the saints, and its realities were for the prophets (Sands, Sufi Commentaries, 13). I translated khawāṣṣ as scholars rather than ‘elites’ in this context. There is a partial Sufi commentary on the Qurʾān attributed to Ṣādiq (see Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism, 75–89). 41. Al-Tirmidhī, Ithbāt al-‘ilal, 77. 42. As Khālid Zahrī pointed out, Tirmidhī’s inspired explanations of the causes of different parts of the law were often inspired by explanations from the Qurʾān and sunna themselves, and sometimes by the language and structure of the terms whose ratios he was explaining. To give a few examples, he linked the word taḥiyyāt (greetings) to God’s name al-Ḥayy (the Living), the fasting in Ramadan to the burning (irmāḍ) of sins and the compulsory alms-giving (zakāt) to growth (zakā’) in the giver’s wealth (Zahrī [ed.] in al-Tirmidhī, Ithbāt al-‘ilal, 48). While these examples do not represent the majority of his explanations, they are important to note because Ibn ʿArabī would also use the same technique. 43. I took this translation of his title from Wymann-Landgraf, Mālik and Medina, 9. 44. Al-Tirmidhī, ʿIlm al-awliyāʾ, 137–38. 45. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 379–80. 46. Sviri summed up Tirmidhī’s teachings on the Arabic language: ‘[I]t is the vessel within which God concealed His secrets. In the quest for divine gnosis (maʿrifa) these secrets can and, in fact, should, be deciphered [. . .] The power to decipher the hidden “meanings” that language holds is part and parcel of the special science (ʿilm) that God’s men, the awliyāʾ, have inherited from the prophets. Mystical linguistics, according to al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, is the foundation of the ‘science of the saints’ (ʿilm al-awliyāʾ) [. . .] the disclosure of God’s mysteries encapsulated in words and letters was reserved for Adam and after him for the prophets and the awliyāʾ’ (Sviri, ‘Words of Power’, 210). 47. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 366. 48. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 365, 49. On these early positions, see Ibn al-Qayyim, Kitāb al-Rūḥ, 117. Eventually all four madhhabs came to accept the sending of all rewards to the dead, and it was the Salafī movement that rejected that notion. 50. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 379–80.

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51. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 378–79. 52. Baraka, al-Ḥakīm, 1:89. 53. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 379. The opinion that fasting is not nullified by intercourse in a state of forgetfulness was that of al-Shāfiʿī, Awzāʿī, Abū Thawr, al-Thawrī, Bukhārī and several other leading scholars. Ibn Ḥanbal, however, held that it does nullify the fast. Abū Ḥanīfa took the first opinion, but he said that he only did so because of the semi-consensus of the scholars on the matter, otherwise he would have ruled that it nullified the fast; this would be more consistent with his position on eating by mistake during the fast, according to which he believed that it should break the fast. See Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s, Istidhkār, 3:349. It is therefore somewhat unfair of Tirmidhī to name Abū Ḥanīfa in particular on this issue. 54. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 376–77, 395–96. 55. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 376. 56. Jurists often inaccurately considered this precept-based deduction as a type of analogy (Wymann-Landgraf, Mālik and Medina, 154). 57. Wymann-Landgraf, Mālik and Medina, 153. 58. Heinrichs, ‘Qawāʿid’, 374. Mālik’s precepts, for example, were based on established precepts and principles of Medinan law – that is, the work of Medinan jurists before him. Medinan praxis played ‘a conspicuous role in his determination of the content and scope of the precepts to which he subscribe[d]’ (Wymann-Landgraf, Mālik and Medina, 154). 59. Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, Kitāb al-iʿtiṣāb bi-l-kitāb wa-l-sunna, section 12; Lucas, ‘Legal Principles’, 296, 305. 60. It is noteworthy that the genre for this type of legal precepts (often translated instead as legal maxims), became known as al-ashbāh wa-l-naẓāʾir (cases that are similar to, or like, each other), a name that might possibly go back to Bukhārī who called it tashbīh (to show the similarity between things). 61. Al-Zarkashī, al-Manthūr, 1:71. Heinrichs assumed that Ibn Nujaym was the first to make this ‘shocking statement’ regarding the position and importance of legal precepts in jurisprudence (see Heinrichs, ‘Qawāʿid’, 368). Shaʿrānī wrote an abridgement of Zarkashī’s work: Mukhtaṣar qawāʿid al-Zarkashī. Shaʿrāni also wrote his own independent work in the genre: al-Maqāsid al-saniyya fī bayān al-qawāʿid al-sharʿiyya. 62. Kamali, Principles, 7. 63. Radtke, ‘Ijtihād’, 912. 64. Al-Tirmidhī al-Ḥakīm, Ṭabāʾiʿ al-nufūs, 106.

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al-tirmidhī’s critique of rationalism  | 99 65. Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-ashribah, bāb mā jāʾa anna l-khamra mā khāmara l-ʿaqla min al-sharāb. 66. See al-Matroudi, Ḥanbalī School, 73. Ibn Taymiyya attempted to reform the process of qiyās. For his argument for qiyās al-ḥikma versus the traditional Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī qiyās al-ʿilla, see Abū Zahra, Ibn Taymiyya, 379–81. 67. Osman looked at the moralistic aspects of the fiqh of Ibn Hanbal and other Ahl al-Ḥadīth figures and how it was less technical in nature than the Ḥanafī and Ẓāhirī schools. See Osman, ‘History and Doctrine’, 163–225. 68. Osman, ‘History and Doctrine’, 155–62, 224–25. 69. Such legal devices (ḥiyal/makhārij) were often used to achieve something that was unlawful through technically lawful means. Yet, Satoe Horii argues that early Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī jurists sometimes used them to escape problems that would be caused by overly formalistic applications of scripture and in an attempt to achieve the inner intentions of the law in the same way as the Mālikī principle of Blocking the Means. See Horii, ‘Reconsideration of Legal Devices’, 317. 70. Al-Tirmidhī, Ṭabāʾiʿ al-nufūs, 102–3. 71. In a poem attributed to al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144), he complained that it was safer for a person to keep his madhhab affiliation hidden because whatever madhhab one mentioned, it would be criticised for its most notorious position or association. If he mentioned that he were Ḥanafī, he would be accused of legalising alcoholic beverages; if Mālikī, of allowing the consumption of dog meat; if Shāfiʿī, of allowing marriage to one’s own biological daughter; if Ḥanbalī, he would be accused of being an anthropomorphist; if a traditionist-jurisprudent, he would be accused of being ‘devoid of understanding’. See the editor’s introduction to Zamakhsharī’s al-Fāʾiq, 1:9. 72. See Wymann-Landgraf, ‘Mercy’, 1–7. 73. See Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī, Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, Abwāb al-ḥajj, bāb mā jāʾa fī ījāb al-ḥajj bi l-zādi wa l-rāḥila, where Tirmidhī narrated this ḥadīth then pointed out its weakness. 74. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥajj wa asrāruh, 41–42. 75. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥajj wa asrāruh, 41. 76. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥajj wa asrāruh, 41–44. 77. Al-Tirmidhī, ʿIlm al-awliyāʾ, 139.

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4 Ibn ʿArab ī ’s Traditionalism

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he Andalusian Sufi Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), known to his admirers as al-Shaykh al-Akbar (The Greatest Master), began his magnum opus al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya (The Meccan Revelations) by describing a vision he saw. This vision defined his entire teaching and purpose, as he saw it, and subsequently led to the composition of the Futūḥāt. The vision culminated in a pulpit being erected for him to ascend in front of an assembly of all of God’s Prophets and Messengers, led by Muḥammad and his four Caliphs, surrounded by the rest of Muḥammad’s followers. On this pulpit the following words were inscribed with radiant light: ‘This is the pure Muḥammadan Station. Whoever ascends to it is an heir (of Muḥammad) and has been sent by God to preserve the sanctity of the Sharīʿa’.1 Ibn ʿArabī, whose honorific title Muḥyī al-Dīn means Reviver of the Religion, clearly saw the service of the sharīʿa as central to his mission. Yet his writings on Islamic law have not received much attention, since most studies focus on his metaphysical views as well as his writings on prophecy and sainthood, love and mercy, and other themes.2 That the jurisprudential thought of one of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the past eight centuries has not been adequately studied is not the only problem. Without a full understanding of his thought, one cannot fully assess its influence on later figures. It would be hard to imagine that over centuries countless Sufis and scholars who believed that Ibn ʿArabī was the ‘Greatest Master’ benefitted only from his writings on Sufism and 100

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 101 ignored what he wrote on the law. Ibn ʿArabī was a controversial figure who had many detractors; therefore, many Sufis who were highly influenced by his teachings did not mention him at all, although the mark of the influence and borrowings is clear.3 Was this also the case regarding his jurisprudential thought? To establish this, we must arrive at a comprehensive and clear understanding of his legal theory. In order to understand Ibn ʿArabī’s legal views fully, one must investigate the origins of his ideas in earlier sources. This is another area of Akbarī studies that is severely lacking.4 We will therefore look at Sufis and mystics before and after Ibn ʿArabī, who shared views similar to his; we will examine how he may have been influenced by those who came before him, as well as how he influenced those who came after him. The life of Ibn ʿArabī Ibn ʿArabī was born in Murcia in Muslim Spain in the year 560/1165. At that time, the Almohad dynasty was wresting Muslim Spain from Almoravid control. The Almohads had conquered most of the Almoravids’ lands, and Murcia was the last city resisting their advance. Ibn ʿArabī’s father was a high-ranking dignitary at the court of Ibn Mardanīsh, the ruler of Murcia. When Murcia fell, Ibn ʿArabī’s father was given a major position in the court of the new ruling dynasty, and the family moved to Seville in 568/1172, which had newly been chosen as the Almohad capital and was undergoing major expansion. Ibn ʿArabī grew up in a military family that was close to the caliph, and he was not interested in the religious disciplines during his youth. Sometime before the age of twenty he felt drawn to live a life of religious devotion and began to study at the hands of scholars and spend time in the company of mystics in Seville and its surroundings. He learned with many scholars and Sufis in both Muslim Spain and North Africa before leaving Spain for Mecca in 590/1193. After the pilgrimage, he spent time travelling between Egypt, Turkey and Iraq, before settling in Damascus for the last seventeen years of his life, until his death in 638/1240. The Intellectual Environment in Andalusia Muslim Spain had been majority Mālikī almost from the outset of Umayyad rule there. Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī, an Andalusian student of Mālik,

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brought Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ to Andalusia. Yaḥyā was highly revered for his piety and learning by the caliph, who would not appoint anyone as a judge anywhere in Andalusia except with Yaḥyā’s approval. This encouraged the local scholars to become Yaḥyā’s students and adopt the Mālikī madhhab in hopes of gaining positions of judgeship, and it is mainly in this way that the Mālikī school became strongly entrenched in Muslim Spain.5 However, this did not mean that the Andalusian landscape was devoid of other schools or movements. Particularly of note for us, a giant among the earliest scholars of the Ahl al-Ḥadith movement was the Andalusian Baqī ibn Makhlad. Baqī travelled east to learn from Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal and brought back to Andalusia the works of al-Shāfiʿī and the Muṣannaf of Ibn Abī Shayba, another prominent Traditionist-Jurisprudent. This Muṣannaf was an encyclopaedia, not just of the ḥadīth of the Prophet, but also of the fatwās and opinions of the Companions, Followers and the Followers of the Followers; it even included a chapter against Abū Ḥanīfa’s fiqh positions, in line with the early Ahl al-Ḥadith sentiment. Baqī also compiled his own large ḥadīth collection and Qurʾān commentary, both now lost, which many scholars deemed to have no equal anywhere in the Muslim world. His introduction of these works and others to Andalusia, his efforts to spread a culture of ḥadīth scholarship there, and his insistence on giving fatwās according to the way of the Ahl al-Ḥadīth rather than the Mālikī school aroused the anger of the local Mālikī scholars and created much difficulty for him. Baqī was ultimately successful in leaving a legacy of strong ḥadīth scholarship and a larger pool of jurisprudential opinions than the strict Mālikī scholars would have liked. He had proudly stated: ‘I have planted for them here in Andalusia a sapling which they will be unable to uproot until [the end times]’; in a sense he was correct (at least as long as Muslim rule would continue on the Iberian Peninsula).6 At around the same time as Baqī was spreading the teachings of the Ahl al-Ḥadith movement in Andalusia, a student of Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī also came to Andalusia and spread the latter’s teachings there, and both local Andalusian and foreign visitors from the Ẓāhirī tradition continued to bring Ẓāhirī teachings to Andalusia. It is therefore an incorrect belief that Ẓāhirī teachings only appeared in Andalusia at a very late time.7 It is true, however, that the Ẓāhirī tradition first became strongly entrenched in Andalusia after the rise of

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 103 Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba (d. 456/1064), one of the intellectual giants of Islamic civilisation. After the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate, Muslim Spain was divided into different warring Taifa kingdoms. Many of these kingdoms were ‘inegalitarian and tension-ridden societies that continued to display vestiges of their original, ethnically stratified Umayyad social structure’ in which the descendants of Arab immigrants were socially and politically privileged over Berbers and indigenous Iberian converts (as well as Jews and Christians).8 It was during this time of the Taifa kingdoms that Berbers and indigenous Iberians began to rise to the upper classes of society, posing a threat to the Arab elites who responded ‘by perpetuating restrictive Umayyad legal codes and patterns of social differentiation throughout the Ta’ifa and Almoravid periods’.9 In the religious field, this Umayyad Arabist reaction expressed itself ‘as a stubborn adherence to insular forms of [. . .] Mālikī legal methodology’. These Mālikī jurists ‘sought to perpetuate the status quo ante by resisting any attempt to promote a true meritocracy or to make Andalusian intellectual life conform to the ethos of “Sunni internationalism” that had become the standard in the east’.10 Against this Mālikī dogmatism, Andalusia began to see a rise in ḥadīth specialists who travelled to the east and learned from Shāfiʿī scholars, returning to Andalusia with more willingness to practise ijtihād within and sometimes outside the boundaries of Mālikī doctrine. These scholars practised ijtihād, armed with their ḥadīth expertise and the science of uṣūl al-fiqh which was emphasised by their Shāfiʿī teachers in the east. This led to an ‘opening up’ of the Mālikī school and its doctrines from within by those independentminded Mālikīs.11 ‘The “international” and universalistic orientation of this movement’ of uṣūl-oriented legists, Sufis and ḥadīth scholars, ‘posed a direct challenge to the ethnically based sectarianism of post-Umayyad society’.12 Sufis were at the heart of this movement, and this brought Sufism, ḥadīth specialists and uṣūlī mujtahids closer together. As Vincent Cornell noted, . . . An important aspect of the juridical Sufi perspective was a non-sectarian attitude toward the four Sunni schools of Islamic law. Although they were influenced by Shāfiʿī methodology, most orthodox mystics in the Maghrib tended to avoid making explicit criticisms of the Mālikī school and preferred instead to retain a sort of cultural allegiance to their traditional madhhab.13

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Cornell continued to claim that the Sufis of Andalusia were more attracted to the Shāfiʿī school because they perceived it to apply the sunna more rigorously. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that they were more committed to the application of the ḥadīth and the elevation of the sunna of God’s Messenger over allegiance to any particular school. After all, the Mālikī school claimed to represent the sunna just as much as the Shāfiʿī school, or any other school for that matter, but they had a different method of gauging the sunna. The Andalusian mystics’ attitude toward the Mālikī school was not too different from that of Traditionalist Mālikīs such as Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr who recognised where the Mālikī school was basing itself on what it perceived to be the sunna, and where it was basing itself on juristic precedence and raʾy. The Almoravids came from North Africa around the year 1090 and wrested control of Andalusia from the different Taifa kingdoms, re-establishing a single authority over the Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula. The Almoravids had first emerged as a religious revivalist movement, and their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula gained the support of the local jurists and judges. Their leaders showed respect for the religious classes and surrounded themselves by jurists who acted as their advisors (fuqahāʾ mushāwarūn, government advisor jurists), relying on them for both religious and political decisions.14 Almoravid rule was therefore very much based on an alliance between the state and the local Mālikī jurists. The rulers gave precedence to the study of Mālikī jurisprudence over the books of other schools and further encouraged and sponsored the power of dogmatically rigid Mālikī jurists whose opponents called them Mālikī anthropomorphists.15 One researcher described the reaction to Almoravid policies as a ‘counter-current movement against Mālikī statesponsored jurists’ that brought together mystics, renunciants and countercurrent jurists such as the Ẓāhirīs.16 Anti-Almoravid feeling was widespread in Andalusia for a number of reasons, such as their ethno-classism, military failures and increased taxation which only heightened the financial disparity between much of the local population and the rulers and their court jurists.17 However, the first major challenge to their rule was the open revolts of mystic leaders. As Hugh Kennedy noted, . . . The Almoravid government, and their allies among the fuqaha of al-Andalus, had tended to preach a severe and perhaps rather unimaginative view of Islam

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 105 in which correct performance of ritual was more important than inner spiritual development. Many in al-Andalus wished to go further than this and looked for leadership to a group of Sufi teachers, based mostly in Almeria, who encouraged their followers to seek a more intense and personal communication with God . . . 18

Mystical and Sufi teachings were viewed as such a threat to the Almoravids and their Mālikī court-jurists that two Almoravid leaders arranged public burnings of all of Ghazālī’s books, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn being their main target. The first burning was ordered by the Almoravid leader ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf in 503/1109 at the instigation of several jurists. His son and successor Tāshufīn ibn ʿAlī instigated the second burning himself in 538/1143, with the support of several jurists.19 There are a great many parallels between the teachings of the Almerian school of mysticism, which dominated the spiritual and mystical landscape on the Iberian Peninsula, and those of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, even though no direct connection between the two schools has been established. Tirmidhī had emphasised the power of spiritual insight (baṣīra) to penetrate through the letter of the law into the wisdom behind it, just as it could, he said, penetrate through dreams and even one’s waking lived experiences to find God’s messages behind them. Tirmidhī also spoke of contemplating God’s dominion and natural phenomenon as a tool for gaining insight into higher realities.20 This idea was the focus of Andalusian mystics, although they employed their own term for it: iʿitbār (literally, to learn from), which for them came from ‘crossing over’ (ʿibra/ʿubūr) from the outward to the inward.21 Andalusian mystics, however, placed more emphasis on contemplation of natural phenomena than did Tirmidhī. Ibn ʿArabī took the term iʿitbār from his Andalusian predecessors and used it for his explanations of the wisdom behind the sharīʿa’s rulings, to signify that he was penetrating, like Tirmidhī, from the outward ruling to the inner wisdom behind it. The most prominent figures of this school were Ibn Barrajān (d. 536/ 1141), who came to be recognised as imām in 130 different Andalusian villages, and his disciple Ibn al-ʿArīf (d. 536/1142) – both of them had a great deal of influence on Ibn ʿArabī.22 It is noteworthy that these two, and many of their most prominent scholarly students, did not follow the Mālikī

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school of law or any of the five main Sunni schools (Ẓāhirism being the fifth). Rather, they had their own methodology which argued that all of the Prophet’s teachings were extracted from the Qurʾān and that ḥadīth could not abrogate the Qurʾān because its function was only to explain it.23 This was a methodology that hearkened back to the Prophet’s cousin Ibn ʿAbbās and his Meccan school of fiqh.24 It did not mean putting less emphasis on ḥadīth, but redefining the relationship between the Qurʾān and the sunna. These mystics, in fact, put more emphasis on ḥadīth study than the local Mālikī scholars, and their fame as ḥadīth scholars sometimes overshadowed their fame as mystics.25 Ibn Barrajān was known for his opposition to the Almoravid state-jurists. His immense power and popularity, as well as those of his student Ibn al-ʿArīf, were deemed a great threat to the Almoravid state and their jurists. They were both summoned to Marrakesh to be interrogated by the Almoravid rulers and their court jurists. Ibn Barrajān was imprisoned and soon died, his body thrown into a refuse dump. Ibn al-ʿArīf died of poisoning soon after his return home – it is said that an Almoravid judge fed him a poisoned aubergine.26 As Kennedy said, ‘[t]hese incidents were made much of by Almohad propagandists, suggesting that Sufis and Sufism had become a major focus of anti-Almoravid feeling in al-Andalus’.27 Another Sufi leader who came not from Almeria, but from the Algarve in modern-day Portugal, was Ibn Qasī (d. 546/1151), of whose Sufi works Ibn ʿArabī did not have a very favourable opinion. After seeing what had happened to Ibn Barrajān and Ibn al-ʿArīf, Ibn Qasī proclaimed himself imām and led his Murīdūn movement in open military rebellion against the Almoravids, winning some victories and wresting some villages from their control. But it was the North African Almohad regime – which also claimed Sufi legitimacy through their founder’s dubious claim to have studied with Ghazālī and to have received his backing for his movement – that eventually defeated and replaced the Almoravids as rulers of Muslim Spain and Portugal. The Almohads who ruled al-Andalus in Ibn ʿArabī’s time would create an environment that supported the growing non-Mālikī currents in al-Andalus – especially the uṣūl and ḥadīth-based approaches taken by the Ẓāhirīs, Shāfiʿīs, Sufis and eastern-educated ḥadīth masters among the Mālikīs who did not conform to the standard Mālikī positions espoused by their taqlīd-favouring colleagues. It is important to note that there had already been a number of

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 107 such prominent Mālikī ḥadīth masters who were known to practise their own ijtihād, and who have been described as having Shāfiʿī leanings, such as Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr al-Mālikī (d. 463/1071), a close friend of Ibn Ḥazm, and Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī al-Mālikī (d. 453/1148), a student of two great Shāfiʿīs: Ghazālī and Abū Bakr al-Shāshī (d. 507/1114).28 These scholars were not necessarily influenced by the Shāfiʿī school as much as they were by the ḥadīthfocused approach of the Traditionalist movement in general. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr did agree in some cases with the Shāfiʿī school, but in most of those cases where he diverged from the mainstream Mālikī school he was favouring the opinions of Mālik himself, as ascribed to him by his students from Medina. Mālik’s Medinan students were seen as part of the Traditionalist movement, whereas the Egyptian Ibn al-Qāsim, upon whom the mainstream Mālikī school relied, was a Rationalist. The short-lived Iraqi school of Mālikism was somewhere in between both schools.29 Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr is best described as a Traditionalist Mālikī who was heavily influenced by the extinct Medinan and Iraqi schools of Mālikism. He left a lasting influence on other independent Mālikī scholars of Andalusia with Traditionalist leanings, such as Ibn Rushd (Averroes) whom Ibn ʿArabī met as a young man and whose funeral he attended. Ibn Rushd relied almost completely on Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s al-Istidhkār as the main source for the opinions of the scholars and schools in his comparative fiqh work Bidāyat almujtahid wa nihāyat al-muqtaṣid. Ibn Rushd mentioned Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr by name hundreds of times in this work, relied on his comments on the authenticity of ḥadīths and often agreed with him in his divergence from the mainstream Mālikī school.30 I have found that Ibn ʿArabī in turn used Ibn Rushd’s Bidāyat al-mujtahid as his main source for presenting the different opinions of the schools in his own comparative fiqh discussions in the Futūḥāt, changing Ibn Rushd’s words only slightly and removing the names of the imāms to which each position was attributed. This is one of the channels through which the Traditionalist strand of Mālikism, which survived mainly in Andalusia, would have influenced Ibn ʿArabī. The Almohads encouraged the study of ḥadīth in the Muslim West, much like the Ayyubids and Seljuks were supporting it in the Muslim East.31 The founder of the Almohad dynasty and his first two successors tended ‘to emphasise the primacy of the revealed sources – the Koran and the Sunna of the Prophet Muḥammad – at the expense of manuals of jurisprudence

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(furūʿ) generated by the Mālikī school of law. By the same token, raʾy and Taqlīd were rejected’.32 The fourth Almohad caliph was Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb al-Manṣūr (r. 580–94/1184–98). It was mostly during his reign that Ibn ʿArabī acquired his studies since he began his education in Seville two to four years before al-Manṣūr ascended the throne. According to the historians ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Marrākushī (d. after 621/1224) and Ibn al-Athīr (d. 630/1233), this caliph publicly professed his allegiance to the Ẓāhirī tradition and the legacy of its main proponent in the Maghreb, Ibn Ḥazm.33 According to the biographer and Shāfiʿī scholar Ibn Khallikān, al-Manṣūr called for the rejection of the positive law that was worked out by the jurists and demanded that legal verdicts only be given based on the Qurʾān and sunna. Al-Manṣūr also demanded that scholars not imitate any previous imāms and that they perform their own ijtihād based on the Qurʾān, ḥadīth, consensus and qiyās.34 If Ibn Khallikān did not err in mentioning qiyās, which was anathema to the Ẓāhirīs, it would be a reflection of al-Manṣūr’s tolerance for other legal methodologies. Ibn Khallikān, who lived in the Muslim East, stated that among the scholars of the Muslim West whom he met and who followed that way (ʿalā dhālik al-ṭarīq) – that is, the way of independent ijtihād encouraged by al-Manṣūr – were Ibn ʿArabī as well as Abū l-Khaṭṭāb ibn Diḥya al-Kalbī and his brother Abū ʿAmr.35 During the reign of al-Manṣūr, there was no noticeable increase in the number of Ẓāhirī scholars, although some Ẓāhirīs were appointed to the position of chief qādī.36 There was, however, a marked increase in the number of traditionists in Seville: a census showed that it jumped from fifty-seven names in the period of 565–85/1170–89 to seventyeight names in the period of 585–610/1189–1213. Furthermore, during that time, ḥadīth studies in Andalusia ‘became more and more closely linked with asceticism (zuhd) and Sufism’.37 It is also worth noting that, while Ibn Ḥazm himself was not a Sufi, his greatest student and the one who took with him Ibn Ḥazm’s writings to the eastern lands, was a Sufi. Abū ʿAbd-Allāh al-Ḥumaydī (d. 488/1095) was a Ẓāhirī jurist, ḥadīth specialist and historian, as well as the author of Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī dhikr ṣūfiyyat al-ʿIrāq, a work on the lives of Iraqi Sufi masters. He even requested to be buried beside the grave of the early mystic Bishr al-Ḥāfī in Baghdad. Ibn ʿArabī, therefore, began to study the religious sciences at a time when the tendency for independent ḥadīth-based jurisprudence was on the rise,

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 109 particularly among mystics, and this is apparent in what he wrote of some of his contemporaries. Ibn ʿArabī wrote about a man called Ibrāhīm ibn Hammām al-Ishbīlī who dedicated himself to the study of traditions and to acting upon them, and according to Ibn ʿArabī, the (presumably Mālikī) jurists of his town rose against him. Ibn ʿArabī would later, in Mecca, see a dream in which the Prophet lovingly embraced Ibrāhīm ibn Hammām, kissed him and told him that he loved him.38 Ibn ʿArabī also wrote that these very same jurists who rose against Ibrāhīm ibn Hammām were once discussing the ruling of a certain part of the pilgrimage when someone showed them authentic traditions of the Prophet that went against their school’s ruling. The jurists refused to follow these traditions and said that ‘the schools of law have now been settled, and this man wants to question them with these traditions!’ After this incident, writes Ibn ʿArabī, ‘a righteous man saw in his dream that the jurists of his town had gathered together to bury the Prophet under the ground, and upon waking up, he inquired as to the cause of his vision until he was told of this incident’.39 Ibn ʿArabī visited Tunis twice to stay with the Sufi Shaykh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Mahdāwī, one of the most famous disciples of the Sufi Shaykh Abū Madyan, who was a major influence on Ibn ʿArabī.40 In Mahdāwī’s house he met the Andalusian scholar and Sufi Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad al-Ḥarīrī who had lived next door to him in Seville, and from whose brother Ibn ʿArabī had learned the Qurʾān as a child.41 Ḥarīrī told Ibn ʿArabī that he used to prefer Abū Ḥanīfa over the other imāms for his great mind and sound juristic opinions (ḥusn raʾyihī), until he had a dream of the Prophet’s Companion Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq who told him that, of the four imāms, Ibn Ḥanbal was ‘the closest to us’ and Abū Ḥanīfa the farthest. This taught Ḥarīrī that ‘salvation was in following ḥadīth’.42 When Ibn ʿArabī later travelled to Mecca, he related Ḥarīrī’s vision to the judge ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Azdī of Alexandria. This shows the great deal to which thoughts about this subject-matter continued to concern him. Azdī affirmed what Ḥarīrī had said and related to him another story in support of this. He spoke of a righteous man who had passed away and was seen in a dream by another righteous man. The dead man was asked about what he saw in the afterlife. He replied: I saw books being raised, and books being lowered. I asked about them, and I was told: ‘As for those that are raised, they are the books of traditions, and as

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for those that are being lowered, they are the books of fiqh – they will remain that way until their authors are questioned about them’.43

These stories give us a glimpse into the thoughts and concerns of some Andalusian scholars and Sufis at the time. The confluence of all these abovementioned elements in Ibn ʿArabī’s time – Sufism, non-madhhabism and ḥadīth-based jurisprudence – is highlighted by a story related in a work by one of Ibn ʿArabī’s most important teachers, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Ishbīlī (d. 581/1116). Ishbīlī (also known as Ibn al-Kharrāṭ) was a mystic – a disciple of Ibn Barrajān – and a traditionist. He authored Kitāb al-aḥkām al-sharʿiyya, a work in the genre known as aḥādīth al-aḥkām, a genre popular among independent jurists with a preference for ḥadīth-based ijtihād, in which all the relevant ḥadīth material is quoted for each issue of fiqh. Ishbīlī showed his true mastery of the ḥadīth sciences in this work; it indicates that, like his Sufi master Ibn Barrajān, Ishbīlī was not a Mālikī, but of the general Ahl al-Ḥadith persuasion, even exhibiting some influence from Bukhārī’s fiqh. He also authored a poem on following the ḥadīth and rejecting the schools of raʾy. Ishbīlī’s expertise in the hidden faults of ḥadīth narrations and his method of ijtihād qualifies him as a late representative of the Traditionist-Jurisprudent method.44 Ishbīlī gave his student Ibn ʿArabī authorisation to transmit this work, as well as another work he wrote on life after death, called al-ʿĀqiba fī dhikr al-mawt. In this latter work, in the section on dreams seen of pious people after they died, Ishbīlī relates that a pious man called Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sāḥilī saw in his dream a deceased scholar called Maysara ibn Salam. Sāḥilī asked Maysara how God treated him after his death, to which he replied: We were let off easily (rukhkhiṣa lanā), on account of us giving fatwās to people based on what made things easier for them’ (rukhaṣ – which meant going outside the standard positions of the Mālikī school). ‘What do you advise me?’, asked Sāḥilī. ‘Following the ḥadīth (ittibāʿ al-āthār) and keeping company with the pious (suḥbat al-akhyār) save one from the Hellfire (al-nār) and bring one nearer to God (al-Jabbār).45

Ibn ʿArabī refers to Ishbīlī’s criticism of the authenticity of a ḥadīth narration in the context of one of his juristic discussions.46 This may be the only time that Ibn ʿArabī explicitly pointed to his teacher’s influence on his own juristic

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 111 discussions, but we would be very wrong to assume that Ishbīlī’s influence stopped there. Ibn ʿArabī admired Ishbīlī’s Kitāb al-aḥkām al-sharʿiyya to such an extent that he copied it out in its entirety – coming to six volumes – in his own hand; the manuscript still exists in the private library collection of Ibn ʿArabī’s son-in-law Qūnawī. Ibn ʿArabī and his beloved student Badr al-Ḥabashī also heard a complete reading of the text in Mecca from one of Ishbīlī’s students.47 This indicates that the fiqh of Ibn ʿArabī was formed not only by the knowledge and arguments of the likes of Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Ibn Rushd and Ibn Ḥazm, but also to a considerable degree by the independent Traditionist-Jurisprudent Ishbīlī. This Ahl al-Ḥadīth non-madhhab persuasion only seemed to have become more widespread after Ibn ʿArabī’s lifetime – not only among the Sufis in particular, but also among a great many jurists. In fact, this became such a visible and dominant approach in al-Andalus that the great Mālikī jurist Abū Isḥāq al-Shāṭibī felt that the Mālikī school in al-Andalus was in danger, leading him to write his most famous work on uṣūl al-fiqh: al-Muwāfaqāt. As Wael Hallaq brilliantly showed, Shāṭibī’s aim in this work was not to open the way for a more flexible application of the sharīʿa in which the clear injunctions of the Qurʾān could be put aside, as many of his modern interpreters claimed. Rather, Shāṭibī’s aim in discussing the maqāṣid or goals of the sharīʿa was to defend raʾy-based reasoning – that is, reasoning that was not strictly tied to textual evidence – in an attempt to defend the Mālikī school’s strong emphasis on non-textual evidence such as maṣlaḥa (public interest) and blocking the means.48 Shāṭibī himself explained in his introduction that his work was titled al-Muwāfaqāt (The Concordances), because it aimed to show the concordances between the principles of the two great schools of raʾy, the Mālikī and Ḥanafī schools. He even referred to the Mālikī school not as the school of Mālik, but as ‘the madhhab of Ibn al-Qāsim’, in recognition of the fact that the methodology of the mainstream Mālikī school owed much to Mālik’s brilliant student Ibn al-Qāsim who was known for his raʾy-based reasoning.49 Shāṭibī felt the need to defend the Mālikī school because he saw that neither the Sufis nor the jurists of his time followed it. The Sufis looked at all the Sunni schools so that they could follow the most demanding and conservative positions of fiqh, while the jurists did the same in order to give fatwās according to the easiest and most accommodating positions. The Sufis also believed

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in the permissibility of singing, as did the Ẓāhirīs, on the basis that there were no authentic ḥadīths prohibiting them. The Traditionalist Mālikī and ḥadīth master Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr also had approved of Ibn Ḥazm’s treatise on the permissibility of singing and musical instruments, in which the author demonstrated the flaws in all the ḥadīths claiming otherwise, and he gave evidence of the Companions listening to women sing and play string instruments.50 Shāṭibī, however, criticised the Sufis for their practice of chanting on the basis that ‘we (the jurists) have declared it to be prohibited’! Shāṭibī argued that, while singing and chanting were permissible when done on rare occasions, they were reprehensible when done on a regular basis, as in the gatherings of Sufis.51 It was precisely this kind of rational argument coupled with juristic precedent that demonstrated for the Sufis the dangers of raʾy and the importance of following only the Qurʾān and authentic ḥadīth. Such Traditionalist Mālikīs did not heed the ‘official doctrine’ of the school and followed what they believed was the most authentic evidence. As we will come to see, the elements advocated by Ibn ʿArabī – elements of 1) following the ḥadīth instead of madhhabs, 2) the Sufi choosing for himself the more difficult option, while 3) giving fatwā to others according to what is the easier option – must have only grown in strength after Ibn ʿArabī’s time and become so dominant as to elicit Shāṭibī’s reaction and the composition of his great Muwāfaqāt.52 The Influence of Eastern Mystics and Sufis We have seen how the Almerian school of mysticism in al-Andalus encouraged an approach to fiqh similar to that which Ibn ʿArabī would adopt himself. Ibn ʿArabī was also influenced by the Sufis and mystics of the Eastern lands of Islam, both from his own personal readings in al-Andalus, and more so later when he left the Muslim West and settled in the Muslim East. When the young Ibn ʿArabī discovered Qushayrī’s Risāla through one of his early teachers in al-Andalus, he was so devoted to reading it that he was even given the title of ‘al-Qushayrī’!53 We have seen earlier how Qushayrī in his final chapter of advice warned the Sufis not to follow any schools of jurisprudence or theology. Ibn ʿArabī also quoted Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī in his writings, who, as previously mentioned, said the same.54 One of the authors who influenced Ibn ʿArabī the most was al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī. Ibn ʿArabī thought very highly of Tirmidhī, describing him as

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 113 ‘the imām who possessed perfect mystical experience’.55 Much of Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas on sainthood was built upon the edifice created by Tirmidhī, as we will see in detail below. We have already noted that the ideas that made Tirmidhī distinct in his time were the same ideas that made Andalusian mysticism distinct in its own time and place. However, it is more likely that Ibn ʿArabī studied Tirmidhī’s writings after he moved to the East. Tirmidhī’s works were available and well-received in Syria during the time Ibn ʿArabī stayed there, and they were usually sold as a large collection of Tirmidhī’s large and small works. Some copyists were even famed for their devotion to Tirmidhī’s writings. These collections included Tirmidhī’s works on the wisdom behind prayer, the pilgrimage, prohibitions in the sharīʿa and his work al-Furūq, which contained his most sustained and detailed critique of analogical reasoning.56 In his Futūḥāt where Ibn ʿArabī discussed the prostration of forgetfulness (sujūd al-sahw) at the end of the prayer to make up for having done a mistake, he wrote: It is recommended for every worshipper to perform the two prostrations of forgetfulness after every prayer, for mankind will almost always become absent-minded in prayer, if even for a single moment [. . .] that is the position (madhhab) of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī.57

Tirmidhī discussed the benefit of this practice in one of his smallest works, Kitāb al-iḥtiyāṭāt, in which he attributed this practice to the Prophet’s young cousin Ibn ʿAbbās. It was a work that dealt with simple practices to be done every day.58 This tells us that Ibn ʿArabī had access to many of Tirmidhī’s works, even this small one which was certainly not one of his more famous or important works, and that he was concerned with benefitting from him even on small matters of practice. In Ibn ʿArabī’s chapter on advice in his Futūḥāt in which he recommended many different small practices and acts of worship, he also recommended a supplication to be recited at the end of every prayer, which he took from Tirmidhī’s largest work, Nawadir al-uṣūl.59 In his work Khatm al-awliya, Tirmidhī left a challenge in the form of a number of questions that only those who had reached the highest level of sainthood could answer. Ibn ʿArabī was the first person known to take up that challenge. In this response, Ibn ʿArabī showed his in-depth study of Tirmidhī’s

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views on jurisprudence when he said: ‘[Tirmidhī] had originally been a follower of the Ḥanafī school until he came to know the Law (directly) from the Lawgiver’.60 The first half of this statement shows a general knowledge of Tirmidhī’s biography, which was better than that of, for example, Tāj al-Dīn Subkī (d. 771/1370), who counted him among the Shāfiʿīs.61 The second part of the statement indicates a study of Tirmidhī’s fiqh positions, based on which Ibn ʿArabī could conclude that Tirmidhī ceased to follow the school of Abū Ḥanīfa, or any other school for that matter.62 Early Eastern Sufis and mystics, then, and especially Tirmidhī and Qushayrī, also undoubtedly influenced Ibn ʿArabī’s approach to jurisprudence and strengthened his belief in the importance of independent ijtihād rather than imitation of previous authorities. By Ibn ʿArabī’s time, the Sufis of the East had undergone some changes that set them apart from the Andalusian mystical tradition with which Ibn ʿArabī had grown up. Ibn ʿArabī found the Eastern Sufis of his time very institutionalised, especially with their formalised ṭuruq (Sufi orders), when compared to the Andalusian mystics.63 Eastern Sufis had also integrated themselves into the institutionalisation of learning and teaching in the East, which helped solidify the four dominant madhhabs, unlike the Andalusian Sufis who had been wary of such institutionalisation and had remained independent theologically and jurisprudentially. Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī’s (d. 386/996) Qūt al-qulūb, written in the fourth/tenth century, had described adherence to the madhhabs as a dangerous new development to be warned against, and Qushayrī’s (d. 465/1072) Risāla warned that adherence to madhhabs, both jurisprudential and theological, was unbefitting of Sufis. Less than half a century after Qushayrī, Ghazālī wrote in his Iḥyāʾ ulūm al-dīn – which took most of its Sufi content from Qūt al-qulūb, but also from the Risāla and others – that ‘the veil of imitation can only be removed by renouncing fanaticism to the madhhabs [. . .] and it is not a condition for the [Sufi] aspirant to belong to a specific madhhab anyway’.64 Adherence to the madhhabs had gone from something blameworthy to being seen as the norm, but not a necessary condition. It was only fanaticism in adhering to the schools that formed a dangerous veil to the aspirant according to Ghazālī, whose writings were probably the most important Sufi works in the Eastern lands in Ibn ʿArabī’s time. The transformations taking place in the East, however, did not mean that Ibn ʿArabī was by any means a lone voice in his generation against taqlīd.

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 115 In fact, in Ibn ʿArabī’s Damascus there lived (arguably) the most important scholar of the age and one of the most powerful scholarly personalities in the history of Muslim civilisation, who was also an independent mujtahid and a strong critic of taqlīd. This was the Shāfiʿī-trained ʿIzz al-Dīn ibn ʿAbd al-Salām (d. 660/1262), known as ‘Sultan of the Scholars’, who would acquire legendary status as a powerful and fearless scholar and whose positions showed a strong iconoclastic tendency before his late conversion to the Sufi path. Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām not only criticised those scholars who insisted on following their madhhabs even when shown the weakness of its evidence,65 but, like Ibn ʿArabī, he also criticised those jurists who prevented laymen from choosing between the accepted opinions of the different madhhabs.66 What makes Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s stance as a contemporary of Ibn ʿArabī even more important to us is that he used to borrow Ibn Ḥazm’s al-Muḥallā and its larger predecessor al-Mujallā from Ibn ʿArabī, and that he considered them two of the three greatest works of scholarship of which he was aware.67 It may be, therefore, that Ibn ʿArabī influenced the thought of Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, even if only through allowing him access to the works of Ibn Ḥazm. There are, however, more indications of Ibn ʿArabī’s influence on Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s thought outside of the field of jurisprudence and in theological matters.68 Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s students, the Egyptian Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd (d. 702/1302) and the Damascene Abū Shāma (d. 665/1268), both composed works against taqlīd and declared themselves to be fully independent mujtahids.69 This now brings us to Ibn ʿArabī’s mysticism and its influence on his study of ḥadīth and jurisprudence. Mysticism, Traditions and Traditionalism Similar to Ibn ʿArabī’s contemporaries who came to favour the Traditionalist approach over the Rationalist schools because of dream visions, Ibn ʿArabī himself justified the Traditionalist approach through both his own dream experiences and his mystical doctrines. Ibn ʿArabī described many dreams which helped direct him in his youth toward ḥadīth studies and Traditionalism. Ibn ʿArabī began studying ḥadīth in his early twenties, soon after he had decided to devote himself to God, and he attributed this decision to a set of visions that he had seen. After his religious calling, Ibn ʿArabī was encouraged by a group of his companions to study books of jurisprudence. He then

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saw a dream in which he was in an open field, while a group of armed men were trying to kill him. Ibn ʿArabī saw the Prophet Muḥammad on top of a small hill and ran to the Prophet’s great embrace. The Prophet said to him: ‘My beloved, hold fast to me and you shall be safe’. At this point, all of his enemies vanished. ‘From that time’, he wrote, ‘I busied myself with the writing of ḥadīth’.70 There is great significance in this vision because it taught Ibn ʿArabī that spiritual perfection could only be attained by closely following and imitating the Prophet Muḥammad’s example.71 This recalls the dream about which Tirmidhī wrote in his autobiography, where he saw himself walking behind the Prophet Muḥammad, placing his feet exactly where the Prophet placed his feet at every step, walking so close behind him that he almost touched the Prophet’s back.72 In another vision, Ibn ʿArabī saw Mālik ibn Anas, the great Traditionist after whom the Mālikī school of jurisprudence is named, and asked him what he should study. Mālik said to him: ‘Do you like to read the books of jurisprudence (raʾy)?’ At this point, Ibn ʿArabī saw a man who busied himself with books of jurisprudence, scavenging through a garbage dump and turning away from Mālik. Ibn ʿArabī said: ‘I fear that the books of jurisprudence would lead me to where they led this man’. Mālik smiled and said: ‘You have spoken the truth! My son, busy yourself with writing traditions and acting upon them’.73 This vision is highly significant because it reflects Ibn ʿArabī’s reaction to the religious atmosphere of his time. Even though an emphasis on traditions was beginning to rise in Ibn ʿArabī’s environment, at such an early stage of Almohad rule the hold of Mālikism was undoubtedly still strong. In this vision, it was Mālik himself who taught Ibn ʿArabī to focus on traditions, not on books of jurisprudence, which in that context would undoubtedly have referred to Mālikī books of jurisprudence. Ibn ʿArabī mentioned these dreams in a work titled Kitāb al-mubashshirāt, a small work on dream visions of his, which he believed were of benefit to all Muslims and not only to himself. It is noteworthy that, when describing his dreams, Ibn ʿArabī referred to books of jurisprudence as ‘kutub al-raʾy’, books of juristic opinion, a condescending term used by the early Traditionalists against the Rationalists. Ibn ʿArabī’s discussion of the ruling on raising the hands during different movements of the prayer gives us another glimpse into this Mālikī hegemony

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 117 in his surroundings, and how he attributed his liberation from it to a dream vision. The official position of the Mālikī school states that the hands are only raised at the initial glorification which signals the beginning of the prayer, but not again for the remainder of the prayer. Ibn ʿArabī, however, wrote that he was commanded by the Prophet Muḥammad himself in a dream vision to raise his hands at two other times: when going down into the bowing position, and again when raising from it. He wrote: The people of our lands, in their entirety, do not hold this opinion, nor do we have anyone who does this, nor had I ever seen it. When I told my dream to Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥājj, who was a traditionist, he narrated to me an authentic tradition from the Messenger of God (may God’s peace and blessings be upon him) stating the same, which was mentioned by Muslim. I later read it myself in Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ when I began to study ḥadīth. I saw later that there is even a narration by Ibn Wahb about Mālik ibn Anas holding the same opinion. Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī also mentioned the same tradition and said, ‘Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī acted upon this tradition and held this opinion’.74

In the quote above we have Ibn ʿArabī claiming once again, through his dreams and his studies of the books of the traditionists, that the Mālikī school itself was many times at odds with the opinions of Mālik ibn Anas. We see the hegemony of Mālikī thought on Muslim Spain, and we see Ibn ʿArabī breaking free from it, first based on visions that he had and then based on his studies and his interaction with traditionists who themselves were affiliated with the Mālikī school.75 The raising of hands is, in fact, the position attributed to Mālik by the majority of his students against the lone attribution to the contrary by Mālik’s student Ibn al-Qāsim, and it was the preference of a number of Traditionalist Mālikīs in Andalusia and the Maghreb before Ibn ʿArabī’s time, such as al-Qādī ʿIyāḍ and Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr.76 It seems, however, that this dream came early in Ibn ʿArabī’s journey of knowledge, when he had not yet been exposed to the heritage of the Traditionalist Mālikīs of Andalusia. We also see in this the importance of dreams in the development of Ibn ʿArabī’s personality and career, as with Tirmidhī whose autobiography consisted mainly of dream visions that he or his wife had for him.

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Ibn ʿArabī’s study of traditions was a lifelong one; his fervour increased further after he left Muslim Spain for the Muslim East,77 especially upon his first stay in Mecca where he spent much of his two years there ‘deepening his study of ḥadīth’.78 In fact, as Gril noted, of all the sciences that Ibn ʿArabī studied, ‘it was to Ḥadīth that he devoted most time and on which he wrote the most’.79 Like Tirmidhī before him, Ibn ʿArabī studied ḥadīth extensively from many masters but was more famous as a Sufi. Unlike Tirmidhī, Ibn ʿArabī has not received enough appreciation as a traditionist. As with Tirmidhī who greatly contributed to the field of traditions with such works as Nawādir al-uṣūl and al-Manhiyyāt, Ibn ʿArabī also made important contributions to the field of ḥadīth. After arriving in Mecca, Ibn ʿArabī began composing al-Maḥajja l-bayḍāʾ fī l-aḥkām al-sharʿiyya. This followed the genre of aḥādīth al-aḥkām works such as those written by the Traditionist-Jurisprudents, including his own teacher ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Ishbīlī. The surviving portion, which constitutes the second volume, discussed 528 matters relating to the ritual prayer. For each question, the book listed the opinions of all the schools of law and other Sunni scholars, then presented the traditions upon which they relied, followed by a grading of the authenticity of these traditions and the reliability of the transmitters in their chains.80 Had this work been completed, it may have earned Ibn ʿArabī a place among the greatest scholars of traditions and jurisprudence. Ibn ʿArabī also wrote abridgements of the three great ḥadīth collections Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim and Sunan al-Tirmidhī, which are now lost.81 He also wrote al-Miṣbāḥ fī al-jamʿ bayn al-ṣiḥāḥ, which some scholars, based on the name, believe was ‘a synthesis of the six canonical collections’.82 Ibn ʿArabī also wrote a collection of 101 aḥādīth qudsiyya: non-Qurʾānic sayings of God stated by the Prophet Muḥammad. Stephen Hirtenstein stated that this was only the second-oldest collection of this genre of traditions, and that it may have therefore contributed to the popularisation of this genre.83 This in itself would be an important contribution to the field of ḥadīth. Ibn ʿArabī is also the central figure behind the popularisation of two pattern-chain (musalsal) ḥadīths and the continuing transmission of these ḥadīths with each ḥadīth’s pattern of action repeated with every transmission until today.84

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 119 We have seen how Ibn ʿArabī’s dreams encouraged him to study ḥadīth and to follow a Traditionalist approach to jurisprudence over that of the four schools. Ibn ʿArabī also gave metaphysical and spiritual justification both for ḥadīth study and transmission, and for strictly following ḥadīth without any of the positive law of the jurists. Ibn ʿArabī explained that one’s greatest aim should be to reach a state of perfect servitude (‘ubūda) to God; in order to do so, one needed to avoid any contestation of God’s lordship.85 Ibn ʿArabī held that the act of legislation through the process of ijtihād detracted from one’s state of servitude to God, because it was God who was the Lawgiver: Hold tight to close following (of the Prophet), you will be a servant, and do not originate (tabtadiʿ) a new judgement in the realm of servanthood [the realm of obligations] and so become through that act a lord, for it is He who is the Originator (badīʿ), glory be to Him. Remain within the bounds of your own reality.86

As Eric Winkel wrote, . . . Ibn al-ʿArabī recognise[d] the dangers of extending, through analogy, explicit commands into realms of silence [. . .] To silence what was spoken and to vocalise what was silent is to assume Lordship. The [servant], in complete contrast, seeks to be utterly passive and receptive to Allah’s command, like the corpse in the washer’s hands.87

For Ibn ʿArabī, the ultimate goal of the Sufi was to distance himself from any remnants of lordship and to achieve perfect servitude. The path thereto similarly entailed becoming a transmitter of the Qurʾān or ḥadīth. According to Ibn ʿArabī, God honoured his Messengers by calling them ‘Messengers’ and not awliyāʾ. That is because the term ‘Messenger’ can only apply to man, not to God. The term walī, however, is also one of God’s Names (al-Walī) and not only refers to meanings of nearness and friendship, but also could refer to authority-related meanings such as ‘guardian’ or ‘protector’.88 To assume that title thus signified a contestation, to a degree, of God’s lordship. Yet, the state of being a Messenger increased one’s spiritual perfection. Since the line of Messengers had come to an end with Muḥammad, the only way left to achieve this perfection was to narrate ḥadīth with their uninterrupted chains

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of transmission. The Prophet had opened this door for his followers when he entrusted them with the mission of conveying his words to others, saying: ‘Let the present transmit to the absent’. By transmitting the Prophet’s words, one became a messenger of the Messenger of God and, hence, ultimately shared in the quality of being a messenger of God. Therefore, no one can reach the highest stations of servitude to God except those who narrate ḥadīth or the Qurʾān. The greatest honour, in the view of Ibn ʿArabī, was the combination of being a muḥaddath (inspired saint) and a muḥaddith (traditionist). Furthermore, for those who had that rank, the term muḥaddath was preferable to the term walī.89 Ibn ʿArabī and the Works of Ibn Ḥazm Ibn ʿArabī began his education in Seville two to four years before the reign of al-Manṣūr (r. 580–94/1184–98), immediately focusing on the study of ḥadīth.90 We have seen how Almohad policy gave space for the rising Ahl al-Ḥadīth tendency in al-Andalus to grow and encouraged the study of Ibn Ḥazm’s work, allowing the Ẓāhirī tradition to flourish. Seville also happened to have more Ẓāhirī scholars than any other Andalusian city. This was not because the Almohads chose it as their capital, but because the descendants of Ibn Ḥazm lived there and spread his teachings there. It was also the city where Shurayḥ al-Ruʿaynī (d. 539/1144) had lived and taught. Ruʿaynī was the most significant transmitter of Ibn Ḥazm’s works in Andalusia.91 This meant that the works of Ibn Ḥazm were accessible to people who could benefit from them. Not only Ẓāhirīs would have studied the works of Ibn Ḥazm. Ibn Ḥazm was undoubtedly one of the giants of Islamic scholarship, and with the rise of interest in ḥadīth scholarship and the Almohad encouragement of independent ijtihād, the works of Ibn Ḥazm would have been useful tools for any scholar or mujtahid. Even Shurayḥ al-Ruʿaynī himself was a Mālikī jurist rather than a Ẓāhirī. Ibn ʿArabī received licenses in Ibn Ḥazm’s works from ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Ishbīlī, who, as discussed above, was a ḥadīth scholar practising independent ijtihād according to the way of the Traditionist-Jurisprudents, rather than according to the Ẓāhirīs. He authored works of the aḥādīth al-aḥkām genre, like the one Ibn ʿArabī would commence to write himself. We have seen above that Ibn ʿArabī also copied by hand and carefully studied an entire work of

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 121 ḥadīth commentary by this teacher. Ishbīlī was a Sufi disciple of Ibn Barrajān and a lover of Ibn ʿArabī’s own (indirect) spiritual guide and role model Abū Madyan. Ibn ʿArabī had much praise for Ishbīlī as ‘the most beautiful of ḥadīth memorisers, the best of the scholars, the pillar of ḥadīth transmission and the chief of the ḥadīth masters’.92 Ishbīlī received his own licence in Ibn Ḥazm’s works from Ruʿaynī,93 who in turn had received his license from Ibn Ḥazm.94 It is clear, then, that simply studying and transmitting Ibn Ḥazm’s works does not mean that one is a follower of his school. This all meant that the works of Ibn Ḥazm were easily accessible for others to benefit from them, regardless of which school they followed. In short, it would have been natural for Ibn ʿArabī to study, benefit from and be influenced by the works of Ibn Ḥazm in such an environment. With the importance that they both gave to ḥadīth-based jurisprudence, Ibn ʿArabī could have found in the works of Ibn Ḥazm the tools that he needed to build his own project. Ibn ʿArabī was attracted to works that came from the general Traditionalist movement, works of jurisprudence that based themselves first and foremost on ḥadīth scholarship. The great importance that Ibn ʿArabī attributed to Ibn Ḥazm can be summed up by the dream that he had of him, which he mentioned in his introduction to Ibn Ḥazm’s Ibṭāl al-qiyās (Refutation of Analogy),95 the Futūḥāt96 and Kitāb al-mubashshirāt. In the latter work, Ibn ʿArabī said: I saw in my dream the Messenger of God embracing the imām and ḥadīth scholar Abū Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd ibn Ḥazm al-Fārisī, author of al-Muḥallā. He was an imām in ḥadīth, a scholar who acted upon his knowledge. I saw a light covering the person of the Messenger of God and the person of Ibn Ḥazm, and they had been joined together until they were as one body. This is because of the blessing of the ḥadīth.97

Ibn ʿArabī specifically mentioned that what he learned from this dream was the importance of learning and following ḥadīth.98 As we have seen above, Ibn ʿArabī recorded several dreams that taught him to avoid books of jurisprudence of the schools because of the influence of analogical reasoning and to focus on ḥadīth instead. Ibn ʿArabī thus turned to Ibn Ḥazm as a source of tradition-based scholarship and as a source of arguments against the use

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of analogy. For example, one of the teachings that Ibn ʿArabī preserved from Ibn Ḥazm via Shurayḥ was Ibn Ḥazm’s collection of Divine Names based solely on authentic narrations.99 Likewise, we must remember that the title of Ibn Ḥazm’s al-Muḥallā bil-āthār meant The (Book) Adorned with Narrations, meaning that it was mainly a source of tradition-based scholarship. Ibn ʿArabī copied and transmitted an abridgement of Ibn Ḥazm’s work Ibṭāl al-qiyās (Refutation of Qiyās), which only survives because of him, and he also wrote an abridgement of al-Muḥallā.100 We should consider that abridging a work is not only a method of transmitting it, but also an opportunity to remove what one may disagree with in a work; it is very possible that, in abridging this work, Ibn ʿArabī intended to preserve what he agreed with and to remove some of what he disagreed with. Ibn ʿArabī’s close study of the works of Ibn Ḥazm and the similarity of many of his jurisprudential positions to those of the former led many even in his own time to confuse him for a Ẓāhirī.101 Ibn ʿArabī replied: They ascribe me to (the school of ) Ibn Ḥazm, but I am not of those who say, ‘Ibn Ḥazm said . . . ’ No! Nor anyone else. What I do say is: The ‘clear text of the Book says’. That is my knowledge, Or ‘the Messenger said’, or ‘the people have agreed – – on what I say’, that is my judgement.102

These words of Ibn ʿArabī himself testify to the fact that many of his contemporaries believed him to be a Ẓāhirī, while he himself rejected this ascription. In his large biographical dictionary Shadharāt al-dhahab, the Ḥanbalī Ibn al-ʿImād (1089/1679) quoted Ibn ʿArabī as saying in verse: The Merciful has prohibited to follow Mālik, Aḥmad, [Abū Ḥanīfa] al-Nuʿmān and any other, so excuse me. . .

and, I am not one who says: ‘Ibn Ḥazm said’, No, ‘Aḥmad said’, no too, Nor ‘[Abū Ḥanīfa] al-Nuʿmān said’ . . .103

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 123 ‘This’, wrote Ibn al-ʿImād, ‘is a clear claim to absolute ijtihād [. . .] and if he was not a mujtahid, then there has never been a mujtahid in all of God’s creation’.104 Several contemporary specialists on Ibn ʿArabī have agreed that he was a fully independent mujtahid.105 Chodkiewicz was probably the first to propose that Ibn ʿArabī may have even founded his own school of jurisprudence, saying: ‘He is a perfectly autonomous mujtahid – or, perhaps, the founder of a madhhab Akbarī, or an “Akbarī school of jurisprudence”, which is, as shall be seen, the most irenic, the most conciliatory of all those that Islam has known’.106 In the following chapter, we will analyse the principles of this Akbarī madhhab fashioned by Ibn ʿArabī. Notes  1. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:2–3. On the significance of this vision, see Addas, Quest, 205.   2. Hussain, ‘Endless Tajalli’, 100, 116.   3. See Chodkiewicz, Ocean, 3–17; Chodkiewicz, ‘Diffusion’, 36–57.   4. Hussain, ‘Endless Tajalli’, 106; Elmore, ‘Road to Santarem’, 2–3.  5. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 10:524.  6. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 13:286–91.   7. Adang, ‘Beginnings’, 117–25.  8. Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 13.  9. Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 14. 10. Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 14–15. 11. Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 15–19. 12. Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 16. 13. Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 17. 14. Kennedy, Muslim Spain, 167–68. 15. Addas, Voyage, 13; Adang, ‘From Mālikism’, 75; Cornell, Realm, 14. 16. Dudgeon, ‘Counter-Current Movements’, 90. 17. Kennedy, Muslim Spain, 187–88; Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 20. Dudgeon, ‘Counter-Current Movements’, 90–91. 18. Kennedy, Muslim Spain, 190–91. 19. Casewit, Mystics of al-Andalus, 503; Kennedy, Muslim Spain, 191. 20. Al-Tirmidhī, ʿIlm al-awliyāʾ, 119, 138–39. 21. Casewit, Mystics of al-Andalus, 3. 22. Abrahamov, Ibn al-ʿArabī and the Sufis, 135–44; Addas, Quest, 52–53. 23. Ibn Barrajān, Tanbīh al-afhām, 1:259–63, 2:151–52. Al-Suyūṭī also quotes Ibn Barrajān on the relationship of the Sunna to the Qurʾān in al-Ḥāwī li

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l-fatāwī, 2:151. For more on this, see Casewit, Mystics of al-Andalus, 129–36, 215–21. 24. This is not explicitly stated by Ibn ʿAbbās but inferred from many of his statements and positions. See, for example, al-Shāṭibī, al-Muwāfaqāt, 4:308; ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt, 132–40; Ibn Māja, Sunan, Kitāb al-Tahara, bāb mā jāʾa fi ghasl al-qadamayn. 25. Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 19–20. 26. Kennedy, Muslim Spain, 190–91. 27. Kennedy, Muslim Spain, 191. 28. On Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s Shāfiʿī leanings, see al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 18:153. 29. On the Mālikī school(s) in Africa, Iraq and Andalusia, see Melchert, Formation, 156–77. 30. Ibn Rushd mentioned his complete reliance on the Istidhkār as his source at the very end of his chapter on purity, just before the chapter on prayer. He also quoted him by name at least 260 times. 31. Gril, ‘Ḥadīth’, 47. 32. Adang, ‘Ẓāhirīs’, 414. 33. Adang, ‘Ẓāhirīs’, 415–16. 34. Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, 7:11. 35. Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, 7:11. Some studies understood from Ibn Khallikān’s description of these scholars that Ibn ʿArabī was a Ẓāhirī. Yet, Ibn Khallikān, whose same work included entries on both Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī and Ibn Ḥazm, did not use the word ‘ẓāhir’ or Ẓāhirī in his description of these men, and his mention of qiyās should rule out the possibility that he perceived them as Ẓāhirīs. It is clear that, according to Ibn Khallikān’s understanding, al-Manṣūr was a proponent of ijtihād against taqlīd but was not specifically a Ẓāhirī, and he believed these scholars to be examples of people ‘upon that way’. Some medieval historians did count these men among the followers of the Ẓāhirī tradition. This was particularly the case with al-Manṣūr himself, as mentioned above. The Baghdādī historian Ibn al-Najjār (d. 643/1245) described Abū l-Khaṭṭāb ibn Diḥya, whom he met and had a strong aversion against, as a Ẓāhirī (see his Dhayl Tārīkh Baghdād, 20:41; for more on him, see Adang, ‘Ẓāhirīs’, 450–53), but Dhahabī described him as a Mālikī. Even if some of these figures were, in fact, Ẓāhirī, all we can take from this passage of Ibn Khallikān is that he understood Ibn ʿArabī to be an independent mujtahid. 36. Adang, ‘Ẓāhirīs’, 468–73. 37. Addas, Quest, 94, citing Urvoy, Le Monde des Ulémas Andalous, 143–46.

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 125 38. Ibn ʿArabī, al-Mubashshirāt, 432. 39. Ibn ʿArabī, al-Mubashshirāt, 431–32. 40. On these visits, see Addas, Voyage, 52–53, 68; Quest, 114. On Ibn ʿArabī’s relationship with Abū Madyan, see Addas, ‘Abū Madyan’, 163–80. 41. On al-Ḥarīrī, see Addas, Quest, 194–96. 42. Ibn ʿArabī, al-Mubashshirāt, 433. 43. Ibn ʿArabī, al-Mubashshirāt, 433. 44. See the assessment of the editors of the work in al-Ishbīlī, al-Aḥkām al-sharʿiyya al-ṣughrā, 1:18, 1:33–34. The Kitāb al-āhkām comes in three sizes: kubrā, wuṣtā and ṣughrā. 45. Al-Ishbīlī, al-ʿĀqiba, 134. 46. Addas, ‘Radiant Way’, 37. 47. Addas, ‘Radiant Way’, 42. 48. See Hallaq, History, 168–206. 49. Al-Shāṭibī, al-Muwāfaqāt, 1:11. Many of Mālik’s students were Traditionalist and were inclined to taqlīd or raʾy. The raʾy-based character of Mālik’s methodology was amplified and systematised by Ibn al-Qāsim. As Ibn Taymiyya noted, Ibn al-Qāsim often made rationalist analogies based on Mālik’s teachings to answer questions that Mālik had not answered, and his answers often agreed with the school of Abū Ḥanīfa (Ibn Taymiyya, Ṭafḍīl, 70). Some studies have suggested that the Rationalist strand of the Mālikī school that developed out of the Mudawwana was influenced by the Ḥanafī school. This is because the Mudawwana is based on the Asadiyya written by Asad ibn al-Furāt who had studied in Iraq with the students of Abū Ḥanīfa and then travelled to Egypt to learn Mālik’s opinions on all the matters he had studied with the Ḥanafīs. Ibn al-Furāt’s questions to Ibn al-Qāsim involved many hypothetical questions, as was the custom of the Ḥanafīs and against Mālik’s dictate for hypothetical questions. His questions helped steer and accentuate Ibn al-Qāsim’s rationalism (see the introduction by the editors to al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Tanbīhāt, 1:68). 50. Ibn Ḥazm, ‘Risāla fi l-ghināʾ al-mulhī’, 1:439. 51. See Hallaq, History, 175. 52. Shāṭibī himself remained very much respectful of Sufis in general, as is clear from many passages throughout his work, and there exists evidence that he had respect for Ibn ʿArabī himself; on this, see Dajani, ‘Centrality of Ibn ʿArabī’, 99–100. 53. Addas, Quest, 102. 54. Addas, Quest, 101.

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55. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:39. 56. Dajani, ‘Ibn ʿArabī’s Conception of Ijtihād’, 137–39. 57. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:485. 58. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Iḥtiyāṭāt, 76. 59. See Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 4: 497; al-Tirmidhī, Nawādir, 3:267. 60. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:115. 61. Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-shāfiʿiyya, 2:245–46. 62. There are also many similarities in positions of fiqh between Tirmidhī and Ibn ʿArabī. See Dajani, ‘Ibn ʿArabī’s Conception of Ijtihād’, 139–41. 63. Addas, Quest, 68. 64. Al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ, 5:265. Here Ghazālī appears to be using the word madhhab to refer to both theological and jurisprudential schools at the same time, and by this time each jurisprudential school was strongly associated with a theological one. 65. Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, Qawāʿid, 2:274–75. 66. See Chapter 5. 67. Ibn Rajab, al-Dhayl, 2:140. 68. For example, Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām shares with Ibn ʿArabī the latter’s view on the superiority of prophethood (nubuwwa) over apostleship (risāla) within the person of a single Messenger of God (not the superiority of Prophets over Messengers). See Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, Qawāʿid, 2:386–87, and Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ, 200–1. There exist many contradictory narrations about Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s appraisal of Ibn ʿArabī, which are discussed by Ali, Sultan al-ulama, 89–101, and Knysh, Ibn ʿArabī, 61–85. Ibn ʿArabī also wrote of a positive dream he had of Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām (see Addas, Quest, 253–54). 69. See Suyūṭī, al-Radd, 141–42; 193–96. 70. Ibn ʿArabī, al-Mubashshirāt, 432. 71. See n70 above and Addas, Voyage, 20–21. 72. Al-Tirmidhī, Budū shaʾn, 16. 73. Ibn ʿArabī, al-Mubashshirāt, 432–33. 74. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 3:70. 75. Addas, Quest, 45. 76. Al-Zurqānī, Sharḥ al-Zurqānī, 1:229. 77. Gril, ‘Ḥadīth’, 46. 78. Addas, Voyage, 103. 79. Gril, ‘Ḥadīth’, 47. For a list of Ibn ʿArabī’s ḥadīth teachers, see Addas, Quest, 97–100, 312–14.

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ibn ʿarabī’s traditionalism  | 127  80. Al-Ghurāb, al-Fiqh, 6, n1; Gril, ‘Ḥadīth’, 48. Ghurāb questioned this work’s attribution to Ibn ʿArabī, but other scholars affirmed that his authorship cannot be disputed. It is listed among the Fihris and Ijāza in which Ibn ʿArabī listed his own writings, and the second volume was written in the shaykh’s own handwriting. Furthermore, the manuscript copy bears an ownership note by Ibn ʿArabī’s greatest disciple, Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī, confirming its authenticity. This only surviving portion of the work has recently been stolen from the Yusuf Aga Library.   81. Gril, ‘Ḥadīth’, 47.   82. Hirtenstein and Notcutt, in Ibn ʿArabī, Divine Sayings, 11.   83. Hirtenstein and Notcutt, in Ibn ʿArabī, Divine Sayings, 1, 6.   84. Dajani, ‘Centrality of Ibn ʿArabī’, 79–111.  85. Ibn ʿArabī most likely took this term from Tirmidhī who used it to refer to pure servanthood (see al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 110: ‘On the Difference Between ʿubūda and ʿibāda’).  86. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:696.  87. Winkel, Living Law, 41–42.   88. For Ibn ʿArabī’s perspective on the different meanings of this term, see Chodkiewicz, Seal, 17–25; Cornell, Realm, xvii–xxi.  89. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:229.   90. Addas dated the start of his studies to the year 578/1183 (Addas, Quest, 95). However, she elsewhere stated that he possibly started earlier (Addas, Quest, 42).   91. Adang, ‘Shurayḥ’, 515–18; Gril, ‘Ḥadīth’, 65.  92. Al-Ghibrīnī, ʿUnwān al-dirāya, 42.   93. Gril, ‘Ḥadīth’, 65.   94. Adang, ‘Ẓāhirīs’, 461–62.   95. The version in Ibṭāl al-qiyās is the longest and has been translated by Goldziher (Ẓāhirīs, 170–71).  96. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:519.  97. Ibn ʿArabī, al-Mubashshirāt, 432.  98. Ibn ʿArabī, al-Mubashshirāt, 432; Addas, Quest, 42; Mayer, ‘Theology and Sufism’, 282.   99. Gril, ‘Ḥadīth’, 65. 100. The work is said to be extant in a single manuscript in Tunis (see Elmore, Islamic Sainthood, 42, n156). 101. Knysh, Ibn ʿArabī, 38–39.

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102. Quoted by al-Ghurāb in al-Fiqh, 11. 103. Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt, 7:346–47. 104. Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt, 7:347. 105. For a discussion of the arguments for and against Ibn ʿArabī’s affiliation to the Ẓāhirī tradition, see Dajani, ‘Ibn ʿArabī’s Conception’, 91–103. 106. Chodkiewicz, Ocean, 55.

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5 The Akbar ī Madhhab : Ibn ʿ Arab ī ’s School of Mercy

T

he previous chapter examined Ibn ʿArabī’s Traditionalism and its relationship to his Sufism. We will now look in detail at Ibn ʿArabī’s approach to jurisprudence to see where he could be situated within the broad Traditionalist school of thought, but more importantly to arrive at a clear picture of his legal method and interpretive framework. Ibn ʿArabī, like every author of uṣūl al-fiqh works, made his own choices in terms of legal principles, which meant that he effectively created his own madhhab or school of law.1 Most authors of uṣūl works, however, could still be classified as followers of one of the five main Sunni schools – the Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī, Ḥanbalī or Ẓāhirī schools – because they usually agreed with and defended the major legal principles upheld by one of those schools and may have differed from them only on minor matters. As Suyūṭī would later explain, many of these scholars could be classified (and indeed viewed themselves) as fully independent mujtahids who were still ascribed to one of the main schools by virtue of the fact that they generally agreed with the major principles of that school; this is called a mujtahid muṭlaq muntasib (fully independent and capable mujtahid with an affiliation to one of the schools). As for Ibn ʿArabī, he should be classified as fully independent mujtahid with his unique set of major jurisprudential principles, much like his predecessors Ibn Ḥanbal, Bukhārī and other Traditionist-Jurisprudents. His own principles brought him very close to the Ẓāhirīs, again much like Bukhārī 129

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before him, but were not identical to those of that school. Due to the superficial similarity between his school and that of the Ẓāhirīs, Ibn ʿArabī was frequently confused for a Ẓāhirī, both in his own lifetime and today. A major factor behind this confusion is the general lack of awareness of the existence of the specific school of Traditionist-Jurisprudents which flourished for a short while and then for the most part died out and whose figures were falsely appropriated by the later madhhabs. There was consequently a lack of awareness of the history of the Traditionist-Jurisprudent approach in al-Andalus, especially among the Sufis. However, a detailed comparison of Ibn ʿArabī’s legal methodology to that of the Ẓāhirīs will show the vast underlying differences between both schools in terms of their general understanding of the sharīʿa. It will reveal how Ibn ʿArabī adopted many of the principles espoused by the Ẓāhirīs when fashioning his own legal method, but he did so for very different reasons than the Ẓāhirīs themselves. Ibn ʿArabī was aiming to create a legal methodology that was as loyal as possible not only to the outward prescriptions of the scripture, but also to what he believed was the spirit of the sharīʿa: mercy. Ibn ʿArabī and Ẓahirism None of the Ibn ʿArabī specialists who attempted to show that Ibn ʿArabī created his own unique methodology or school of jurisprudence have made a sustained or organised effort to compare the principles of Ibn ʿArabī with those of the Ẓāhirīs in general, or the principles of Ibn Ḥazm in particular.2 It was left to Aron Zysow, an uṣūl al-fiqh specialist, to point out that such comparisons could be the key to unlocking a madhhab’s inner logic. Zysow showed how a seemingly minor disagreement in legal principles can point to a much deeper difference below the surface. He used as his example the status of what is known as the khabar al-wāḥid.3 Differences in Principles of Jurisprudence and What They Reveal: The Khabar al-Wāḥid as an Example The ‘khabar al-wāḥid’ is a term that refers to ḥadīth reports; it is based on a theoretical classification of ḥadīth reports invented not by ḥadīth specialists but by theologians. Theologians, in their concern for epistemology (sources of knowledge), argued that the Qurʾān has been transmitted by so many people

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in every generation in a way that gives us certain knowledge of its authenticity, a condition they call ‘tawātur’. As for the ḥadīth, theologians argued that, if a ḥadīth was also mutawātir (transmitted in such a way as to remove the possibility of fabrication), then its authenticity was as certain as that of the Qurʾān. If, however, a ḥadīth is not mutawātir, then it will be classified as a khabar al-wāḥid (plural akhbār al-āḥād), which, despite the name meaning ‘reports from individual authorities’, simply refers to a non-mutawātir report, even if it was transmitted by multiple authorities. This division was invented by theologians, not by ḥadīth scholars, and only entered the field of Sunni ḥadīth criticism in the fifth/eleventh century. As the most famous scholar of ḥadīth criticism in the later period, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ (d. 643/1245) wrote, there is only one single ḥadīth which might qualify as mutawātir.4 This means that all ḥadīth reports are essentially akhbār al-āḥād and that the usage of this term is strictly theoretical. The status of the khabar al-wāḥid was of central importance to Ibn Ḥazm and Dāwūd, and it set the Ẓāhirīs apart from all other Sunnis. Acting upon the import of khabar al-wāḥid reports is agreed upon by the vast majority of Muslim jurists. Only in the early centuries of Islam were there some, mostly Muʿtazilīs, who rejected acting upon them.5 Dāwūd is reported to have vehemently debated a scholar who rejected acting upon these traditions in Baghdad, and the people in the mosque supported Dāwūd and pelted his opponent with stones.6 However, it seems that Dāwūd stood out from the majority of the scholars in arguing that such traditions, as long as their narrators were all trustworthy, were good enough not only as a basis for action, but also as sources of certain knowledge.7 According to the list by Ibn al-Nadīm, Dāwūd wrote two works on this subject: Kitāb al-khabar al-wāḥid and Kitāb al-khabar al-mūjib lil-ʿilm (A Treatise on the Traditions that Provide Certain Knowledge).8 This was also the position of Ibn Ḥazm.9 However, there had been an early group of Ẓāhirīs influenced by Muʿtazilī thought who rejected the use of the khabar al-wāḥid completely.10 Zysow categorised the schools of law based on epistemological grounds, classifying them into two broad groups: those madhhabs, like the four surviving Sunni schools, that allowed for probability (the mujtahid needed not reach a level of absolute certainty that his position is correct), and those, like the Ẓāhirīs and the Twelver Shīʿīs, who demanded certainty. As Zysow and

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others showed in their studies, the basis for the principles adopted by the Ẓāhirīs was the desire to remove all probability in the formulation of the law. Their insistence that all general words are to be taken as unrestricted, that all commands are obligatory, that nothing is inferred from the text that is not clearly stated, that an authentic ḥadīth gave certain and not probable knowledge, as well as their rules on linguistic interpretation – these were all because they believed that the law had no place for probability.11 As Zysow noted, the Ẓāhirīs, because of their insistence on certainty, either accepted the use of the khabar al-wāḥid and held that it provided certain knowledge (like Dāwūd, Ibn Ḥazm and most Ẓāhirīs), or they rejected its use because they denied that it provided certain knowledge (like the minority group mentioned above). Ibn ʿArabī took the position of the rest of the Sunnis: He acted upon ḥadīth reports while accepting that they did not provide certain knowledge, which made him different from both groups of Ẓāhirīs.12 Ibn ʿArabī’s disagreement with the Ẓāhirīs on this shows that the whole edifice that his own approach was based upon differed greatly from that of the Ẓāhirīs, whose methodology was based on the search for certain knowledge. Zysow concluded that Ibn ʿArabī had a ‘very personal legal theory’ which was ‘only a part of an all-encompassing mystical system’,13 but did not attempt to investigate it much further.14 Zysow’s approach points the way to the key to understanding Ibn ʿArabī’s legal system, which is to search for an underlying reason that may explain all the differences between Ibn ʿArabī’s principles of jurisprudence and those of the Ẓāhirīs. If such a reason is found, it would help us truly understand the inner logic of Ibn ʿArabī’s madhhab and the goals it aims to achieve. Therefore, we cannot proceed without first properly investigating the main principles of jurisprudence in the Ẓāhirī legal tradition in order to compare that school’s principles to those of Ibn ʿArabī. The Ẓāhirī School’s Principles of Jurisprudence We have discussed the main pillars of Ẓāhirī thought in Chapter 1. There we also saw that there was a similar movement within the broader Traditionalist movement, known as the Traditionist-Jurisprudents, and that many of their main figures explicitly rejected qiyās and the other major non-textual sources of law also rejected by the Ẓāhirīs. Among these figures were Aḥmad

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ibn Ḥanbal, Bukhārī and Abū Muḥammad al-Dārimī whose ḥadīth collection Sunan al-Dārimī contains a large introductory chapter full of quotations against raʾy and qiyās by early authorities.15 We have also seen in Chapter 2 that there were Sufis such as Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim who were explicitly described as ‘ẓāhirīs’ or of the ‘ahl al-ẓāhir’ even though they disagreed with, and sometimes criticised, Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī. Similarly, we saw that the Central Asian mystic al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī also criticised qiyās at length but wrote even lengthier criticisms of those who – like the Ẓāhirīs – rejected the existence of legal causes (ʿilal) for the different stipulations of the sharīʿa. Therefore, the school founded by Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī represents the distinct methodology and vision of the founder and does not represent all those who rejected qiyās or all textualists, although it does appear to have attracted into its fold a great number of the early textualists. Still, it is important to note that, in the fourth/tenth century, the Ẓāhirī legal tradition was often referred to as the Dāwūdī madhhab, and more followers of that school were identified as ‘Dāwūdī’ rather than as ‘Ẓāhirī’. The latter term gradually became more popular until it came to dominate after Ibn Ḥazm.16 It is important to clarify in greater detail the principles of the DāwūdīẒāhirī legal tradition and list its main principles. Even within the school there are differences of opinion on certain principles.17 Below is a list of the core Ẓāhirī principles of jurisprudence: the first nine are those for which Ibn Ḥazm claimed complete agreement among all Ẓāhirīs, and while I found no such explicit claim for the last two, they were certainly a major principle of the Ẓāhirī method as presented by Ibn Ḥazm and as Ibn ʿArabī would have known it.18 These will be useful for making a quick comparison with Ibn ʿArabī in order to ascertain the extent to which he matched this criteria made by Ibn Ḥazm, whose works were the source of Ẓāhirī influence on Ibn ʿArabī. These principles are:   1) The rejection of taqlīd. Ibn ʿArabī agreed with this.19   2) The Qurʾān and ḥadīth are the only sound basis of legal rulings. Ibn ʿArabī agreed.20   3) The rejection of qiyās. Ibn ʿArabī agreed on this, but also allowed others to use it, which is completely unacceptable to Ẓāhirīs. This will be dealt with in more depth below.

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 4) The rejection of dalīl al-khiṭāb and the insistence that statements only meant what they stated, without the use of any inference. Ibn ʿArabī agreed, but his position was not as strong and categorical as the Ẓāhirīs’, stating that argument based on the mafhūm (implied or inferred meaning) of a text is weak evidence because it is not correct in every case.21   5) Terms are to be interpreted according to their general and unrestricted meaning, unless there is evidence otherwise. Ibn ʿArabī seems to have agreed with this.22   6) Commands and prohibitions indicate absolute obligation (wujūb) unless a revealed text or consensus stated otherwise. Ibn ʿArabī agreed.23   7) The Prophet’s actions are not obligatory, only his commandments indicate obligation. Ibn ʿArabī agreed.24   8) The only acceptable consensus is that of the Companions. Ibn ʿArabī agreed.25  9) No divine prescription is tied to any cause in any way. Ibn Ḥazm declared that Dāwūd and all of his followers believe this, while some other rejectors of analogy do not.26 We have already seen that Tirmidhī was one of those rejectors of analogy who did believe that each divine prescription had a cause and dedicated books to explaining the wisdom behind the rituals. Ibn ʿArabī affirmed the existence of causes for divine prescriptions; like Tirmidhī, he explained the wisdom (ḥikma) behind the different acts of worship at length. He would therefore be excluded from the followers of Dāwūd by Ibn Ḥazm’s criterion. Also, unlike the Ẓāhirīs, for whom this matter was central to their rejection of analogical reasoning, this issue was not of great importance to Ibn ʿArabī.27 When he did discuss it, he was more concerned with the matter’s theological rather than jurisprudential implications.28 10) Disagreement between scholars is blameworthy. Ibn Ḥazm held that differences of opinion were not a source of mercy or flexibility for the community, but rather a blight and a cause for division and misguidance. He dedicated a chapter of his major work on jurisprudence, al-Iḥkām fī uṣūl al-aḥkām, to this issue.29 As will be discussed later in this chapter, Ibn ʿArabī saw that the different opinions of the jurists were a source of mercy for the community.

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11) If a commandment or prohibition that is connected to, or part of, another act is contravened, the whole act becomes invalid. This principle is perhaps the most distinctive difference between the Ẓāhirī method and the others, and this led the Ẓāhirī positive law to differ often from all schools, including the Traditionist-Jurisprudents who otherwise very often agreed with the Ẓāhirīs. For example, the Prophet taught his Companions a specific supplication to say at the end of the ritual prayer, and Ibn Ḥazm was the only scholar known to hold that failing to recite this supplication – a supplication that most schools do not emphasise or teach at all – invalidates the whole prayer. Similarly, the Prophet forbade his Companions from glancing upward during the prayer, and again Ibn Ḥazm was alone in saying that glancing upward during the prayer invalidated the whole prayer. Likewise, if a Muslim intentionally commits a sin while he is fasting, Ibn Ḥazm held that his fast was no longer valid.30 This principle was likely upheld by Dāwūd as well, as Ibn Ḥazm states that Dāwūd and all his followers are in agreement that, if a person is able to pray in the mosque in congregation but prays by himself, his prayer is invalid.31 Ibn ʿArabī disagreed with the Ẓāhirīs on such positions.32 There are other significant differences still. We have seen above the difference between Ibn ʿArabī and the Ẓāhirīs on the epistemological status of khabar al-wāḥid ḥadīth reports (which, again, are practically speaking all ḥadīth reports). This disagreement led to another difference in methodology. For Ibn Ḥazm, if there seemed to be a contradiction between an authentic khabar al-wāḥid and the Qurʾān, both remained equal, and a way had to be found to reconcile the two.33 For Ibn ʿArabī, however, the tradition would be dropped because it only gave ẓann (a strong likelihood of truth), whereas the Qurʾānic verse gave certain knowledge.34 Regarding a scenario with two contrary texts of equal strength (such as two Qurʾānic verses or two authentic traditions),35 both Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Ḥazm agreed on a number of ways to attempt to reconcile and use both texts. However, they disagreed on the very last resort when all other attempts to reconcile the two had failed and only one text was to be chosen. For Ibn Ḥazm, the final solution was to act upon the teaching that contravened the original state of things (all things originally being permissible). For example, there is a ḥadīth against drinking while standing and

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another stating that the Prophet drank while standing. We therefore know that the Prophet at some point told people not to drink while standing. The ḥadīth showing him drinking while standing was either describing something that happened before the prohibition, in which case the prohibition stands, or afterwards, in which case the prohibition was abrogated. Since there is no way to know for sure, it is safer to preserve the prohibition. One must follow the certain knowledge which is obtained by going contrary to the original state of things.36 Ibn ʿArabī’s solution to this scenario was radically different: in such cases, it is the easiest, most accommodating option that should be acted upon. This is because it is supported by a host of Qurʾānic verses and ḥadīths about God’s wish for ease for His servants, not hardship; these tip the scale in favour of the easier option.37 If both options were easy, Ibn ʿArabī held that the believer had a choice in the matter and could act upon whichever of the two verses or traditions he wished.38 In such cases, Ibn ʿArabī often interpreted the more difficult course of action to represent a recommendation, not a strict obligation or prohibition. In other words, he would say regarding this case that the Prophet did not intend to make drinking while standing impermissible, that he merely discouraged it, but his action showed that it remained permissible (this type of interpretation is the subject of Part 2 of this book).39 This use of ease as a tool for giving preponderance (tarjīḥ) to one out of two contrary judgements is a minority position attributed in books of uṣūl al-fiqh to two Shāfiʿī jurisprudents: Tāj al-Dīn al-Armawī (d. 653/1255) and Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Bayḍāwī (d. 685/1286).40 Ibn ʿArabī died before both of these figures and therefore may have been the first to hold this position. Original Licitness and The Ease Principle The principle of ease in religion is a very powerful one in Ibn ʿArabī’s understanding, not only because of the many Qurʾānic verses and ḥadīth reports that the religion is easy, but because ease accords with the original state of affairs in which God placed mankind: the state of no obligation. Muslim jurists understand the teachings of the sharīʿa as a set of divine judgements regarding all possible human actions: is action X obligatory, recommended, permissible, disliked, or prohibited? A question that jurists have asked and debated at length is: what was the status of acts before the coming of the

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sharīʿa?41 Was the original status of all things permissibility until the sharīʿa said otherwise? Or was it prohibition? Although there was a great amount of disagreement on this topic in the first centuries of Islam, once the theological implications of each answer were worked out, a majority position appeared, which held that the original status of all acts was that of no judgement. This was the position upheld by the jurists associated with the Ashʿarī theological school (the Shāfiʿīs, Mālikīs and some Ḥanafīs), as well as Ḥanbalī and Ẓāhirī jurists, and it was also the position of Ibn ʿArabī.42 A question now arises: once the Revelation had come and the sharīʿa had given its judgements on all acts covered by the Qurʾān and sunna, what was the status of all things on which the sharīʿa remained silent? The majority position of the four schools held that after the coming of the Revelation, there was now a divine judgement for every conceivable act. Since the Qurʾān and ḥadīth were finite texts, they could not be expected to cover all possible acts explicitly, but God had revealed in them all that was needed for jurists to discover the rest of His judgements by means of extension to the law – extension such as analogical reasoning. Others have put it slightly differently: everything is, in fact, in the Qurʾān, it just remains to be discovered. Ibn Ḥazm agreed that Revelation had given a judgement on every act, but he disagreed that the sharīʿa was in fact silent about anything. According to Ibn Ḥazm, there is a verse in the Qurʾān that applies to everything not given a specific treatment by the sharīʿa: ‘He created all that is on the Earth for you’ (Q 2:29). This meant that everything is permissible except what God specifically forbade. This is further explained by the following verse: ‘He has explained for you in detail what He has made prohibited for you’ (Q 6:119). There are therefore no matters about which the Qurʾān or sunna did not speak. To make something prohibited or obligatory by any tool of extension or ‘discovery’ is to change God’s own ruling of permissibility, and this is a grave transgression against God’s authority. This idea became the basis of the principle of ‘original licitness’ which held that, after the coming of the Revelation, everything was assumed to be permitted unless a text stated otherwise. This assumption was based on verses of the Qurʾān stipulating licitness, and therefore this assumption could not be changed except by ḥadīths of unquestionable authenticity. Only ḥadīths of unquestionable authenticity

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could change the status of an act from permitted to otherwise and take it outside the domain of those Qurʾānic verses above. Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī sometimes referred to what was not specifically mentioned in the texts as ‘permissible’, like his follower Ibn Ḥazm, but more often his answer indicated a more nuanced position. Dāwūd’s position seems to be that, when Revelation came it only gave God’s judgements on a limited number of issues: those issues specifically and explicitly mentioned in the Qurʾān and sunna. Everything not covered by Revelation retained its original pre-Revelation status of ‘no judgement’. The sharīʿa according to Dāwūd was meant to be simple and never intended to cover all conceivable acts, as those covered by Revelation were sufficient guidance. By virtue of Divine Pardon, God kept everything else without judgement and made it in effect permissible. He took the term ‘pardon’ (ʿafw) from several ḥadīth narrations, to which we will turn below.43 The word ʿafw could mean two things in Arabic: 1) to be left without treatment (hence, in this context one could call it ‘exemption from judgement’), or 2) pardon (if an act has been exempt from judgement, then it naturally follows that a person is pardoned for doing it). This accords with Ibn ʿArabī’s position. Ibn ʿArabī held that all acts were originally without Divine Judgement, the primary principle by which human beings freely act as their human nature demands of them to act. Then Divine Judgement was assigned to many acts in order to test us: to see if we will obey what is obligatory and refrain from what is prohibited. Everything else was, by virtue of the primary principle, left without judgement and, by virtue of the secondary principle, permissible, as the verse said: ‘He created all that is on the Earth for you’ (Q 2:29).44 Unlike Ibn Ḥazm, Ibn ʿArabī held that this verse was not explicit in indicating permissibility, but rather only carried the apparent and preponderant interpretation of permissibility. Ibn ʿArabī held that ease in the religion accorded with the primary principle – that is, the original state of affairs in which human beings may act according to what their human nature demands of them, without the assignment of judgement to their acts. This was the case for humans when they were first created in Paradise, and this will be the case when they return to Paradise, whereas the testing of humans through prohibitions was only a temporary affair. He wrote:

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Those who do ijtihād fall into two categories on the Day of Resurrection. The first category is those who make impermissibility preponderant. The second category makes the removal of difficulty (rafʿ al-ḥaraj) from this ummah preponderant, for they hold on to that verse (‘God does not wish to place you in any difficulty’ [Q 5:6]) and they return to the primary principle and original nature. This second category will be closer to God and greater in rank than those who make impermissibility preponderant.45

Ibn ʿArabī took this principle one step further and made a distinction between divine instructions that God tied to specific occasioning factors or needs and therefore in a sense were secondary teachings, and those that were not tied to any such factors, hence the primary teachings of the sharīʿa. He who reaches the truth of the matter (the muḥaqqiq) understands that these two types of divine instructions are not the same and knows how to deal with each one. Ibn ʿArabī explained this principle during his discussion of the fiqh of the ḥajj pilgrimage, and the fact that women are not allowed to cover their faces during the pilgrimage. This, he states, is a return to the original principle, which is that there is no veiling or covering. What Ibn ʿArabī refers to here is that the verse telling women to cover their heads was occasioned by the need to distinguish Muslim women from non-Muslim women, because the early Muslims lived in a mixed society in Medina with Jews and polytheists, some free and others as slaves. Young non-Muslim men in that city used to make sexual advances on the streets to servants or slaves, but sometimes mistook Muslim women for them. The Qurʾān came with a revelation instructing Muslim women to cover their heads ‘so that they are recognised and not harmed’ (Q 33:59). Another verse came down to instruct men who entered the Prophet’s house not to speak to his wives except from behind a curtain (ḥijāb). That is ‘purer for your hearts and their hearts’ (Q 33:53). This, according to the canonical ḥadīth collections, was because all sorts of men would enter the house of the Prophet to visit him and sometimes overstay their welcome, and so a curtain was needed to make the Prophet’s wives feel more at ease inside the home. However, according to the ḥadīth collections, the Prophet’s wives inferred from this verse that they should (or that it is better to) cover their faces outside the home, which was a way for them to implement the verse of the curtain (ḥijāb) outside the home. It seems from the instruction that women should not cover their faces in the ḥajj,

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and from other indications in the literature that it became a practice among many, but not all, women in Muslim society to also voluntarily cover their faces in imitation of the Prophet’s wives.46 Ibn ʿArabī explained that, when women were told to keep their faces uncovered during the ḥajj, it was a return to the original state of things, which is that women should not be veiled or hidden away from men and that the teachings of veiling and covering were only secondary teachings of the sharīʿa necessitated by certain circumstances. This distinction by Ibn ʿArabī does not have immediate and direct implications in the practice or implementation of fiqh, because he did not differentiate between the two grades of divine instruction when it came to implementation. He wrote: ‘Let not the fact that God brought some things down because of the needs and questions of some deceive you. Rush to accepting His judgement, whichever type it is, with contentment and pleasure if you want to be a (true) believer’. In other words, all of God’s commandments need to be followed, whether they are the core primary teachings of Islam (such as prayer, fasting and the like), or the secondary commandments that were necessitated by the realities of the human condition, such as the covering of women. However, those who truly understand that matter know that there is, in fact, a difference in importance between the two.47 For example, some men were unhappy that their wives had to uncover their faces during the pilgrimage. Ibn ʿArabī compared this unhappiness to some men’s wish that God and His Messenger had not encouraged women to pray in the mosque. These people think that they feel more jealousy over women than God himself, but this only points to a problem in their understanding.48 This distinction, then, does have major theoretical implications with important practical consequences in the social realm as well. Knowing that covering and veiling is not the original state for women negates the idea that ‘women’s place is in the home’, or that women must be hidden away, discreet, or less visible than men. It teaches that, according to the ‘primary principle’ or ‘original state’, there is no difference between men and women in terms of social participation and visibility, and that modest clothing which includes a head covering is the only difference between them in this regard. This understanding does not take away the obligation on women to cover their heads, but it undermines the very harmful way in which men came to view women and their place in society.49

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Divine Pardon and Mercy As we have seen above, the Ẓāhirīs rejected the idea of discovering God’s hidden judgements based on the idea that nothing was actually hidden and that everything not specifically prohibited was explicitly permitted. Yet, the original impulse behind their rejection was that it entailed the use of rational methods of inference such as qiyās and negatively implied meaning, and because it led to uncertain results in the law and disagreement. As for Ibn ʿArabī, his reason for holding this position was rooted not in the rejection of uncertainty or of absolute denial of rational inquiry: rather, it was rooted in the principle of the primacy of ease in the religion and the merciful nature of the sharīʿa. Ibn ʿArabī and the Ẓāhirīs used a number of Qurʾānic verses and ḥadīths to support their rejection of the existence of hidden guidance that needed discovering. Ibn ʿArabī made it clear that, unlike the Ẓāhirīs who in principle completely rejected the use of analogy as a source of legislation, he only rejected it because he feared, just like the Prophet Muḥammad before him, that it would increase the number of legal obligations upon the believers. He said: ‘We only stayed away from accepting qiyās ourselves because it leads to an increase in legal rulings, and we understood from the Lawgiver that he wanted to lighten the burden of this community’.50 The Qurʾān had said: You who believe, do not ask about matters which, if made known to you, would make things difficult for you – if you ask about them while the Qurʾān is being revealed, they will be made plain to you – for God pardons them (has absolved you of any obligation regarding them). God is most forgiving and forbearing (Q 5:101)

According to early Qurʾān commentators, such as Ṭabarī who quoted Ibn ʿAbbās and Abū Hurayra, this verse was revealed when the Prophet told his people that the pilgrimage had been made an obligatory act, at which point a man stood up to ask if it was to be done every year. The Prophet is reported to have replied: Had I said ‘yes’ it would have become obligatory upon you to do so, and you would not have been able to fulfil this obligation. Leave me as long as I leave

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you [. . .] If I instruct you to do something then fulfil as much of it as you are capable of, and if I forbid you from something then stay away from it (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim).51

Similarly, the Prophet’s cousin Ibn ʿAbbās said: God sent His Messenger and sent down His Book in which He declared what is lawful and what is unlawful. Therefore, what He made lawful is lawful and what He made unlawful is unlawful, and what He remained silent about has been pardoned (or: exempt from judgement) (Sunan Abū Dāwūd).52

The two narrations above were considered the most authentic, but there are others attributed to the Prophet as well: What God made lawful is lawful and what He made unlawful is unlawful, and what He remained silent about has been pardoned [or: exempt from judgement], so accept from God His pardon [or: exemption], for God would not forget a single thing (Al-Ḥākim, al-Mustadrak).

And the most famous narration, on account of being part of the famous forty-ḥadīth collection of Sharaf al-Dīn al-Nawawī, stated: God has given you obligations, so do not neglect them; drawn limits, so do not transgress them; prohibited some things, so do not violate them; and remained silent on some things as a mercy for you, not out of forgetfulness, so do not investigate them (Al-Dāraquṭnī, Sunan).53

Based on such texts and others, Ibn ʿArabī rejected analogical reasoning and other forms of ijtihād that led to an increase in the obligations upon man. Ibn Ḥazm believed that the acts about which God appeared to be silent were covered by a general verse indicating permissibility, which makes his usage of these traditions to support his stance problematic, as they appear to indicate that God did not reveal His true judgement on these acts. The followers of the four madhhabs, however, believed that God had indeed given judgement on everything, a position that is also at odds with these reports. However, these traditions seem to suggest that God could have given guidance regarding

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all acts but chose not to; rather, He chose to make all acts not covered by the explicit teachings of the Qurʾān or sunna exempt from judgement, pardoned by God, out of His mercy. This is the position of Ibn ʿArabī (and Dāwūd before him). From this point of view, those scholars who believed in discovering God’s law were attempting to discover what God would have revealed if He had wanted to, but which He chose not to reveal. Ibn ʿArabī argued that God, out of His mercy, kept all actions originally judgement-free and only revealed judgments based on a core of necessary instructions, based on what people asked about. The Prophet therefore many times warned his followers about asking too many questions, fearing that due to their curiosity there might be revealed new instructions that they would then not be able to act upon.54 Just as the Prophet disliked (kariha) being asked questions, likewise God’s ruling on the creation of new laws is that it is makrūh (disliked). This is because it leads to an increase in legal obligations. When something is disliked in the law, that means that one will not be punished for doing it (as with something impermissible), and yet those who avoid it will be rewarded for doing so.55 For Ibn ʿArabī, therefore, abstaining from the use of analogy is rewarded by God. Yet, Ibn ʿArabī also held that those who use qiyās and similar tools of ijtihād will still be rewarded for their efforts, especially if they based their analogy on a clear legal cause behind what God did reveal.56 This brings us to Ibn ʿArabī’s wider discussion of the role and status of ijtihād. Ibn ʿArabī’s Position on Ijtihād The Prophet Muḥammad is reported to have said: ‘When a judge exercises ijtihād and gives a right judgement, he will have two rewards, but if he errs in his judgement, he will still have earned one reward’.57 Despite the fact that this ḥadīth only speaks about a judge’s arbitration between two parties and therefore does not cover a vast amount of the sharīʿa’s guidance, it became a cornerstone of every discussion on ijtihād in books of legal theory. We will look at Ibn ʿArabī’s position regarding two key matters related to this tradition: first, is every mujtahid correct or not, and second, what does the process of ijtihād entail? According to the vast majority of jurists, this tradition indicates that there is one correct answer in the sight of God and that all others are wrong, but that

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the mujtahid is rewarded for his effort even if he is mistaken. However, many theologians among the Ashʿarī school, such as al-Bāqillānī (d. 402/1013) and Ghazālī, held that every fully qualified mujtahid was correct, a position called Infallibilism. They based this view on the idea that there was no one correct answer in the sight of God before the process of ijtihād, and that after the process of ijtihād, every result became a correct answer (for more on this, see the Appendix). Ibn ʿArabī believed that there was ultimately only one correct answer in the sight of God. However, since God Himself allowed ijtihād as the report stated, then that meant that He gave His stamp of approval (iqrār) to its results, and God does not approve of falsehood. Therefore, the end result of one’s ijtihād was correct because it either happened to arrive at God’s particular judgement on the matter, or because God had approved it as correct for the mujtahid who reached it. That is why Ibn ʿArabī said: ‘The scholars have said that every mujtahid is correct’. He therefore gave this statement a different meaning than that intended by the Infallibilist school.58 This position is unique to Ibn ʿArabī, although Abū Ḥanīfa’s great student Abū Yūsuf (d. 181/798) may have intended the same when he said: ‘Every mujtahid is correct, but the truth is only with one of them’.59 According to Ibn ʿArabī, the truly correct answer is the one that the Prophet would have chosen in his own lifetime.60 He wrote in Fuṣūs al-ḥikam that the mujtahids from among the followers of the Prophet Muḥammad were honoured with the ranks of the Prophets David and Solomon. According to the Qurʾān, both of these figures gave different judgements on the same issue; commenting on that, the Qurʾān states: ‘We gave Solomon understanding of it, though we gave sound judgement and knowledge to both of them’ (Q 21:79). He concluded from this that the knowledge of David was given to him by God, but that the knowledge of Solomon was as the knowledge of God Himself on the issue. He stated that the judgement of the mujtahid is either like that of Solomon, which corresponds to the judgement that God Himself would give or would inspire to His Messenger Muḥammad, or like that of David, which, although not the one chosen by God, was still deemed, in the Qurʾān’s own words, ‘sound judgement and (correct) knowledge’.61 Ibn ʿArabī stated that, when the mahdī comes, he will be of those whose judgements would correspond to those chosen by God and His Messenger. The mahdī will abolish the schools of law and keep only the ‘pure religion’.62

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The one true answer on every issue is the one that would also be chosen by the saints known as ‘the solitary ones’ (the afrād) who succeed in preparing themselves spiritually for the descent of the true answers upon their hearts, and indeed it is a mark by which they are recognised that they never disagree among each other on any judgement.63 Ibn ʿArabī, of course, ascribed to himself this type of ijtihād, saying that, ‘although the Lawgiver has approved of the mujtahid’s judgement even if he was wrong, yet the people of this way (ṭarīqa) only take what the Messenger of God himself has judged’.64 It should however be pointed out that in the beginning of the same passage he said that he took ‘many’ of Muḥammad’s judgements in this way, indicating that he did not claim to take all of the sharīʿa’s judgements by way of inspiration. This would accord with Ibn ʿArabī’s hesitant tone on the authenticity of several ḥadīths or the correct interpretation of some of the revealed texts: he was not afraid to show that he did not have the absolute answer on every issue.65 He similarly stated that even the mahdī will be veiled from the answers to some questions, at which point he will treat them as if they were in the realm of the permissible because God will protect him from the use of raʾy and analogy.66 The second question we come to now is what the word ijtihād meant to Ibn ʿArabī and what it entailed as a process. The majority of Sunni scholars advocated the use of ijtihād, or the expenditure of effort, in finding divine judgments for actions not mentioned in the divinely revealed sources. They used as evidence the tradition of Muʿādh ibn Jabal, the Companion who was sent to Yemen, in which he stated that, if he did not find the answer to a problem that he was adjudicating in the teachings of the Qurʾān or the Prophet, then he would use his ijtihād to find an answer. The Prophet was reportedly pleased with this answer. Although the chain for this tradition is broken, it was widely accepted by Sunni scholars as proof of ijtihād in general and qiyās in particular.67 Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī, his son Muḥammad, and their followers rejected this tradition because of the fault with its chain of transmission. They also argued that, even if the tradition were to be sound, ijtihād would have meant to exert more effort for finding the answer in the revealed sources.68 Ibn Ḥazm would later repeat the same arguments in his writings and expand upon them.69 The Ẓāhirīs thus redefined ijtihād to signify the expenditure of effort into finding the answer for any problem in the revealed sources, not extrapolating an answer using tools such as qiyās.

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One of the classic examples used to demonstrate the need for ijtihād in general and analogical reasoning in particular was the lack of a verse in the Qurʾān prohibiting people from hitting their parents. Jurists argued that what the Qurʾān did prohibit was to utter the slightest expression of displeasure at one’s parents or to rebuke them (Q 17:23). Jurists used this verse as a prime example of where analogy was used, particularly the a fortiori type of analogy, to reach the conclusion that, if one may not hurt one’s parents verbally, one may not do something worse, such as hurting them physically.70 Ibn ʿArabī, however, like the Ẓāhirīs, argued that recourse to analogy was not needed in this matter – or, in fact, any matter – for anyone possessing deep understanding (fiqh) in the religion. Regarding this example, they noted that the Qurʾān already gave the answer in very same verse, although many jurists did not see it. The same verse also instructed the believers ‘to treat one’s parents with kindness’. Those with understanding know that this general instruction of treating parents with kindness inherently contains within it the prohibition of hitting them; therefore, they did not need to make an analogy between hitting and disrespectful speech. According to them, the religion has been completed and everything that was needed is in the Qurʾān and sunna, sometimes in the form of general instructions (mujmal) from which specific teachings can be extracted.71 This is the type of ijtihād approved by the Ẓāhirīs: to find a text that already covers the act in question. Ibn ʿArabī, approved of both interpretations of the word ijtihād, while giving preference to the Ẓāhirī one. He did this by applying the principle of God’s approval of a person’s ijtihād not only to positive law, but also to the principles of jurisprudence themselves. In other words, the very principles and sources of jurisprudence are reached by way of ijtihād, and therefore God has given His approval for any set of juristic principles and sources arrived at by man, such as the acceptance or rejection of qiyās, for example. He wrote: [The Prophet] did not single out the corollaries (furu’) in ijtihād and leave out the principles/sources (uṣūl). Rather, he spoke in general terms. Therefore, those who hold that he meant only the corollaries and not the principles, that is a result of their own ijtihād and likewise is the case for those who hold that the expression was general. Both will be rewarded for their ijtihād.72

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Here we see Ibn ʿArabī taking the position that the judgement on ijtihād is the same for both principles and corollaries, combining it with the position that all results of ijtihād are acceptable, to reach the conclusion that all positions on principles of jurisprudence arrived at by way of ijtihād are correct. By holding this position, Ibn ʿArabī could approve of both interpretations of the word ijtihād and, therefore, approve of the methodologies of both those who approved of qiyās and those who did not. Ibn ʿArabī himself gave preference to the Ẓāhirī position, but by adopting this stance on ijtihād with regard to principles of jurisprudence, he gave himself a position above that of the Ẓāhirīs and their detractors. Therefore, while his own methodology was very similar to that of the Ẓāhirīs, it would not be correct to classify him as a Ẓāhirī because he also approved of a position completely at odds with that of the Ẓāhirī tradition. Ibn ʿArabī agreed with the Ẓāhirīs that ijtihād was not to create new laws but to seek rulings from the Qurʾān, sunna, consensus of the Companions, or an understanding of the revealed texts acceptable to the language of the Arabs. As for the consensus of the Companions, it is not seen as something outside these two sources because it is taken to be an indication of an existence of a sunna that was known to all the Companions and yet did not reach the later generations by way of narration. He argued that there was nothing for which there is no answer in the Qurʾān and sunna, for, as the Qurʾān stated in Q 5:3, the religion has been perfected and perfection does not accept any increase.73 At the same time, he argued that, for those who could not find the answer to everything in the revealed sources, it was acceptable for them to use analogy. This is because analogy is a type of speculative thought or rational inquiry (naẓar ʿaqlī), and many verses of the Qurʾān commanded its listeners to use rational inquiry to establish firstly His existence, secondly His oneness and thirdly the truthfulness of His Messenger. If these very cornerstones of the religion were established and strengthened by way of rational inquiry, then how could it not be acceptable in the case of something comparatively minor to this, such as an individual point of law? Therefore, it is rational inquiry itself which proves analogical reasoning to be a source of law in times of necessity. It establishes that analogical reasoning could be used when an act shared the same trait as another that was likely the cause of a Divine Judgement.74

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For Ibn ʿArabī, it is wrong to reject the opinions of others, whether in principles or corollaries. It is ijtihād that led some scholars to approve of analogy and others to reject it, and the ijtihād of both is correct for themselves by God’s own decree. It is therefore not permissible for the rejectors of analogical reasoning to forbid its practitioners from using it, just as it is not permissible for the practitioners of analogical reasoning to forbid the Ẓāhirīs from rejecting it.75 He wrote: Therefore, even if the use of analogy was wrong in and of itself, the Lawgiver made it an act of worship for him [because his ijtihād led him to accept it as a source of law], and the Lawgiver may choose whatever He wishes as a way of being worshipped by His servants. This is a way which is uniquely ours, as far as we know. We reject analogical reasoning for ourselves but approve of it for those whose ijtihād led them to accept it, because the Lawgiver established it [that is, established the result of his ijtihād]. Therefore, if he who opposed it were fair, he would remain quiet and not argue on this matter, for it is too obvious to be argued about.76

The use of ijtihād to make new laws, then, although it is makrūh, becomes at the same time an act of worship that is rewarded, whether the results are correct or erroneous! Those who err receive one reward, while those who are correct receive double. God, as the Lawgiver, can make an act of worship for His servants out of anything that He wishes, even something that is makrūh, and He did so with ijtihād and the use of analogical reasoning. Ibn ʿArabī found a parallel for this position in religious vows (nadhr), where one may make a vow such as the following: ‘If God cures my illness, then I will feed my neighbours’. According to the canonical ḥadīth literature, the Prophet discouraged people from making such vows and yet made their fulfilment compulsory.77 According to Ibn ʿArabī, the Prophet disliked these vows because they created an additional obligation for people, but at the same time made the fulfilment of these vows an obligation. This meant that fulfilling such vows was rewarded, while not fulfilling them was blameworthy and punishable.78 For Ibn ʿArabī, then, the use of analogy in ijtihād leads to the earning of reward, but not as much as the reward of abstaining from it altogether. He wrote: Your reward in abstaining from establishing a new sunna is far greater than the reward that you would get for establishing a new sunna, for the Prophet

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disliked the increase of obligations upon his nation. He disliked for them to ask too many questions out of fear that something would be revealed about it that they would not be able to bear, and whoever establishes a new sunna establishes a new obligation. The Prophet would have been the most suitable to establish that, but he left it to make things easier. That is why we say: following the Prophet in abstaining [from establishing a new sunna] is greater in reward than in making one.79

Ibn ʿArabī, however, did not tolerate a scholar’s use of opinion or analogy where a text had already spoken on an issue. He wrote: ‘If the revealed text appears to him, and he leaves it in favour of his own opinion [raʾy] or what he claims to be perspicuous analogy, there is no excuse for him before God, and he is blameworthy’.80 As we have stated, Ibn ʿArabī believed that the position that rejected the use of analogical reasoning was stronger. ‘God is not absentminded; His silences are not omissions. It is not for man to fill in the “voids” in Revelation’, as Addas summarised his position succinctly.81 Despite it being unfavourable to extrapolate new laws, the very fact that God even allowed this was a great honour that God bestowed upon Muḥammad’s followers. The act of ijtihād was a great honour that God bestowed upon the nation of Muḥammad, for lawgiving is originally an act of the Prophets and Messengers only. In allowing the men of Muḥammad’s community to do ijtihād, God was in fact giving them a share of the role of prophethood – without calling it thus. In effect, then, those who practise ijtihād are like the Prophets, but they cannot be called Prophets; in any case, it is known that the lawgiving of the Prophets was not based on ijtihād. The fact remains, however, that mujtahids are in a sense acting like Prophets when they make new laws. The mujtahids are the heirs of the Prophets in lawgiving, and the evidence that they gather take the place of the Revelation that came down upon the Prophets, and the differences in the rulings of different mujtahids is similar to the differences in laws between different Prophets; however, that does not equate them in any other way to the Prophets and Messengers.82 Furthermore, every mujtahid is correct, just as every Prophet is maʿṣūm (protected from error).83 This is an honour that God gave this community so that its scholars could be raised on the Day of Resurrection to the ranks of the Prophets and Messengers, with no one ahead of them except the Prophet Muḥammad himself.84 Here, Ibn ʿArabī differs very strongly from

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the position of Ibn Ḥazm who completely rejected the notion that God has authorised men to legislate, as he held that legislation belonged only to God.85 Ibn ʿArabī defended his position with the ḥadīths stating that ‘[t]he scholars are the inheritors of the Prophets’ and ‘[w]hoever establishes a good practice (sunna ḥasana) will have its reward and the reward of those who act upon it’. The Prophet, therefore, had given his stamp of approval to the injunctions that result from the scholars’s ijtihād and istiḥsān (what they deem to be good), meaning that every ijtihād performed by a fully qualified jurist was correct.86 We see here how Ibn ʿArabī linked the type of ijtihād known as istiḥsān with the tradition about establishing new practices. Ibn ʿArabī therefore called the judgements in the revealed sources nubuwwa aṣliyya (original prophecy), and the judgements added by scholars by way of ijtihād he termed nubuwwa firʿiyya (derivative prophecy). This is presumably because it was God who allowed scholars to bring new laws like the Prophets, and because these laws were derived from the original laws brought by the Prophets and built upon them. However, having said this, Ibn ʿArabī counselled his reader to strive to only follow original prophecy and never go beyond what is in the original sources, in order to be a perfect follower of Muḥammad himself.87 He wrote: Every mujtahid is bound to what his ijtihād led him to, but he may not accuse those who disagree with him of being in error [. . .] 88 We must never criticise the ruling of a mujtahid because it is the sharīʿa itself, being God’s judgement, that approved of [the mujtahid’s] judgement, so it becomes the law of God by God’s approval of it, and this is a matter in which the people of all the schools of law fall into the realm of the prohibited . . . 89

This is how Ibn ʿArabī could approve of all the different opinions of the schools throughout his jurisprudential discussions in the Futūḥāt. The Akbarī madhhab embraces all madhhabs and gives a justification for each opinion based on its inward secret, its crossover to the interior of man. Ibn ʿArabī was clearly no Ẓāhirī. Taqlīd, Pluralism and God’s Mercy As we have seen, Ibn ʿArabī argued that mujtahids were bound to follow the opinion to which their ijtihād or analogy led them, but he argued that others were not bound to follow anything but the Qurʾān and sunna.90

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People likewise had the option of whether they wished to follow what scholars added by way of analogical reasoning. If they followed someone’s ijtihād, then they were following a law approved by God for that person, and yet this remained a questionable matter. It is better to follow only what is in the texts, for God only commanded the people to ask ‘the people of the Remembrance’ (Q 21:7), meaning the experts on the Qurʾān and the experts on sunna.91 Furthermore, how could God make an act of worship for people out of the product of someone else’s reasoning? Acts of worship can only come from the Qurʾān and sunna.92 For Ibn ʿArabī, therefore, people would only be taken to account on the Day of Judgement according to what was in the Qurʾān and sunna and would not be questioned about anything added by the jurists based on analogy. For Ibn ʿArabī, as we have shown, ijtihād was the search for the answer to a question within the Qurʾān and sunna; therefore, the role of the scholars and muftīs was simply to transmit the evidence from the Qurʾān, sunna, or consensus (of the Companions) to the questioner. The imitation of scholars was only acceptable when the scholar or muftī stated that his answer was the ruling of God and His Messenger, as proven by one of the three above sources, but if he stated that the ruling was based on his opinion or reasoning, then it became impermissible for a person to follow it.93 According to Ibn ʿArabī, like Ibn Ḥazm before him, a layman may not be bound to following a single school of jurisprudence but must search for the scholar who will tell him that he is providing the judgement of God and His Messenger, regardless of what school this scholar follows. He gave this advice to the layperson: I warn you that you must not bind yourself to following a single school, but must act upon God’s commandment, for He has commanded you to ‘ask the people of the Remembrance if you do not know’, (Q 21:7) and the people of the Remembrance are the experts on the Qurʾān and sunna, for the ‘Remembrance’ is the Qurʾān as stated in the Qurʾān. You must seek the removal of difficulty (rafʿ al-ḥaraj) in your matter, if possible, for God said: ‘He has imposed nothing difficult on you in matters of religion’ (Q 22:78). And the Prophet said: ‘The religion is about ease’. So ask about the easier option (rukhṣa) in the matter until you find it, and when you find it, act upon it [. . .] If you want to take the harder option (ʿazāʾim) in your matters do

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so, but only in what applies to yourself (and not others), and know that the removal of hardship is the sunna.94

At the same time, even though God’s mercy meant that no one was obliged to follow the additions of the scholars, Ibn ʿArabī found another type of mercy in their additions. He argued that the learned opinions and istiḥsān of the scholars provided people with more opinions to choose from. Thus, while there is mercy in people only being taken into account for what is in the revealed texts, there is another mercy in God’s acceptance of other people’s ijtihād for themselves and whoever wished to follow them. This allowed people to seek the easiest option in any school of thought. The jurists, however, deprived the people of this mercy by restricting them to following a single school of jurisprudence and barring them from searching for easier solutions in other schools, fearing that this would amount to playing with the religion. For Ibn ʿArabī, God had approved of the ijtihād of every mujtahid and made it part of the sharīʿa; hence, those who wish to seek their solutions in other schools have evidence to do so in this. It is those who forbid people from going beyond a single school of jurisprudence that have no evidence for this position of theirs, except their unfounded fears. Furthermore, the founders of the schools never commanded anyone to follow only them and not any other, and those who now forbid people from doing so were not independent mujtahids like the founding imāms, by their own admission, and they therefore have no right to make such statements.95 He wrote: Out of divergence in legal questions God has made both a mercy for His servants and a widening [ittisāʿ] of what He has prescribed for them to do. But the jurists of our times have restricted and forbidden, for those who follow them, what the Sacred Law had widened for them. They say to one who belongs to their school, if he is a Ḥanafī, for example: ‘Do not go looking for al-Shāfiʿī’s dispensation in this problem that you have’. And so on for each of them. That is one of the gravest calamities and one of the heaviest constraints in the matter of religion. Now God said that ‘He has imposed nothing difficult on you in matters of religion’ (Q 22:78). The law has affirmed the validity of the status of he who makes a personal ijtihād for himself or for those who follow him. But the jurists of our time have forbidden this, maintaining that it leads to making light of religion. This, from them, is the height of ignorance!96

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For Ibn ʿArabī, the muqallid (imitator) is muṭlaq (has absolute freedom) to choose what he wishes from the different opinions of the mujtahids. Jurists usually used the term muṭlaq for the independent mujtahids, such as the four imāms who followed no one, but were to be followed. Ibn ʿArabī instead cleverly called the imitators muṭlaq for being allowed to move freely from one school to another while seeking the easy option, whereas it is the mujtahid who was muqayyad (restricted) by his evidence and the result of his ijtihād.97 Ibn ʿArabī even went so far as to accuse those who restricted God’s sharīʿa and made things difficult for Muslims by forcing them to follow a madhhab of having left the religion.98 For Ibn ʿArabī, God is merciful and hence placed mercy even in the act of the jurists who transgressed His mercy by adding to His laws. Addas succinctly summarised Ibn ʿArabī’s position: ‘As soon as the Divine Law leaves the field open to a number of solutions, none of these, and certainly not the easiest, has a right to be discarded, “God imposes upon a soul only that which it can bear” (Q 2:286); Divine Law is strict, but it is not rigid’.99 We have seen in the previous chapter that Ibn ʿArabī was certainly not alone in holding that laymen need not be bound to a single madhhab. His contemporary Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām wrote: People have always been this way: they asked whichever scholar was convenient to ask, without adherence to a specific madhhab. No one criticised people for doing this until these madhhabs appeared along with their fanatical adherents. Now you see one of them following his imām despite that imām’s madhhab lacking any evidence, blindly following him in what he said, as if he were a Prophet who was sent to him. This behaviour takes one far from the truth and from what is correct and is not acceptable to the intelligent.100

This stance would be repeated by Sharaf al-Dīn al-Nawawī (d. 676/1277), who was seven years old when Ibn ʿArabī passed away and is one of the two main authorities of the Shāfiʿī school. However, Nawawī added that one should not be motivated by the search for dispensations (the easiest options) in the different schools. He wrote: The evidence indicates that the layman does not have to adhere to a particular madhhab. He can ask for a fatwā from whomever he wants, or whoever is convenient for him, as long as his aim is not to seek every dispensation.

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Perhaps those who forbade this freedom to the layman did so because they did not trust him to not seek every dispensation.101

Nawawī’s position came to represent the majority of Shāfiʿīs (and other prominent scholars from the other madhhabs).102 The following statement became an oft-repeated principle: ‘The layman has no madhhab. His madhhab (in any particular case) is the fatwā of his muftī (whom he asked regarding that case)’.103 Ibn ʿArabī was parting from the mainstream positions of his time in two respects: 1) Ibn ʿArabī did not place any conditions on this freedom for laymen to choose from the different madhhabs. 2) Ibn ʿArabī actively encouraged the layperson to seek what was easier for them (we must not forget, however, that he also actively encouraged the layperson when seeking a fatwā to ask for its evidence in the Qurʾān and sunna). Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām agreed with him on the first position of unconditional freedom to choose from the different schools, provided one chose an accepted opinion, which he defined as one that a judge would not reject as invalid. He argued that there was no evidence for such a condition in the revealed texts.104 As for the second position – that is, Ibn ʿArabī encouraging the layperson to seek the most accommodating position – he appears to be a lone voice in his time-period. But he was not the first to hold this opinion. It was held before him by Ibn Abī Hurayra (d. 345/956), the Baghdadī judge who became the ultimate authority of his age in the Shāfiʿī school.105 Like Ibn ʿArabī after him, Ibn Abī Hurayra stated that there was no legal basis for forbidding people from seeking the lenient options in every school. He argued that they, in fact, should seek the easiest option because the Prophet had wanted ease for God’s servants in their obligations.106 Some Ḥanbalīs also held this position, for Ibn Ḥanbal told his students: ‘Do not force people to follow your opinion (madhhab)’. This Ibn ʿAqīl al-Ḥanbalī (d. 513/119) explained to mean: ‘Let them seek the easier options provided by the opinions of others’.107 A man once came to Ibn Ḥanbal asking if a

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certain action would lead to his being divorced from his wife. Ibn Ḥanbal confirmed that it would. The man asked: ‘What if someone gave me a fatwā to the contrary?’ Ibn Ḥanbal instructed the man to find the Ruṣāfa quarter of Baghdad where migrants from Medina stayed and to ask one of their scholars for a fatwā on this matter; he gave the man his blessings for acting upon the Medinan fatwā in order to save his marriage.108 The majority of scholars, however, claimed that one who sought the easier option on every matter was a fāsiq (transgressor). They based this on a narration of Ibn Ḥanbal himself, quoting the traditionist Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭan (d. 198/813) as having said: ‘He who follows the scholars of Kufa in allowing intoxicants, the scholars of Medina in allowing listening to singing girls (and music), and the scholars of Mecca in allowing temporary marriages, would be a fāsiq’.109 These, however, are extreme cases (especially if combined in one setting!) from an early time before the above-mentioned Kufan and Meccan positions were abandoned by all Sunnis (the position on music and singing girls survived for much longer with the Ẓāhirīs). This statement should not be taken as representative of Ibn Ḥanbal’s position but must rather be balanced with his other statements above. Ibn Ḥanbal, in fact, used to insist that the differences of the scholars reflected the flexibility given by the sharīʿa itself (as we will see in Chapter 7).110 Despite the eminence of Ibn Abī Hurayra, however, the Mālikī traditionist Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr of Cordoba (d. 464/1071) could claim a century after him that there was a consensus among scholars on the impermissibility of seeking the easier options from the different schools.111 The early Ẓāhiri Sufi Ruwaym ibn Aḥmad had praised the practice of allowing latitude for others as a mark of wisdom and of truly following ʿilm. He had said: From the wisdom of the ḥakīm is that he shows latitude for his brothers in legal rulings but constricts his own options. To give latitude (tawsiʿa) to others is to follow true knowledge (ʿilm), whereas constriction of one’s own options (taḍyīq) is a condition of cautious piety (waraʿ).112

Ibn ʿArabī agreed. As Addas noted, ‘[m]ercy towards others, steadfast rigour toward himself: these are the defining poles of Ibn ʿArabī’s ethics’.113 Ibn

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ʿArabī linked his own position of allowing the layman to seek the easiest opinions from among the different schools to the concept of spiritual inheritance from the Prophet Muḥammad. He wrote: ‘God has created me a mercy, and made me an inheritor of mercy from the one to whom it was said, “We did not send you but as a mercy to all the worlds”’ (Q 21:107).114 In a sense, this is not unlike Ruwaym’s identification of this approach to ʿilm, for this word was in Ruwaym’s time mostly associated with knowledge of the inherited body of the Prophet’s teachings, the ḥadīth. Summary We have shown that Ibn ʿArabī had his own unique approach to jurisprudence, which as an independent methodology could possibly be termed the Akbarī madhhab, as some have called it. Although it shared much with the Ẓāhirī method and indeed benefited greatly from it, Ibn ʿArabī’s approach could not truly be described as Ẓāhirī. Ibn ʿArabī had his own reasons for adopting many of the key positions of the Ẓāhirīs that were very different from the reasons that led the Ẓāhirīs to adopt their own positions. Furthermore, the rejection of qiyās, one of the two main cornerstones of Ẓāhirī thought, was not unique to them and also constituted a key feature of the juristic thought of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī and other Sufis. It is in the differences between Ibn ʿArabī and the Ẓāhirīs that the guiding principles behind their legal thought emerge. The Ẓāhirī legal methodology was built around the desire for certainty in every detail of the law. They rejected the use of rational tools such as analogical reasoning, as well as the possibility that the intellect could discover with certainty the legal causes behind God’s injunctions. They also held that a khabar al-wāḥid tradition provided certainty. When two texts of equal strength contradicted each other and when they did not know which one abrogated the other, they chose the tradition that they knew with certainty had at first been implemented by the fact that it went against free human norms. Ibn ʿArabī did not search for certainty in chains of transmission and held that the khabar al-wāḥid did not provide certain knowledge. If two texts of equal strength contradicted each other and there was no way to know which one abrogated the other, his position was that the easier option should be chosen. Ibn ʿArabī’s discussions on analogical reasoning were not linked to the discoverability of legal causes,

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the existence of which he did not deny. He rejected analogical reasoning on the basis that it increased the number of commands and prohibitions that people had to follow. He did accept analogical reasoning on the condition that people were not forced to follow the results of this process. Ibn ʿArabī argued that the founders of the schools of law were divinely inspired saints whose positions were all in a sense correct, given that God gave his stamp of approval to the result of their ijtihād. Ibn ʿArabī urged laymen to freely seek from all schools the positions that caused them the least hardship. Therefore, Ibn ʿArabī agreed with the Ẓāhirīs where their principles led to ease, which is the rejection of additions to the divinely revealed commands and prohibitions, as well as the rejection of confining laity to the opinions of a single school. He did this out of his belief in God’s mercy and his desire to bring ease to people. The Ẓāhirī rejection of additions to what is strictly mentioned in the texts increases the domain of the permissible and preserves people’s original freedom of action. From the point of view of Ibn Ḥazm and Traditionist-Jurisprudents such as Bukhārī, everything that God did not specifically forbid was permissible, and one cannot take away that permissibility and the human freedom that results from it by using weak ḥadīths or fallible reasoning. To put it another way, all things are originally licit and can only be made illicit by means of certain, indisputable evidence; this can only come from an explicit text.115 According to Ibn ʿArabī, even if this reasoning made a lot of sense, the Prophet himself told us repeatedly that God, with His mercy, had pardoned all that was not explicitly stated in the revealed sources. Ibn ʿArabī chose those principles of the Ẓāhirīs that preserved people’s right to act freely outside the limited set of divine prescriptions but rejected those that placed certainty above leniency. We can therefore say that the Akbarī legal system was primarily based on the desire for mercy and ease for God’s servants. Ibn ʿArabī believed that the Prophet Muḥammad had exactly that same desire, and so did Muḥammad’s perfect heirs, like himself. Did Ibn ʿArabī Have his Own Madhhab? Ibn ʿArabī dedicated Chapter 88 of his Futūḥāt, titled ‘On Knowing the Secrets of the Principles of the Sharīʿa’s Judgements’, to the exposition of his own choices in legal principles – that is, his own madhhab.116 In it he

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covered his positions on the major principles of jurisprudence, covering the following topics:   1) The sources themselves  2) Consensus   3) The rules of interpreting the sources   4) Conflicts of evidence  5) How to understand commands, prohibitions, and the actions of the Prophet (that is, what is their value judgement)  6) Abrogation  7) Analogy   8) The authority of a Companion’s fatwā117   9) The revealed laws of previous nations 10) Ijtihād and taqlīd for scholars and for the layperson 11) Value judgements118 12) Seeking easier options and moving between schools All of these matters he discussed in several places throughout the Futūḥāt, adding further detail. It could be said, therefore, that Ibn ʿArabī had his own complete set of principles, a full madhhab. As with the case of Ibn Ḥazm and the Ẓāhirīs in general, it remains questionable whether one could say they had a madhhab in the sense of a school. It might be more accurate to call the principles of Ẓāhirism a methodology, because the ahl al-ẓāhir also rejected taqlīd and considered themselves to be independent mujtahids.119 However, since he disagreed with the Ẓāhirīs on their main philosophy of the law, and only quoted from their texts that which agreed with his own theory and aims, it would be more accurate to say that he had his own independent method which benefitted greatly from the Ẓāhirīs. One could only consider Ibn ʿArabī a ẓāhirī, if by ẓāhirī we refer to the textualism espoused by many Sufis before and contemporaneous with Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī, who were not affiliated to the Dāwūdī-Ẓāhirī legal tradition. Still, it would be truer to say that Ibn ʿArabī had his own methodology that was closer to the early Sufis who were allied to the general Traditionalist movement but remained uniquely different. Although he also came very close to the method of Traditionist-Jurisprudents like Bukhārī, Ibn ʿArabī did not

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have the expertise in finding the hidden faults (ʿilal) in chains of transmission that the third/ninth-century Traditionist-Jurisprudents employed. He did not look at ḥadīth with the critical eyes of the experts. If we could establish that there existed subsequent scholars who were influenced by Ibn ʿArabī, who accepted all his principles and worshipped according to his preferences, then we would be justified in saying that there was an Akbarī school, even if it only had a small number of followers. Our prime example would be the Sufi shaykh and revivalist scholar Aḥmad ibn Idrīs and the movements influenced by his teachings. However, before we jump to future centuries, it would be a mistake to overlook Ibn ʿArabī’s close circle of disciples. One should assume that at least some of Ibn ʿArabī’s most dedicated disciples followed his choices and preferences in jurisprudence. A prime example of this is Ibn ʿArabī’s greatest disciple and son-in-law Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī. We see Qūnawī share Ibn ʿArabī’s attitude to juristic opinions and his strict adherence to traditions in his final will. Qūnawī wrote in his will: ‘I enjoin them to wash my body in keeping with what is mentioned in the books of ḥadīth, not in keeping with what is mentioned in the books of jurisprudence’. Equally in keeping with the ḥadīth literature and in opposition to later dispensation given by the jurists of the Ḥanafī school and others, he furthermore requested that no structure be built over his grave.120 Qūnawī was also described as a great traditionist,121 and Ibn ʿArabī most likely would have been the main influence behind Qūnawī’s dedication to ḥadīth studies. Notes   1. On the originality and individuality of the authors of uṣūl al-fiqh works, see Hallaq, ‘Uṣūl al-Fiqh’, 172–202.   2. For a discussion of the arguments for and against Ibn ʿArabī’s affiliation to the Ẓāhirī tradition, see Dajani, ‘Ibn ʿArabī’s Conception’, 91–103.   3. Aron Zysow briefly discussed Ibn ʿArabī in his classic doctoral dissertation ‘The Economy of Certainty: An Introduction to the Typology of Islamic Legal Theory’. As this work remained unpublished from 1984 until 2013 and was mostly of concern to students of uṣūl al-fiqh, it has not been noticed in Akbarī studies.  4. Brown, Hadith, 104–6.  5. Zysow, Economy of Certainty, 25–26, 31.  6. Al-Qurashī, al-Jawāhir, 1:111.

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 7. Zysow, Economy of Certainty, 29–30. Ibn Ḥazm attributed this position to Dāwūd and two of his contemporaries: al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī (d. 243/857) and al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī al-Karābīsī (d. 245/859) (Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 1:119). It is worth noting that all of these figures were closely connected. Muḥāsibī was a teacher of Junayd who, like Dāwūd, was a close student of Abū Thawr. Junayd himself is counted among Dāwūd’s teachers (Osman, ‘History and Doctrine’, 29–30). Karābīsī was a very close associate of Abū Thawr and may have also been a teacher of Dāwūd (Osman, ‘History and Doctrine’, 32–34). Ibn Ḥazm also noted that one scholar ascribed this view to Mālik ibn Anas as well (Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 1:119).   8. Osman, ‘History and Doctrine’, 22; Stewart, ‘Muḥammad ibn Dāʾūd’, 132.  9. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 1:119. Abū Zahra understood from Ibn Ḥazm that he believed the khabar al-wāḥid produced certain but not immediate knowledge, unlike the mutawātir tradition which produced immediate knowledge (Abū Zahra, Ibn Ḥazm, 262). 10. Zysow, Economy of Certainty, 30–31. As Zysow noted, Ibn Ḥazm avoided mentioning this group of Ẓāhirīs (see Zysow, Economy of Certainty, 31; Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 1:113–14). However, Ibn Ḥazm’s knowledge of this group would explain why he did not claim the universal agreement of the ahl al-ẓāhir on this issue, despite its centrality to his and Dāwūd’s systems. 11. See Zysow, Economy of Certainty, 2–3; Osman, ‘History and Doctrine’, 197–98, 224–25. For Ibn Ḥazm’s Ẓāhirī methodology of linguistic interpretation see Gleave, Islam and Literalism, 172–73. For Ibn Ḥazm’s Ẓāhirī methodology of Ḥadīth acceptance, see Abū Zahra, Ibn Ḥazm, 258–69; Sabra, ‘Ibn Ḥazm’s Literalism’, part 1, 14–15. 12. Zysow, Economy of Certainty, 30–31, 280–81; Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:162–64. 13. Zysow, Economy of Certainty, 281. 14. Zysow did also point out some of the other differences mentioned above. His brief treatment of the subject, although only a small part of his epilogue, surpasses that of the other scholars mentioned (see Zysow, Economy of Certainty, 280–82). 15. Al-Dārimī, Sunan, 1:48–77. 16. Osman, ‘History and Doctrine’, 70, 87, 104. 17. Osman found that Ibn Ḥazm criticised other Ẓāhirī scholars on some of their positions in regard to the principles of jurisprudence, but never criticised Dāwūd himself (see Osman, ‘History and Doctrine’, 95). 18. The first eight principles were compiled by Amr Osman, who searched through Ibn Ḥazm’s al-Iḥkām fī uṣūl al-aḥkām for every principle about which Ibn Ḥazm

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claimed there was total agreement within his school. They are listed, albeit not in the same order, in Osman, ‘History and Doctrine’, 97–99. I have added principles 9 to 11. 19. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:373; 2:165. Also in his Qurʾānic commentary Ījāz al-bayān when discussing verse 2:170, as quoted by al-Ghurāb in al-Fiqh, 66–67. 20. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:162. 21. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:149. The word mafhūm literally means ‘what is understood’ from a text. In its technical meaning in jurisprudence, however, it means linguistic implication or textual inference as discussed above. Ghurāb understood the word mafhūm in this passage by its literal, non-technical meaning ‘what is understood’ and equated that to ‘literal meaning’. He said that, according to Ibn ʿArabī, ‘consideration of only the literal meaning (mafhūm) as evidence (dalāla) is weak, for it cannot reliably be true in every case’ (Al-Ghurāb, ‘Ibn al-ʿArabī’, 200). Al-Ghurāb therefore used this statement of Ibn ʿArabī as evidence that he was not a Ẓāhirī when in fact the passage, to the contrary, shows that Ibn ʿArabī agreed with the Ẓāhirīs on this issue. 22. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:164. 23. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:164. 24. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:165. 25. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:162. 26. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 9:76–77. This important principle was not listed by Osman. Principles 2–6 and 9 would constitute the ‘ẓāhirism’ of the school. 27. For the Ẓāhirī rejection of legal causes, see Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 8:76–128. 28. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:685. See also the section where Ibn ʿArabī explained the pro-qiyās argument (Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:163). For a more extended discussion of this topic, see Dajani, ‘Ibn ʿArabī’s Conception’, 124–25. 29. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 5:64–70. 30. On this principle, see ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt, 291–94. 31. The only non-Ẓāhirī to hold this position was Ibn Taymiyya, who was himself influenced by Ibn Ḥazm. 32. See, for example, Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:494, where Ibn ʿArabī refers to Ibn Ḥazm in support of making an action obligatory, but he disagrees with him in making the fajr prayer invalid without it; for the example of the supplication at the end of the prayer, see Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:431. 33. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā, 1:72; al-Iḥkām, 2:21. 34. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:163. 35. Or, in the case of Ibn Ḥazm, even a Qurʾānic verse versus an authentic Ḥadīth.

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36. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 2:30–33. 37. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:163. 38. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:163. 39. See Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:355, on a similar case regarding whether touching one’s genitals necessitates new ablutions. 40. Al-Armawī, al-Ḥāṣil, 2:985; al-Bayḍāwī, Minhāj al-wuṣūl, 242. Both of these scholars followed the Shāfiʿī school. 41. This subject is the topic of the book Before Revelation by A. Kevin Reinhart. 42. Most Ḥanafīs argued for permissibility. 43. According to al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, ‘Dāwūd called whatever he did not find within the scope of the plain sense of a text Divine Pardon (ʿafw) and in some instances he referred to it as permission’ (al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-Madārik, 1:96). According to a quotation from Dāwūd, ‘[w]hat is beyond the text, God has remained silent about, and is therefore among those things that are pardoned’ (Tāj al-Dīn Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 2:290). See also Zysow, Economy of Certainty, 183. 44. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 3:195–96. 45. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:742. 46. ʿĀʾisha makes such an implication when she says about Ṣafwān ibn al-Muʿaṭṭal that ‘he recognised me when he saw me, for he had seen me before the verse of the ḥijāb’. Furthermore, the fact that faces had to be uncovered during ḥajj meant that there were some women who covered their faces. Other sources indicate that face covering remained rare, however, such as the ḥadīth of ʿĀʾisha saying that, when the fajr prayer would finish and the women left the mosque, it would still be so dark that they could not recognise each other. Commentaries on this ḥadīth (in all Six Books) often note that this indicates that most women’s faces were uncovered, because they would have recognised each other if it were not for the darkness. 47. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:742. 48. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:742. 49. Ibn ʿArabī makes a similar point in his discussion of the concept of ʿawrah. For this, see Winkel, ‘Ibn ʿArabī’s Fiqh’, 63. What is particularly unique here, however, is how his discussion is tied to legal principles and not just positive law, such as the definition of ʿawrah. 50. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:165. 51. Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, verse 5:101; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, kitāb al-ḥajj, bāb farḍu l-ḥajji marratan fi l-ʿumri. 52. See Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 8:28. This is narrated by Abū Dāwūd in his Sunan and regarded as authentic. On these narrations and similar statements attributed to

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prominent scholars among the generation of the Followers, see Ibn Rajab, Jāmiʿ, 2:149–52. 53. See Ibn Rajab, Jāmiʿ, 2:149–52. 54. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:164–65. 55. See the section by Kamali, Principles, 424–28. 56. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:165. 57. Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-iʿtiṣām bi l-kitāb wa-l-sunna, bāb ajr al-ḥākim idhā ijtahada fa aṣāba aw akhṭaʾa. 58. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:165; 3:400. 59. Al-Shawkānī, Irshad al-fuhul, 2:745. 60. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:472; 4:305. 61. Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ, 1:156. 62. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 3:337, 327. 63. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 3:271. 64. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:224–25. 65. For example, in Kitāb al-Mubashshirāt, Ibn ʿArabī mentions asking the Prophet in a dream about the meaning of the word qurʾ in the Qurʾān, which some schools understood to refer to the menstrual period and others to its opposite: the period of purification between periods. Ibn ʿArabī received a hint but not a direct answer as to the correct answer (Ibn ʿArabī, al-Mubashshirāt, 435). 66. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 3:337. 67. See Kamali, Principles, 288, 474. 68. Stewart, ‘Muḥammad ibn Dāʾūd’, 155. 69. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 6:35. 70. See Kamali, Principles, 284–85. A fortiori reasoning is where ‘the presence of some factor in mild or moderate form in one case entails that another cause where it exists in extreme form would share the same ruling’ (Brown, Misquoting Muhammad, 38). Some scholars even believed that this was not a legal type of inference at all, but a linguistic one; they argued that this is one of the universal rules of speech, that one need not explain every small detail, but could use one example to teach a general rule. 71. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:371. 72. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:477. 73. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 3:69, 502. Here we see Ibn ʿArabī accepting any understanding of the text that is approved by the language of the Arabs as proof, a principle which we will address below. 74. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:163. 75. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:472.

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76. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:163. 77. See Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-aymān wa l-nudhūr, bāb al-wafāʾ bi l-nadhr, and the following section, bāb ithm man lā yafī bi l-nadhr. 78. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 3:230. 79. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 4:457; see also 1:696 and 2:188. 80. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1: 499. Obvious analogy (as Kamali translates ‘qiyās jalī’), or ‘perspicuous qiyās’, as Hallaq translates it, was considered the strongest type of analogy which was accepted by many of those who rejected qiyās on principle. It thus represented the most valid or authoritative form of qiyās (see Hallaq, History, 102–3, 105; Kamali, Principles, 286.). Ibn ʿArabī was referring to those scholars who rejected a ḥadīth based on what they claimed to be obvious (and therefore undeniable) analogy from a Qurʾānic text, which would mean that a tradition stating the contrary must necessarily be wrong. For him, they are wrong in thinking that such an analogy is obvious and must hold tightly to the ḥadīth, even if it seemed obvious by way of reason that they should not. 81. Addas, Voyage, 123. The Ẓāhirīs also rejected qiyās because the Qurʾān, in verse 4:59, instructed those in dispute to return their affairs to God and His messenger if they had faith, which, after the latter’s passing, was understood to refer to the Qurʾān and sunna; according to them, then, to solve a dispute by analogy or anything outside the Qurʾān and sunna is invalid and amounts to the creation of new law that God did not permit. 82. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:545; 2:252. 83. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 3:400. This does not mean that mujtahids are protected from error, as are Prophets. It only means to show a parallel between the two. 84. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:400. 85. Osman, ‘History and Doctrine’, 231. 86. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:168–69. 87. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:169. 88. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:523. 89. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:348. In other words, the followers of all schools fall into the sin of rejecting the opinions of others of which God Himself approved. 90. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:472; 4:305. 91. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 3:230. The ‘Remembrance’ meaning the Qurʾān and, by extension, sunna. 92. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:373. 93. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:373; 2:165. Also from Ibn ʿArabī’s commentary on verse 2:170 in Ījāz al-bayān, as quoted by al-Ghurāb in al-Fiqh, 66–67.

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 94. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 4:491.  95. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:392.  96. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:392. I made use of Chodkiewicz’s translation in Ocean, 56, with minor improvements.  97. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 4:142. This could be seen as a natural consequence of the doctrine of Infallibilism and was accepted by some jurists. However, other Infallibilists such as Ghazālī sought to restrict this freedom by requiring the layperson to follow the scholar that he regards as the most learned (see Zysow, Economy of Certainty, 274–75).  98. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 4:79.  99. Addas, Voyage, 123–24. 100. Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, Qawāʿid, 2:371. 101. Al-Nawawī, Rawḍat al-ṭālibīn, 11:117. 102. Al-Zarkashī, al-Baḥr al-muḥīṭ, 8:375. For the names of subsequent scholars from different madhhabs who held this opinion, see al-Sanūsī, Īqāẓ al-wasnān, 94–98; Brown, ‘Reaching into the Obscure Past’, 124 n15. 103. Ibn Nujaym, al-Baḥr al-rāʾiq, 2:90, 2:316. 104. Brown, ‘Reaching into the Obscure Past’, 104. 105. Al-Luh, Uṣūl al-fiqh, 479. On Ibn Abī Hurayra, see al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 15:428; Melchert, Formation, 105. 106. Al-Luh, Uṣūl al-fiqh, 479. 107. Ibn ʿAqīl, al-Wāḍiḥ fī uṣūl al-fiqh, 1:279. 108. Abū Yaʿlā, al-ʿUdda, 4:1226, 5:1571; Ibn ʿAqīl, al-Wāḍiḥ fī uṣūl al-fiqh, 1:279; al-Zarkashī, al-Baḥr al-muḥīṭ, 8:374. 109. Āl Taymiyya, al-Musawwada, 518–19. 110. As narrated by Ibn Taymiyya in al-Fatāwā, 30:79; idem, al-Musawwada, 401. 111. Al-Luh, Uṣūl al-fiqh, 479. 112. Al-Sulamī, Ṭabaqāt, 148. 113. Addas, Voyage, 124. 114. Addas, Voyage, 124; Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 4:163. 115. Camilla Adang has produced a number of studies on Ibn Ḥazm’s opinions about matters such as women’s participation in public life (Adang, ‘Women’s Access to Public Space’, 90), the punishment of homosexual intercourse (Adang, ‘Ibn Ḥazm on Homosexuality’, 30) and interaction with non-Muslims (Adang, ‘Ibn Ḥazm’s Criticism’, 2, 8), all of which show him to be less restrictive than his opponents from the other schools. A major factor in this is his rejection of weak ḥadīths in the face of original licitness.

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116. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:162–65. 117. Jurisprudents discuss, as part of the principles of the law, the amount of weight that is carried by a Companion’s fatwā. Ibn ʿArabī discussed one half of that problem: the scenario of a contradiction between a Qurʾānic verse or an authentic Ḥadīth, on one hand, and the fatwā of a Companion, on the other. The other half of the problem, however, no longer existed in his theory: in the absence of a text from the Qurʾān or sunna, does the fatwā of a single Companion carry more weight, or the opinion of a later imām of a school? Ibn ʿArabī did not answer this question, but, by the principles of his jurisprudence, he did not need to because there was no need for an answer on something about which the two main sources remained silent. As for those who believed otherwise, their ijtihād on the weight of a Companion’s fatwā would be correct for themselves, and likewise would be the end result of their ijtihād, of course! 118. Here, Ibn ʿArabī covers some matters relating to the states of those addressed by the value judgements or divine rules (maḥkūm fīh) and their legal capacity (ahliyya), as well as the time delineated by the Lawgiver for each act (cf. Kamali, Principles, 445–53). 119. See Sabra, ‘Ibn Ḥazm’s Literalism’, part 1, 22; Abū Zahra, Ibn Ḥazm, 242. As Abū Zahra noted, the Ẓāhirīs did not consider themselves to be followers of a madhhab. This is certainly true in regard to Ibn Ḥazm whose expressions about the ahl al-ẓāhir and what they had in common and what they did not all have in common gave the sense of a group of scholars who agreed on certain basic principles. 120. Chittick, ‘Last Will and Testament’, 43–58. 121. Hirtenstein, ‘Image’, 70.

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6 Loyalty to the Akbar ī Way: ʿAbd al-Wahh ā b al-Shaʿr ā n ī

I

bn ʿArabī died in 1240 ce. In his lifetime, great changes took place in the Muslim world. Sufi teachings and practices were institutionalised through the formation of ṭuruq (Sufi orders). Learning and teaching were institutionalised through madrasas in which teaching posts (professorships) were dedicated to scholars from the four dominant Sunni schools. Ibn ʿArabī and several of his contemporaries were among the last great figures standing against the rising tide of taqlīd. We have seen how Ibn ʿArabī’s contemporary ʿIzz al-Dīn ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, like Ibn ʿArabī, strongly criticised taqlīd in his writings. However, Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s greatest student, Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd, found it unwise to do so publicly in his own time. Despite being seen as the pre-eminent scholar of his age and being granted by many the title of ‘Reviver of Islam’ of his century, Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd requested that his close students not share the book he wrote against taqlīd with the public during his lifetime and that they only make private use of it.1 This difference between teacher and student fits perfectly with the date that has been suggested as a helpful marker for the transition from the Classical Period, in which ijtihād was the norm, to the Post-Classical Period, in which taqlīd was fully dominant over ijtihād. This change had been gradually taking place over the fifth/eleventh and sixth/ twelfth centuries but may have reached its full effect in 663/1265, when the Mamluk Sultan al-Ẓāhir Baybars appointed in Cairo four chief judges representing the Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī schools; this was three years 167

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after the passing of Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām in 660/1262. This institutionalisation of ijtihād and stabilisation of the positive law due to the requirement that judges follow one specific school in their rulings was useful to the Mamluk imperial regime who would benefit from greater predictability in the justice system. A system in which judges continued to practise free ijtihād would have meant less uniformity and predictability, and the sultans could not rely on knowing the expected policies of their judges. By the end of the seventh/thirteenth century and the beginning of the eighth/fourteenth century, there was a clear system of taqlīd, leading to the emergence of what has been termed the ‘Late Sunni Tradition’ or ‘Post-Classical Tradition’.2 As Jonathan Brown explains, the Late Sunni Tradition is . . . . . . the version of Sunni orthodoxy that emerged in the 1300s and has characterised Islamic civilisation in the Middle East and South Asia until the modern period. It consists of an institutional combination of the four Sunni schools of law, the Ashʿarī or Māturīdī schools of speculative theology, and Sufi brotherhoods. A Muslim scholar in the Late Sunni Tradition would loyally follow one of the established schools of law, one of the established schools of speculative theology, and participate in one or more Sufi brotherhoods.3

The great Indian Sufi Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ (d. 725/1325) and his students provide one of the last prominent examples of Ibn ʿArabī’s approach to following ḥadīth versus the madhhabs into the 1300s. Awliyāʾ was brought to the court of the Sultan of Delhi at the request of Ḥanafī jurists who opposed his practice of samāʿ (Sufi dhikr sessions that involve musical instruments). The jurists were concerned about the thousands of Indians who followed Awliyāʾ in this practice, against Ḥanafī teachings. Awliyāʾ quoted ḥadīth reports to support his position on the validity of samāʿ, but the Ḥanafī jurists’ response was that any ḥadīth that went against the Ḥanafī madhhab meant nothing to them in legal discussions and that only the opinions of the Ḥanafī authorities carried weight. Awliyāʾ reacted with great concern over the jurists’ disrespect for the ḥadīth and feared that it would remove the necessary respect for ḥadīth from the hearts of the masses. Awliyāʾ reportedly made a prediction that came true: a divine punishment would befall the scholars who responded in this way.4

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ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 169 One of Awliyāʾ’s appointed successors (khalifas) as head of the Chishtī Sufi order was the Shāfiʿī-trained ḥadīth scholar Fakhr al-Dīn al-Zarrādī (d. 748/1347). Zarrādī had supported his spiritual master during the debate on samāʿ with ḥadīths and Shāfiʿī fatwās. Zarrādī also wrote a treatise on the permissibility of samāʿ in which he wrote that ‘choosing a specific madhhab is a harmful innovation in the religion (bidʿa)’. He also wrote: [The Sufis] act upon the most precautionary madhhab [on each issue] and do not accept to follow a particular madhhab. As some of them said, ‘the Sufi has no madhhab’. They hold firmly to the tradition that states, ‘Disagreement among my community is a source of saʿa (leeway/latitude) in the religion’.5 If disagreement provides leeway, then choosing a single madhhab causes restriction. This religion does not allow restricting what was given leeway [by God] because that creates difficulty for the one who needs to follow it.6

Zarrādī went further to flip the jurists’ argument against using ḥadīth against them. They had claimed that ḥadīth was not relevant to them in debates, because what mattered was the trusted opinion of the scholars of their schools. Since the Sufis did not follow madhhabs, the opinion of any madhhab-following jurist could not be used against them (in the same way that a Mālikī fatwā cannot be used against a Ḥanafī scholar, for example). The Sufis were independent mujtahids answerable only to God and His Messenger.7 We therefore find in Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ and his circle the same three elements that we have seen from the time of the early Baghdadī Sufi Ruwaym, over Ibn ʿArabī and the Andalusian mystics, to Shaʿrānī and others: 1) Loyalty to the sunna over the madhhabs 2) Sufis demanding the superior (often more difficult) action for themselves 3) Giving laymen the easier option or allowing them to choose what suits them from amongst the different positions of the madhhabs However, Zarrādī’s claim that ‘the Sufi has no madhhab’ soon became the exception, not the rule (at least among mainstream, learned Sufis, for we are not concerned here with antinomian dervishes). Despite Ibn ʿArabī’s immense popularity throughout the Muslim world, even the most dedicated

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followers of his spiritual, theological and metaphysical teachings did not adopt his jurisprudential ones – at least, not as far as one could tell. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī (d. 973/1565), born some 250 years after Ibn ʿArabī’s death, was the most prominent exception. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī Shaʿrānī was raised as an orphan by his elder brother in a small village in Egypt. At a young age he memorised the Qurʾān and basic texts in grammar and Shāfiʿī jurisprudence before moving to Cairo at the age of twelve to complete his education. He studied with a large number of scholars, many of whom were from the most renowned scholars of his age and of Islamic history. The most prominent of those were Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, whom he met only briefly before his death, and the ‘shaykh al-Islam’ of the Shāfiʿī school, Zakariyya al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1520), with whom he spent twenty years as a close student and writing assistant.8 He mastered jurisprudence according to the Shāfiʿī school and several other fields of learning, and he supplemented his lessons with private study of the jurisprudence of the three other madhhabs. Anṣārī encouraged Shaʿrānī to begin teaching at a young age, but he soon met an unlearned Sufi called ʿAlī al-Khawwāṣ al-Burullusī (d. 953/1533) who made a living selling oil and plaiting leaves. Khawwāṣ so impressed the young scholar that Shaʿrānī became his disciple in the Sufi path and turned his focus to a life of Sufi devotion. Shaʿrānī eventually became a Sufi guide himself, acquiring a large following and his own prosperous zāwiya (Sufi centre). He soon began to write works on Sufism, jurisprudence, ḥadīth and other sciences. Although his ṭarīqa lasted until the nineteenth century, his greatest legacy was in the works that he authored. Shaʿrānī was a highly respected and successful author in his own lifetime and emerged as the most prominent Egyptian writer of the sixteenth century.9 His manuals on Sufism and his hagiographies of the saints are very popular in the Muslim world until today, and his works on the sharīʿa came to play a central role in debates on ijtihād and revival in the nineteenth century, as we will see. A recent study found that Shaʿrānī’s works were the most widely disseminated books in late Ottoman Syria, with the prints themselves coming from Cairo.10 Contemporary scholarship knows him first and foremost as a populariser of Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings through a number of works, especially

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ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 171 al-Kibrīt al-aḥmar and al-Yawāqīt wa-l-jawāhir.11 Ibn ʿArabī’s influence pervades most of Shaʿrānī’s works, especially his two most popular works on jurisprudence, to be discussed below. Shaʿrānī’s Writings on Ibn ʿArabī Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas, concepts and terminology had become central to the Sufi orders in Shaʿrānī’s time, going far beyond these orders or even Sufism itself. Ibn ʿArabī’s thought influenced almost all levels of both scholarly and popular discourse in the Middle East and beyond. Shaʿrānī himself described several Sufis and scholars in his time who taught the works of Ibn ʿArabī, and he himself would often ask his spiritual guide Khawwāṣ to explain to him passages from Ibn ʿArabī’s works.12 The fact that Khawwāṣ, being unlettered, was able to explain Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings and that his teachings usually matched those of Ibn ʿArabī shows how much Sufis at the time could have been influenced by Ibn ʿArabī without even reading his works. We do not, however, know of a scholar or Sufi in his age as wholly and entirely dedicated to Ibn ʿArabī as Shaʿrānī. Shaʿrānī’s study of Ibn ʿArabī’s works and his writings on him began in his youth and were to continue until the end of his life. Among his written works on Ibn ʿArabī are the following: • Lawāqiḥ al-anwār (The Fecundating Lights): an abridgement of the Futūḥāt al-makkiyya (3 vols) • Al-Kibrīt al-aḥmar (The Red Sulphur that Clarifies the Teachings of the Shaykh al-Akbar): a much more concise abridgement of the Futūḥāt almakkiyya (1 vol.) • Ṣawāṭiʿ al-anwār al-qudsiyya (The Shining Pure Lights from the Beginnings of the Chapters of the Futūḥāt al-makkiyya): a collection of the poetic lines with which Ibn ʿArabī began the hundreds of chapters of his magnum opus.13 • Al-Qawl al-mubīn fi-l-radd ʿan al-shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn (The Clear Speech in Defence of Shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn): a slim treatise of quotations from Ibn ʿArabī to refute some charges against him14 • Al-Yawāqīt wa-l-jawāhir fī bayān ʿaqāʾid al-akābir (The Rubies and Jewels that Clarify the Beliefs of the Great Saints): A large work defending Ibn ʿArabī’s theological beliefs and showing their compatibility with the Ashʿarī school

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• Tanbīh al-aghbiyāʾ ʿalā qaṭratin min baḥr ʿulūm al-awliyāʾ (Alerting the Dim-witted to a Drop from the Ocean of the Knowledge of the Saints): a treatise on the different branches of knowledge that Ibn ʿArabī revealed in his works15 • Al-Ajwiba al-marḍiyya, the full title of which means The Satisfying Answers on Behalf of the Imāms of Jurists and the Sufis. He dedicated one of its ten chapters to a defence of the ‘Shaykh al-Akbar’, while also quoting him heavily throughout the rest of the work.16 Shaʿrānī also relied heavily on the Futūḥāt in two works of creed, the largest of which aimed to explain anthropomorphic descriptions of God in the Qurʾān using almost exclusively passages from the Futūḥat. In the smaller work, the Futūḥāt was one of the six main sources.17 There are potentially several other works of Shaʿrānī that relied almost exclusively on Ibn ʿArabī’s works, and the writings of the Shaykh al-Akbar pervade the majority of Shaʿrānī’s writings. Once we look at some of his earlier writings concerning jurisprudence, we can understand that Shaʿrānī truly spent the majority of his life reading and re-reading the Futūḥāt in order to extract the relevant quotes that he needed for his works on different topics. We will now examine the influence of Ibn ʿArabī’s jurisprudential writings on Shaʿrānī’s own works of jurisprudence and the close connection between them. Ibn ʿArabī and Shaʿrānī’s Works of Jurisprudence Shaʿrānī was a voracious reader who enumerated an impressive list of books that he studied under the great scholars of his age and those that he read on his own, focusing in particular on those to do with Qurʾānic studies, ḥadīth and jurisprudence. He likewise had a passion for finding rare manuscripts and had recourse to a scholar who could help him locate what he sought from Cairo’s treasuries, boasting that he was able to find an ancient work of tafsīr that Suyūṭī before him had searched for twenty years but was unable to find. His admirer and contemporary Shihāb al-Dīn al-Ḥanbalī al-Futūḥī praised him as ‘someone who has read books whose names I am not even aware of ’ and which, had he wished to do so, he could have claimed as his own without anyone knowing otherwise.18 Shaʿrānī would write comments and footnotes to the works that he read, or sometimes abridge them, and in the case of the

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ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 173 ancient tafsīr work mentioned above, he extracted from it all its ḥadīth reports in a separate treatise to use in such works as Kashf al-ghumma.19 More importantly for us, he also studied closely the works of Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Ḥazm from a juristic point of view. Shaʿrānī wrote that he studied Ibn Ḥazm’s entire Muḥallā – in ‘thirty massive volumes’ – three times, and its abridgement by Ibn ʿArabī once.20 We cannot know the number of times that he must have read Ibn ʿArabī’s Futūḥāt (although it was undoubtedly a great number of times), but in his introduction to its minor abridgement al-Kibrīt al-aḥmar, he urged jurists to study the full Futūḥāt to discover in it ‘secrets concerning the ways of derivation [of the legal rules]’ and ‘sound legal causes [for the rulings] of which they were not previously aware’.21 Shaʿrānī further developed his expertise in the sciences of jurisprudence and its principles through authorship. Among his works on jurisprudence he made a compendium of the fatwās of more than ten great scholars, most of whom were Shāfiʿī, a copy of which he says was taken to West Africa.22 Although his primary training was in the Shāfiʿī school, Shaʿrānī states that he had seen the Prophet in a dream instructing him to study the opinions of Mālik as he was the imām of the Prophet’s city and ‘saw the vestiges (āthār)’ of the Prophet’s life in Medina. This led Shaʿrānī to not only study the Muwaṭṭaʾ but to write an abridgement of the ‘ten-volume’ Mudawwana, in which he highlighted all the matters where Mālik disagreed with the rest of the imāms.23 Shaʿrānī’s study of the Mudawwana led him to conclude that Mālik stopped at the limits set by the original sharīʿa and almost never went beyond them (perhaps as opposed to his experience of the Shāfiʿī and Ḥanafī schools). This is probably because, while the Mālikī – and likewise the Ḥanbalī – school used sources of legislation such as blocking the means and public interest which were not based on specific textual evidence, but rather on inductive inference from multiple texts, these sources were not used very often. The Shāfiʿī school, although it rejected the use of such seemingly non-textual sources of legislation, used qiyās and other methods of standardisation so often in its quest for consistency that, like the Ḥanafī school, it became much more restrictive and difficult than the Mālikī and Ḥanbalī schools in general. Their text-based analogies meant that they added far more restrictions to the ‘original sharīʿa’ than the Mālikī school. While the Ḥanafī school was highly

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criticised by its opponents in the early centuries of Islam for its use of raʾy in opposition to ḥadīth, the Shāfiʿī school would become just as much a school of raʾy, if not more, except that its use of raʾy often involved addition to what is in the ḥadīth. This was even recognised by the Ḥanafīs, who compiled a list of Shāfiʿī principles of jurisprudence that show that they employed raʾy more than the Ḥanafīs, leading them to conclude that they were the textualists (comparatively speaking), and that it was their historical rivals, the Shāfiʿī’s, who were the rationalists.24 One simple example of how the Shāfiʿī school created rules through which they added to the sharīʿa is the following: the Shāfiʿī school analysed the relevant Qurʾānic verses and ḥadīths on fasting and concluded that the fast would be nullified only by things that enter the body (such as eating), not by what comes out of it (such as drawing blood). They then fashioned a rule based on this conclusion in order to consistently determine what nullified the fast and what did not: it was for a substance to enter the body cavity through an open passageway. Based on this rule that they created, they came to the conclusion that the fast was not only nullified by food or drink, but also by the following, all of which technically qualified as a substance entering the body through an open passageway: 1) a cotton bud entering the ear to clean ear wax; 2) a finger or something else entering the anus or vagina (in a recent Ramadan month, Egyptian Muslims on social media were in uproar over a young Shāfiʿī’s claim that improper use of bidets could lead to the nullification of the fast); 3) a knife or spear penetrating the body and thus creating its own open passageway into it (or in modern days, a bullet).25 None of these had anything to do with the intended abstention from fasting or drinking that are the purpose of the fast, and neither did any of this have any direct basis in the sources, but the Shāfiʿīs had deemed that they nullified the fast because they technically qualified for the criterion in the ruling which they themselves had created. Shaʿrānī praised God for the dream instructing him to study Mālik’s fiqh, as he believed it was meant to teach him ‘that it is preferable to stop where the revealed texts stopped rather than create new rulings (ibtidāʿ), even though it may seem praiseworthy to do so, for the Lawgiver may not approve of these added Prohibitions or Obligations’.26 In other words, Shaʿrānī’s reading of Mālik’s fiqh, studied directly and without the additions of later Mālikī scholars, reinforced and supported the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī.

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ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 175 In the field of legal maxims (al-qawāʿid al-fiqhiyya), Shaʿrānī made an abridgement of al-Zarkashī’s famed work on the subject, as well as a compendium of five books.27 He also composed a work on the evidence for the positions of the madhhabs.28 In the field of uṣūl al-fiqh he wrote Minhāj al-wuṣūl, in which he abridged, combined and commented on two different commentaries on the classic Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ of Tāj al-Dīn Subkī (d. 771/1370).29 Shaʿrānī also composed a number of works in this field that were inspired by Ibn ʿArabī: • ‘A very large volume’ discussing all the necessary sciences and tools that a mujtahid needed to extract rulings from the Qurʾān and sunna.30 • A book investigating the permissibility of qiyās. Based on what he said of this book, we know that he discussed in it Ibn ʿArabī’s complex position on this subject.31 • Dhamm al-raʾy, a compilation of quotes by early Muslim authorities against raʾy and in favour of following the ḥadīth, to ‘show that the mujtahid imāms disassociated themselves from [raʾy] and forbade people from imitating them without knowing the evidence behind their positions’. This work was extracted from Dhamm al-kalām wa ahlih (The Condemnation of Scholastic Rationalism and its Practitioners) by the Ḥanbalī Sufi ʿAbdullāh Anṣārī and supplemented by quotations from Ibn ʿArabī’s Futūḥāt.32 These works came at an early stage in Shaʿrānī’s life and show us not only the extent of his accomplishment, but also reveal to us that he reflected carefully on the writings of Ibn ʿArabī and brought some of Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas to bear on his own legal thought and his legalistic writings. However, the greatest of Shaʿrānī’s legal writings came after this formative period of study. These were three works, each highlighting and focusing on one of three key ideas of Ibn ʿArabī: • Kashf al-ghumma ʿan jamīʿ al-umma (The Removal of the Fog from the Whole Community). • Al-Mīzān al-kubrā (The Great Scale). • Irshād al-ṭalibīn: on the authority of Sufis as mujtahids.

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Both Kashf al-ghumma and al-Mīzān reflected different aspects of Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings. The first represented his rejection of analogical reasoning and the scholars’s additions to the law, while the second reflected his approval of the fiqh of the madhhabs. The aim in each work, however, was the same: to preserve the mercy and ease that Ibn ʿArabī and Shaʿrānī insisted was integral to the law. Shaʿrānī found that both approaches, even though they may appear at odds with one another, achieved the same goals. In this chapter, we will look at Shaʿrānī’s dedication to Ibn ʿArabī in general and his work Kashf al-ghumma. Al-Mīzān al-kubrā, which was ultimately the more influential of the two and which represents Shaʿrānī’s most original contribution, will be discussed in Part 2. Beforehand, however, we must briefly discuss another work by Shaʿrānī that he was inspired to write because of the Futūḥāt, which is a collection of traditions called al-Badr al-munīr. Ibn ʿArabī and Shaʿrānī’s Work on Traditions We have previously seen how Ibn ʿArabī stressed the importance of ḥadīth books and criticised works of jurisprudence that went beyond being simple ḥadīth al-aḥkām works. In al-Futūḥāt, he wrote: [The Prophet] said, ‘May God show mercy to him who hears my speech, memorises it, and transmits it as he heard it’. This means letter by letter [. . .] This is only done by those who transmit revelation: the Qurʾān reciters and the traditionists [. . .] Jurists or those who transmit traditions by their meaning [. . .] have no share or portion of this [mercy].33

Ibn ʿArabī continued to say that whoever narrated ḥadīth was a messenger of the Messenger of God, which ultimately made them a messenger of God. Therefore, the traditionists and Qurʾān reciters will be honoured to stand with the Messengers of God on the Day of Judgement.34 Shaʿrānī longed to share in this honour that Ibn ʿArabī described. Therefore, in the year 944/1538 he composed a book on traditions which he called al-Badr al-munīr fī gharīb aḥādīth al-bashīr al-nadhīr, which clarified the source of 2,300 popular traditions whose sources and authenticity were not well known. Beside the need that he felt for this work, Shaʿrānī wrote that he composed it because . . .

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ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 177 The messenger of the Messenger is himself a messenger (of God), and so on until the Day of Judgement, as alluded to by the Messenger of God when he said, ‘May God show mercy to him who hears my speech, memorises it, and transmits it as he heard it’. This means letter by letter. The traditionists thus won the Messenger of God’s supplication for mercy [. . .] but those who are not traditionists will not receive from this supplication of mercy except as much as they narrate of the sunna, not of their own understanding or opinion, so understand this!35

The paraphrasing from the Futūḥāt is clear, and this is but one more indication of Ibn ʿArabī’s influence on Shaʿrānī’s written output and Traditionalist leanings. We now turn to Shaʿrānī’s Kashf al-ghumma. The Removal of the Fog At around the age of thirty-three, in the year 936/1530, Shaʿrānī wrote Kashf al-ghumma ʿan jamīʿ al-umma (The Removal of Fog from the Whole Community). The fog that the title referred to as being a blight upon the entire Muslim community was the confusion created by the jurists. He said in the preface to the work that the laity – such as the craftsmen, tradesmen and Sufi aspirants (fuqarāʾ) – were confused by the jurists of the different schools telling them that they should follow only one school of jurisprudence, that it should be their own school only and that worship according to the other schools was invalid. Furthermore, these jurists rarely quoted the Qurʾān and sunna and busied themselves instead with the utterances of their predecessors. This meant that, if the common people tried to learn from the jurists, they would be wasting their precious time and would not be able to know if the jurists’s opinions had any evidence from the Qurʾān and sunna.36 In order to solve their predicament, he wrote them this work. The problem was the following: the scholars in questions were the followers of the madhhabs who were by far the dominant force at the time. They believed that the truth ultimately lay with one opinion on any issue in the sight of God, but they had a pluralistic understanding that this correct opinion was only known to God and that everyone was rewarded for their ijtihād. They therefore believed that the followers of all schools were rightly guided, and that it was better for everyone to remain within the boundaries of a single school, out of fear that they might pick and choose opinions

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from the different schools based on their whims and desires. However, the problem, as Shaʿrānī portrayed it in al-Mīzān al-kubrā, was that these same scholars who professed this pluralistic understanding with their tongues ‘did not believe it in their hearts’; in fact, they believed that only their school of law was correct on all issues, and that the positions of the other schools were incorrect.37 When the laity saw the supporters of each school saying that worship was only valid according to their school and that everyone else was wrong, they became confused and worried that their worship was invalid. Therefore, the situation was caused by intense rivalry between the scholars of the schools, driving the laity into confusion about the validity of their acts of worship. This was the source of the difficulty, the ‘fog’ that drove Shaʿrānī to author Kashf al-ghumma. The laity did not have an easy solution to their problem. The usual answer for such a problem was for a person to study and evaluate each school’s position and its evidence so as to come to a conclusion on who was correct, but that would require that they become scholars themselves. However, these were mostly people who needed to earn a living, or those for whom scholarship was not suitable and who wished to spend their time in worship. For either reason, they could not afford to spend their time in study. Their request as portrayed by Shaʿrānī – or at least his solution for them – was a work that simply provided them with the relevant ḥadīths for every issue.38 The solution thus was such: Shaʿrānī followed Ibn ʿArabī in only accepting the traditionists, and not the jurists, as the inheritors of the Prophets. He further inferred from the Prophet Muḥammad’s statement ‘May God show mercy to him who hears my speech, memorises it, and transmits it as he heard it’ a rejection of any additions to, or deductions from, the law as it came from the Prophet.39 He thus compiled a fiqh book without any fiqh – in other words, a work of aḥādīth al-aḥkām which contained only sayings of the Prophet and his Companions. However, this work was different from the standard works of this genre in many respects. Firstly, it was different in that Shaʿrānī relied on the narrations used in the works of the early imāms of fiqh, rather than the major collections of canonical traditions. He neither attributed the traditions to any sources nor did he investigate the authenticity of these traditions, stating that their use by the early imāms of the schools was enough to validate acting upon them. In other

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ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 179 words, Shaʿrānī was not doing away with the authority of the great imāms because he only used ḥadīths that were acted upon by at least one of them. He also refrained from commenting on the narrations or explaining them, stating that the understandings of scholars only limited the vastness and richness of the injunctions of the Qurʾān and sunna, from which each was to take according to their own understanding. By leaving the Prophet’s words as they were, he left ‘the door of comprehension open to everyone who sees or hears, from among the greatest of the gnostics to the rest of the creation, so that each understands according to the clarity or rust of the mirror of their hearts, and acts upon what they understood’.40 Similarly, in his works al-Baḥr al-mawrūd and al-Durar al-manthūra, Shaʿrānī repeated that God only expected His servants to act upon that which they themselves understood, not the understanding of others, and that they therefore did not need to refer to scholars regarding the comprehension of a Qurʾānic verse or ḥadīth. Thus, for Shaʿrānī, everything revolved around acting upon one’s knowledge as an obedient servant of God, not upon having the knowledge without acting upon it.41 It seems that, for Shaʿrānī, what mattered most was the spirit of the law as a vehicle for man’s obedience to his Lord, not the particulars of it. The introduction to Kashf al-ghumma makes it clear that it is based on the idea that people will not be responsible on the Day of Judgement for anything other than what is strictly stated in the Qurʾān and sunna. He wrote in a passage which was clearly taken from the Futūḥāt that the mahdī will come with the ‘pure religion’ and will only give judgments of lawful and unlawful as the Prophet would have done if he were alive, thereby bringing an end to all the added rulings that the mujtahids derived. The imitators of the scholars who will exist in his time will only follow him out of fear of his power, and in their hearts will oppose him for going against what their schools say, thinking that no one could surpass their imāms in knowledge. Shaʿrānī then used this to support his work, saying that . . . From what we have said, everyone who is fair will know the correctness of what we intended in writing this book and that, if it was obligatory for the community to follow what was derived by the mujtahids as it was obligatory to follow the clear statements of the sunna, the mahdī would not put an end to [acting upon their derivations] when he emerges.42

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If there were two (or more) apparently contradictory ḥadīths on a particular issue, Shaʿrānī refrained from choosing one as more correct or from claiming that one abrogated the others. The habit of the madhhab-jurists, when they saw two conflicting ḥadīths, was to attempt to discover which one came later in time in order to say that it abrogated the earlier tradition. He said that no one may abrogate the sayings of the Prophet but the Prophet himself in clear statements he made, such as: ‘I had previously forbidden you from visiting graves but (now I say) do visit them’. As for two apparently contradictory statements by the Prophet in which there is no clear statement of abrogation, scholars had no right to abrogate one of them: it is bad propriety (adab) toward the Prophet.43 Shaʿrānī explained the apparent contradiction between traditions through the idea that would become the basis for his other work al-Mīzān. It is that the sharīʿa does not create difficulty or constriction for mankind, but is expansive and accommodating, and therefore provides different rulings for every case based on the different circumstances and needs of the people. Every matter can have two rulings, the more stringent ruling (tashdīd/ʿazīma), the optimal course of action that is to be followed by those who have the ability to follow it, and the more lenient ruling (takhfīf/rukhṣa) for those who do not have the ability to do the former. There can also be different shades of stringency or leniency, allowing for multiple rulings for every issue or practice. Hence, if there was a seeming contradiction between two ḥadīths, the differences could be solved by applying their rulings to Shaʿrānī’s ‘Scale’ (mīzān) of stringency and leniency: one of the traditions is then understood to give the more stringent option, and the other gives the more lenient option. He believed that in such cases the sharīʿa presented people with choice and flexibility. He advised those who used Kashf al-ghumma that, if they were faced with two different reports, they should give preference to the tradition that tended toward precaution, rather than the one that tended toward leniency.44 This work was based on Ibn ʿArabī’s idea of mercy and ease for the people, and that no one was expected to act upon any derivations of the law by the scholars, nor upon the scholars’ understanding of the sources. The laity were given a manual to consult, offering them the relevant Qurʾānic or Prophetic guidance on the issues they faced, and if they found traditions giving different answers then they were free to choose which to follow. In this approach,

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ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 181 Shaʿrānī was following in the footsteps of Ibn ʿArabī as well as the TraditionistJurisprudents. However, there were some important differences. Shaʿrānī only quoted the ḥadīths that were acted upon by the madhhabs and used this as the source of validation for the ḥadīths. This meant that whoever acted upon one of the ḥadīths in the book was in agreement with one of the madhhabs. In this way, the madhhabs retained their value as guides to the outer boundaries of the tradition but could no longer add to it or limit its inherent flexibility. However, Shaʿrānī’s approach meant that ḥadīths were chosen simply by virtue of the fact that madhhabs used them to support their position, even though madhhabs often quoted any ḥadīth that could support them, even if it were very weak or fabricated. In effect, this amounted to a validation of many madhhab positions that Traditionist-Jurisprudents would discount as baseless. Perhaps this is why the most eminent scholars from Shaʿrānī’s time (three Shafīʿīs, two Ḥanafīs, one Mālikī and one Ḥanbalī) had no problem writing forewords to Kashf al-ghumma full of praise, despite it seemingly taking away from their authority.45 Traditional aḥādīth al-aḥkām works would not be so lax, and this is one issue for which later reformers who wanted to strip the tradition of what they saw as harmful accretions to the Islamic tradition criticised the book. For example, in 1903, the utilitarian reformer Rashīd Riḍā praised Kashf al-ghumma for its aims but noted that it contained many unreliable ḥadīths and recommended Shawkānī’s Nayl al-awṭār instead.46 Still, Shaʿrānī’s critique of the authority of the madhhabs was daring for its time. It should also be noted here that Shaʿrānī had his own zāwiya which gave him the ability to be independent. In his time, leadership of religious institutions in Cairo such as madrasas and even the zāwiyas of the Sufis was given to learned scholars from one of the madhhabs, usually the Shāfiʿī.47 Shaʿrānī’s zāwiya, however, was a highly prosperous institution.48 This meant that Shaʿrānī did not need to represent one of the schools of law and could afford to be independent. On a practical level, Kashf al-ghumma reduced the number of details, injunctions, or prohibitions about which the laity had to worry. It also allowed the laity the flexibility to follow whichever opinion convinced them or suited them without feeling restricted to a particular school, while giving them a sense of security that their action was rightly guided and approved by

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at least one madhhab. Even more importantly, Kashf al-ghumma first introduced Shaʿrānī’s original contribution to legal theory, which was his idea of the ‘Scale’, through which he restricted the scholars’ claims to abrogation and championed in its place the idea that the sharīʿa came with built-in flexibility to suit people of different abilities. We will fully present this idea in Part 2 of the present book. Notes   1. See Suyūṭī, al-Radd, 196. Some of what this book contained, and a surviving passage, is mentioned in Sanūsī, Īqāẓ, 181–82.   2. Ibrahim, ‘School Boundaries’, 5 n15, 28–29, 40, 84 n231.  3. Brown, Hadith, 57.   4. Aquil, ‘Music and Related Practices in Chishti Sufìsm’, 25–29.   5. This is an unconventional wording of the well-known purported ḥadīth titled ‘Disagreement within my community is a source of mercy.’  6. al-Zarradī, Uṣūl al-samāʿ, 7–8.  7. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī, Nuzhat al-khawāṭir, 2:186; al-Zarradī, Uṣūl al-samāʿ, 7–8.  8. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Ṭabaqāt al-ṣughrā, 18, 32; Laṭāʾif al-minan, 73–74.  9. Winter, Egyptian Society, 130, 162. 10. Hudson, ‘Reading al-Shaʿrānī’, 45. 11. On this work, see Johnson, ‘Unerring Balance’, Parts 1 and 2. 12. For one example, see al-Shaʿrānī, Durar al-ghawwāṣ, 14. 13. See the editor’s introduction to al-Shaʿrānī, Al-Qawl al-mubīn, 3, 7. 14. According to the work’s editor, Muḥammad Naṣṣār, this was the last of Shaʿrānī’s works that were fully dedicated to Ibn ʿArabī. It was written in 964/1557, nine years before his death. 15. See Shaʿrānī, al-Kibrīt al-aḥmar, 8. 16. This was written in the year 965/1558, eight years before his death. 17. The largest one is al-Qawāʿid al-kashfiyya al-muwaḍḍiḥa li-maʿānī al-ṣifāt al-ilāhiyya, and the smaller one is al-Mīzān al-dharriyya al-mubayyina li-ʿaqāʾid al-firqa al-ʿaliyya. 18. See Al-Shaʿrānī, Laṭāʾif al-minan, 82–91. 19. Al-Shaʿrānī, Kashf al-ghumma, 1:7. 20. Al-Shaʿrānī, Laṭāʾif al-minan, 82. 21. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Kibrīt al-aḥmar, 5–6. 22. Al-Shaʿrānī, Laṭāʾif al-minan, 88.

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ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 183 23. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:72; idem, Laṭāʾif al-minan, 90. 24. Muḥibullāh al-Bihārī al-Ḥanafī (d. 1707) composed an epistle on this issue, which was summarised by al-Nuʿmānī, al-Biḍāʿat al-muzjāt, 128–29. 25. Al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, 284–85. 26. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:72. 27. The compendium included the work of al-Zarkashī and two by Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām (see al-Shaʿrānī, Laṭāʾif al-minan, 88, 92). 28. Titled al-Manhaj al-mubīn fī bayān adillat madhāhib al-mujtahidīn. See al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-khaḍiriyya, 40. 29. Al-Shaʿrānī, Laṭāʾif al-minan, 92. This work has very recently been published by Dār al-Fatḥ in Amman, Jordan. 30. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:16. 31. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Durar al-manthūra, 94. The book on qiyās was titled Al-Iqtibās fī maʿrifat aḥkām al-qiyās. 32. Al-Shaʿrānī, Dhamm al-raʾy, 79. 33. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:229. 34. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:229. 35. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Badr al-munīr, 4. 36. Al-Shaʿrānī, Kashf al-ghumma, 1:5–6. 37. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:11. 38. Al-Shaʿrānī, Kashf al-ghumma, 1:5–6. 39. Al-Shaʿrānī, Kashf al-ghumma, 1:11. 40. Al-Shaʿrānī, Kashf al-ghumma, 1:8–9. 41. Al-Shaʿrānī, Al-Baḥr al-mawrūd, 71–72; al-Durar al-manthūra, 36. 42. Al-Shaʿrānī, Kashf al-ghumma, 1:11. 43. Al-Shaʿrānī, Kashf al-ghumma, 1:8. 44. Al-Shaʿrānī, Kashf al-ghumma, 1:5, 12–13. 45. These ‘ijāzas’ functioning as forewords to the works are included at the end of Kashf al-ghumma. 46. Ibrahim, ‘Shaʿrānī’s Response’, 138. Nayl al-awṭār is a commentary on the aḥādīth al-aḥkām work Munṭaqā al-akhbār by Ibn Taymiyya’s grandfather Majd al-Dīn ibn Taymiyya. Shaʿrānī himself also used that same work as the basis for Kashf al-ghumma but then added to it a great deal of material from other sources (Shaʿrānī, Lata’if, 87). 47. Winter, Society and Religion, 220. 48. Winter, Society and Religion, 50.

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Part 2 Mercy in Flexibility: A Path for All Mankind

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7 The All-Comprehensive Nature of the Shar īʿ a: From Tirmidh ī to Suy ūṭī

A

fter the passing of the Prophet Muḥammad and the Companions who had taken their practices from him, the following generations were faced with a challenge: different Companions practised things differently, and each one attributed their practice to the sunna of the Prophet himself. In that early period before the emergence of the schools of Sunni jurisprudence as we know them, trivial differences in practice did not seem to arouse much discussion or debate. This indicates that the earlier generations may have been more accepting of differences in minutiae of practice, and that they might have thought of such differences as indicating that both transmitted practices were permissible.1 This makes sense because the older generations among the Followers travelled and studied with Companions in different cities and observed them doing things differently from one another. In Mecca there was Ibn ʿAbbās and his circle of students, in Kufa there was Ibn Masʿūd, and in Medina there were many different authorities such as ʿĀʾisha, Zayd ibn Thābit and Ibn ʿUmar whose practice and understanding differed from one another. Ibn Masʿūd’s students in Kufa and Ibn ʿAbbās’s students in Mecca had studied closely with Medinan Companions, too, and the Medinan Followers in turn learned from the Companions of other cities who returned to visit Medina.2 Although the exchange between different centres of learning continued over the next generations, it was natural for the people of every city to be 187

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in awe of the legacy left by the giants who had lived among them. Each Companion had left a group of students who had studied with him or her diligently and heard their knowledge and arguments more closely than they heard what came from others. Those followers in turn raised after them a generation who knew them more closely than anyone else. They learned stories of their piety, the breadth of their knowledge, their intelligence, as well as from whom they took their knowledge, and came to trust and admire them. Pride in one’s teachers grew, accompanied by trust in their knowledge, scholarly lineage and methodology above all others. The Kufan al-Shaʿbī – who studied with Ibn Masʿūd’s students – said: ‘None of the Companions of the Prophet had greater understanding (fiqh) than our own, ʿAbdullāh (Ibn Masʿūd)’.3 Shaʿbī’s Medinan counterpart al-Zuhrī – who studied with the students of Ibn ʿUmar – counselled Mālik not to deviate from the opinions of Ibn ʿUmar, ‘because he lived for sixty years after the death of the Prophet and there was nothing about the Prophet that had escaped him’.4 Abū Ḥanīfa’s positions almost never went beyond those of his teacher’s teacher Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī, another student of Ibn Masʿūd’s students; when Abū Ḥanīfa did not have reports from Nakhaʿī on a matter, he attempted to follow the internal logic of Nakhāʿī’s positions to come up with new ones. Similarly, Mālik’s positions never went beyond the positions of authorities from Medina.5 Over time, this trust in one’s own teachers came with growing distrust in the knowledge of those who disagreed. This shift in attitude towards diverging practices and opinions was accompanied by, or connected to, a shift in legal theory regarding the cause of such divergences. It appears that among the early generations, differences were often explained – at least by a number of prominent figures – as being rooted in leeway (saʿa) provided by the sharīʿa itself: it was not that one Companion was right and one was wrong, but that their ultimate teacher, God’s Messenger himself, allowed more than one way of doing things. Later scholars explained the differences they found as rooted in change – that is, that the Prophet first did things one way and then changed his practice to another way. Sometimes the differences were explained as one practice representing the norm, and another presenting a rare exception. Scholars from Kufa and Medina, the forefathers of the Ḥanafī and Mālikī schools, developed the important concept of sunna versus ḥadīth: a ḥadīth report may be authentically attributed to the Prophet, but that does

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not necessarily mean that it represented the ‘best way’ or the norm of the Prophet – it may instead represent the odd exception or an abrogated practice that was no longer valid. Scholars from all madhhabs believed that their imāms and predecessors knew best which ḥadīth represented the sunna and which did not. The Mālikīs argued that the practice of the people of Medina captured the sunna, whereas the Ḥanafīs argued that no one knew the sunna more than the stellar students of Ibn Masʿūd, who had also studied with other giants such as ʿĀʾisha and were therefore acquainted with the variety of practices among the Companions, knowing best which ones represented the final way of the Prophet. When the later scholars of the madhhabs were faced with practices that differed from theirs, their first recourse would be to cast doubt on the authenticity of the opposing material. If that was not possible, the doctrine of abrogation was an easy explanation. This idea of abrogation came to dominate legal discussions and the early doctrine of leeway began to fall out of usage until it was championed by a number of figures from the Traditionalist (Ahl al-Ḥadīth) movement, such as Ibn Ḥanbal and al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī. The Early Concept of Leeway The very term tawsiʿa (to give leeway) appears in the usage of the Companions themselves and their students according to the canonical ḥadīth literature in its variant form saʿa. According to one narration, a man asked ʿĀʾisha about three aspects of the Prophet Muḥammad’s night worship: did the Prophet perform his post-coital major ablutions at the beginning of the night, or did he delay it until the end of the night before the obligatory fajr prayer? Did the Prophet pray the witr prayer at the beginning or end of the night? And did the Prophet recite the Qurʾān in his night prayers aloud or silently? In each case, ʿĀʾisha stated that the Prophet would sometimes do this and sometimes do that, and in each case the man asking her responded by saying: ‘God is Great! Praise be to God who gave us leeway (saʿa) in the matter!’6 The concept of saʿa then appeared in the statements of many of the Followers as an explanation of the differences between the Companions, and as representing a flexible and merciful sunna of the Prophet Muḥammad himself. This was the view of the jurist and early Umayyad Caliph ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (also known as ʿUmar II), upon whom Sunni Muslims

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bestowed the title of ‘Fifth of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs’. Multiple reports show that, in a meeting with the Follower al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad, known as one of the ‘Seven Jurists of Medina’, al-Qāsim was troubled by the fact that ʿUmar II held positions different from his. ʿUmar II said to al-Qāsim: ‘Let not the differences of the Companions trouble you. I would not trade the fact that they differed for the most expensive camels’. Al-Qāsim said to his son ʿAbd al-Raḥmān: I liked what ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz said, ‘I would not have preferred it for the Companions of the Messenger of Allah to not disagree’. For if the Companions all agreed upon the same position, people would be constrained to it, but since the Companions are imāms of guidance, then a person has leeway in choosing from amongst their different positions’.7

Al-Qāsim, the grandson of Abū Bakr, would also say: ‘Differences among the Companions of God’s Messenger are a mercy to people’. This saying appears to have been mistakenly transformed into the well-known purported ḥadīth that states: ‘Differences within my community are a mercy’.8 This same idea appears with other figures from the Followers, including ʿAwn ibn ʿAbdullāh who, like al-Qāsim, also was the grandson of a famous Companion.9 ʿAwn went further to state outright that the different positions of the Companions all represented the sunna. He said: I would not have liked it if Muḥammad’s Companions had not differed. For if they all agreed on something and a person was to leave it, he would have left the sunna. However, since they have differed, then whomever of them a person follows, he follows the sunna.10

One of the Followers known for his devotions and piety, Talḥa ibn Muṣarrif, used to say: ‘Do not say that there is disagreement (ikhtilāf   ), rather say that there is leeway (al-saʿa)’.11 A key traditionist of the same generation, Abū Isḥāq al-Sabīʿī (d. 127/745), said: ‘The scholars used to see leeway as a form of assistance to one’s religious practice’.12 Sabīʿī was one of the main teachers of Sufyān al-Thawrī, the great Iraqi peer and contemporary of Mālik and Abū Ḥanīfa. Thawrī, to whom a madhhab is ascribed and who became known as the ‘jurist of the Sufis’, used to say: ‘What we consider [real] knowledge

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[worth seeking or learning] is finding an easier way of doing things (rukhṣa), that has come to us through a reliable authority. As for making things difficult [for people], that is easy for anyone to do’.13 Thawrī may have taken this statement from another of his great teachers, Maʿmar ibn Rāshid (d. 153/770), to whom this statement has also been attributed.14 Thawrī made it clear that, where there was a disagreement among scholars, he allowed his students to choose whichever position they wished.15 The Medinan muftī al-Mājashūn (d. 164) – a contemporary of Mālik – wrote in his Kitāb al-ḥajj: ‘People [the Companions] have differed [on what to recite] when one enters the Sacred Sanctuary, and it is our hope that in their divergence is leeway for those who come after them’.16 The Position of the Four Madhhabs Mālik and his Egyptian peer al-Layth ibn Saʿd, who had studied alongside him in Medina, reportedly rejected this early attitude that we saw toward divergent practices. Mālik’s student Ibn al-Qāsim said: ‘I heard both Mālik and al-Layth say regarding the disagreement among the Companions of God’s Messenger: it is not a case of leeway (tawsiʿa) as some people have claimed. It is a case of right and wrong’.17 This statement does show that the concept of leeway was talked about in their time, and of course ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad had been among their most illustrious Medinan predecessors. Ibn Wahb, another student of Mālik, said: Mālik was asked about someone who has two [different] ḥadīths that have been narrated from the Companions via trustworthy authorities. Does this person have leeway in acting upon both? Mālik said, ‘No, by God, he must aim for the truth and the truth is only in one. Could two different positions be correct at the same time?!’18

At the same time, Mālik demonstrated not only an acceptance of divergent opinions and regional practices, but he honoured and respected these differences.19 This pluralistic attitude of accepting differences while insisting on a singular truth would become the dominant position among later Sunnis, in particular the Mālikī, Shāfiʿī and Ḥanafī schools. The Ẓāhirī madhhab, however, neither accepted the concept of leeway nor tolerance for divergent opinions.20

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Ibn Ḥanbal and the Traditionalists The early attitude of leeway appears to have survived, however, with more traditionalist scholars such as Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (but not all his followers). He reportedly counselled someone who had written a book called Kitāb al-ikhtilāf (The Book on the Different Positions/Disagreements) to change its name to Kitāb al-saʿa (The Book of Leeway).21 Ibn Ḥanbal is also quoted as counselling his students: ‘Do not force people to follow your opinion (madhhab)’. This statement Ibn ʿAqīl al-Ḥanbalī and other Ḥanbalī jurists explained to mean: ‘Let them seek the easier options provided by the opinions of others’.22 When asked if the statements of the greatest jurists among the Companions such as the Four Rightly-Guided Caliphs, Muʿādh ibn Jabal or Ibn Masʿūd could be called ‘sunna’, he said: ‘I will not deny it, and I dislike to disagree with any of them’.23 Ibn Ḥanbal was asked whether or not a mujtahid may investigate the divergent positions of the Companions on a matter in order to see which of them was correct, and he said: ‘It is not permissible to investigate the differences between the Companions of the Messenger of God. ‘So what does one do?’ the questioner continued. ‘You imitate whomever of them you wish’, he replied.24 When faced with seemingly conflicting ḥadīth reports, Ibn Ḥanbal refused to accept one in place of the other or to assume abrogation without a clear mention of abrogation in the texts themselves. He would attempt instead to find a way to apply both by explaining each to apply in a different circumstance. When Abū Ḥanīfa’s greatest student Abū Yūsuf visited Medina, he argued with Mālik about the correct way to do the call to prayer (adhān). A ḥadīth mentions that the Prophet’s muezzin Bilāl used to repeat every statement in the adhān twice, but the practice in Medina was for the two testimonies of faith to be repeated four times, first quietly twice, and then loudly twice. Mālik responded that the call to prayer had been done in the Prophet’s city five times a day, generation after generation, in front of all the scholars and inhabitants of Medina, without change: surely this was a more accurate transmission of the sunna than a solitary ḥadīth. Abū Yūsuf was reportedly convinced, but the Ḥanafī school held on to their founder’s position in this matter.25 This Madinan practice is called tarjīʿ, and it was also followed by al-Shāfiʿī who had studied in Medina under Mālik. It was also backed by the ḥadīth of Abū Maḥdhūra, the Prophet’s Meccan muezzin, who said that this was how the Prophet had taught him to perform the call to

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prayer. The Ḥanafīs also disagreed with the Mālikīs and Shāfiʿīs on how to do the call announcing the commencement of prayer (iqāma). Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), a late Ḥanbalī who saw himself as an independent mujtahid and a reviver of the Ahl al-Ḥadīth approach, wrote: The madhhab of the ahl al-ḥadīth and those who agree with them is to accept all of what has been authentically attributed to the Prophet – they do not disapprove of any of that – for the variations in the adhān and iqāma are like the variations in Qurʾān recitations and the tashahhud formula [at the conclusion of prayer] and the like. No one has a right to disapprove of what God’s Messenger has made a Sunna for his community [. . .] As for tarjīʿ in the adhān, it was chosen by Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī but Abū Ḥanīfa chose not to do it. [Ibn Ḥanbal] considered both ways as sunna but preferred not to do it as per the adhān of Bilal [ . . .] 26 As for the iqāma, Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī and [Ibn Ḥanbal] chose to repeat every statement once, and yet [Ibn Ḥanbal] held that repeating it twice [like the Ḥanafīs] is also sunna . . . 27

This is one reason why Ibn Ḥanbal famously has two or more opinions attributed to him on most issues, and that the Ḥanbalī school in turn has more internal variation than the other schools.28 Ibn Ḥanbal’s stance on accepting the different versions of the call to prayer was also shared by the second great pillar of the Traditionist-Jurisprudent movement in his age, Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh, as well as Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī and his student Ṭabarī.29 Another figure from this movement was the Meccan-based Ibn al-Mundhir (d. 318), a student of the Traditionist-Jurisprudents Bukhārī and Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī, and several of al-Shāfiʿī’s students.30 He authored many works of jurisprudence and comparative fiqh, and he is reported to have said: ‘If it has been established that the Prophet did two different things at different times, and no abrogation has been proven, then there is a choice in which to act upon’.31 Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī Tirmidhī’s approach agreed with the Traditionist-Jurisprudents. Tirmidhī held that the actions and statements of many Companions could all represent the sunna and represent true guidance, although they may differ; however, this did not apply to everything narrated by someone who had met or seen the Prophet. This also holds for the mujtahids of future generations: the truth

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could be with more than one mujtahid, even though they may differ from one another, but it is not so with all mujtahids. A statement attributed to the Prophet says: ‘My Companions are like the stars (nujūm), whomever of them you follow, you will be guided’.32 Commenting on this ḥadīth, Tirmidhī rejected the notion that any person who met the Prophet once or perhaps only saw him could be an imām of guidance for others. The word nujūm literally means objects that rise from a place. According to Tirmidhī’s definition, the nujūm are only those celestial objects that have maṭāliʿ (places of rising) through which they come to appear in the Earth’s sky. This description, he says, only applies to Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Venus (these are the five brightest planets, they can be seen with the naked eye and have been known from ancient times). As for all other fixed celestial objects, they are kawākib, not nujūm. Those among the Prophet’s Companions who had the necessary knowledge of the sharīʿa combined with the necessary spiritual insight to be imāms were small in number, like the number of the nujūm. It was only these Companions who had the right to practise ijtihād, but their ijtihād might have led them to different conclusions. People of taqlīd may choose any of them to follow and will be rightly guided. As for the rest of the Companions, their light was a source of guidance for their own selves, but they were not imāms or guides for others.33 Among the Companions, Tirmidhī named seven such figures who were of the Elect of God’s saints: Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, Muʿādh ibn Jabal, Abū ʿUbayda and Ibn Masʿūd. They were inspired saints (muḥaddathūn) and the ones who possessed authority in their generation.34 Here, Tirmidhī was not only speaking of the cases in which these Companions were functioning as carriers of the sunna, but also where they practised ijtihād on issues for which they did not have clear guidance from the Prophet. Tirmidhī, then, accepted that different mujtahids from amongst the Companions and future generations could arrive at positions that were at variance with one another, but that were all correct. The same understanding is displayed in practice, rather than stated, in Tirmidhī’s legal discussions. In Ithbāt al-ʿilal, his work on the wisdom behind the sharīʿa teachings, Tirmidhī came to three issues on which there was scholarly disagreement. For each of these issues, Tirmidhī presented the opinions of different schools of jurisprudence, compared them, then chose what he thought was the stronger

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opinion. As we will see below, he seemed to suggest that sometimes there was more than one correct answer, but that one was superior to the others. Ibn Ḥanbal and Tirmidhī’s approach to the different practices of the Companions would be repeated centuries later by another great Andalusian Sufi who settled in the East: Ibn Abī Jamra (d. Cairo 695/1296). Commenting on the same ḥadīth – ‘My Companions are like the stars, whomever of them you follow, you will be guided’ – Ibn Abī Jamra wrote: ‘“You will be guided” means: you will be following me, because [the Prophet] is the imām of guidance and the Companions do not do anything contrary to his Sunna. Therefore all of their actions and statements serve as transmission of [Muḥammad’s] own [actions and statements]’.35 Commenting on ʿĀʾisha’s ḥadīth that, ‘whenever God’s Messenger was given a choice between two things, he always chose the easier one’, Ibn Abī Jamra wrote that, when it came to non-worldly matters – that is, matters relating to worship of God – the Prophet chose for himself that which is greatest in God’s sight, such as when he worshipped in the night until his feet became swollen; however, when it came to matters of worship that effected the whole community, the Prophet chose what was easier and more practical out of mercy for them.36 Ibn Abī Jamra also found mercy in the ambiguity of the majority of the sharīʿa’s teachings – that is, that they are open to interpretation and differing opinions. Commenting on the ḥadīth that states ‘this religion is very easy (inna l-dīna yusr)’, Ibn Abī Jamra stated that one of the ways in which this religion is easy consists of the fact that the matters about which there is clear unambiguous guidance (naṣṣ) are few, while the majority of issues could have different interpretations. He wrote that, ‘if those texts which are open to interpretation are the majority, then that is ease (taysīr) and leeway (tawsiʿa) granted by God to His servants [. . .] these differences are leeway and a mercy’.37 This is implicitly recognised in Tirmidhī’s acceptance of different positions where the imāms differed, and we have seen how it was also the position of Ibn ʿArabī, who held that God approved of every mujtahid’s ijtihad, even if they did not find the truth. Tirmidhī also noted that God, out of His mercy, never allowed any religious obligations to cause excess hardship. When it came to the obligation of fasting, God excused the travellers from having to fast in Ramadan and revealed: ‘God wants ease for you, and does not want hardship for

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you’ (Q 2:185). When it came to the obligatory ritual purification before prayer, God excused those who did not have water, or due to illness would be harmed by water, and allowed them to do tayammum (lightly touching the earth) as a substitute; God then said: ‘God does not wish to place you in any difficulty’ (Q 5:6).38 A similar example is the expiation for killing someone by mistake: one had to pay blood money and free a slave, and if one could not afford to free a slave, they had to fast for two months in a row (Q 4:92) This is one type of flexibility that we see in a number of instances in the Qurʾān and in ḥadīth literature: a flexibility of accommodation where the sharīʿa would state that ‘action A is prescribed, and if you cannot do it, then you may do action B instead’. Ibn ʿArabī laid the foundation for an understanding of the sharīʿa that would explain this type of flexibility of accommodation noted by Tirmidhī, as well as the early concept of leeway. Ibn ʿArabī The idea of leeway represents a different, more far-reaching type of flexibility than the one described above: a flexibility of choice. In this type of flexibility, the sharīʿa would say: ‘In scenario X, you need to do either Action A or Action B (and possibly even C or D)’. In the following passages of the Futūḥāt, Ibn ʿArabī planted the seeds of a theoretical explanation for this flexibility that would be developed by others after him: Muḥammad was given the ‘all-comprehensive’ words. Hence his sharīʿa comprises all revealed sharīʿas. He was a Prophet when Adam had not yet been created. Hence from him branch out the Laws to all the Prophets. They were sent to be his deputies on Earth in the absence of his body. If he was physically there, none of them would have a sharīʿa of their own. Hence, he said: ‘Were Moses alive now, he would have had to follow me’.39 [. . .] Since [the Prophet] was not yet there in the material world [only his spirit being in existence], each sharīʿa brought by a Prophet was ascribed to that Prophet, even though in reality it was the sharīʿa of Muḥammad [. . .] As for the abrogation of the previous sharīʿas by his sharīʿa, this does not mean that the previous sharīʿas were not part of his sharīʿa. God has shown us how

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there is abrogation within the pure sharīʿa that was revealed to [the Prophet]. We saw how, in the Qurʾān and sunna, teachings came down at a late stage to abrogate others that had come before them. This abrogation within the Qurʾān and sunna should alert us to the fact that the abrogation of the previous sharīʿas by Muḥammad’s sharīʿa does not mean that they were not also part of his sharīʿa.40

Muslim theologians had always held that the different revealed religions were united in theological doctrine but may have differed in legal prescriptions. It would be worth noting here the Sunni belief that God had given revelation to a total of 124,000 Prophets. The Prophets were those men – and women, according to many scholars such as Bukhārī, Ibn Ḥazm and Ibn ʿArabī – who held the spiritual rank of Prophethood and who received God’s revelations for the sake of their own guidance. From among those, God had chosen 315 men as His Messengers to call different communities to God and to teach God’s revelations to them.41 Muḥammad was the last Prophet and therefore by necessity the last Messenger. According to this traditionally accepted teaching, there could have been up to 315 different sharīʿās that God sent with His Messengers. An early ḥadīth from the Musnad of ʿAbd ibn Ḥumayd (d. 249/863–64) – with a very short but weak chain – states that there exist a total of 315 sharīʿās, all preserved in a tablet in God’s presence. It continues to say: ‘The All-Merciful says: By My power and majesty, any servant who associates no partner with Me and comes to Me with one of these sharīʿās within him will enter Paradise’. Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī also narrated this ḥadīth and made it the fifty-sixth ‘foundation’ or subject-matter in his book, concluding that God sent a total of 315 sharīʿās, according to the number of Messengers.42 According to Ibn ʿArabī, the sharīʿas of the previous Prophets were all parts of the all-encompassing sharīʿa of their guide and leader Muḥammad, and all these parts were reunited again in the final revelation to mankind given to Muḥammad. This revelation was to suffice all of humanity in every place and every time until the world came to an end. One way in which this combination of different sharīʿas showed itself in the sharīʿa of Muḥammad was in abrogation. In the traditional conception of abrogation held by jurists, God would send down a revelation (whether via the Qurʾān or the inspired sayings of Muḥammad) laying down a certain obligation or prohibition and

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would later send down another revelation cancelling the effect of the first one, thus instituting a new one. For example, the Prophet at first prohibited his Companions from visiting graves because of the pre-Islamic practices associated with grave visitation to which they had been accustomed. After the Companions had become firm in their new creed and knew the proper way to visit graves, the Prophet lifted this prohibition and allowed, even encouraged, the visitation of graves. Ibn ʿArabī redefined the concept of abrogation. He stated that abrogation was not the repeal of an older revelation for a newer one. Rather, it was a case of each revelation having its own start and (possible) expiration date. He drew a parallel between the different revelations and between the sharīʿas given to previous Prophets. Each Prophet’s sharīʿa was intended to take effect for a limited amount of time, until the time came for them all to end and for the sharīʿa of the Prophet Muḥammad to be introduced and last until the end of time. Ibn ʿArabī said that this was also the case within the sharīʿa of Muḥammad: some revelations were only intended to last a certain amount of time, and at the time of their end another revelation was to come down and take effect instead.43 Although Ibn ʿArabī did not explicitly say so himself, these passages from the Futūḥāt could be combined to say that the different revelations within Muḥammad’s sharīʿa (such as the allowance and then prohibition of intoxicating beverages) in fact represented the sharīʿas given to different Prophets before Muḥammad and were recombined in the sharīʿa of Muḥammad. Hence, even when the Qurʾān allowed the drinking of intoxicants at first, that itself was a way allowed in some of the pre-Islamic sharīʿas. However, in this specific example, this particular sharīʿa teaching was only to last for a limited time within Muḥammad’s lifetime; then only the other one, which prohibited these drinks, was to carry on until the end of time. Even though we cannot be sure that Ibn ʿArabī had this precise conception in mind regarding the issue of abrogation actually representing different sharīʿas, and not just being comparable to them, it is easy to see how later scholars contemplating his legal thought might have come to such a conclusion. But if the issue of abrogation ultimately leads us to a cancellation of one way of doing things and leaves us with only one way, where does the flexibility of choice come in? This would be developed by successors to Ibn ʿArabī, such as Jalāl al-Dīn

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al-Suyūṭī and Shaʿrānī. Before Suyūṭī, however, there was the contribution of another giant of Islamic thought: Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī. Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 756/1355) was one of the foremost theologians of the Ashʿarī school, as well as a great jurisprudent. In fact, his jurisprudential and legal mastery was such that even in the age of taqlīd, there were hopes among some of his contemporaries that he would create a new school of law that all Muslims would follow.44 Subkī authored a treatise called al-Taʿẓīm wa-l-minna fī qawlihī taʿālā la-tuʾminunna bihī wa tanṣurannah.45 The treatise is the result of Subkī’s reflections on the Qurʾānic verse that states: ‘Remember when God took a covenant from all the Prophets: Once I have given you a writ and wisdom, if a Messenger comes to you confirming that which you have been given, you shall believe in him and support him’ (Q 3:81). Subkī’s reflections are based on a popular position among commentators on this verse, which holds that the Messenger in question is Muḥammad and that God had therefore taken a covenant with each Prophet to support Muḥammad’s mission if he were to be sent during their lifetime. The Prophets were also to instruct their followers to do so as well, if Muḥammad were to be sent after they (the Prophets) had passed away. The verse shows, so Subkī argued, that had Muḥammad been sent to any of the Prophets during their lifetimes, he would have been a Messenger to those very Prophets as well, not just to their followers and the rest of the people, for even the Prophets were commanded to follow his teachings and his message. Now Muḥammad was in fact a Prophet during the time of every preceding Prophet, for he had said: ‘I was a Prophet while Adam was neither body nor spirit’. Muḥammad’s spirit must therefore have been created before Adam’s spirit was created, even before all things. Muḥammad’s spirit was not only given the rank of Prophethood since that time: rather, Muḥammad would have truly been a Prophet since that time. A Prophet is he who receives knowledge directly from God, and Muḥammad’s spirit had been receiving lights and knowledge of divine realities from God since then. Subkī continued to see in this covenant a correspondence to the oath of allegiance given to the ruling caliphs, indicating that the Prophets were all

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Muḥammad’s followers and that he was ‘the Prophet to the Prophets’. This reality became clear on the Night Journey when Muḥammad was chosen as the imām of the Prophets in Jerusalem, and it will become even clearer on the Day of Judgement when all the Prophets will stand under Muḥammad’s banner, again indicating that they are his followers and representatives. When all these verses and ḥadīths are put together, another reality emerges – that is, when the Prophet said, ‘I was sent to all people’, he was not only speaking of the people during and after his lifetime, but all people since the creation of mankind. Muḥammad was, in fact, God’s Messenger to all of God’s creation, and until his physical emergence on Earth, the other Prophets were simply acting as his representatives, delivering his message on his behalf. Subkī believes that two possible conclusions could be drawn from all this. The first possibility is the usual understanding of the scholars, which is that Muḥammad’s sharīʿa takes precedence over all previous sharīʿas by either abrogating or specifying their teachings. However, as notes Subkī, there is another possible conclusion, the one to which Subkī himself subscribed: that Muḥammad’s sharīʿa was not a separate sharīʿa that abrogated the previous ones; rather, that all the sharīʿas of the previous Messengers were, in fact, the sharīʿas of none other than Muḥammad himself, being delivered on his behalf by the previous Messengers. After all, God’s rulings change based on the changing of times and circumstances, and therefore Muḥammad’s sharīʿa for the preceding peoples was whatever their Messengers brought to them, while Muḥammad’s sharīʿa for those during and after his lifetime was what he himself brought forth. Although these reflections were presented as the fruits of Subkī’s own journey of discovery, we can see that in reality there is nothing that he said that was not present in Ibn ʿArabī’s more concise passages in the Futūḥāt. Subkī’s longer treatment simply explained in more detail and presented more textual evidence for what Ibn ʿArabī had already stated. Subkī actually was a critic of Ibn ʿArabī, but that does not mean that he did not benefit from him directly, just as Subkī’s contemporary and lifelong theological opponent Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) – an even bigger critic of Ibn ʿArabī – admitted to having been an admirer of Ibn ʿArabī and to have benefitted from studying his works.46 Even if Subkī’s thoughts were original, he still might have been influenced by Ibn ʿArabī indirectly, through the circulation of some of these

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ideas in society. In fact, the early Shādhilī poet al-Būṣīrī had popularised some aspects of this idea in his immensely popular poem al-Kawākib al-durriyya fī madḥi khayr al-bariyya (more commonly known as al-Burda al-Būṣīriyya), when he said: [Muḥammad] was the sun of virtue, and [the other Prophets] were its moons reflecting that sun’s light in the time of darkness.

In other words, what the other Prophets possessed was only what they spiritually received from Muḥammad in order to fill his place while he had not yet been sent, just as the moon reflects the sun’s light when the sun is not there. And just as the moon no longer shines when the sun rises, when Muḥammad came, there was no longer any need for the previous Prophets. Al-Suyūṭī Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) was one of the greatest scholars of the Sunni tradition. His works have become classics and standard textbooks in a great number of different fields of knowledge, especially in Qurʾān and ḥadīth sciences. Suyūṭī was a Sufi of the Shādhilī school whose Sufi master Muḥammad al-Maghribī al-Shādhilī instructed him in the teachings of the Akbarian school.47 Suyūṭī also received and passed on an authorisation in Ibn ʿArabī’s litany al-Dawr al-aʿlā 48 and wrote a defence of Ibn ʿArabī called Tanbiʾat al-ghabī fī tabriʾat Ibn al-ʿArabī (Alerting the Dim-Witted Concerning Ibn ʿArabī’s Vindication). Many of his teachings, even some related to jurisprudence, point to an affinity with, or the possible influence of, Ibn ʿArabī’s works.49 He also wrote a work defending the possibility of ijtihād in every age, and claimed for himself, as well as for many scholars before him, the rank of mujtahid muṭlaq muntasib. This meant that he reached the capacity to be a fully independent mujtahid, but he did not create his own madhhab because he found that he agreed with the main principles of one of the existing madhhabs (in his case, the Shāfiʿī madhhab). He therefore considered himself a Shāfiʿī despite not being an imitator of Imām al-Ṣḥāfiʿī, only being in agreement with him; Suyūṭī also provided a list of the positions where he disagreed with the Shāfiʿī madhhab.50 Suyūṭī wrote a small treatise on how the existence of different legal schools was a source of mercy, entitled Jazīl al-mawāhib fī ikhtilāf al-madhāhib. In this

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work he focused on some of the unique qualities of the Muḥammadan sharīʿa. Suyūṭī summarised Subkī’s treatise and added a key element to the theory. According to Subkī, the Prophet Muḥammad’s sharīʿa encompassed different sets of laws to suit different times, some of which were given to pre-Islamic Messengers and some to the Muslim community. Suyūṭī, however, argued that the sharīʿa as revealed to the Muḥammadan community encompassed the previous sharīʿas within it, which led to its uniquely flexible nature. The flexibility that Suyūṭī attributed to the sharīʿa of Muḥammad’s community manifested itself in two ways. The first was through abrogation: the sharīʿa was flexible enough to allow the early Muslims in the Prophet’s time to act in certain ways at first, after which these were abrogated by new teachings. This was a diachronic type of flexibility that helped the early Muslims ease into the final form that their sharīʿa was to take, and according to Suyūṭī both the abrogated and the abrogating laws would have been part of the sharīʿas given previously to different Prophets. Suyūṭī believed that previous nations did not know the concept of abrogation; hence, the Jews could not accept that God would change the prayer direction for the Muslims from Jerusalem to Mecca. A more significant type of flexibility that Suyūṭī saw in the Muḥammadan community’s sharīʿa was the synchronic type, which led to the existence of choice in injunctions revealed to the Muḥammadan community. For example, Suyūṭī believed that Jewish law only allowed one way of dealing with murder, which was capital punishment, whereas Christian law only allowed the payment of blood money instead; Islam, however, gave the victim’s family a choice between the two, and therefore combined within it the two previous sharīʿas.51 Suyūṭī was of course correct to say that the Qurʾān and sunna gave the Muslims choice in several matters, not just in the punishment for murder (Q 2:178–79). For example, the sunna gave Muslims three different ways of performing the ḥajj: ifrād, qirān and tamattuʿ. The Qurʾān gave pilgrims a choice in how to expiate for doing some acts that contravene the requirements of ḥajj, such as shaving the head before the completion of the pilgrimage out of medical necessity (Q 2:196), or hunting while in a state of iḥrām (Q 5:96).52 The Qurʾān also gave Muslims a choice in how to expiate for breaking an oath (Q 5:98) and for committing the pre-Islamic practice of ẓihār (Q 58:3–4). When fasting was first made obligatory, able-bodied

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Muslims were given the free choice to feed one poor person instead of fasting (Q 2:184). At a later stage, this free choice was taken away from those who were able to fast without excessive difficulty (Q 2:185). According to the canonical ḥadīth collections and classical exegetical works, the Prophet’s Companion Ibn ʿAbbās insisted that the option to opt out of fasting was not fully abrogated and remained for those who would suffer extreme hardship from fasting, such as the elderly, the pregnant and the breastfeeding.53 Suyūṭī went further to argue that the varied positions that the Prophet’s Companions inferred from his statements and actions reflected the different sharīʿas united within his sharīʿa. This was reflected by the Prophet’s following statement: ‘My Companions are like the stars. Whichever of them you follow, you will be rightly-guided’. Suyūṭī therefore concluded that the varied schools of the later imāms, which ultimately originated in the positions of the Companions, also reflected these different sharīʿas with which the Prophet Muḥammad was sent. He wrote: In this there is extra leeway in the sharīʿa. This also reflects the greatness of the Prophet Muḥammad’s worth over that of the other Prophets and his uniqueness amongst them. Each of them was sent with only one ruling for each act, whilst he was sent with a variety of rulings regarding the same act. Each of the varied rulings could be a basis of judgement and implementation. He who holds any of these varied rulings is correct and will be rewarded for holding it and will be rightly guided in acting upon it. This is a subtle reality (maʿnā) that God opened my heart to understanding, and everyone who has experienced and tasted the secrets of the sharīʿa will see its excellence.54

Difference of Perspective So far we have looked at how the scholars above explained differences arising from different ḥadīth narrations, as well as the divergence of the practices and fatwās of the Companions, both of which could also be explained as stemming from the sunna itself. The explanation was that the sharīʿa itself came with in-built flexibility, demonstrated by the Prophet himself in his actions and statements. Not all differences between the imāms, however, arose from matters covered by the sunna. There are many issues about which the Prophet did not speak, and other issues where different interpretations are possible of

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what the Prophet did say or do. Could there be flexibility in these matters, too? Could there be more than one correct answer? We can infer Tirmidhī’s and Ibn ʿArabī’s positions on such matters from their evaluations of the differences of the madhhabs on certain issues. We have seen that Tirmidhī not only validated the opinions of different mujtahid Companions as representing the sunna of God’s Messenger, but he also validated the positions of different mujtahids among later generations, implying that more than one could be correct at the same time. This he also demonstrated in some of his fiqh discussions. One question arose regarding the recitation of the Qurʾān during congregational prayers. Setting aside the obligatory recitation of the Fātiḥa (the first sūra or ‘chapter’ of the Qurʾān, being a prayer to God), the first two cycles of each prayer also included the recitation of any other part of the Qurʾān. When a person prayed by themselves, they would recite what they wished of the Qurʾān after the Fātiḥa. However, when they were led by an imām, the recitation was done by the imām. This was the case during those prayers where the recitation was done aloud (three out of the five daily prayers). In two of the five daily prayers, all recitation was silent. The question here was: since the person praying behind the imām cannot hear what the imām is reciting, should they recite something to themselves, or should they not, given that the imām was reciting on their behalf? The Ḥanafīs held that one should not recite anything at all and just stand in silence, but the three other schools held that one should recite something to themselves silently. Tirmidhī preferred this latter position. He believed that it was more beneficial for a person to get a reminder from the Qurʾān rather than nothing at all. His answer implied an acceptance of the validity of the Ḥanafī position in which people only bring to themselves the awareness of standing before God, but he held that the other position in which people’s souls were exposed to a reminder from the Qurʾān was superior.55 The Prophet taught that the prayer begins with the statement ‘Allāhu akbar’ (literally, ‘God is greater’), coupled with a raising of the hands to the shoulders/head, in a movement akin to throwing the rest of the world behind oneself, and entering the sacred state of iḥrām – that is, entering the inviolable presence of God. Here a question was asked by jurists: could someone use an alternative formula to start the prayer? Al-Shāfiʿī accepted

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a slightly modified form, Allāhu l-akbar (God is the greatest), but not, for example, Allāhu l-kabīr (God is the Great One) or anything that did not specifically contain God being greater than anything else. Abū Ḥanīfa, however, accepted synonyms for the word akbar, such as aʿẓam. Thus, one could say ‘Allāhu aʿẓam’ to begin the prayer. Tirmidhī strongly disagreed. Although these two words were of very similar meaning, they were not the same. He gave an explanation on why those possessed of spiritual insight recognised the difference between akbar and aʿẓam, especially with regard to the spiritual experience of saints during prayer, standing in the presence of God; aʿẓam simply did not work in that context. Tirmidhī considered Abū Ḥanīfa’s opinion ‘a reprehensible statement’,56 something that the people of true ijtihād would consider ‘blind floundering’.57 He concluded that, as far as he could tell, Abū Ḥanīfa was not a man of spiritual insight. ‘Had he known the fault in his statement he would have stopped himself from saying it’.58 This position of Abū Ḥanīfa really irked Tirmidhī, and he repeated it in many of his works to show the superiority of spiritual insight over the rationalisation of the jurists, but at least in one work he was slightly kinder to Abū Ḥanīfa and followed his name with the respectful invocation of God’s mercy upon his soul.59 A third issue was whether bleeding nullified one’s state of ritual purity. Tirmidhī compared the positions of the ‘jurists of Medina’ and the ‘people of fiqh from amongst the jurists of Kufa’. The position of the ‘jurists of Medina’ was held by Mālik and his Meccan student al-Shāfiʿī: bleeding did not affect the state of ritual purity. The Kufan position was held by Abū Ḥanīfa and Sufyān al-Thawrī: bleeding nullified one’s ritual purity. Tirmidhī did not say that one position was right and the other wrong. He instead held that the Kufan position was ‘more appropriate and more fitting (ashbah wa alyaq)’.60 His argument was based on the fact that blood was generated from food after it was digested in the stomach, just like human waste – all of those were spiritually impure because the stomach was ‘the seat of Satan’. This was because humans ate in excess of what they should, just like their father Adam ate the forbidden fruit. As for things that came out of the body without exiting the stomach – such as vomit, phlegm, or snot – those were spiritually pure. In this case, Tirmidhī appeared to accept both opinions, but he held that one was more appropriate – that

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is, one showed a higher level of propriety. However, he was careful when supporting the people of Kufa to specify that he only meant ‘the people of (true) fiqh’ from among the people of Kufa, not all of them. By Tirmidhī’s definition, the people of ‘true fiqh’ are those equipped with both the outward sciences and inward spiritual insight. The examples above (and others) indicate that he may have meant to exclude Abū Ḥanīfa, while including the latter’s rival, Sufyān al-Thawrī, who was beloved to the Sufis. Thawrī and Abū Ḥanīfa often shared many positions of positive law because of the influence of their shared predecessors from Kufa, but Thawrī was a critic of Abū Ḥanīfa on principle because of his legal methodology (as discussed in Chapter 1).61 Tirmidhī’s approach in these cases is very significant. The first and most obvious matter of note in Tirmidhī’s approach is that he compared the opinions of different schools and acted as an independent mujtahid. Secondly, in at least two of the examples above, Tirmidhī appears to validate more than one opinion at the same time while giving preference to one of them, rather than simply describing one position as correct and the other as incorrect. Thirdly, Tirmidhī seems to conclude from Abū Ḥanīfa’s positions that he was not a man of ‘true ijtihād’ but ascribed this rank to other scholars from Kufa (most likely Sufyān al-Thawrī) and Medina (Mālik). Ibn ʿArabī discussed the ranks of the imāms when speaking of the highest spiritual station that a non-Prophet could reach, which he called the Station of Proximity (maqām al-qurba). Those privileged to occupy this station were called the Solitary Ones (afrād), and they were inspired saints (muḥaddathūn) and therefore the greatest interpreters of the sharīʿa.62 In Chapter 116 of the Futūḥāt, Ibn ʿArabī described the Station of Proximity. He stated that, when he reached this station, he saw that the mujtahid scholars had been firmly established there without being aware of it. The divine inspiration for their different positions flowed to them from this station, and they were therefore all upon the truth in their different positions. He likened this to the preIslamic Messengers who had different sacred laws (Q 5:48) and yet each was correct. Despite occupying this exalted rank, some of those mujtahids were not gifted with spiritual unveiling (kashf ), and so they were not aware that they were in the Station of Proximity, nor were they aware that their knowledge came to them from God. Those scholars rejected each other’s positions

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as incorrect. Only those mujtahid scholars who were also people of unveiling did not reject the positions of the others, because they could see the validity of the other opinions.63 Ibn ʿArabī therefore accorded the mujtahid imāms the highest spiritual rank possible, but he differentiated between those who had unveiling and were aware that they possessed this rank and those who did not. However, Ibn ʿArabī did not mention specific names to explain whom he meant. Elsewhere in his treatment of the afrād Ibn ʿArabī specifically named Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal as one of the greatest to ever reach this rank.64 Similarly, Ibn ʿArabī also quoted a story from Qushayrī’s classic treatise on Sufism, al-Risāla, where the mysterious agent of God, al-Khaḍir – teacher of Prophets and saints – taught one Sufi that al-Shāfiʿī was one of the Four Pillars (awtād).65 In Ibn ʿArabī’s hierarchy, these Four Pillars are among the afrād.66 Based on this ‘testimony from Khaḍir’, Ibn ʿArabī argued that al-Shāfiʿī was one of the great knowers of the realities pertaining to the nature of the sharīʿa.67 We do not know if Ibn ʿArabī accorded this rank to Abū Ḥanīfa as well, but he did mention the Ḥanafī and Ḥanbalī madhhabs as his examples in the passage stating that all madhhabs were equally effective in taking a person to God. Even though Ibn ʿArabī ascribed the positions of the imāms to inspiration, he did not mean by this all of their positions. As we have previously seen, he stated that even the greatest of God’s mujtahid saints, including himself, are sometimes, by virtue of divine wisdom, veiled from being certain regarding some issues; this would even be the case for the mahdī at the end of time. Even when accepting the validity of different positions by the sharīʿa’s most authoritative interpreters, he did not accord all positions equal status. Throughout his treatment of jurisprudence in the Futūḥāt, Ibn ʿArabī, on a far greater scale than Tirmidhī before him, aimed to show the inner significance of the different rulings of the law and of the differing juristic positions of the schools. He would present the opinions of the schools without mentioning which opinion belonged to which school and then proceed to give a spiritual justification for each position. In other words, he attempted to show how each position was valid from a certain perspective and reflected some deeper truth connected to higher metaphysical realities. This treatment of the five pillars and ritual purification formed an extended section of the Futūḥāt,

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which in Osman Yaḥyā’s critical edition amounts to 2,654 pages,68 and in ʿĀʾisha Bewely’s translation to approximately 1,300 pages.69 In some cases, Ibn ʿArabī did not express a preference for one position over others. One example relates to leadership in prayer: the Prophet never gave clear instruction on who may or may not lead others in prayer. One question that jurists asked was: could a prepubescent child lead prayer? This was problematic because prayer only becomes obligatory for a Muslim after they reach puberty, so was it valid for a child to lead men in a prayer that is not obligatory for him, but is obligatory for them? Ibn ʿArabī cited three opinions: 1) those who rejected it completely, 2) those who accepted it completely, and 3) those who only accepted it for supererogatory prayers but not obligatory ones. According to Ibn ʿArabī, the first position was based on the nature of children. The very word for child, ṣabī, comes from the root word [ṣ-b-ī] which means to incline to something out of desire (verb form ṣabā/ yaṣbū). A child is inclined to follow his natural desires and whims, as his intellect is not yet fully formed. However, leadership belongs to the intellect, not nature. He who follows the intellect is placed ahead of him who follows nature, and therefore the quality of leadership demands a fully formed intellect. From this perspective, a child should not lead others in prayer. Those who took the second position considered the fact that the child is carrying the Qurʾān within him and is leading for the sake of reciting the Qurʾān. They were giving the position of leadership to the Qurʾān, not to its vessel (the child). From that perspective, they accepted the child’s leadership. ‘The ones who saw the worship of a child to be a free-will worship – in the absence of a prescription of the Law requiring him to do it – and who saw that supererogatory prayers are a freely-willed act of worship, permitted the prayer of the child as the leader for supererogatory prayers, but not for obligatory prayers’.70 In this case, Ibn ʿArabī showed how each position was valid from a certain spiritual perspective, but remained silent on the issue. We have seen how Sufis such as Ṭirmidhī, Ibn ʿArabī and Suyūṭī were able to conceive of a sharīʿa that came with in-built flexibility, and how they were also able to conceive of a variety of valid positions that resulted from the ijtihād of the imāms in matters not covered by the sharīʿa as set down by God and His Messenger. All of these ideas would be subsumed in a grand theory by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī.

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Notes  1. ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 46. This observation is echoed by Kevin Reinhart who said: ‘As far as one can tell, it is only later scholars who are discomforted by the plurality of Muslim doctrine in the formative period’ (Reinhart, Before Revelation, 27).  2. ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 28–33.  3. ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 37.  4. Dutton, The Origins of Islamic Law, 33. He also gave similar advice to al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf. Zuhrī may have met Ibn ʿUmar briefly and is believed to have narrated three reports from him directly (al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 5:327).  5. ʿAbd al-Majīd, al-Ittijāhāt al-fiqhiyya, 46–47.  6. Saḥīḥ Muslim, Kitāb al-Ḥayd, Bāb jawāz nawm al-junub wa-istiḥbāb al-wuḍūʾ lah wa ghasl al-farj idhā arāda an yaʾkul aw yashrab aw-yanām aw-yujāmiʿ (where it is narrated in abridged form, quoting only the question regarding the major ablutions); Sunan Abū Dāwūd, Kitāb al-Ṭahāra, Bāb fi l-junub yuʾakhkhir al-ghusl; Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, Kitāb al-Ṣalāh, Bāb mā jāʾa fī qirāʾat al-layl.  7. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Mukhtaṣar Jāmiʿ bayān al-ʿilm, 349.   8. Ibrahim, ‘Al-Shaʿrānī’s Response’, 121.  9. ʿAwn was the grandson of ʿUtbah ibn Masʿūd, the brother of ʿAbullāh ibn Masʿūd. ʿAwn’s brother was ʿUbaydullāh ibn ʿAbullāh, another one of the Seven Jurists of Medina. 10. Al-Dārimī, Sunan, 1:151 (al-Muqaddimah, Bāb ikhtilāf al-fuqāhāʾ). 11. Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ, 5:119. It is worth noting here that al-Shaʿrānī used this quote in al-Mīzān al-Khadiriyya, mistakingly attributing it to Thawrī. It appears that, when composing the Mīzān al-Kubrā, he was not able to trace it back to Thawrī and dropped it altogether. 12. See al-Baghawī, Musnad Ibn Jaʿd, 1:366. Sabīʿī is considered one of the ‘six pillars’ of ḥadīth transmission after the Companions. 13. Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ, 3:367. 14. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Mukhtaṣar Jāmiʿ bayān al-ʿilm, 290. 15. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Faqīh wa l-mutafaqqih, 2:135. 16. Al-Mājashūn, Kitāb al-ḥajj, 183. 17. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Mukhtaṣar Jāmiʿ bayān al-ʿilm, 352. 18. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Mukhtaṣar Jāmiʿ bayān al-ʿilm, 352; Ibn Ḥazm, Mulakhkhaṣ Ibṭāl al-qiyās, 51–52. 19. On Mālik’s acceptance of different opinions and a discussion of early juristic views on dissent, see Wymann-Landgraf, Mālik and Medina, 16–23.

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For more pluralistic attitudes of early imāms, see ʿAwwāma, Adab al-ikhtilāf, 39–48. 20. Ibn Ḥazm, Mulakhkhaṣ ibṭāl al-qiyās, 51–52. 21. As narrated by Ibn Taymiyya in al-Fatāwā, 30:79, idem, al-Musawwada, 401. 22. Ibn ʿAqīl, al-Wāḍiḥ fī uṣūl al-fiqh, 1:279. 23. Melchert, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, 71. 24. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Mukhtaṣar Jāmiʿ bayān al-ʿilm, 353. 25. Dutton, The Origins of Islamic Law, 43. 26. Ibn Taymiyya continued to out more differences: ‘However, Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī also disagreed in that Mālik held that the takbīr is repeated twice and al-Shāfiʿī held that it was repeated four times’. 27. Ibn Taymiyya carried on to say: ‘However, Mālik chose to say the statement [qad qāmat al-ṣalāh] once, while the other three held that this one is to be repeated’. Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ al-fatāwā, 22:66–69. 28. Abū Zahra, Ibn Ḥanbal, 150–51. 29. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Tamhīd, 3:15. 30. Bin Ramli, ‘Early Sufism’, 29. 31. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 19. 32. Al-Bayhaqī, al-Madkhal ila l-Sunan al-Kubrā, 163. 33. Al-Tirmidhī, Nawādir, 3:61–62. 34. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 390. These seven Companions are examples and not meant to be an exhaustive list. 35. Ibn Abī Jamra, Bahjat al-nufūs, 1:175. 36. Ibn Abī Jamra, Bahjat al-nufūs, 3:63. 37. Ibn Abī Jamra, Bahjat al-nufūs, 1:81. 38. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥajj wa asrāruh, 41. 39. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:134. 40. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:135. 41. A ḥadīth narrated by Ibn Ḥanbal in his Musnad and accepted as authentic by Sunni scholars reports that there were 124,000 Prophets and 315 Messengers. 42. Al-Tirmidhī, Nawādir al-uṣūl (Dār al-Minhāj), 1:736. It is not clear why this early tradition speaks of people coming to God with a sharīʿa within them, rather than of people acting upon a sharīʿa. 43. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:164, 2:473, 2:493. 44. Al-Suyūṭī, Ḥusn al-muḥāḍara, 1:321. 45. Published in al-Subkī, Fatāwā l-Subkī, 1:38–41. 46. On this admission by Ibn Taymiyya, see Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā shaykh al-islām, 2:464–65 (from his Risāla to Shaykh Abu l-Fatḥ Naṣr al-Manbijī).

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There are a great many similarities in the legal opinions of Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Taymiyya, and Maḥmūd al-Ghurāb argues that Ibn Taymiyya must have benefitted from the ijtihād of Ibn ʿArabī before him on at least one opinion that appears to be unique to both scholars. See al-Ghurab, al-Fiqh ʿind al-shaykh alakbar, 354 n2. On Subkī’s criticism of Ibn ʿArabī, see Knysh, Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition, 129–30. 47. That Maghribī was al-Suyūṭī’s Sufi master was mentioned by Shaʿrānī in al-Ṭabaqāt al-ṣughrā, 89, and al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmi, 4:69. It was Sakhāwī, who was hostile to Akbarian thought and to Suyūṭī, who mentioned that Suyūṭī took this thought from this shaykh in particular. Maghribī was well known for his commentary on the poems of Ibn al-Fāriḍ and sometimes on some statements of Ibn ʿArabī. See, for example, al-Shādhilī, al-Kawākib al-zāhira, 344–51. Shaʿrānī has an entry on this shaykh in al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā, 442–45. 48. See the study by Taji-Farouki (ed.) in Ibn ʿArabī, A Prayer for Spiritual Elevation, 20–21, 27. 49. Dajani, ‘Ibn ʿArabī’s Conception of Ijtihād’, 144–47. 50. Suyūṭī, al-Radd, 20–23, 112–16. 51. Al-Suyūṭī, Jazīl al-mawāhib, 27–28. 52. Iḥrām is the sacred state into which a Muslim must enter in order to perform the pilgrimage, during which certain acts such as hunting, sex, shaving and cutting one’s nails are forbidden. 53. Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, Kitāb al-tafsīr, section 25 (on verse Q 2:184). Ibn ʿArabī chose the position of Ibn ʿAbbās on this matter (Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:617), also chosen before him by the leading traditionist-jurisprudent Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh. The five Sunni schools also excused these three categories of people from fasting, but either prescribed for them make-up fasts, a combination of make-up fasts and feeding the poor, or nothing at all. 54. Al-Suyūṭī, Jazīl al-mawāhib, 28. 55. Al-Tirmidhī, Ithbāt al-‘ilal, 102. 56. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 396. 57. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 377. 58. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Furūq, 376; idem, Ithbāt al-‘ilal, 97. 59. Al-Tirmidhī, Ithbāt al-‘ilal, 97. 60. Al-Tirmidhī, Ithbāt al-‘ilal, 86–87. 61. For Thawrī’s criticism of Abū Ḥanīfa, see Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ, 7:13. 62. See Dajani, ‘Ibn ʿArabī’s Conception’, 61–76. 63. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:261–62.

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64. ‘Among the aqṭāb of this station are ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal’ (Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:200). 65. Al-Qushayrī, al-Risāla, 49. On al-Khaḍir, see Sands, Ṣūfī Commentaries, 79–82. 66. Chodkiewicz, Seal, 107. See also Chapter 6, The Four Pillars (idem, 89–102). 67. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:200. 68. Based on the breakdown given by Winkel in Mysteries, 12. 69. She translated these sections into five different books for Kazi publications. See the series of books titled Ibn al-ʿArabī on the Mysteries of Purification and Prayer, Ibn al-ʿArabī on the Mysteries of Fasting and so on. 70. Winkel, Living Law, 23–24; Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:446.

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8 The ‘Scale’ of ʿAbd al-Wahh ā b al-Shaʿr ā n ī

S

haʿrānī met Suyūṭī at the age of twelve, three months before the latter’s death, and received some scholarly transmissions from him. He highly admired Suyūṭī, studied his writings and kept in contact with Suyūṭī’s close friend and partner on the Sufi path, ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Mughayzil al-Shādhilī. The latter gave him access to private letters in which Suyūṭī described some of his spiritual experiences.1 The greatest influence on Shaʿrānī, however, came from the writings of Ibn ʿArabī, as we have previously seen. The jurisprudential ideas of Ibn ʿArabī and Suyūṭī, as discussed in the previous chapter, were synthesised and worked into a novel theory by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī. This theory he called ‘al-Mīzān’ (the Scale). Shaʿrānī first introduced his Scale in brief in the introduction to Kashf al-ghumma, a work that was discussed in Part 1. There, the summary of the Scale served as a guide for the reader on how to understand and deal with apparent contradictions in the ḥadīth literature. Shaʿrānī later dedicated two works to this idea. The first was a slim volume titled al-Mīzān al-khaḍiriyya (The Scale of al-Khaḍir) – the reason for this name will be given below – also known as al-Mīzān al-ṣughra (The Smaller Book of the Scale). This first work was mostly an introduction to the theory behind his idea but included a small section demonstrating it on a practical level. Finally, in his old age, Shaʿrānī wrote his al-Mīzān al-Shaʿrāniyya (Al-Shaʿrānī’s Scale), also known as al-Mīzān al-kubrā (The Large Book of the Scale), in 213

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which he both vastly expanded the theoretical introduction and gave an extensive application of the theory covering all main chapters of jurisprudence, making it a complete work of comparative fiqh. This was no ordinary work of comparative fiqh, however. Instead of giving the evidence for each madhhab’s position on any issue, Shaʿrānī instead offered the wisdom behind that position and how each position would be classified according to his ‘Scale’. The Scale Shaʿrānī’s idea of the Scale was simple: that wherever the Qurʾān, sunna, or practices of the Companions seemed to offer contradictory teachings, it was never a case of contradiction, and, contrary to most scholars, rarely a case of abrogation. Instead, he held that the sharīʿa provided two or more acceptable options on the vast majority of actions for which it provided guidance, in order to be more accommodative and flexible. The Prophet Muḥammad did things in more than one way in order to give leeway to his followers, for his sharīʿa would be the final sharīʿa that would last until the end of time and suit all people at all times. These different options fell into different degrees of leniency and stringency, and people were to choose the options that suited their particular abilities at any given time. When a person looked at all the different options provided by the sharīʿa, he or she should evaluate them based on this idea of the different degrees of stringency. This is the reason why it was called the Scale. Muslim jurists often disagreed on the ‘correct way’ to do things; in fact, matters of consensus were extremely rare. A natural result of the multiplicity of opinions formulated by jurists was that one jurist’s way of fulfilling a divine command might be easier or more difficult than another’s. Ibn ʿArabī had likened these differences to the difference in the teachings of God’s Messengers. When seen as separate created entities – from what he calls the point of view of differentiation (farq, literally ‘separating’) – the Messengers each had their own unique rank, and each might have different strengths or gifts that others did not; the Qurʾān said: ‘We favoured some of these Messengers above others’ (Q 2:253). However, when one looks instead from a unitive perspective (jamʿ, literally ‘bringing together’) – that is, focusing on the Absolute from whom all creatures borrow their existence – the differences

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 215 fall out of view. The Qurʾān quotes Muḥammad and his followers, speaking from that point of view, saying: ‘We make no distinction between any of His Messengers’ (Q 2:285). From this perspective, the Knower of God sees that the ‘easy’ path can be just as effective as the ‘difficult’ one. It is the same with the positions of the different jurists: whether the school of law (madhhab) that one followed took a more difficult or a more lenient position on a particular action, the more difficult option did not guarantee a higher rank with God. All paths were equally effective. He who reaches this spiritual insight will no longer believe in abrogation as classically defined by the jurists.2 Undoubtedly, however, returning to a different point of view after that unifying vision, one would return to appreciating the different merits of the different paths, just as Muslims hold that ultimately the Prophet Muḥammad was superior to the other Prophets, and that every Prophet had his own unique rank. This discussion was the origin of Shaʿrānī’s conception of the Scale. In his larger abridgement of the Futūḥāt, Shaʿrānī expressly linked this passage to the idea of the Scale, saying: ‘When I experienced this spiritual station first hand, I put down a Scale through which one could act upon all ḥadīths and the positions of the imāms’; then he summarised the idea of the Scale.3 In the Mīzān he claimed that this understanding was supplemented by a vision of al-Khaḍir, the figure who taught wisdom to Moses in the Qurʾān, whom Ibn ʿArabī before him had also met. Many Sufis believed that God had given Khaḍir an extraordinarily long life so that he could meet all of God’s saints until he would finally die with the end of the world, while others believed that he was dead but that his spirit materialised in the physical realm so that he could be mistaken for a living person. Khaḍir taught Shaʿrānī to understand the differences of opinions in terms of different degrees of leniency or strictness. By weighing the positions of the schools according to this ‘Scale’, they no longer appeared at odds and were harmoniously united in a grander vision. In Shaʿrānī’s understanding, the sharīʿa was made up of the sum of all the different options provided by the Qurʾān, sunna and practice of the Companions (as well as the schools which are ultimately built upon the above). If one were to take away any of the opinions from these sources, he would be taking away part of the sharīʿa, just as one would pull a thread out of a woollen garment. He therefore united

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the different schools into one large school encompassing an array of different options on most matters. He wrote: I praise Him with the praise of he who came to know, through experiential knowledge of the ‘Source [inner workings] of the sharīʿa’, that the sharīʿa of Muḥammad came as an expansive sharīʿa that combines the stations of islām, īmān and iḥsān, and that there is no difficulty or constriction in it for any Muslim. He who claims such a thing is only lying against the sharīʿa and being difficult himself, for God has said: He has placed no hardship in your religion (Q 22:78). Whoever attributes hardship to the religion has gone against the clear statement of the Qurʾān [. . .] Know that the sharīʿa has come with two degrees in terms of its commands and prohibitions: stringency and leniency. That is because all the people who are expected to act upon it, at all times and in all places, fall within two groups: those who are stronger and those who are weaker, whether it be in their faith or their physical strength. Those who are strong are addressed with stringency and those who are weaker are addressed with leniency, and each of them in doing so is following a path (sharīʿa) from his Lord. The strong one is not commanded to descend to the dispensation and the weak one is not commanded to ascend to the firmer action. For those who act upon this scale, all differences among the evidence of the sharīʿa or the positions of the scholars are removed.4

Shaʿrānī criticised the followers of the different schools of law for ‘seeing with only one eye’ – that is, thinking that the sharīʿa had only one level in which only one position on any one matter could be correct, rather than different levels of stringency and leniency. Because of this, if the imām they followed chose one judgment, whether it be a stringent or lenient one, they called it ‘his madhhab’, as if it were the only judgment that that imām would have accepted, and they asked the rest of the Muslim world to follow that opinion only and reject all others.5 Shaʿrānī claimed that many of the answers attributed to the imāms were context-specific: had the imām who had given judgement X on a particular act been asked the same question by different people or in different circumstances, he may have given judgement Y instead, in agreement with those other imāms who had given such a judgment.6 Shaʿrānī therefore criticised the followers of different schools for telling people in some circumstances that there was no way out of their problem in their

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 217 own school and that the solution lay in another, thus forcing them to cross school boundaries out of necessity, not conviction – which was in theory not looked upon favourably.7 Instead, he argued that the scholars of the different schools should realise that each person must necessarily be in a state in which he can either follow the more stringent or more lenient judgement, and that they must give him the judgment that suits him, regardless of whether it was chosen by their own particular imām or not.8 For Shaʿrānī, limiting people to one school of law meant removing its expansive nature and forcing people into following opinions that might not suit them in certain circumstances. He wrote: The one with experiential knowledge of this Scale sees all the schools of the mujtahid imāms and the opinions of their followers as part of one sharīʿa for one person that comes in two degrees. Whoever acts upon either of its degrees is correct.9

In other words, all the madhhabs should be combined into one large body of positions. Muslims were to determine freely which position to act upon, based on the context and their circumstances. The Mīzān al-kubrā is divided into a theoretical introduction and a practical application. Shaʿrānī undertook an explanation of the positions of the four schools on the most important acts. He sometimes added positions from outside the four schools, such as those of the Ẓāhirīs, Awzāʿī, Thawrī or even pre-madhhab authorities from the Followers and Followers of the Followers. He provided the divine wisdom (ḥikma) behind each option and then classified them into different degrees of leniency and stringency. The work is therefore a large work of comparative jurisprudence, but where traditional books of this genre would discuss the evidence for each school’s position and attempt to reach a conclusion on the correct answer, Shaʿrānī would instead give a Sufi explanation of the wisdom behind all the different positions and show that they were all correct at the same time. His explanations portrayed the sharīʿa as being accommodative in more than one way – namely, that it takes multiple factors into consideration, such as: • The spiritual attainments of islām, īmān, and iḥsān • Different levels of physical ability

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• Different levels of will power or concentration • Different perspectives on how to best express one’s servanthood / how to best fulfil a command • Different levels of altruism or detachment from worldly things • Different spiritual capacities and powers This last point goes one step further than the first point of the division between islām, īmān and iḥsān. It added the Sufi belief that within the ranks of iḥsān, which the Sufis equated with sainthood, there were different levels of spiritual attainment. The Sufi Ideas Underlying the Theory A number of Sufi ideas can be detected behind Shaʿrānī’s theory. The first is the idea of propriety (adab) in dealing with God. We have seen how Tirmidhī used the word ‘adab’ or propriety as the reason behind a great deal of the sharīʿa’s teachings and explained that not all prohibitions dealt with sinful or destructive matters. Tirmidhī wrote: ‘We have found that prohibitions from [the Prophet] are of two types: prohibition indicating impermissibility (taḥrīm), and prohibition teaching propriety (taʾdīb). Whoever leaves propriety descends from its [high] rank, but whoever jumps at the forbidden falls into perdition’.10 Sufis have always emphasised the proper set of proprieties or ādāb that the Sufi must observe with his Creator, with the rest of creation and with his own self, and so did Tirmidhī.11 The division of the Prophet’s prohibitions into prohibitions of impermissibility and prohibitions teaching adab was used not only by the Sufis, but also by early authorities such as al-Shāfiʿī in al-Risala and Kitāb al-umm,12 Ibn Ḥanbal13 and, earlier still, by Sallām ibn Abī Muṭīʿ (d. 164/780 or 781).14 Shaʿrānī held that the more lenient option was usually the baseline requirement for believers, whereas the more stringent option often represented the way of higher propriety that was expected of the Prophet Muḥammad, his close Companions and the saints and scholars amongst his followers. In other words, not all of the Prophet’s commandments and prohibitions were on the same level. Shaʿrānī heard confirmation of this idea from his greatest teacher, the ‘Shaykh al-Islam’ Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī, who is considered the greatest late authority on the Shāfiʿī school. Anṣārī, who also

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 219 wrote a commentary on Qushayrī’s Risāla in Sufism and was very devoted to Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings, said: There is no contradiction in the words of [the Prophet . . . ] his answers used to differ according to the difference of the questioners and their spiritual stations. How could one compare his answers to Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq to how he answered some Bedouin? He also instructed his followers to address people according to their different intellectual abilities and capacities.15

Second is the concept of spiritual states (aḥwāl) and stations (maqāmāt). Sufi authors have always stated that spiritual travellers go through states of either fear (khawf   ) or hope (rajāʾ), awe (hayba) or intimacy (uns), ‘constriction’ (qabḍ) or ‘expansion’ (basṭ). The latter binary of constriction and expansion is very popular in Sufi writings. While fear and hope are states based on anticipation of the future, constriction and expansion are based on a spiritual experience that comes upon spiritual seekers and dominates them in their immediate present.16 Those who are dominated by the state of constriction feel compelled to behave more cautiously and conservatively in the way in which they deal with God and the world around them, and they are indeed expected to behave that way by God. Yet, those dominated by a state of expansion feel more at ease and are allowed more leeway in their behaviour, or, as Annemarie Schimmel put it, they experience ‘a perfect joy and ease that may develop [. . .] into the feeling of partaking of the life of everything created’.17 This Sufi concept naturally leads to the idea that different people cannot be expected to act in the same way, because they are divided according to different states that demand different types of actions. Furthermore, states such as constriction and expansion are tied to the Sufi understanding of waqt (the moment). A well-known Sufi expression says that ‘the Sufi is the son of his moment’, which means that Sufis respond to every moment with the action that is most befitting of it. Sufis evaluate what comes to them from God in every moment and assess the right course of action demanded by that moment.18 This concept is closely linked to the previous concept of different states, because constriction and expansion are attributed to a spiritual experience that Sufis receive (wārid), which comes upon them and dominates their moment (waqt).19 It is therefore natural for the Sufi

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to assume that the superiority of one action over another is not necessarily intrinsic to itself, but depends on the demands of the moment. What may be the ideal course of action in one moment is inferior at another moment. Hence we see Shaʿrānī write in al-Mīzān that, whenever God inspires a person to act upon the position of one of the mujtahid imāms, it is only because that is what is most befitting of their particular state (ḥāl ) at that particular moment (waqt); likewise, whenever they are inspired to not act upon the position of an imām, it is because that position would have fallen short of what is more perfect and more befitting for them. God is therefore like a loving doctor who inspires the people of eternal felicity to act in every moment according to the position that is most befitting of their state, specifically the most meritorious for them.20 Furthermore, Ibn ʿArabī had always stressed that God reveals himself differently to every created being, so that every single person knows God differently from everyone else and has a unique relationship to God, which no one else has.21 He wrote that the Prophet Yaḥyā had taught him in a vision that ‘each person has a path (to God) that no one else but he travels’.22 I once met in Dubai a Yemeni shaykh of the Shādhilī Sufi path who was well-versed in the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī. I took the opportunity to discuss with him how some Sufis who were dedicated to Ibn ʿArabī, such as Shaʿrānī and Ibn Idrīs, agreed with Ibn ʿArabī’s rejection of taqlīd, whereas others, such as ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulsī, defended taqlīd. In words inspired by Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings, he replied: ‘God reveals himself differently to every human being, so how could any person imitate another?’ It is clear, then, that Shaʿrānī’s Scale easily fits in with the Sufi conception of alternate states and the different demands of different times. The Sufi perspective naturally assumes that people are different and need to act differently, and that even the same individual is required to act differently at different times, especially if they were well-attuned to perceive the propriety that was demanded by what was sent by the divine in every moment. Third is the belief in different levels of spiritual attainment. Throughout the work, Shaʿrānī wrote of how one course of action was more fitting for the greatest of saints (al-akābir), while another was more appropriate for the saints of lesser rank (al-aṣāghir). For the saint, worship – especially the ritual prayer – is not simply an outward physical act, but a source of spiritual

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 221 experience. Different actions within the prayer may be more difficult or easier for a saint, depending on his inner spiritual capacity and his ability to cope with the heaviness or lightness of a given spiritual experience. In other actions within prayer – and in other forms of worship, too – it is the strength of the saint’s will power, determination, focus or presence of mind that determines their necessary course of action. According to Shaʿrānī, no single school provided the options suitable for the greater saints, nor were any more suitable for lesser saints. Rather, the schools are balanced in that each preferred the more difficult option in one act, but the easier option in another. This made all the schools suitable for the general public. However, a clear implication of Shaʿrānī’s conception is that no one school could suit the saints of spiritual experience because their own spiritual experiences, levels of attainment and inner capacities and strengths determined what action they must take at any point of time. Therefore, the saint had to treat the entire sharīʿa as one whole and choose the most fitting action for each requirement based on their specific ability at any given time, seeking always to choose the better or more fitting action for their current state. At the same time, the lay person who is far removed from any of the spiritual experiences of the saints may also treat the sharīʿa as one whole in order to find the easier or more convenient option to suit his own condition or situation. If a lay person chose to restrict himself to a single school, that was fine, and if he did so to avoid following his whims, then that was a noble choice. However, it is clear that for the saint being tied to one school was detrimental as it may force him or her to either undergo a spiritual act that is too much for them to bear, or to follow a lesser option than what they are capable of doing. This idea is an old one among Sufis and mystics; it also made its way into more general works. In his work al-Ṣalātu wa-maqāṣiduhā, Tirmidhī compared statements regarding the prayer of two of the Prophet’s Companions: Saʿd ibn Muʿādh, one of the tribal chiefs in Medina, and the Prophet’s close advisor ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb. Saʿd is reported to have stated that, when he prayed, nothing other than God ever crossed his mind. Although this sounds like a tall order, Tirmidhī claimed that this actually was only considered perfection for the lesser saints. The most complete saints, such as ʿUmar, were

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allowed to be aware of what was other than God in prayer because it did not distract them from Him. ʿUmar famously stated that, while in prayer, he would think of which commanders to appoint and which armies to send. Tirmidhī allowed this for ʿUmar because he was one of the Elect who thought through God, saw through God and heard through God; hence, ʿUmar’s thinking of the affairs of the Muslim community was guided by God. He was a man of inner vision who was not veiled from God; thus, thinking of such things in prayer did not distract him from God. Tirmidhī concluded that the state of ʿUmar in prayer was that of the ‘spiritually strong’, while that of Saʿd was the state of those who are ‘spiritually weaker’.23 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449), the teacher of Shaʿrānī’s own teacher Anṣārī, authored Fatḥ al-Bārī, the most celebrated commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī. Ibn Ḥajar was faced with an apparent contradiction between a ḥadīth in which the Prophet instructed people to stay away from lepers and a ḥadīth according to which the Prophet sat and shared a meal with a leper.24 Here was an action of the Prophet at odds with his oral instruction. After going through five ways that scholars attempted to solve this contradiction, Ibn Ḥajar chose to conclude with the solution of the Sufi commentator on Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī, Ibn Abī Jamra. Ibn Abī Jamra had explained that the action of the Prophet was that of someone with absolute certainty, who knew that things cannot cause effect without God’s permission (one cannot be infected by disease except by God’s will), while the statement of the Prophet was addressed to all Muslims, including those of weaker faith. He said: He who is strong in certainty may follow the action of the Prophet and nothing will harm him. As for he who finds himself weak [in certainty], let him follow the Prophet’s command lest he do an action that would count as ‘contributing to one’s own perdition’ (referring to Q 2:195).25

Ibn Abī Jamra was also keenly aware that people are of different capacities. The Prophet had counselled his followers not to overexert themselves, but he had not given a delimitation for matters of ease or overexertion because he knew that people were of different states. If the Prophet had given a definition of what is easy, some people might have found that definition too difficult for them.26

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 223 The Concept of Leeway versus the Concept of Abrogation The Qurʾān and sunna showed several examples in which Muslims were given a clear choice between different courses of action. However, these examples were few in relation to the totality of the sharīʿa’s teachings. Yet, regarding the vast majority of what remained of the sharīʿa’s teachings where no apparent choice existed, the scholars were faced with different positions attributed to different scholars. These positions were often traced back to different Companions or different narrations about, or statements of, the Prophet Muḥammad himself. In these cases, the scholars usually resorted to the doctrine of abrogation, where they assumed the Prophet must have done things in a certain way at some point and then changed his practice at a later time, and each school of law believed that the practices they had chosen were the final (abrogating) practices, while the practices chosen by other schools were the earlier (abrogated) practices. Shaʿrānī did not agree with this approach. He restricted the doctrine of abrogation to the few cases in which the Prophet Muḥammad himself specified that he was abrogating one practice with another, such as his following statement: ‘I used to forbid you from visiting graves, but now I tell you to visit them’.27 In any case where abrogation was not mentioned by the Prophet Muḥammad, Shaʿrānī considered it unbefitting of Muḥammad’s followers to assume it and to have the audacity to cancel out some of their Prophet’s teachings. This approach was taken before him by Ibn ʿArabī, who had treated opposing texts as cases of choice rather than abrogation. For example, the Qurʾān instructed believers to wipe their feet with water during the ritual ablutions, but the Prophet instructed them to wash their feet. Whereas a scholar such as Ibn Ḥazm concluded that the sunna instruction of washing the feet abrogated the Qurʾānic instruction, Ibn ʿArabī held that the Qurʾān gave the minimum requirement, which was wiping, and that the sunna added the recommended course of action, which was washing.28 Shaʿrānī maintained that, even if it were known that the Prophet Muḥammad used to do something in one way and later switched to another, this was no proof that the earlier way was no longer valid, only that the Prophet Muḥammad preferred the later version. The earlier version was still valid as an option for his followers in those cases in which such actions suited their circumstances.29 Shaʿrānī restricted the doctrine of abrogation through

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which the scholars had explained away the different positions attributed to the Prophet and his Companions, instead expanding the doctrine of choice beyond those places where choice was explicitly offered, to the vast majority of the sharīʿa’s teachings. As Jonathan Brown put it, . . . Only after Sufism had permeated Sunni thinking on law, creating a loftier sphere from which the law could be regarded, did perspectives emerge putting the theory of abrogation in its place. The Sufi jurist Shaʿrānī considered all four schools to be one great school of law, offering each believer a range of positions on any issue and thus the choice between relaxed or more stringent rules on any issue. For him, claims of abrogation were the recourse of those mediocre and narrow-minded jurists whose hearts God had not illuminated with His light. They could not perceive all the interpretive possibilities in the words of God and the Prophet or appreciate that a diversity of opinion was a mercy. By taking the shortcut of stamping Qurʾānic verses or ḥadīths ‘abrogated’, such ulama had restricted the interpretive plurality that God had intended in the Sharīʿa.30

As we have seen, this Sufi perspective originated in the writings of Ibn ʿArabī, which influenced major Sunni authorities such as al-Suyūṭī, and it culminated in the grand theory of the Scale put forward by Shaʿrānī. According to this theory, the Prophet Muḥammad brought to people a sharīʿa with in-built flexibility because it was the final sharīʿa that needed to be suitable for all people and all times thereafter. It was the Seal of the sharīʿas for the Seal of the Prophets. Shaʿrānī’s approach would be adopted by major revivalist figures after him, such as Shah Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī and Aḥmad ibn Idrīs. Shah Walī-Allāh noted with dismay that earlier scholars exaggerated the number of verses abrogated in the Qurʾān up to more than 500! Later, more cautious scholars such as Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 543/1148) and Suyūṭī placed the maximum limit on twenty-one verses, noting that there was disagreement on some of them. Walī-Allāh revisited those twenty-one and brought down the number of abrogated verses in the Qurʾān to only five.31 He did the same with ḥadīth, stating that most cases of apparent contradiction between ḥadīths is only due to a fault in investigation, and there should be a way to apply both.32

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 225 Walī-Allāh wrote two commentaries on selected chapter headings from Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī. Bukhārī’s fiqh opinions can be extracted from the chapter headings to his ḥadīth material, and there is a long tradition of scholars who had dedicated works to their analysis, including Ibn Ḥazm. In one section in the chapter on prayer, Bukhārī discussed the seemingly contrary ḥadīths on whether a man’s thigh may show in front of others (because if thighs were ʿawra, it would be necessary to cover them in prayer). Al-Shāfiʿī and Abū Ḥanīfa held that the thigh was ʿawra. Mālik held that it was not ʿawra. Bukhārī stated that ‘the ḥadīth [indicating that it is not ʿawra] is more authentic, but it is more cautious to act upon the ḥadīth [indicating that it is ʿawra]’. Walī-Allāh did not think that there was a contradiction there. He wrote: As for Mālik’s position that labourers and porters and the like do not have to cover their thigh, we have no doubt of its correctness due to what has been narrated through so many different chains giving us certain knowledge that the Prophet did not burden them and their like with having to cover their thighs down to the knees in prayer. Here is a general rule: the Prophet showed us two approaches to prayer: the prayer of the people of iḥsān, and the prayer of the rest of the believers. How many are those things which he permitted to the latter but forbade the former from doing. If you remember this rule, it will make it easy for you to deal with most places where you see contradiction in matters relating to prayer.33

Ibn Idrīs also followed this approach. He was asked what should be done in cases of two ḥadīths that appeared to contradict each other. The example that the questioner gave is the most famous instance used in such discussions: whether a man breaks the state of ritual purity by touching his genitals. A Companion called Ṭalq saw a Bedouin man ask the Prophet about mistakenly touching one’s genitals during prayer. The Prophet replied: ‘Is it not just a part of you?’ This meant that the ritual purity is not broken and the prayer not affected by this movement. However, a female Companion called Busra reported hearing the Prophet say: ‘Whoever touched his genitals should do wuḍūʾ (ritual ablutions)’. The Mālikī, Shāfiʿī, Ḥanbalī and Ẓāhirī madhhabs followed this latter ḥadīth. They claimed that this ḥadīth must have been spoken at a later time than the first; hence, the first ḥadīth was abrogated. The Ḥanafīs responded that many of the greatest scholars

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among the Prophet’s Companions, such as ʿAlī and Ibn Masʿūd, who were far closer to the Prophet than Busra and far more knowledgeable in jurisprudence, insisted that touching the genitals did not break one’s state of purity. The other camp retorted that these Companions may have missed the second ḥadīth and not known about the abrogation, but the Ḥanafīs thought it impossible that this lady knew something that the Prophet’s closest and most knowledgeable Companions did not know, especially since it was something that concerned them as males and did not concern her. Furthermore, even if one were to imagine, for argument’s sake, that these Companions somehow did not know about this abrogation, how could their great students who studied with Companions from every school and city not have heard about this either? Clearly, they knew something about this topic that neutralised Busra’s ḥadīth, or maybe Busra’s ḥadīth was somehow a mistake. Ibn Idrīs did not think that there was a contradiction between the two ḥadīths at all. The Prophet’s instruction to his Companions to do wuḍūʾ after touching their genitals did not necessitate that touching one’s genitals broke a man’s state of ritual purity. However, one should do ablutions again, thereby acting upon both ḥadīths, and the repeat ablutions ‘would be light upon light!’34 Here, Ibn Idrīs was agreeing with Ibn ʿArabī, Ibn Taymiyya and Shaʿrānī. Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Taymiyya both held that the instruction to redo one’s wuḍūʾ was a recommendation and not indicative that one’s wuḍūʾ was broken.35 Shaʿrānī gave a longer explanation: the state of ritual purity only breaks when something comes out of the genitals (urine or sexual fluid). However, the Prophet taught his close Companions to redo their wuḍūʾ from touching the place from which urine comes out as a form of higher etiquette with God. As for the Bedouins who lived far from the city and had less access to water (like the person who asked the Prophet), farmers, field labourers, new converts to Islam and the like, the Prophet made things easier for them and only asked of them the bare minimum; thus, he did not teach them this higher etiquette. What the Prophet taught his close Companions and those strong in Islam was not the same as what he taught others. Shaʿrānī argued that the Ḥanafīs were ultimately correct in holding that touching the genitals did not break one’s state of purity, but he encouraged those with greater zeal for the religion to redo their ablutions in such cases.36

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 227 Shaʿrānī’s Defence of the Madhhabs In his earlier work Kashf al-ghumma, Shaʿrānī rejected the scholars’ additions to what was strictly revealed in the Qurʾān and sunna. However, in this late work, Shaʿrānī stated that the sharīʿa also embraced the ijtihād of the mujtahids, which was approved by the sharīʿa and became added to it. In both stances he was agreeing with Ibn ʿArabī, who, as we have seen earlier, differentiated between ‘original prophecy’ – that is, the legislation brought by the Qurʾān and the Prophet – and ‘derivative prophecy’, which is the product of the ijtihād of the imāms, who were permitted to derive further rulings from the ‘original prophecy’. According to Shaʿrānī, the different opinions of the imāms were also based on the different circumstances of the people and represented varying levels of stringency and leniency.37 Shaʿrānī claimed that the founding imāms of the schools were among the greatest of God’s saints. The imāms used their spiritual unveiling and knowledge of the secrets of the sharīʿa to take the different ranks and capabilities of the Muslims into consideration. Some of the imāms purposefully chose one judgement for the sake of the weaker Muslims and left the more stringent judgements for other imāms to choose. Their rules were thus based on knowledge of the spiritual reality (ḥaqīqa) and, therefore, were all correct. The imāms then sought the Prophet’s validation for their judgements before making them, as they could see the Prophet’s spirit in the waking state.38 However, the imāms themselves did not provide the answers to every ruling of jurisprudence; those had to be worked out by their students and followers who came after them, who did not necessarily have the same level of gnosis. Shaʿrānī explained that there exists an original ‘source of the sharīʿa’ (ʿayn al-sharīʿa) from which the original imāms derived their opinions, and that their opinions were necessarily correct because they came from this source of the law. Those who reached the requisite level of spiritual progress and unveiling could witness this ‘source’ firsthand and discover where every mujtahid took their opinions from in that original source, seeing with certainty how they were all correct.39 As for the additions that were developed by the followers of these imāms, their positions were correct because they were built on the original positions of the imāms and were connected to them, which meant that the ‘light of the sharīʿa’ ran through them.40

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One of the distinctive features of al-Mīzān al-kubrā is a series of drawn illustrations that Shaʿrānī included to explain his ideas. Perhaps the most important illustration was that of the fisherman’s net, which aimed to illustrate and explain the connection of the positions of the scholars to the source of the sharīʿa. In this image, there is a large circle or ring at the top, representing the source of the sharīʿa. The first row of little rings attached to the large one represents the opinions of the earliest imāms, based directly on this source of the sharīʿa. The second wider row of rings is connected to the first row, and then another wider row connects to that, producing a long succession of rows getting wider and wider, which represent the deductions of successive generations of scholars, each building on the work of their predecessors. The very fact that each generation’s deductions built upon the ones that came before them meant that they were connected to the original source of the sharīʿa and stemmed from it and, therefore, could not possibly be incorrect.41 He did caution, however, that if a jurist affiliated with one school went against that school’s principles to come up with an ijtihād that went against the Qurʾān, sunna or consensus, then he was not truly a follower of that school’s imām but of his own desires, and his ijtihād was to be rejected.42 In his previous work titled al-Mīzān al-ṣughrā, Shaʿrānī’s expression was clearer: Whoever witnesses [the connection of the opinions of the scholars to the source of the sharīʿa] accepts the truth of all the opinions of the scholars who follow the imāms, as long as they do not go against their texts and their principles, or against a consensus, for whoever does that is not a follower of any of the imāms, but a follower of Satan. Therefore, when we refer to the followers of the imāms in this Scale, we refer to those whose speech falls under their principles.43

Thus, Shaʿrānī believed that the derivations of later scholars are correct as long as they built upon the correct positions of the founding imāms, which meant that the ‘light of the sharīʿa’ flowed through them. This may have been an appeal to the functional validity of the positive law of the jurists. Shaʿrānī here may have been thinking in terms of the goals (maqāṣid) of the sharīʿa. The Qurʾān and sunna were sufficient to achieve the sharīʿa’s main goals of reforming the soul, improving the character, achieving true islām or surrender to God and reaching God. The additions of the imāms may add more prohibitions or

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 229

Figure 8.1  The equality of all the schools of law – those still in use and those that are extinct –exists because they all are equally connected to the source of the sharīʿa. The schools named clockwise from top are those of 1) ʿĀʾisha; 2) Ibn ʿUmar; 3) Ibn Masʿūd; 4) ʿAṭāʾ; 5) Mujāhid; 6) al-Layth; 7) Dāwūd; 8) Abū Ḥanīfa; 9) Mālik; 10) al-Shāfiʿī; 11) Ibn Ḥanbal; 12) al-Thawrī; 13) Sufyān ibn ʿUyayna; 14) al-Ṭabarī; 15) ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz; 16) al-Aʿmash; 17) al-Shaʿbī; and 18) Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh. Source: Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:61.

commandments, but these cannot take one backwards or further away from the sharīʿa’s goals. The additions might make the path harder or more detailed, but the main objectives are still achieved. Shāh Walī-Allāh was to make a similar argument. He did not believe that all the positions of the schools were equally correct, but he did believe that all schools were equally effective at achieving the sharīʿa’s main goals of reforming human beings’ character and behaviour, because they covered all the main basics of the sharīʿa.44 What is the ‘Source of the Sharīʿa?’ Different interpretations have been offered to explain what Shaʿrānī meant by this ʿayn al-sharīʿa that some of God’s saints could witness – the word ʿayn

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Figure 8.2  The fisherman’s net. The ring at the top represents the source of the sharīʿa. The next set of rings represents the positions of the imāms of the schools, and each subsequent set represents the positions of the scholars who came after them. This diagram serves to show that the positions of the scholars were necessarily connected to the original source of the sharīʿa and, therefore, were equally correct. Source: Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:62.

has many meanings in Arabic, including source or spring, or the very thing itself, all of which could be discounted from Shaʿrānī’s own writings.45 I propose that the answer lies in a single passage in al-Mīzān itself, which makes it clear that he took his concept of ʿayn al-sharīʿa from Ibn ʿArabī’s Futūḥāt. Shaʿrānī wrote: Shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn said in the seventy-third chapter of the Futūḥāt: ‘ [. . .] When the servant reaches the knowledge of God, “where there is no goal beyond God”, there he will see by way of unveiling and certainty the presences (ḥaḍarāt) of the divine Names, and he will see the connection of all the opinions of the scholars to the presence of the Names. All differences of opinions among the schools of the mujtahids will be removed for him because he will witness the connection of all their opinions to the presence of the Names and Attributes [of God] – not a single one of their opinions goes outside of their presence’. This is like what we have said earlier about the ‘ayn al-sharīʿa al-kubrā.46

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 231

Figure 8.3  The tree of the sharīʿa. The base represents the ‘source of the sharīʿa’. The large branches represent the opinions of the imāms of the schools. The smaller branches represent the opinions of the great scholars among the followers of the imāms. The twigs sprouting from the branches represent the lesser scholars of the schools (‘the students of those great scholars’). The red dots at the top of the twigs represent the answers to new questions in every generation, inferred from the teachings of previous scholars. This also demonstrates that the positions of the scholars are connected to the original source of the sharīʿa and are therefore correct. Source: MS 1227, Laleli, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Istanbul, folio 51.

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Here Shaʿrānī stated that the knower of God will reach a station where he sees the origin of the opinions of the mujtahids in the presence of God’s Names and then explicitly equated it to his description of the ʿayn al-sharīʿa. This passage is not an exact quote from the Fūtūḥāt but rather an explanation or elaboration based on Shaʿrānī’s understanding. Although the concept of the ‘Presences of the Divine Names’ is a major theme in the Futūḥāt, it was not directly mentioned in the actual passage to which Shaʿrānī referred.47 The passage referred to is the same one mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, on the spiritual station of unitive vision: It is similar to when a seeker travels the path as a Ḥanbalī or Ḥanafī, limiting himself to a single school through which he worships God and does not believe in going against it. When he then arrives at this sight, it leads him to worship according to all the schools without differentiating between them.48

Shaʿrānī understood this ‘sight’ to refer to the connection of every judgement to the Names of God, an idea repeated often in the Futūḥāt.49 This, in turn, is similar to the belief of Tirmidhī who wrote that all knowledge stems from the Names of God. God’s ordering of the universe, His judgements and what He made permissible or impermissible, these all emerged from the Names. The sciences of the Names, in turn, could be found in the letters of the Arabic alphabet. He wrote: All branches of knowledge are contained within the letters of the alphabet. This is because the beginning of all knowledge is in the Names of God. From [the Names of God] emerged God’s creation of the world and His governance (tadbīr) of it. Likewise [from the Names of God] emerged His judgements regarding what He made permissible and what He made impermissible. The Names themselves appeared from the letters, and they return to the letters. This is a hidden science, understood only by the saints whose intellects understand through God, and whose hearts are attached to God [ . . . For them] the veils over these letters, as well as the attributes of God’s essence, have been lifted.50

Ibn ʿArabī made explicit reference to this idea of Tirmidhī in his Futūḥāt when he discussed the secrets of the letters of the alphabet. He wrote that

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 233 ‘this science (of the letters) is called the science of the saints, and it is through it that the essences of all created things appear [. . .] That is why Tirmidhī considered it to be the science of the saints (ʿilm al-awliyāʾ)’.51 Therefore, it is almost certain that by ʿayn al-sharīʿa Shaʿrānī referred to the Names of God from which all divine judgements emerge, an idea that he took from Ibn ʿArabī, who in turn took it from Tirmidhī. In Shaʿrānī’s conception of this process, however, the imāms purposefully chose their opinions from amongst a number of correct options that they saw by way of unveiling (kashf   ). This does differ in very important ways from Ibn ʿArabī’s and Tirmidhī’s conceptions of the ijtihād of the imāms and led to very different conclusions about the validity of all maddhab opinions. Are all the Madhhab Positions Correct? Shaʿrānī believed that all four imāms were men of spiritual insight who purposefully chose their positions from the ‘source of the sharīʿa’, using the gift of spiritual unveiling. He went further to say that the greatest saints of his own age could all meet with the Prophet’s spirit in the waking and ask him about the sharīʿa, and if this were the case for the saints of his time, then surely all four imāms had that ability, too, because they were the greatest of God’s saints and came from an earlier, more pristine age.52 This differs from Ibn ʿArabī in that Ibn ʿArabī did not believe that all saints had the same gifts. Some saints, like the mujtahid imāms, could be at the highest spiritual rank possible (the Station of Proximity) and still not be endowed with the gift of spiritual unveiling that saints of a far lower rank may have; there was great variety in the gifts that God gave to those whom He loved, and no two shared an identical experience of sainthood.53 Shaʿrānī insisted that all of the positions of the madhhabs were equally correct. This was problematic, as his treatment of the above-mentioned issue of men touching their genitals will demonstrate. Shaʿrānī ultimately accepted the Ḥanafī position that touching one’s genitals did not break the state of ritual purity. He also agreed with the three other schools in accepting the ḥadīth instructing people to redo their ablutions upon touching their genitals and in acting upon this ḥadīth. His solution was that the Ḥanafī school gave the lenient option, while the other schools gave the stringent option. The problem here, however, is that the others did not simply state that one had to redo

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his ablutions – they stated that touching the genitals broke the state of purity. In other words, by accepting the Ḥanafī position, Shaʿrānī was necessarily saying that the legal ruling held by the other schools was incorrect. He may have agreed with them in acting upon the ḥadīth, but not in its interpretation. While claiming that they were also correct, he was in fact implying that they were wrong. This is a recurring problem throughout Shaʿrānī’s work. One place where this problem is most visible is Shaʿrānī’s attempt to validate all the positions of the madhhabs concerning which foods are lawful or unlawful. When some schools argued that a food was permissible and others said it was disliked, this was not a problem: he could say that some foods were indeed permissible but that eating too much of them would ‘harden the heart’, and hence they should be classified as disliked. However, when the disagreement was that of permissible versus impermissible, Shaʿrānī’s arguments faltered. For instance, horse meat was permissible according to Ibn Ḥanbal and al-Shāfiʿī ‘because royalty and the upper classes enjoyed it’; disliked according to Mālik, ‘because it is not as desirable as cattle meat’; and forbidden according to Abū Ḥanīfa, ‘out of fear that horses will be extinct, leaving armies unable to prepare for jihād’. Donkey meat was forbidden according to Ibn Ḥanbal, al-Shāfiʿī and Abū Ḥanīfa, but disliked (and therefore ultimately permitted) according to Mālik, because people are of different constitution: ‘Those who have no problem eating donkeys can go ahead, but those with an aversion to donkey meat should not eat from it because it would likely harm their health’.54 Surely horse and donkey meat is either permissible or impermissible and cannot be both at the same time, nor could an animal’s meat be religiously disliked – that is, God rewards those who abstain from it for His sake, simply because it is ‘not as desirable’ as lamb or beef, or permissible because royals enjoyed it. This is where later scholars from the Akbarī tradition, such as Aḥmad ibn Idrīs and his followers, did not agree with Shaʿrānī. They seemed to accept flexibility as an explanation for differences in certain types of situations, but not all: 1) If there were different authentic texts from the Qurʾān and sunna, then this is a flexibility given by God and His Messenger. 2) If there were cases were there was no specific instruction in the Qurʾān and sunna, then God and His Messenger may accept more than one way to do things.

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 235 Yet, they did not accept flexibility as an explanation in the following situations: 1) Where an authentic text was at odds with an inauthentic text 2) Where two seemingly authentic texts could not be reconciled, in which case one of them must be inauthentic or contain a mistake in wording 3) Where the differences arose not from contradictory texts but contradictory interpretations of the same text or texts In the cases above, differences could not be attributed to the sharīʿa but to its interpreters, and there was no legitimate reason to appeal to the sharīʿa’s flexibility. To clarify the last situation regarding interpretation, we can use the debate on donkey meat as an example. There is a Qurʾān verse indicating that the only animal that is impermissible to eat is pig (Q 6:145). There is also a ḥadīth that, during the siege of Khaybar, the Prophet prohibited donkey meat as well as any animal that has fed on dung. ʿĀʾisha and Ibn ʿAbbās believed that the verse in the Qurʾān was final, and that donkey meat must be permissible. Ibn ʿAbbās argued that the Prophet must have prohibited his Companions from eating donkeys during the siege of Khaybar once he was informed that those donkeys had fed on dung; the ḥadīth was transmitted incorrectly and made it appear as though the Prophet made two separate prohibitions – one on donkey meat and one on animals that ate dung. Mālik agreed that only pig meat was impermissible, and he interpreted every prohibition on food beside pig meat to indicate that something was disliked. Mālik did not accept Ibn ʿAbbās’s criticism of the wording of the ḥadīth in question and classified donkey meat as disliked. The majority of scholars believed that, despite what the Qurʾān said, the Prophet could make things other than pig meat impermissible and that this was the case with donkey meat. In this case, there could only be one judgement because it all rests on how that one ḥadīth was understood. To give an example from the Akbarī tradition, Ibn Idrīs and his followers combined two verses and a number of ḥadīth about fasting to conclude that fasting while travelling in Ramadan was disliked (agreeing with the Ibn ʿArabī, the Ḥanbalīs, the Ẓāhirīs and other early imāms), whereas the Ḥanafīs, Mālikīs and Shāfiʿīs held that it was recommended (see Chapter 9). Surely these two contrary assessments of the same act cannot be correct at the

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same time, and Shaʿrānī’s argument that one gave a lenient option and the other a more stringent one is problematic. To clarify the type of situation where there was no clear guidance on an issue, we can use the example of saying the taʿawwudh (formula of seeking refuge from Satan) in prayer. For example, Abū Ḥanīfa held that the taʿawwudh should be recited before the Fātiḥa in the first cycle of prayer only, whereas al-Shāfiʿī said it should be repeated before the Fātiḥa in each cycle. Shaʿrānī explained that Abū Ḥanīfa was addressing the spiritually powerful whose determination to keep Satan at bay was so strong that it remained with them throughout the prayer; however, the majority of people do not have as strong a determination and should therefore repeat the formula at the start of each cycle. As for Mālik, he held that this formula was not to be said at all in the obligatory prayers, only in the optional ones. According to Shaʿrānī, this applied to the spiritual elite whose focus on God in prayer was so strong that Satan would be burned if he tried to approach them – ‘as we have seen from our own experience’. He explained that the formula may be recited in optional prayers because people do not treat the optional prayers with the same level of reverence as they do the obligatory ones. Furthermore, those who are praying an obligatory prayer have no choice in doing so, as they are servants doing what they have been commanded to do; optional prayers, however, allow Satan to come and whisper thoughts of pride and self-regard in people for doing more than what they were asked to do and, therefore, the taʿawwudh formula is beneficial here.55 These Sufi scholars, then, accepted Shaʿrānī’s argument on the sharīʿa’s flexibility when this flexibility came from different options that God and His Messenger gave or in scenarios where there is no specific guidance and there is more than one way to do things. They did not accept an absolute flexibility stemming from conflicting interpretations of the sources. Conflicting positions may sometimes be equally valid without being equally correct. Shaʿrānī’s work was more successful at showing the sharīʿa’s flexibility than his stated goal of proving all madhhabs correct. The shaykh of the Mālikīs in the Azhar, Muḥammad ʿUllaysh (d. 1882), received a complaint about Ibn Idrīs’s followers, the Sanūsīs in particular, for diverging from some established Mālikī positions. ʿUllaysh relied mostly on Shaʿrānī in his fatwā, quoting Shaʿrānī’s claim that none of the founding

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 237 imāms chose a single position without first getting it approved by the Prophet in a direct waking vision. The Idrīsī tradition was more in line with Ibn ʿArabī on this, however. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh, the Sufi guide of Ibn Idrīs’s own Sufi guide (see Chapter 9), had held a position in agreement with Ibn ʿArabī: he said that God withheld spiritual enlightenment (fatḥ) from many of those whom He loved for their own good. A great number of Muslims died without having achieved spiritual enlightenment, but on the Day of Judgement they will be in a greater and more perfect spiritual state than others who had achieved spiritual enlightenment in their lives!56 Shaʿrānī’s assumptions that all four imāms must have achieved spiritual enlightenment and unveiling – simply because of their stature – did not convince them. It moreover went against the sayings of the imāms themselves. Did they not stress their fallibility? Did they not warn people not to imitate them but to follow the Qurʾān and sunna? Did Mālik not cry in regret over everything he said out of raʾy? Did al-Shāfiʿī not say: ‘If the ḥadīth on the subject being discussed is proven to be authentic, then throw my (contrary) opinion against the wall. If the ḥadīth is proven to be authentic then that becomes my opinion’?57 Why Shaʿrānī Wrote the Mīzān In al-Mizān al-kubrā, Shaʿrānī took an approach very different from the one in his earlier work Kashf al-ghummah (discussed in Part 1). Kashf al-ghummah emphasised the primacy of the Qurʾān and sunna, and it appeared to do away completely with the schools of law. He still gave a role to the schools in shaping the tradition because he accepted those ḥadīths that the schools acted upon, but the reader of Kashf al-ghummah saw only the ḥadīth and no positive law developed by the schools. The Mīzān, however, did not quote any ḥadīth, only the positions of the scholars; it then went further to attribute the positions of the imāms to inspiration and to claim that they all received validation from the Prophet Muḥammad himself. The reasons for this shift in approach are many. Shaʿrānī himself mentions some of the motivations for writing al-Mīzān al-kubrā. The first motivation of Shaʿrānī mostly concerned the scholars of the madhhabs. The general Sunni belief is that all the imāms of the schools and their followers were rightly guided, but Shaʿrānī was troubled by the attitude of the followers of the schools, the jurists and their imitators, who did not

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seem to truly believe this and who acted as if acts of worship and transactions done according to schools other than their own were invalid. His aim, then, as he repeated again and again, was to make the internal belief of these jurists and their followers match the statements that they proclaimed with their tongues, so that they refrained from attacking the imāms, jurists and followers of other schools.58 He realised that giving the ḥadīth-based evidence for each school’s position was not enough to convince the scholars, for they were already aware of the evidence used by their opponents and trained to defend their school against theirs. He found that only showing the wisdom behind each school’s position from a Sufi perspective was successful at convincing the scholars of the validity of other opinions. Presented with a ḥadīth or rational argument, scholars could easily find a counter-argument or cast doubt on the ḥadīth; yet, presented with the spiritual benefit of the opposing opinion, scholars were more willing to admit the possibility of there being more than one way of doing things. Shaʿrānī had found a crucial role for Sufism in healing the rifts between the schools of law.59 He saw in this work a way to increase the respectful etiquette due to the imāms and those who imitated them and to defend them from those who objected to them or the evidence they used.60 The second motivation concerned the laity and was the same concern that lay behind his earlier work Kashf al-ghummah. The best way to see what Shaʿrānī’s motives were and what the implementation of his ideas meant in practice in his time and age is to look not only at the arguments of the book itself, but also at other works that described his actual practice as a religious authority and Sufi shaykh. One of the most important and most popular of these works is al-Baḥr al-mawrūd, a collection of principles that Shaʿrānī lived by as a Sufi guide. In it he wrote: We took an oath not to restrict any of the laity among the Muslims to follow one particular school only, and not use any of the others, unless that was easy for them. If that was hard for them, we accept every action they do, as long as they remain within the fence of a mujtahid among the mujtahids. This is out of fear of the supplication of the Messenger of God applying to us in his saying: ‘Oh God, he who makes things difficult for my nation, make things difficult for him!’ No one makes things more difficult for them than he who judges that their worship and dealings and marriage contracts are void because of things not stated clearly by the sharīʿa, nor agreed upon by

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 239 the imāms, and commands them to follow only one school, although there are no ḥadīths to show that the other schools are false. [Following a school] is a matter of ‘but if anyone does good of his own accord, it is better for him’ (Q 2:184) [ . . .] It is not correct for the laity to follow only one school, nor could they even imagine doing that. The laity have always, in every age, [simply] prayed and fasted with the [other] Muslims, and none of the imāms ever told them that their worship was invalid, out of mercy for them. However, this restriction has become dominant even with the popular preachers who made the people lose hope in their Lord’s mercy. I have seen some of them say to people: ‘All of your acts of worship are void because you do not follow a particular school, and if your worship is void, then it is as if you have not prayed, and if you have not prayed, then you will become wood for the Hellfire’. This made things very difficult for the women and the laity, and had I not gone to save them, they would have perished out of hopelessness.61

Beyond Shaʿrānī’s expressed motivations, there must have been others based on the socio-political circumstances of his time. In the Mamluk Egypt where Shaʿrānī had grown up, each of the four madhhabs had a chief judge, and the four madhhabs were seen as equals in the sight of the authorities. People had free choice to go to a judge of whichever madhhab they followed and have a ruling given to them according to that madhhab. This balance was overturned by the Ottoman conquest of Egypt, which Shaʿrānī witnessed in his youth. The Ottomans pursued a strong policy of Ḥanafisation. They dismissed most judges and court officials. They appointed two Ḥanafī chief judges who came from the Ottoman heartlands: the qāḍī ʿaskar (chief of the military court) and the qāḍī al-ʿarab (chief of the civilian courts). The four local chief judges of the madhhabs were demoted to the position of deputies to the Ottoman qāḍī al-ʿarab. These deputies were allowed to appoint judges from their own madhhabs as deputies to themselves – which, in turn, was a demotion for these judges as they would have been independent judges before. Other local scholars who had been judges either lost their jobs altogether, or they had their powers severely limited. Local judges were no longer allowed to make their own ijtihād and needed the approval of the Ḥanafī chief judge. The Ottomans also introduced taxes that shocked the local scholars and people, and which the local scholars believed went against the sharīʿa. The most controversial example in Shaʿrānī’s time was a marriage tax introduced in 1521, a

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fee that had to be paid to a judge to register a marriage. This tax was attacked by local scholars as contrary to the sharīʿa and detrimental to the populace. One hundred scholars of the Azhar gathered at the governor’s residence to protest, and people refused to ratify marriages officially under these new regulations; a local chronicler writes that ‘the sunna of marriage was discontinued’ for a period of time. Shaʿrānī’s writings reveal some of the consequences of this aggressive Ottoman Ḥanfisation. One of Shaʿrānī’s beloved teachers, the Mālikī judge Shams al-Dīn al-Laqqānī, resigned from his position as deputy to the Ottoman chief judge when his ruling was overturned by his Ḥanafī superior. Laqqānī insisted that he had a right to practise ijtihād and that a judge’s rulings must be respected; a local chronicler tells us that Laqqānī died of heartbreak soon after.62 Another of his teachers, Fakhr al-Dīn Sunbāṭī, resigned from his post and retired to his home village.63 Some local scholars held that all judges employed by the Ottomans were morally corrupted because their stipends were funded by the illicit taxes imposed by the Ottomans and, therefore, all of their judgements and contracts were void; Shaʿrānī states that his enemies accused him of holding such a view himself, probably in hopes of him getting in trouble with the authorities.64 Hence, it has been suggested that one motivation for Shaʿrānī’s project was the defence of the validity of the three other madhhabs against the Ottoman system where the Ḥanafī madhhab reigned supreme.65 This is certainly true, but must be balanced with the rest of the picture. Shaʿrānī insisted that he showed great respect for the judges of the time and held that all their rulings and contracts were sound, ‘out of respect for the imāms who held these positions to be correct’ (the early authorities of the Ḥanafī school), ‘and out of respect for the [Ottoman] sultan who appointed these judges’.66 When Fakhr al-Dīn Sunbāṭī retired to his village and was left without income, Shaʿrānī convinced him to return to the city and seek re-appointment by the Ottoman authorities.67 He advised people to pay the tax willingly: ‘If one does not give of his own free will, he will give in spite of himself. He is wise who knows his times’.68 Shaʿrānī, in fact, appears particularly troubled by the enmity shown by jurists of other schools to Abū Ḥanīfa and his school – an enmity that was most likely intensified in reaction to Ottoman Ḥanafisation – and dedicated long sections in al-Mīzan to

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 241 defending Abū Ḥanīfa and his opinions. Shaʿrānī predicted that the Ḥanafī madhhab would continue to gain in numbers and that its followers would continue to increase in their respect for its founder until the end times.69 Shaʿrānī had studied all four schools of law and showed great respect to them all. The previous chapter illustrated how Shaʿrānī came to study the Mālikī school and in some ways preferred it over his own Shāfiʿī school for its conservatism in relation to adding obligations and prohibitions beyond what was in the revealed texts. Shaʿrānī also described a dream he had had in his youth, in which Abu Ḥanīfa and Mālik praised him for defending them better than anyone else had ever done.70 In his youth, Shaʿrānī had authored an anti-rationalist tract called Dhamm al-raʾy. Even there, Shaʿrānī’s traditionalism never led to any lack of respect for the Ḥanafī school: Shaʿrānī concluded his tract with extracts from a Ḥanafī work defending Abū Ḥanīfa from the charge that he placed raʾy before ḥadīth. Shaʿrānī repeated the same passages in his lengthy defence of Abū Ḥanīfa in al-Mīzān al-kubrā.71 Shaʿrānī was always an equal defender of all four madhhabs; just as much as he wanted to defend the equal worth of the three embattled madhhabs to the Ḥanafī madhhab, he also wanted to defend the legitimacy of the Ḥanafī madhhab against the criticisms of bitter scholars from other madhhabs. It may be that Shaʿrānī wanted to assure the followers of the three other madhhabs, both scholars and laity, that conforming to the Ḥanafī madhhab was perfectly acceptable and that they should accept the present situation. Whatever his motivations, Shaʿrānī’s change in approach has led some scholars to argue that his al-Mīzān was a departure from the thought of Ibn ʿArabī. They thought that Shaʿrānī was more faithful to Ibn ʿArabī in Kashf al-ghumma, in which he emphasised the distinction between revealed law and human reasoning. As one scholar said, the Mīzān gave prominence to the acceptance of difference of opinion and ‘blur[red] the boundaries between revelation and humanly constructed fiqh’ which meant that it ran ‘directly counter to Ibn ʿArabī’s intention’.72 It is true that Shaʿrānī did elevate the positions of the madhhabs more than Ibn ʿArabī, but it was a difference of degree, just as he elevated the type of inspiration that the madhhab founders received over the one ascribed to them by Ibn ʿArabī. It is important to remember that Ibn ʿArabī also gave a spiritual justification for the different opinions and derivations of the madhhabs over hundreds of

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pages of comparative fiqh in the Futūḥāt in a manner similar to the Mīzān. The main differences between the two are that 1) Ibn ʿArabī very often gave a preference of one position over the others, indicating that, while the different positions had a spiritual/metaphysical justification from one point of view, all positions were not ultimately equal; and 2) Shaʿrānī provided a gradation of these opinions into different levels of stringency and leniency, which is part of his justification for an absolute (divinely ordained) equality of all positions. In practical terms, then, the bulk of the Mīzān actually mirrored the fiqh section of the Futūḥāt, which also gave a wisdom-based justification for the different positions of the schools. It is easy to overlook this fact when one focuses on the theoretical preface of the Mīzān and Ibn ʿArabī’s discussions of legal theory. Ibn ʿArabī did not intend to reject the authority of the scholars altogether; in fact, he approved of their ijtihād on the basis that God honoured the ummah by permitting them to legislate like the Prophets; Ibn ʿArabī simply did not give the legislation of the scholars the same authority as the Prophet’s own legislation and claimed that no one was bound to act by it. He only rejected jurists’ authority when it removed the mercy from the law. If the jurists did not force people to remain within one school, or if they did not force people to follow their added derivations, then he did not question their authority or their place in the community. As Addas stressed, Ibn ʿArabī’s independence of thought did not mean ‘that he reject[ed] the legacy of the masters who preceded him. On the contrary, he was in complete solidarity with them’.73 The case is similar with Shaʿrānī. The Mīzān approved of the authority of the scholars, as well as of the laws that they derived, but it gave the reader the ability to look at a host of juristic opinions and make their own informed decisions without having to obey the scholars if they told them to remain within the boundaries of one school. The Mīzān approved of the scholars’s work and yet at the same time gave freedom to laity. It allowed them to remain within a school if they so wished, and the freedom to remain unaffiliated to any schools if they so wished.74 In this way, it would not be accurate to say that the Mīzān went directly counter to Ibn ʿArabī’s intention. If, in the words of one scholar, the Mīzān ‘made it possible to return to the original mildness of the law’, by preserving all the different opinions in it as correct options,75 then this

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 243 mildness was precisely Ibn ʿArabī’s intention, which was the basis for both his acceptance and rejection of the ijtihād of the schools. Shaʿrānī’s works in general reveal a very powerful and genuine concern for the wellbeing of his fellow Muslims. Like his role model Ibn ʿArabī, Shaʿrānī was concerned with being an inheritor of the mercy of the Prophet Muḥammad to all creation. In his autobiography Laṭāʾif al-minan, which he composed toward the end of his life, Shaʿrānī praised God for having protected him from criticising the opinions of others when he was studying jurisprudence in his youth and for guiding him to accept a multiplicity of opinions. He then quoted Ibn ʿArabī as stating that the multiplicity of schools and mujtahids was a mercy from God, allowing a person to move from one school to another whenever they faced constriction or difficulty, but that scholars took this mercy away by forcing people to remain within one school.76 Shaʿrānī’s al-Mīzān al-kubrā was not a divergence from the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī; it was just as faithful to Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings as Kashf al-ghumma. I have shown elsewhere how Shaʿrānī quoted or paraphrased several passages from Ibn ʿArabī in the introduction to the Mīzān without mentioning their source, possibly to avoid appearing too reliant on one source, especially one like Ibn ʿArabī who, despite his immense popularity, also had some powerful critics among the scholarly class.77 Both works, albeit seemingly very different, highlighted different aspects of the thought of Ibn ʿArabī. One highlighted the rejection of the derivations of the scholars, while the other highlighted their acceptance. The Mīzān aimed to restore the mercy in the law by allowing Muslims to treat all the schools of jurisprudence as one all-encompassing school, or rather to treat the sharīʿa as the sum of all the schools, giving Muslims the freedom to choose the options that suited their different circumstances and abilities, should they wish to follow the opinions of the scholars. It also aimed to create mutual understanding and respect among the schools, at a time where madhhab factionalism appears to have been strong, in part due to Ottoman policies of Ḥanafisation. The theory of the Scale was the result and culmination of decades of careful study and reflection upon the principles of law that Ibn ʿArabī scattered throughout his Futūḥāt. Al-Mīzān al-kubrā, in fact, was a more complete representation of Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas and therefore arguably more faithful to the latter’s teachings than Kashf al-ghumma. By making these ideas more accessible to

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the layperson, one could argue that al-Mīzān al-kubrā was able to achieve Ibn ʿArabī’s own goals of making the law easier for the laity, more than the Futūḥāt itself. Kashf al-ghumma was too radical a solution in Shaʿrānī’s time, both because it was an age of taqlīd and because of the aggressive Ottoman policies in support of the Ḥanafī madhhab and the sultan’s own qānūn (state law). As Reem Meshal noted, ‘[a]mong the measures adopted to pre-empt a potential challenge to these policies, was the censure of scholars accused of engaging in ijtihād (independent judicial reasoning)’.78 Shaʿrānī knew that the Kashf al-ghumma was not what was needed at the time, although he did believe that it would be used as a helpful resource after the emergence of the endtimes saviour of the ummah, the mahdī; this is when people would return to the ‘original pure sharīʿa’ as Ibn ʿArabī had predicted (as the mahdī himself would not possibly have the time to answer everyone’s questions).79 Shaʿrānī felt that a change of strategy was needed for his own time: he felt the need for a work that would defend the three embattled madhhabs, justify the application of the Ḥanafī madhhab that was being forced on the populace and avoid the charge of encouraging ijtihād. As Shaʿrānī himself had stated, ‘[h]e is wise who knows his times’. The Problem of Talf īq The question of the freedom of the laity to remain unaffiliated to a particular school, as well as whether they may seek the easier rulings among different schools, leads to a discussion about talfīq. The word talfīq originally meant ‘to sew two pieces of cloth together’, but ‘in its technical sense, the term is used to refer to putting together elements of two or more doctrines to create a new different doctrine’.80 The concern was that, when the laity mixed and matched positions from different schools, they may create a composite action that was invalid according to all four schools and that their worship or transactions would therefore be invalid. An oft-used example pertains to having a valid state of ritual purity before prayer. Among the four schools, only the Shāfiʿī school allows wiping less than a quarter of the head with water during ablutions, and only the Ḥanafi school holds that touching the genitals does not invalidate one’s state of ritual ablutions. If a man performed the ritual ablutions wiping less than a quarter

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 245 of his head with water and after finishing his ablutions he touched his genitals, he is no longer in a state of ritual purity according to any of the four schools; thus, his subsequent prayer would be invalid. Those who defended the permissibility of talfīq pointed out that it was easily conceivable for an independent mujtahid to reach the conclusion that the Shāfiʿī school was correct as to the minimum requirement of wiping the head and that the Ḥanafī school was correct as to the touching of the genitals; therefore, according to this mujtahid, the man in question was in fact in a state of ritual ablution and his prayer was valid. Just as the position of such a mujtahid would be accepted and respected, so should the ablutions of that layman.81 There were countless scholars before and after the four imāms whose sum of positions on ritual ablutions, prayer, or countless other things did not match the total sum of any of the four schools. In fact, it does so happen that Imām Sufyān al-Thawrī agreed with the Ḥanafīs that touching the genitals does not break the state of ritual ablutions and with the Shāfiʿīs on the minimum requirement for wiping the head. A later mujtahid such as Shaʿrānī also came to the same conclusion and would have had no problem with this type of ritual ablution. However, what mattered was not the existence of a previous imām or school who had held any certain position, but that such a position was conceivable and legitimate based on the Qurʾān and sunna: the schools were not in and of themselves the yardstick for the truth, only the Qurʾān and sunna were. Sanūsī wrote: ‘Neither a layman nor a muftī is bound within the parameters of the four schools’.82 The fact is that the scholars of the four madhhabs accused each other of performing invalid prayers with invalid ablutions based on the differences among themselves, and their positions were therefore not the final say on what was acceptable or not. According to the Shāfiʿī school, the prayer of the Mālikīs was invalid because they did not recite the basmala, and the prayers of the Ḥanafīs were invalid if they touched their genitals and did not redo their ablutions. According to the Ḥanafīs, the prayers of the Shāfiʿīs were invalid if they bled and did not redo their ablutions. What ultimately mattered to each school was their own criteria alone, not the collective criteria of all schools. Scholars of the different schools usually respected each other’s ijtihād and hoped that God would accept the praxis of every school because they tried their best. Why should this be different with regard to a new position?

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From the point of view of those who did not believe in taqlīd, a truly unacceptable case of talfīq would have to go against all the interpretive possibilities allowed by the Qurʾān and sunna. It is by failing to live up to the standard of any single ḥadīth that talfīq becomes problematic, not by failing to live up to the standards of the madhhabs as independent authorities. Talfīq is a problem if it goes against the basic building blocks of ijtihād – the Qurʾān and sunna – not the madhhabs which themselves are built upon countless building blocks. A number of scholars working from within the framework of the Post-Classical Late Sunni Tradition, and for whom the four schools were authoritative in and of themselves, spoke in defence of talfīq in the Ottoman period.83 Some scholars justified it by showing that previous well-respected mujtahids had mixed elements from the different schools in their fatwās; if the result of these scholars’ ijtihād was accepted, then the same results should be accepted if they were chanced upon by the laity. They also appealed to the social utility of talfīq and the fact that the laity did it all the time without knowing. Talfīq was a source of ease for the laity and often constituted a social need.84 Debates from within the four-school framework carry on today, with perhaps wider acceptance for it now than in pre-modern discussions. However, this was never an issue for those working from outside the fourmadhhab framework. Notes  1. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:55.   2. See Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:43.  3. Al-Shaʿrānī, Mukhtaṣar al-Futūḥāt, 1:543–44.  4. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:5–6.  5. Al-Shaʿrānī, Kashf al-ghumma, 1:13.  6. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-khaḍiriyya, 20.   7. This referral of people from a muftī or judge of one school to another was not infrequent. See Rapoport, ‘Legal Diversity’, 220–21.  8. Al-Shaʿrānī, Kashf al-ghumma, 1:13.  9. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:15. 10. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Manhiyyāt, 6. 11. See Ohlander, ‘Adab, in Ṣūfism’, in EI3; al-Tirmidhī, Adab al-nafs, 63–66. 12. See al-Shāfiʿī, al-Umm, 7:305; idem, al-Risāla, 1:343–53. 13. See Abū Yaʿlā, al-ʿUdda, 2:425–26.

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 247 14. According to the early scholar Sallām ibn Abī Muṭīʿ (d. 164/780 or 781), the Companion ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar rebuked his student Abū Dakhīla for paraphrasing his statement that the Prophet forbade act X as ‘the Prophet declared act X to be ḥarām’. After narrating this incident on the authority of Abū Dakhīla’s son, Sallām commented: ‘It is as if [Ibn ʿUmar] was saying that from amongst the Prophet’s prohibitions there were things prohibited for the sake of adab’ (see the discussion in Ibn Rajab, Jāmiʿ, 2:158–60). 15. Al-Shaʿrānī, Laṭāʾif al-minan, 80. 16. Al-Qushayrī, al-Risāla, 156–60; Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 127–29. 17. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 128. 18. Al-Qushayrī, al-Risāla, 151. 19. Al-Qushayrī, al-Risāla, 156. 20. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:11. 21. See Chittick, Imaginal Worlds, 137–60. 22. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 3:349. 23. Al-Tirmidhī, al-Ṣalāt, 59–64. 24. Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī narrated the ḥadīth of the Prophet eating with a leper and then criticised it, stating that a more authentic chain has ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb as the one who sat and ate with a leper. See al-Tirmidhī, al-Jāmiʿ, Kitāb al-aṭʿimah, bāb mā jāʾa fī al-akl maʿ al-majdhūm. Scholars noted this in their discussions but still found a contradiction between the statement of the Prophet and the action of ʿUmar. 25. Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, 10:167; Ibn Abī Jamra, Bahjat al-nufūs, 4:133. 26. Ibn Abī Jamra, Bahjat al-nufūs, 3:217. 27. Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Kitāb al-Janāʾiz. 28. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā bi-l-āthār, 3:17–21; Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:343. The verse on ablutions states: ‘Wash your faces and your hands up to the elbows, and wipe your heads and your feet up to the ankles’ (Q 5:6). It should be noted here that many Sunni scholars argued that the diacritical marks on the word ‘feet’ in the verse joins it to the items to be washed, not wiped, despite it coming after the command ‘and wipe’; this was done to support the general Sunni position that feet are to be washed, against the Shīʿa who held that feet are only to be wiped. Both Ibn Ḥazm and Ibn ʿArabī rejected this claim and insisted that the verse could only be understood to mention the wiping of the feet, and that the washing is only to be found in the ḥadīth literature. Ibn ʿArabī’s position of choice between wiping and washing was held by Ṭabarī before him. 29. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:19.

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30. Brown, Misquoting Muhammad, 102–3. 31. Al-Dihlawī, al-Fawz, 58–68. 32. Al-Dihlawī, Ḥujjat Allāh al-bālighah, 2:256. 33. Al-Dihlawī, Sharḥ tarājim, 149. 34. Ibn Idrīs, al-ʿIqd al-nafīs, 67. 35. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:355; Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ al-fatāwā, 21:222. 36. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:142; idem, Laṭāʾif al-minan, 80. 37. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:35; idem, al-Mīzān al-khaḍiriyya, 25. 38. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:54–55. 39. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:27–29. 40. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:44. 41. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:62. 42. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:5. 43. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-khaḍiriyya, 7. 44. Al-Dihlawī, Fuyūḍ al-Ḥaramayn, 38. 45. For a critique of each proposal, see Dajani, ‘Ibn ʿArabī’s Conception’, 176–77. 46. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:39. 47. On the ‘presences of the names’, see Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 4–6. 48. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:43. 49. See Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:39, 508. 50. Al-Tirmidhī, Ṭaḥṣīl, 104–5. A similar passage from his Kitāb ʿilm al-awliyāʾ has been translated by Radtke and O’Kane as part of an appendix to Concept, 223–25. 51. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:190. 52. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:54–55. 53. On the varieties of ranks and degrees of sainthood, see Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, Chapter 73. 54. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 2:72. 55. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:178–79. 56. Al-Lamaṭī, al-Ibrīz, 499–500. 57. Al-Sanūsī, Īqāẓ al-wasnān (Dār al-Ṣāliḥ edition), 173–77. 58. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-khaḍiriyya, 8. 59. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:14. 60. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-khaḍiriyya, 78–79. 61. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Baḥr al-mawrūd, 223. The continued importance given to this work over the years is indicated by the fact that the main manuscript upon which the modern editor relied was made into a religious endowment at a Damascene

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the ‘scale’ of ʿabd al-wahhāb al-shaʿrānī  | 249 institute of learning by the city’s most celebrated ḥadīth scholar in recent memory, Badr al-Dīn al-Ḥasanī (d. 1935) (see the editor’s introduction to Shaʿrānī, al-Baḥr al-mawrūd, 26). 62. Meshal, ‘Antagonizing Sharīʿas’, 201–2. 63. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Ṭabaqāt al-ṣughrā, 66–67. 64. Al-Shaʿrānī, Laṭāʾif al-minan, 315–16. 65. Ibrahim, ‘Al-Shaʿrānī’s Response’, 134–35. 66. Al-Shaʿrānī, Laṭāʾif al-minan, 315. 67. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Ṭabaqāt al-ṣughrā, 67. 68. Winter, Society and Religion, 187. 69. See for example al-Mīzān al-khaḍiriyya, 54–76; idem, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:77–89. 70. Al-Shaʿrānī, Latāʾif al-Minan, 222–25. 71. Al-Shaʿrānī, Dhamm al-raʾy, 143–70. 72. Pagani, ‘Meaning of Ikhtilāf ’, 205–6. 73. Addas, Voyage, 4. 74. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:25. 75. Pagani, ‘Meaning of Ikhtilāf ’, 194. 76. Al-Shaʿrānī, Laṭāʾif al-minan, 79. This work was composed in the year 960/1553. 77. See Dajani, ‘Ibn ʿArabī’s Conception of Ijtihād’, 187–91. Among the generation of Shaʿrānī’s teachers and teacher’s teachers, there were a number of critics of Ibn ʿArabī, including Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī and his student al-Sakhāwī, as well as al-Biqāʿī. 78. Meshal, ‘Antagonistic Sharīʿas’, 184. 79. Al-Shaʿrānī, Kashf al-ghummah, 10–11. 80. Ibrahim, ‘School Boundaries’, 31. 81. Ibrahim, ‘School Boundaries’, 96–97. 82. Al-Sanūsī, Īqāẓ al-wasnān, 414. 83. The very term talfīq first appeared during the Mamluk period, after the concept of ‘seeking the easiest opinions’ had become an acceptable opinion. However, it was only during the Ottoman period, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that scholars began to explicitly defend the permissibility of the practice (Ibrahim, ‘School Boundaries’, 98–101). 84. Ibrahim, ‘School Boundaries’, 90–93.

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Part 3 The Akbarī Madhhab in Practice and its Influence on the Modern World

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9 A ḥ mad ibn Idr ī s and the Implementation of Ibn ʿ Arab ī ’s Jurisprudence in the Nineteenth Century

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t is difficult to know how many Sufis and scholars followed the jurisprudential thought of Ibn ʿArabī when it came to their own private worship, regardless of the school with which they may have officially been affiliated. It was not uncommon throughout Muslim history for scholars to take official positions as judges or muftīs in one school, due to state sponsorship or other reasons, even though their own personal convictions and private worship accorded to another. In the nineteenth century, however, we have a remarkable phenomenon: the jurisprudential thought of Ibn ʿArabī was implemented and followed on a large scale by the different Sufi ṭuruq and scholars that constituted the Idrīsī tradition. It was perhaps the first time that the madhhab of Ibn ʿArabī, as a set of principles of jurisprudence and positive law, came ‘alive’ as a school (beside perhaps the circle of Ibn ʿArabī’s immediate disciples). So far, however, all scholarship has attributed these teachings to the direct ijtihād of the eponymous founder of the Idrīsī tradition, Aḥmad ibn Idrīs (d. 1837), and overlooked the influence of Ibn ʿArabī. This is because Ibn Idrīs was a highly accomplished scholar, a master of Islamic disciplines such as ḥadīth and Qurʾānic exegesis, who proclaimed himself to be a fully independent mujtahid. Ibn Idrīs was also treated as an inspired authority by his students and did not feel the need to cite any previous authorities. Ibn Idrīs’s biographer O’Fahey wrote: 253

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What is striking is how rarely he ever cites any previous authorities. In his lectures, Ibn Idrīs interprets the Qurʾān and sunna ‘straight’ on his own authority. For him, ijtihād was a real and living process, not an abstract ideal [. . .] Thus, Ibn Idrīs seems not only to have claimed the right to and to have exercised absolute (muṭlaq) ijtihād, but to have deliberately defied the sad judgement of Ibn Khaldūn, ‘The person who would claim independent judgement nowadays would be frustrated and have no adherents’.1

Ibn Idrīs certainly did interpret the Qurʾān and sunna ‘straight’ on his own authority, as O’Fahey put it, and he did it frequently – he had all the intellectual tools and qualifications needed to do so. However, when it came to Ibn Idrīs’s most important teachings on jurisprudence and the very ideas behind his own claim to ijtihād in the first place, Ibn Idrīs was, for the most part, applying and popularising the opinions and principles of Ibn ʿArabī. The Importance of Aḥmad ibn Idrīs Aḥmad ibn Idrīs was a nineteenth-century Moroccan Sufi and scholar who spent more than thirty years preaching in the Ḥijāz, mostly in Mecca, where he acquired great fame and attracted a great deal of outstanding and highly influential students. In the estimation of Itzchak Weismann, Ibn Idrīs was one of ‘the two most outstanding religious reformers of the premodern era of Islam’.2 John Voll summed up the range of the achievements of the Idrīsī tradition: The achievement of Aḥmad ibn Idrīs was not the establishment of a single mass movement for revitalising Islam. What he did accomplish was to lay the foundations for an important revivalist tradition in Islam. The Idrīsi tradition gave birth to leaders of holy wars, men who established religious states, and a number of important centralised tariqas. It was an important feature of the Islamic world in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its success was such that observers at the end of the nineteenth century felt that it was the source of much of the Islamic dynamism of the time.3

His Education Aḥmad ibn Idrīs was born in Morocco in 1750, to a family from the descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad, and he memorised the Qurʾān and several Islamic texts before going to Fez at the age of twenty to study at the

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ibn ʿarabī’s jurisprudence in the nineteenth century  | 255 Qarawiyyīn, one of the Muslim world’s leading centres of religious learning. At that time, reforms had been instituted by Sultan Mūlāy Muḥammad (r. 1757–89) which in some ways resembled those of the Almohad sultans at the time of Ibn ʿArabī. This sultan encouraged a focus on Qurʾānic exegesis, canonical collections of ḥadīth, and early works of jurisprudence, rather than the short codified compendia of law (mukhtaṣars) that had become popular since the seventh/thirteenth century.4 One of Ibn Idrīs’s main teachers at the Qarawiyyīn was the great traditionist Ibn Sūda, described by the Egyptian historian al-Jabartī as ‘the crescent of the Muslim West’, who authored a major commentary on the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and was ‘one of the most influential scholars of his day in Morocco, both politically and intellectually’.5 Ibn Sūda taught Ibn Idrīs the six canonical collections of ḥadīth, as well as other texts on the science of ḥadīth.6 These reforms gave Ibn Idrīs the opportunity to learn the ḥadīth sciences and the science of Qurʾānic exegesis for which his lessons became famous. Ibn Idrīs excelled as a student and became a teacher himself in Fez in the 1780s and 1790s. These policies of Mūlāy Muḥammad may have prepared the way for Ibn Idrīs’s reception of Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings, which he took from his Sufi teachers in Fez. Ibn Idrīs’s teachings on ijtihād, however, went far beyond the conservative Moroccan reforms. For example, Ibn Idrīs’s disciple Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Sanūsī (d. 1859) had studied in the same milieu as that of Ibn Idrīs in Fez, had undergone a similar education and shared at least one teacher with him, Ibn Kīrān (d. 1812); yet, he was shocked when he was first confronted with the teachings of Ibn Idrīs.7 Sanūsī first met Ibn Idrīs in Mecca. He wrote: ‘I did not accept him because he did not follow the schools of law. I said to myself, “He is a Khārijite!”’ It was only after repeated dream visions of the Prophet that Sanūsī came to accept Ibn Idrīs as a spiritual authority and submitted himself to him as his disciple.8 While studying at the Qarawiyyīn, Ibn Idrīs learned Sufism from a set of teachers other than those who taught him the sharīʿa. His main spiritual guide was ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Tāzī (d. 1792 or 1798) with whom he spent four years until al-Tāzī’s death. He was considered a master in two ancient Sufi paths, the Shādhiliyya and the Naqshbandīyya, as well as a third new spiritual path, the Khaḍiriyya, that began with his own teacher, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh (d. 1132/1720). Ibn Idrīs took all three of these paths

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from Tāzī,9 as well as others including the Ḥātimiyya of Ibn ʿArabī, all of which he would later pass on to Sanūsī.10 The Naqshbandī and Ḥātimī paths that Ibn Idrīs took from Tāzī connected him to Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Qushāshī (d. 1071/1661), a highly influential Sufi and scholar in Medina who left behind a long-lasting legacy. Although famous as a master of the Shaṭṭārī path, Qushāshī was also known as the foremost expounder of Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings in the Ḥijāz, a role that was continued by his student Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī (d. 1101/1689).11 For Ibn Idrīs, however, the most important chain that Tāzī gave to him was that of Tāzī’s teacher Dabbāgh because of its short chain. This path was called the Khaḍiriyya because Dabbāgh claimed to have received it from al-Khaḍir. Dabbāgh had another disciple by the name of Aḥmad ibn al-Mubārak al-Lamaṭī, who was a highly accomplished Moroccan scholar.12 This scholar wrote down the teachings of his unlettered spiritual master in al-Ibrīz, which would become one of the most popular Sufi works ever written. Lamaṭī often supplemented Dabbāgh’s teachings with the writings of Tirmidhī, Ibn ʿArabī and Shaʿrānī.13 Among Dabbāgh’s teachings is that a saint who has received spiritual illumination will always know right from wrong and not be bound to any school of law. This, according to Lamaṭī, in words reminiscent of Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings, is because they are constantly in the presence of the Prophet and in a state of spiritual witnessing of God, so that they know what God and His Messenger intended in the obligations that they made. Even if all the schools of law vanished from the Earth, such a saint would be able to revive the sharīʿa, but it is only the most perfect saints at the very top of the hierarchy who know the sharīʿa in its entirety.14 Thanks to the scholarship of Lamaṭī, Ibn Idrīs could have the teachings of his spiritual guide Dabbāgh side by side with those of Tirmidhī, Ibn ʿArabī and Shaʿrānī in one work.15 After the deaths of Tāzī and a subsequent shaykh, Ibn Idrīs described meeting with the Prophet Muḥammad and al-Khaḍir in a waking vision. In this vision, Ibn Idrīs was given his own litanies to form the basis of his own spiritual way.16 In the year 1799, at the age of forty-nine, Ibn Idrīs arrived in Mecca, intending to spend the rest of his life in the two holy sanctuaries. He spent almost thirty years there, teaching mostly in Mecca, but also in Medina, al-Ṭāʾif and the Yemen.

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ibn ʿarabī’s jurisprudence in the nineteenth century  | 257 Ibn Idrīs as Teacher Ibn Idrīs attracted a great following in Mecca and taught a circle of some of the Muslim world’s greatest scholars and Sufis who would change the face of the Muslim world and its history. Chief among them is Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad ʿUthmān al-Mirghanī (d. 1852) and Ibrāhīm al-Rashīd (d. 1874), whose Sufi paths, being extensions of that of Ibn Idrīs, attracted enormous followings and left a great impact on the Muslim world. In Mecca, Ibn Idrīs’s teachings against taqlīd and his claim to absolute ijtihād aroused the anger of many scholars. The local Meccan scholars attempted to test Ibn Idrīs, but he proved himself as both a mujtahid and expert traditionist.17 In a final attempt, the scholars asked the great Egyptian scholar and Sufi Aḥmad al-Ṣāwī (d. 1825), who had come on pilgrimage, to debate him. Ṣāwī lost the debate to Ibn Idrīs and even requested initiation into the latter’s Sufi path!18 In 1827, Ibn Idrīs moved to the Yemen where he spent the last ten years of his life, having left Sanūsī as his representative in Mecca.19 He was wellreceived by the scholars of Yemen; the chief judge of Ṣanʿāʾ, Muḥammad al-Shawkānī (d. 1834), ‘lavished praise on him and advised people to obtain as much of his learning as possible’.20 Although they never met, they had corresponded with each other by mail. Shawkānī was one of the greatest Muslim thinkers of that age. He had been born into a Zaydī Shīʿī family and educated as such, but then became more or less Sunni. In jurisprudence, he was an independent mujtahid who followed the way of the TraditionistJurisprudents, but very much influenced by Ibn Hazm and the Ẓāhirīs. Shawkānī considered himself a non-Dāwūdī ẓāhirī in the sense of a textualist who did not subscribe to Dāwūd’s particular school of jurisprudence. He held that the ẓāhirī way was the way of the early Muslims, and all those who held on to the texts throughout the centuries, among them Dāwūd and his school were but one example. He criticised Dāwūd’s Ẓāhirī madhhab for rejecting a type of ‘obvious’ inference called dilālat al-naṣṣ which the Ẓāhirīs classified as a type of qiyās, whereas Shawkānī argued that it was not qiyās and should not be rejected.21 In his early works as a Sunni TraditionistJurisprudent, Shawkānī had followed Ibn Taymiyya in his attacks on Ibn ʿArabī and other Sufis whom he believed to be pantheists, but he reversed his position on this towards the end of his life and publicly renounced his early criticism of Ibn ʿArabī. Shawkānī even counted Ibn ʿArabī as one of

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the greatest of God’s saints and transmitted the Futūḥāt with a chain of authorisations back to the author.22 Shawkānī and Ibn Idrīs were therefore very much kindred spirits (although there is also a possibility that Ibn Idrīs was behind Shawkānī’s reversal of opinion on Ibn ʿArabī). Ibn Idrīs finally settled in Ṣabyā in the area of ʿAsīr – then part of the Yemen but today part of Saudi Arabia – where he would be buried. A great number of students from the Sudan, East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula’s Red Sea coast flocked towards him. The influx of Sufis to the Yemen aroused the anger of the local Wahhābī scholars of ʿAsīr, who set up a debate with Ibn Idrīs, which was recorded by one of his students. One of the central topics of debate was around the Wahhābī scholars’s accusation that Ibn Idrīs adhered to the ‘creed’ of Ibn ʿArabī.23 As Ibn Idrīs’s biographer O’Fahey noted, the arguments made by Ibn Idrīs in defence of Ibn ʿArabī were similar to the arguments of Shaʿrānī.24 The Yemeni muftī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Sulaymān al-Ahdal (d. 1835), who became Ibn Idrīs’s disciple, wrote that both the elect and the laymen benefitted greatly from the arrival of Ibn Idrīs in Yemen because they saw in his worship and in his dealings a model of perfect following of the Prophet. ‘This is especially apparent in the prayer for he [. . .] prays in the most perfect way as described in the authentic ḥadīth’.25 Ahdal was pointing to the fact that Ibn Idrīs’s prayer did not conform to any single school of law and followed instead the traditions in the most canonical collections of traditions. What Ahdal himself might not have known, however, was that Ibn Idrīs built his complete description of prayer, not by combing through the books of traditions and deciding on the most authentic narrations, but by combing through the Futūḥāt and following Ibn ʿArabī’s preferences to the letter. Ibn Idrīs as Heir to Ibn ʿArabī We have seen how the Wahhābī scholars of ʿAsīr accused Ibn Idrīs of being a follower of Ibn ʿArabī, and how Ibn Idrīs defended Ibn ʿArabī in those debates. The reason behind this accusation is that, after Ibn Idrīs finished his daily teaching sessions, his closest students would hold their own gathering in which they together studied Ibn ʿArabī’s most controversial work, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (The Bezels of Wisdom), as well as Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poem al-Tāʾiyya with its commentary by Dāwūd al-Qaysarī (d. ca 748/1347), a direct intellectual

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ibn ʿarabī’s jurisprudence in the nineteenth century  | 259 descendant of Ibn ʿArabī. These sessions were attended by a jurist who did not approve of what he heard and sent a complaint to the local ruler.26 Although Ibn Idrīs did not himself teach in those sessions, he did instruct his disciples to study Ibn ʿArabī’s work. We are informed of Ibn Idrīs’s recommended curriculum for his disciples in a letter written by Sanūsī. In terms of the sharīʿa, Ibn Idrīs’s instructions were to study several collections of ḥadīth, especially those pertaining to jurisprudential matters, ‘for it is not permissible for anyone to embark upon anything without knowing God’s ruling on the matter and its proof ’.27 Recommended were Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, the Muwaṭṭa’ of Mālik, Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī’s Bulūgh al-Marām (a work of the aḥādīth al-aḥkām genre) and Ibn Abī Zayd’s Risāla in Mālikī jurisprudence which was recommended for its high content of paraphrased ḥadīth. In terms of Sufism, seven treatises were recommended, three of which were those of Ibn ʿArabī: a collection of aphorisms, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam and the Futūḥāt.28 It seems likely that Ibn Idrīs was considered by his students to be an heir to Ibn ʿArabī, or even to have surpassed him. Qushāshī, the great exponent of Akbarī doctrine in Medina to whom Ibn Idrīs was connected in spiritual lineage, had argued that the Seal of Muḥammadan Sainthood was not a rank reserved for a single person (Ibn ʿArabī himself), but a spiritual station that remained accessible until the end of time, with one man reaching it for every epoch. Qushāshī himself laid claim to having reached that station.29 Shaʿrānī had also claimed that there was a Seal for every epoch.30 It is most likely that the disciples of Ibn Idrīs believed that their master was among those who followed Ibn ʿArabī in attaining that rank. Rashīd states that Ibn Idrīs said to him: ‘The Messenger of God created a bond of brotherhood between myself and the Qurʾān’.31 The full implication of this statement can only be appreciated by those who have read Ibn ʿArabī’s statement in the Futūḥāt that the Seal of Muḥammadan Sainthood and the Qurʾān were brothers.32 Sanūsī described him in one letter as khātimat al-ʿārifīn al-aqṭāb al-ʿiẓām (the seal of the great poles and knowers of God).33 Sanūsī also wrote of a vision he saw in which one of the great saints from the preceding generation, Muḥammad al-Sammān, told him that none of the greatest saints in the history of Islam, neither Abū Yazīd, Sahl al-Tustarī, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, nor Ibn ʿArabī reached anything even near the status of Ibn Idrīs.34 In a more revealing comparison by Mirghanī,

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the student wrote that his master ‘surpassed al-Shaykh al-Akbar Ibn ʿArabī in knowledge and its subtleties, and surpassed al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī in what he received of speech that was sent to him’.35 This last remark is of great importance in showing us that, in the eyes of his disciples, Ibn Idrīs was a continuation of Tirmidhī and Ibn ʿArabī in particular. Ibn Idrīs was not only seen as a continuation of these two figures, but as having surpassed each of them in what they were most known for: Ibn ʿArabī in the spiritual realities of which he spoke, and Tirmidhī in the ‘Divine Address’ about which he wrote.36 Among the greatest reflections of Ibn Idrīs’s mastery of Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrine are his litanies (awrād) and his fourteen formulas of invoking blessings upon the Prophet (ṣalawāt), which needed Akbarī experts to unlock them.37 The Egyptian Muḥammad al-Hajrasī (d. 1910), a student of Ibn Idrīs’s close disciple al-Rashīd, wrote a large commentary on the same fourteen ṣalawāt in which he claimed to clarify the meaning of waḥdat al-wujūd in a way that both the elite and the layperson could understand, to show its conformity to the law and to explain the most problematic passages in the Futūḥāt and the Fuṣūṣ. Hajrasī gave this Akbarī commentary on Ibn Idrīs’s ṣalawāt the title al-Futūḥāt al-Madaniyya al-Hajrasiyya (Hajrasī’s Medinan Openings), a title paralleling Ibn ʿArabī’s Meccan Openings.38 Upon his return to Egypt, the Ottoman Commissioner Aḥmad Mukhtār al-Ghāzī Pasha, who in the words of O’Fahey was an ‘Ibn Idrīs enthusiast’, urged Hajrasī to write a more accessible abridgement of the original, which became al-Jawhar al-nafīs fī ṣalawāt Ibn Idrīs.39 Shaykh Muḥammad al-Dandarāwī (d. 1911), Rashīd’s main deputy and successor, asked the Damascene scholar Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-Bīṭār (d. 1910) to write a commentary on the fourteen ṣalawāt more accessible than that of Hajrasī. Dandarāwī chose Bīṭār because he was known for his ‘proficiency in al-Shaykh al-Akbar’s teaching’ and because he ‘was a prolific author, primarily of commentaries on the works of Ibn ʿArabī and his school’.40 Incidentally, another great scholar of the Bīṭār family before him, ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Bīṭār, was also asked, this time by his own brother, to explain a statement attributed to Ibn Idrīs, which he did, ‘demonstrating his proficiency in the Akbarī teaching’.41 ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Bīṭār had learned and mastered Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrine at the hands of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī (both of whom will be discussed in Chapter 11). The devotional literature of Ibn Idrīs was therefore seen as a distillation of Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings by several later Sufis.

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ibn ʿarabī’s jurisprudence in the nineteenth century  | 261 For Ibn ʿArabī, the higher realities that he taught were never separate from the laws of the sharīʿa, as his crossover from the law to its inward realities shows time and time again throughout his jurisprudential discussions in the Futūḥāt. ‘The sharīʿa itself is the ḥaqīqa’, he wrote, and much of Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings on ḥaqīqa can be found in his discussions on sharīʿa.42 As we will see, Ibn Idrīs studied Ibn ʿArabī’s discussions of the law and its underlying realities to the point of mastery, and this will be the first step to discovering the extent to which he knew (and applied) the Akbarī school of jurisprudence. However, before we come to this, we will first consider some spiritual practices of Ibn ʿArabī that Ibn Idrīs incorporated into his own ṭarīqa. Practices that Ibn Idrīs Took from Ibn ʿArabī Ibn Idrīs took many of Ibn ʿArabī’s counsels and recommendations and turned them into cornerstones of his spiritual path. Among them is a supplication for the multiplication of the rewards of good deeds, which came from a tradition narrated by al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī in Nawādir al-uṣūl.43 Ibn ʿArabī had recommended this practice in his list of important counsels in the Futūḥāt.44 Ibn Idrīs, who knew that it originally came from Nawādir al-uṣūl,45 valued this supplication to such an extent that he urged his followers to begin every good action, whether verbal or physical, with this supplication, so that the rewards of all of their actions are multiplied. He also incorporated it into his litanies so that his students start their daily devotions with it, calling it ‘The Opening of the Litanies’.46 The second practice is found in many of Ibn ʿArabī’s works, including the counsels in the Futūḥāt. It is to repeat ‘There is none worthy of being worshiped save God (Lā ilāha illā Allāh)’ 70,000 times in order to ‘purchase one’s soul from God’ and protect oneself from hellfire.47 According to Addas, it is one of only two supererogatory practices that we know for certain that Ibn ʿArabī prescribed for his disciples on the path. Ibn Idrīs made this practice one of the ‘foundations’ of his path, meaning that it is one of the first acts that the disciple must do after taking his path.48 The second practice that Ibn ʿArabī recommended is muḥāsaba, to take oneself to account for one’s actions at the end of each day. Ibn Idrīs also made muḥāsaba one of the four main principles of his teachings, except that for him it meant to question the motivation of one’s actions and whether it is the right thing to do before doing it.49

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A fourth practice that Ibn Idrīs took from Ibn ʿArabī is a special supplication that Ibn ʿArabī created out of the Prophet’s ṣalāt al-istikhāra prayer in which one prays a two-cycle prayer and after finishing it recites the Prophet’s supplication asking for guidance on a particular issue. Ibn ʿArabī took the Prophet’s supplication and fashioned out of it a more general supplication for guidance to all good things, to be recited regularly and not just in times of specific need. In the words of Shaʿrānī, Ibn ʿArabī ‘made a sunna’ out of doing this every day in the forenoon.50 Ibn Idrīs recommended this practice of Ibn ʿArabī to his followers.51 Finally, one could say that the most distinctive feature of Ibn Idrīs’s path also has its origin in Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings. Ibn Idrīs claimed to have placed his disciples in the care of the Prophet. As a result, they would receive their spiritual growth directly from the Prophet without an intermediary, which is why he called his path the ṭarīqa muḥammadiyya. The disciples were directed to nurture this connection with the Prophet, in the hope of achieving waking visions of him and receiving direct instructions from him.52 Ibn Idrīs’s disciple Sanūsī described the path and its method in these words: ‘The ṭarīqa muḥammadiyya is based on the close following of the sunna [. . .] and on occupying oneself with the invocation of blessings upon the Prophet at all times’.53 What was distinctive about Ibn Idrīs was his portrayal of the Prophet as the shaykh for those who took his path and his minimisation of his own role; this has been aptly described as a ‘democratization of sanctity’.54 However, the goals of the path and the methods for reaching those goals were not new. The origins of this concept have been traced back to Ibn ʿArabī who strongly recommended that the aspirant constantly send blessings upon the Prophet until they could see him and learn directly from him. Ibn ʿArabī wrote that ‘whatever is revealed to the one who does this dhikr is true and immune from error, for nothing comes to him except through the Messenger’.55 The goal and method of this practice as understood and applied by the Idrīsī tradition are very much rooted in the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī and his school.56 Ibn Idrīs’s Study of the Jurisprudential Sections of the Futūh. āt Perform your ablutions with the water of the unseen, if you possess the secret or else perform tayammum with the highland and rocks And place before you an imām, in front of whom you had previously stood

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ibn ʿarabī’s jurisprudence in the nineteenth century  | 263 and pray the fajr prayer at the beginning of its time That is the prayer of those who know their Lord so if you are from them, then let the sea flow onto the land (barr).57

Ibn Idrīs was asked by his students to explain these cryptic lines usually attributed to al-Junayd al-Baghdadī, but sometimes attributed to Ibn ʿArabī instead.58 A study of Ibn Idrīs’s explanations of these cryptic lines about the spiritual path, clothed in words related to prayer, reveals that he unlocked their meanings using the inward crossovers employed by Ibn ʿArabī when the latter discussed these same words in his treatment of the fiqh of prayer. According to Ibn Idrīs, to have the secret is to have reached the connection with God mentioned in the ḥadīth, in which God becomes one’s sight with which he sees, one’s hearing with which he hears, one’s hand with which he works and one’s foot with which he walks. Those who have reached this level are told to purify themselves with the divine effulgence (tajallī), for the ‘water of the unseen’ refers to life through God. God is ultimately the unseen, for He is the most important of all that is unseen. Water means life because God’s effulgence upon it is with His name al-Muhyī, the Bringer to Life, which makes water a source of all life. The wisdom behind ablutions with water is to give life force to one’s bodily organs through the life-giving force in water, so that the organs feel energetic enough to perform the prayers and stand before God.59 Those who do not have this station must seek it, for tayammum means ‘to seek’ in Qurʾānic usage (Q 2:267), and they should seek it through the highlands (ṣaʿīd), a term that comes from ṣuʿud (to ascend). The highland here refers to the human body, which needs to ascend through the performance of supererogatory acts in order to reach that station in which God becomes one’s sight and seeing, and so on. The key here is the determination in seeking the station (qaṣd), which is taken from the tayammum, and the other tool to help one reach the goal is the rock, which symbolises unwavering determination and patience.60 The source of this understanding is Ibn ʿArabī’s discussions in the Futūḥāt of the need for intention before acts of ablution or tayammum. Water, he says, is the secret of life and gives life on its own without the need for intention; it is in itself a spirit (rūḥ) to the bodily organs and gives them life. Earth and rock, however, have a much weaker life force in them, which needs

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to be strengthened and given a spirit through intention. Therefore, in the case of ablutions with water, one needs only to intend the act of purification, without thinking about the water. However, in the case of earth and rock, the Qurʾān tells people to seek the earth, meaning to intend not only purification through the act, but also by giving intention to the usage of the earth itself in order to infuse it with life. The key is in the tayammum, here meaning the force given in seeking the earth as a source of purification, a force that gives soul to the earth in order to be able to purify and energise the limbs.61 In the second half of the third line, the poem instructs the knowers of God to mix the land (al-barr) with the sea. For Ibn Idrīs, al-barr is an allusion to God whose name is al-Barr (the Beneficent, the Doer of Good), and the sea refers to water. The Qurʾān states that every living thing was made from water (Q 21:30). Ibn Idrīs comments: There is nothing in this universe that is not alive. The tradition states, ‘Every thing, whether moist or dry, that is reached by the muezzin’s voice, will bear witness on his behalf ’. Is there anything in the universe that is not moist or dry? Can anything bear witness if it does not possess knowledge? Can there be knowledge without life? What he is saying is: Do not see things as independent of the Real but witness the whole universe instead as Divine Names. The Real, whom he called al-Barr, also has as His Names: The First and the Last, the Apparent and the Hidden. So do not witness anything then, but Him!62

This passage is based on the very same discussion in which Ibn ʿArabī discoursed on the need for intention, only a few lines below. In it he quoted the following Qurʾānic verses: ‘We have made from water every living thing’ and ‘Everything glorifies Him in praise’ (Q 17:44). Then he commented: ‘Only a living thing can make glorification’.63 In another passage elsewhere in the Futūḥāt where Ibn ʿArabī wanted to prove this point at length, he said: According to the people of unveiling, every natural material body contains a spirit, for God says, ‘Everything glorifies Him in praise’ and the Messenger of God said, ‘Every thing, whether moist or dry, that is reached by the muezzin’s voice will bear witness on his behalf ’.64

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ibn ʿarabī’s jurisprudence in the nineteenth century  | 265 These two passages, from different volumes of the Futūḥāt, indicate that Ibn Idrīs had them both in mind as he explained to his students the last part of the poem. It gives an indication of the level to which Ibn Idrīs learned, memorised and internalised the secrets of the law in Ibn ʿArabī’s discussions. This will become even clearer in the following comparison between the individual fiqh opinions of Ibn Idrīs – which both his followers and contemporary scholars alike assumed to be the product of his own ijtihād – and those of Ibn ʿArabī. The Akbarī School in Practice: The Case of Aḥmad ibn Idrīs Ibn Idrīs taught his disciples to follow the example of the Prophet ‘footstep after footstep’. He was also highly concerned with reviving oft-neglected practices of the Prophet Muḥammad, which is why his students gave him the title ‘Reviver of the sunna’.65 It was mainly for the sake of achieving this perfect following of the Prophet that Ibn Idrīs did not restrict himself to following the opinions of a single school of law, but rather practised his ijtihād in order to follow as closely as possible the Prophet’s example. Ibn Idrīs claimed the ability to practise independent ijtihād, and he undoubtedly did so. However, all of Ibn Idrīs’s judgements have been attributed to his independent ijtihād, which is not the case.66 While it is true that Ibn Idrīs would not have followed the opinions of any predecessors uncritically, I will demonstrate the extent to which Ibn Idrīs took from the Futūḥāt of Ibn ʿArabī. As a firm believer in Ibn ʿArabī, it would have been natural for Ibn Idrīs to consult Ibn ʿArabī’s opinions in jurisprudential matters as part of his ijtihād process; after all, Ibn ʿArabī believed that he was the perfect heir to the Prophet and that his juristic opinions were divinely inspired. To demonstrate this influence, I will now examine all the juristic opinions in which Ibn Idrīs is known to have differed from either all four schools of law, or the majority of them, and compare those opinions to Ibn ʿArabī’s own preferences in the Futūḥāt. 1) The Pre-Maghrib Supererogatory Prayer • Mālikīs and Ḥanafīs: disliked (makrūh). • Ḥanbalīs: permissible (mubāḥ), neither encouraged nor discouraged. • Shāfiʿīs and Ẓāhirīs: non-emphasised sunna (sunna ghayr muʾakkada), meaning that one is not expected to perform it regularly, as the

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Prophet himself and his Companions were not understood to have prayed it regularly.67 • Ibn Idrīs: Sunna. Ibn Idrīs did not specify whether this was an emphasised or non-emphasised Sunna. However, Ibn Idrīs considered this a very important sunna which was neglected and forgotten by the followers of all four schools and saw himself as a reviver of this practice. Ibn Idrīs included a ḥadīth recommending the performance of this prayer in his small collection of 208 traditions, called Rūḥ al-sunna (The Spirit of the Sunna), in which he aimed to distil the main spirit of the Prophet’s way.68 This tradition is of course not one of the most important ones, nor does it convey a major Islamic principle, but Ibn Idrīs chose to include it in order to revive this practice, as he did with other small practices about which he placed traditions in this collection. In practice, however, Ibn Idrīs seemed to take the importance of this prayer to an extreme by elongating it. This issue was one of the eight main complaints that the Wahhābī jurists of ʿAsīr sent to the ruler of ʿAsīr against Ibn Idrīs, stating that he prolonged this prayer too much, even though the sunset prayer needed to be done as soon as possible.69 During the ensuing debate between both parties, Ibn Idrīs’s main adversary brought up this point again. Ibn Idrīs replied that this prayer ‘is a sunna which people have abandoned [. . .] Simply because the people have abandoned [it] does not mean that we must abandon [it . . . ]. Disapproval should be directed against someone who denies that [it has] the status of a sunna, and not against someone who performs [it]’.70 Ibn Idrīs did not, however, explain why he prolonged this prayer. The secret to this is in the emphasis given to the importance of this prayer by Ibn ʿArabī in the Futūḥāt. In the Futūḥāt, Ibn ʿArabī described this prayer’s importance as being equal to the two-cycle prayer before the fajr prayer, which, by agreement of the scholars, was the most important of all the sunna muʾakkada prayers and which was described by the Prophet as being ‘worth more than the world and all that is in it’.71 Furthermore, Ibn ʿArabī stated that no one prays this prayer regularly except he who exercises prudence in his religion. Ibn ʿArabī proceeded to say:

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ibn ʿarabī’s jurisprudence in the nineteenth century  | 267 [It is] a sunna that has been forgotten and neglected. In our age I have not seen among the jurists anyone who prays it regularly other than our companion Zayn al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shāfiʿī al-Kurdī, may God grant him success to keep to it. In [it] there is an amount of reward known only to God, for God has a special effulgence between every obligatory prayer and the adhān that precedes it, so whoever prays to Him with intimate discourse at that time will be given something very great.72

2) Praying in Footwear Another sunna that Ibn Idrīs wanted to revive was praying in one’s footwear rather than barefooted, seeing it as an important adornment for the prayer. Ibn Idrīs addressed this issue repeatedly in three separate passages of al-ʿIqd al-nafīs, giving it great importance.73 Praying in one’s footwear is recommended in Ibn ʿArabī’s chapter of counsels in the Futūḥāt (as Muslims had to abandon it when carpets were introduced to mosques).74 3) Fasting in the Second Half of Shaʿbān The Prophet is known to have fasted more in the month of Shaʿbān than in any other month except Ramadan, and this became a popular practice for Muslims. However, there is a tradition that states: ‘After Shaʿbān reaches its middle, do not fast’. Ibn Idrīs was asked to explain the meaning of this tradition. He explained that the Prophet said it out of fear that, if all the Muslims fasted in the days leading up to Ramadan, a Qurʾānic revelation might make it into an obligation. He compared it to the Prophet showing the Muslims the sunna of the tarawīh prayers for two or three days only and then not coming out to lead them in it again, out of fear that it would become obligatory.75 After the death of the Prophet, however, this fear was no longer there, and it was acceptable again to fast in the second half of Shaʿbān. Ibn Idrīs quoted other traditions of the Prophet showing that it is permissible to be fasting in the last two days of Shaʿbān, just before Ramadan, as evidence of his position. Ibn Idrīs then concluded his discussion with the opinion of Ibn ʿArabī who wished to reconcile all the traditions. He said: ‘Among the scholars there are those who, out of prudence, forbade fasting on the sixteenth day only, among them Muhyī al-Dīn ibn ʿArabī, and that

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is correct, so that the tradition in question does not become abrogated entirely’.76 In fact, this unique (and ultimately unconvincing) compromise had been unique to Ibn Ḥazm, from whom Ibn ʿArabī took it. As for Ibn Ḥanbal and the Traditionist-Jurisprudents, they had discounted the problematic ḥadīth forbidding fasting after the middle of Shaʿbān as not authentic.77 4) Breaking the Fast when Travelling • Ḥanafīs, Mālikīs and Shāfiʿīs: recommended to keep the fast, provided the travel does not cause much hardship. • Ḥanbalīs: sunna to break the fast, disliked to fast while travelling. • Awzāʿī: superior to break the fast, but not disliked to do otherwise.78 • Traditionist-Jurisprudents such as Bukhārī, Ibn Khuzayma and Ibn Ḥibbān: both options were allowed, and there is no blame on anyone except those whose fasting harms them.79 • Ẓāhirīs: obligatory to break the fast, forbidden to fast while travelling.80 • Ibn Idrīs: his response to the question on this matter is similar to the Ḥanbalī opinion; however, he refrained from giving a judgement, instead giving the exact response that Ibn ʿArabī gave in his Futūḥāt. In the Futūḥāt Ibn ʿArabī wrote: As for the traveller, his fasting, whether in Ramadan or outside of it, is not an act of piety, and if it is not an act of piety, then the least that it could be is that it is like not doing anything at all. Or it could be the opposite of piety, which is impiety, and I do not say that, but I do deny it being an act of piety.81



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Ibn Idrīs’s response is essentially the same: ‘[The Prophet] said: “It is not from piety to fast on a journey”. If it is not piety, then it is not obedience’.82 Furthermore, Ibn ʿArabī, unlike the four other schools and Ibn Ḥazm, took the literalist view that anything that is called ‘travel’ in the language calls for breaking the fast in Ramadan.83 The followers of Ibn Idrīs, particularly the Khatmiyya and Sanūsiyya, were criticised for also breaking the fast during anything defined as ‘travel’ in Ramadan, no matter how short or easy the journey was.84

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ibn ʿarabī’s jurisprudence in the nineteenth century  | 269 5) Gaps of silence left by the imām in the prayer • Mālikīs: no gaps of silence in the prayer. • Ḥanafīs: one gap of silence before the commencement of recitation, for silent supplications. • Shāfiʿīs: add a second gap of silence between the Fātiḥa and the other portion of the Qurʾān, so that worshippers behind the imām have a chance to recite the Fātiḥa for themselves. • Ḥanbalīs and Ẓāhirīs: add a second gap at the end of all recitation, before going down into bowing. • Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Idrīs: all three gaps.85 6) The witr prayer • Mālikīs, Shāfiʿīs, Ḥanbalīs and Ẓāhirīs: sunna. • Ḥanafīs, al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Idrīs: wājib (between the farḍ and sunna).86 7) The ‘prostration of recitation’ after reciting certain verses of the Qurʾān outside of prayer • The four schools: requires a state of ritual ablution. • Ẓāhirīs, Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Idrīs: ritual purity is not a condition for this prostration, citing the tradition about the Companion Ibn ʿUmar doing it without ritual purity.87 Ibn Idrīs chose the tradition about Ibn ʿUmar for his collection Rūḥ al-sunna.88 It is one of the very few traditions in that collection which are not statements of the Prophet himself, or about him. Clearly, Ibn Idrīs was very concerned with this practice and therefore included this tradition in his collection. 8) Formula of taʿawwudh (the seeking of refuge from Satan) in prayer • Mālikīs: disapprove of it in prayer. • Other schools and Ẓāhirīs: recite the standard formula. • Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Idrīs: recite an extended formula.89

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9) The optional qunūt supplication in prayer • Ḥanbalīs: in the witr prayer. There is no authentic timing narrated for it. • Ḥanafīs: in the witr prayer, silently, before the rukūʿ. • Mālikīs: in the fajr prayer, silently, before the rukūʿ. • Shāfiʿīs: in the fajr prayer, loudly, after the rukūʿ. • Ibn Ḥazm: in all obligatory prayers, after the rukūʿ.90 • Ibn ʿArabī: did not mention in which prayers or its timing. However, he stated that the supplication itself which was narrated for the witr qunūt is well established, whereas the supplication narrated for the fajr prayer is not authentically established. Therefore, those who do qunūt in the fajr prayer should make any supplication that they wish instead.91 • Ibn Idrīs: did qunūt in both witr and fajr prayers, silently or loudly, either before or after rukūʿ. He most often did it before the rukūʿ, as in the Mālikī school, yet loudly like the Shāfiʿīs. Ibn Idrīs used the Prophet’s supplication for the witr qunūt only. He did not recite the qunūt supplication narrated for the fajr prayer, which the Mālikīs recited, instead using one of his own Idrīsi supplications.92 This is in accord with the advice of Ibn ʿArabī. 10) Descending into sujūd • Ḥanafīs, Shāfiʿīs, Ḥanbalīs: knees before hands. • Mālikīs, Ẓāhirīs, Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Idrīs: hands before knees.93 11) Women imāms leading men and women in prayer • The four schools and Ibn Ḥazm: forbidden.94 • Ibn ʿArabī: permissible.95 This is also the opinion of two imāms who founded semi-textualist madhhabs: Abū Thawr, the main teacher of Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī, and Ṭabarī, who had been a student of Dāwūd before founding his own madhhab. Both have strong textualist tendencies like Dāwūd and often hold similar positions.96 Some Ḥanbalīs

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ibn ʿarabī’s jurisprudence in the nineteenth century  | 271 also allowed it in tarawīh prayers, with the condition that the woman leads from behind the rows of the men.97 While Ibn Ḥazm did not allow it (and it is not recorded that Dāwūd did), it makes sense for other textualists to allow it, because the argument for it is a textualist one: that there is nothing authentic against women leading mixed prayer.98 • Ibn Idrīs: his position on this is not known; however, some students of Ibn Idrīs, including Mirghanī and/or his followers, were accused of holding that it is permissible.99 12) Holding the Friday Prayer in more than one mosque in the same city • Four schools: not permissible except in cases of necessity. • Ẓāhirīs, Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Idrīs: permissible without conditions.100 13) Recitation of the basmala (bism Allāh al-raḥmān al-raḥīm) as part of the Fātiḥa in the prayer • Mālikīs: disliked. The more canonical traditions state that the Prophet was not heard reciting it out loud and began with ‘al-ḥamdulillāh’; therefore, the Mālikīs do not allow its recitation in prayer at all, not even silently. • Ḥanbalīs and Ḥanafīs: preferable but not obligatory. It should be done silently, whether the remaining recitation is silent or loud, because of the traditions that the Prophet was not heard reciting it. • Shāfiʿīs: obligatory. They alone count the basmala as part of the Fātiḥa, and since the prayer is invalid without the Fātiḥa, the prayer is invalid without the basmala. It is to be recited loudly in loud recitations and silently in silent recitations. According to al-Shāfiʿī, the canonical ḥadīth stating that the Prophet and his Companions were not heard reciting it is worded incorrectly due to a misunderstanding by one of the narrators. Anas had said that they started prayer with ‘al-ḥamdulillāhi rabb al-ʿālamīn’ referring to the chapter of al-Fātiḥa itself, not that the basmala was skipped, and it was a narrator who changed Anas’s words to say: ‘I did not hear them recite the basmala’.

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Other canonical versions of the same ḥadīth that come through a different narrator do not have Anas explicitly denying hearing the basmala.101 • Ibn Ḥazm: Those who recite using a canonical Qurʾānic recitation that counts the basmala as part of the Fātiḥa and the rest of the sūras must recite it or their prayer is invalid. Those who recite using canonical recitations which do not count the basmala as part of the Fātiḥa and the rest of the sūras, but rather as a separator between the sūras, are free to recite it or not.102 • Ibn ʿArabī: reciting the basmala is more correct and should be given preference, ‘for it is part of the Qurʾān according to the ʿulamā billāh [those who know through Allah]’. However, the ijtihād of those who do not think the basmala is part of the Fātiḥa will still be accepted by God.103 In another discussion, his argument is as follows. God said in the Qurʾān: ‘Recite as much of the Qurʾān as is easy for you’ (Q 73:20); hence, it is obligatory to recite what is easy to do so. God later clarified through the Prophet that ‘what is easy for you’ is the Fātiḥa. Thus, if it is easy for one to recite the basmala as part of the Fātiḥa, then one should, but if it is not easy to recite the basmala, then the obligation is lifted. Reciting the basmala is therefore better than leaving it.104 By this logic, even though Ibn ʿArabī seems to accept the possibility of not reciting the basmala, he indicates that, as long as it is easy to do so, it should be recited (it is an obligation). Practically speaking, it is difficult to conceive of a situation where the recitation of the basmala would be difficult. • Ibn Idrīs: obligatory. Ibn Idrīs defended this position vehemently in more than one treatise. In doing so, he gave his own arguments and was not simply imitating Ibn ʿArabī.105 His disciple Muḥammad al-Majdhūb (d. 1831) likewise argued for this position in his works.106 Sanūsī also discussed the issue of the basmala at length in several treatises. Sanūsī’s main concern was to convince the Mālikīs that the basmala was part of the Fātiḥa because they were the ones who rejected its recitation in prayer. His ultimate aim was to prove that the basmala must be recited in prayer, and yet he also made extensive use of the same type of argument as Ibn Ḥazm.107 This is

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ibn ʿarabī’s jurisprudence in the nineteenth century  | 273 a very interesting case of the Idrīsīs siding with Ibn ʿArabī. From a purely Traditionalist point of view, the case against the basmala being part of the Fātiḥa is stronger, and most Traditionist-Jurisprudents agreed with Ibn Ḥanbal’s position that it was not necessary to recite it in prayer and that it was recommended to recite it silently. It is the influence of Ibn ʿArabī which led Ibn Idrīs and his students to this position against the Traditionist-Jurisprudents and the majority of the schools. Conclusion When one compares Ibn Idrīs’s juristic opinions with those of the four schools that existed in his time, one finds that some of his opinions agreed only with the Ḥanafī school, while others agreed only with the Shāfiʿī, Mālikī, or Ḥanbalī schools. Yet other opinions agreed only with the Ẓāhirīs, while some were different from all of the above. However, one finds that in every case his opinions matched those of Ibn ʿArabī, sometimes using the same exact words. This does not mean that Ibn Idrīs was simply copying from the Futūḥāt, but that he was generally convinced that Ibn ʿArabī’s positions were more correct than the others. In Ibn Idrīs’s treatment of the fiqh of prayer, for example, he delved into far more depth than Ibn ʿArabī on certain questions to defend his positions, displaying his vast knowledge of the ḥadīth literature.108 He often discussed in detail matters that Ibn ʿArabī simply never discussed or mentioned, for Ibn ʿArabī did not deal with every conceivable issue in the Futūḥāt.109 Furthermore, Ibn Idrīs, as a revivalist, saw different issues in his time and society that he needed to address and different forgotten practices to revive, which Ibn ʿArabī did not address in his writings. What we can establish without a doubt, however, is that Ibn Idrīs is at least one example of someone applying and practicing the ‘Akbarī madhhab’. Notes  1. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 199.  2. The other being Shaykh Khālid of the Naqshbandīyya (Weismann, Taste of Modernity, 2).   3. Voll, ‘History of the Khatmiyyah Tariqah’, 103.

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  4. For more on the nature of these reforms, see Vikør, Sufi and Scholar, 36–39. The sultan did not encourage full independent ijtihād and declared his loyalty to the Mālikī school in jurisprudence. He did oppose the blind imitation of the Mālikī school, however, encouraging a limited form of ijtihād: ijtihād bil-fatwā (Vikør, Sufi and Scholar, 38). This simply meant that muftīs were encouraged to evaluate the different positions within the Mālikī school and give their preference based on the circumstance, rather than abiding by the ‘preferred’ or standard opinion of the school at all times. These moderate reforms are a far cry from the type of ijtihād that Ibn Idrīs would call for, but they provided Ibn Idrīs with the necessary tools, resources and skills to engage directly with the revealed sources and early works of law, which would allow him to practise his independent ijtihād.  5. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 35–36.  6. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 36.   7. Vikør wrote: ‘It is significant that the milieus in which Ibn Idrīs and al-Sanūsī moved in Fez were similar. The same names occur, albeit at one link removed in the chain of teachers. Thus what may be said of al-Sanūsī’s studies must to a large degree also be said of Ibn Idrīs; with the proviso that he left twenty years earlier and that he was older when he left than al-Sanūsī was’ (Vikør, Sufi and Scholar, 103).  8. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 134–35, with some modifications to the translation. O’Fahey did not understand Sanūsī’s statement ‘hādhā khārijī’ (meaning ‘This man is a Khārijī!’) and translated it instead as ‘This is foreign [strange]’.  9. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 53. 10. See al-Sanūsī, al-Manhal, 48; idem, al-Salsabīl, 45–46. 11. On these two figures and their role in spreading the teachings and works of Ibn ʿArabī, see Taji-Farouki in Ibn ʿArabī, A Prayer, 32–35. 12. See the testimonies of local biographers and chroniclers on al-Lamaṭī in O’Kane and Radtke (ed.), in Pure Gold, xi. 13. On the sources used by al-Lamaṭī in al-Ibrīz, see Radtke, ‘Ibrīziana’, 129–56. 14. Al-Lamaṭī, al-Ibrīz, 325–26. 15. That Ibn Idrīs studied this work is clear from a passage recorded from one of his lessons, in which Ibn Idrīs repeated al-Lamaṭī’s list of what he believed were among the three greatest afflictions to happen to the ummah. Compare Ibn Idrīs, al-ʿIqd al-nafīs, 28–29, with al-Lamaṭī, al-Ibrīz, 395–98. 16. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 48. 17. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 77. 18. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 14–15, 77.

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ibn ʿarabī’s jurisprudence in the nineteenth century  | 275 19. Vikør, Sufi and Scholar, 184. 20. ʿĀkish, Munāẓara, 153; O’Fahey, ‘Enigmatic Imam’, 207. 21. Shawkānī, al-Badr al-tali, 2:290. 22. Dajani, ‘Centrality of Ibn ʿArabī’, 110–11. 23. ʿĀkish, Munāẓara, 146–47, 159. 24. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 104. 25. Al-Jaʿfarī, al-Muntaqa l-nafīs, 32–33. 26. It should be noted that O’Fahey misunderstood the relevant passages to mean that it was Ibn Idrīs himself who led this final session of each day, teaching his innermost circle these works from the school of Ibn ʿArabī, a mistake that was followed by subsequent authors and translators (see O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 94; Thomassen and Radtke, Letters, 3; as well as the translation of the text in question by Radtke et al. in Exoteric, 179–83). When carefully read, the passages clearly show that those sessieons were those of Ibn Idrīs’s innermost circle studying amongst each other, without Ibn Idrīs himself. See ʿĀkish, Munāẓara, 147–50. 27. Al-Jaʿfarī, Aʿṭār, 110. 28. Al-Jaʿfarī, Aʿṭār, 110. The aphorisms of Ibn ʿArabī, al-Ḥikam al-ḥātimiyya, also known as al-Ḥikma al-ḥātimiyya, is not to be confused with al-Ḥikam al-ʿAṭāʾiyya which also formed part of the seven recommended works. 29. Al-Qushāshī, al-Ṣimṭ al-majīd, 183. 30. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Ajwiba al-marḍiyya, 54–55; al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā, 326. 31. Al-Jaʿfarī, al-Muntaqa l-nafīs, 59. 32. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 3:329. 33. From a letter by Sanūsī in al-Jaʿfarī, Aʿṭār, 111. This indicates that Sanūsī may have viewed his teacher as the seal of sainthood in their epoch. 34. Al-Jaʿfarī, al-Muntaqa l-nafīs, 41. 35. Al-Jaʿfarī, al-Muntaqa l-nafīs, 39. 36. Al-Tirmidhī was probably associated with Heavenly Speech because he was the first to describe it in detail. 37. Levtzion believed that ‘[r]ejection of Ibn ʿArabī’s teaching, particularly waḥdat al-wujūd, is counted among the characteristics of the reformist Sharīʿa-oriented ṭuruq’ of the period (Levtzion, ‘Sharīʿa-oriented Sufi Ṭuruq’, 382). This idea can no longer hold weight, with Qushāshī, Kūrānī, Ibn Idrīs, Sanūsī and others being dedicated teachers of his theological writings. Similarly, early Tijānī writers such as al-ʿArabī al-Sāyiḥ who systematised the thought of Aḥmad al-Tijānī, relied heavily on Ibn ʿArabī and Shaʿrānī in their works.

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38. Al-Hajrasī, al-Jawhar al-nafīs, 14. 39. Al-Hajrasī, al-Jawhar al-nafīs, 14; O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 167–69. The original al-Futūḥāt al-Madaniyya is now lost. 40. Weismann, Taste of Modernity, 255–56. Weismann noted that, although he was a prolific author, this commentary was his only printed treatise. More recently, Farīd al-Mizyadī printed large extracts from one of this author’s treatises in footnotes to Najm al-Dīn Kubrā’s great esoteric commentary on the Qurʾān (see bibliography). The extracts reveal his great mastery of Akbarī thought and also quote Ibn Idrīs’s Akbarī teachings. 41. Weismann, Taste of Modernity, 210; al-Bīṭār, Ḥilyat al-bashar, 1:873–81. 42. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:564. 43. Al-Tirmidhī, Nawādir, 3:267. 44. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 4:497. 45. He mentioned its source in one of his lessons, as recorded by a student (Tafsīr Manuscript, 14). 46. Al-Idrīsī, Risālat al-awrād al-Idrīsiyya, 15. 47. Addas, Quest, 271. 48. Ibn Idrīs, Risālat al-asās, 13; O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 207. 49. Addas, Quest, 271; Ibn Idrīs, al-ʿIqd al-nafīs, 117. 50. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Ajwiba al-marḍiyya, 173. I could not locate it in the Futūḥāt, so it might come from another of Ibn ʿArabī’s works. 51. Ibn Idrīs, al-Nafaḥāt al-kubrā, 54. 52. Dajani, Reassurance, 13–14; Thomassen and Radtke, Letters, 3; Sedgwick, Saints and Sons, 12–14. 53. Dajānī, al-Ḥaraka l-sanūsiyya, 152. 54. Katz, Dreams, Sufism and Sainthood, xx. 55. Sedgwick, Saints and Sons, 29–30; Hoffman, ‘Annihilation’, 353. 56. Hoffman, ‘Annihilation’, 351–65. 57. Al-Jaʿfarī, al‐Maʿānī al‐raqīqa, 4. 58. Ibn Idrīs’s commentary was published by Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī (see the following chapter) who added his own didactic super-commentary and called the work al-Maʿānī al-raqīqa ʿalā al-durar al-daqīqa. 59. Al-Jaʿfarī, al-Maʿānī al-raqīqa, 4, 33. 60. Al-Jaʿfarī, al-Maʿānī al-raqīqa, 61, 69. 61. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:332. Shaʿrānī likewise took this understanding of the life-giving and energising ‘secret’ of ablutions and used it to guide his inspired explanations of the jurisprudence of purification throughout his treatment of

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ibn ʿarabī’s jurisprudence in the nineteenth century  | 277 this subject in many of his works, such as al-Mīzān and al-Fatḥ al-mubīn fī jumlatin min asrār al-dīn. 62. Al-Jaʿfarī, al-Maʿānī al-raqīqa, 155. 63. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:332. 64. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 3:38. 65. Dajani, Reassurance, 6–7; al-Sanūsī, al-Musalsalāt al-ʿashr, 13. 66. Thomassen and Radtke, Letters, 12; O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 199, and others. 67. Cf. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā, 2:21–24. 68. Ibn Idrīs, Rūḥ al-sunna, 97. 69. ʿĀkish, Munāẓara, 147. 70. ʿĀkish, Munāẓara, 201. 71. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā, 2:19. 72. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:491–92. 73. Ibn Idrīs, al-ʿIqd al-nafīs, 81–82, 167, 261. 74. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 4:500. 75. See the discussion on this in Chapter 4. 76. Ibn Idrīs, al-ʿIqd al-nafīs, 214–15. 77. See Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:649. Scholars have traditionally come up with different solutions to this apparent contradiction in ḥadīths. Ṭaḥāwī claimed that the ḥadīth that forbids fasting after the middle of Shaʿbān was simply abrogated. Ibn Ḥibbān gave this ḥadīth an interpretation that allowed it to still hold true: if one had started fasting from the beginning of Shaʿbān, they may carry on fasting, but no one was to start fasting only after the middle of the month as a way of receiving Ramadan. Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī states that the greatest ḥadīth critics, such as Ibn Mahdī and Ibn Ḥanbal, simply discounted this ḥadīth as false (see Ibn Rajab, Laṭāʾif, 260). 78. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān, 2:22. 79. See the discussions of these traditionist-jurisprudents in the chapter on fasting in their books. 80. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā, 4:384. 81. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:612–13. Ibn ʿArabī was influenced by Ibn Ḥazm in his understanding of these traditions discouraging fasting during travel, whereas traditionist-jurisprudents such as Bukhārī, Ibn Khuzayma and Ibn Ḥibbān contextualised them. 82. Thohmassen and Radtke, Letters, 40. 83. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:713. Ibn Ḥazm defined travel as a distance of more than one mile, as mentioned above.

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 84. Vikør, Sufi and Saint, 245, 257.  85. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:412; Ibn Idrīs, Sharḥ al-ṣudūr, 16, 22–23, 26.  86. For the five schools, see Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā, 2:3–7. For Tirmidhī, see al-Tirmidhī, al-Ṣalātu wa-maqāṣiduhā, 141. For Ibn Idrīs, see Ibn Idrīs, al-ʿIqd al-nafīs, 177. For Ibn ʿArabī, see Futūḥāt, 1:394, 488–89.  87. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:516.   88. Ibn Idrīs, Rūḥ al-Sunna, 235.   89. Ibn Idrīs, al-Nafaḥat al-kubrā, 9; Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:421. Cf. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā, 2:278.   90. For Ibn Ḥazm and the previous schools, see Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā, 3:54–61.  91. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:435.   92. Descriptions of Ibn Idrīs’s qunūt were written down in detail by his students. See al-Idrīsī, Risālat al-awrād al-Idrīsiyya, 8–11.  93. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā, 3:44–45; Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:440; Ibn Idrīs, al-ʿIqd al-nafīs, 276–77.  94. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā, 3: 81, 135–36.  95. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:447.  96. Al-Shāfiʿī’s student al-Muzanī (d. 264/877) also allowed it unconditionally. Al-ʿAẓīmābādī, ʿAwn al-maʿbūd, 2:225–28. In works of comparative jurisprudence, it is very common to see the words, ‘Abū Thawr and Dāwūd said . . . ’ Ṭabarī agreed with his teacher Dāwūd on the legal principle that a command of God must be understood to be an obligation, and nothing except another text from the Qurʾān or sunna can change its status to recommended. The four madhhabs allow non-textual sources to also indicate this (as discussed in Chapter 5); see Ṭabarī’s commentary on Q 24:33. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ classified Ṭabarī and Dāwūd as part of the Ahl al-Ḥadīth, except that Dāwūd went further by completely rejecting qiyās (see Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik, 1:64–65).   97. lbn Qudāma, al-Mughnī, 2:146.   98. For a good discussion of this topic, including Ibn ʿArabī’s argument, see Brown, Misquoting Muhammad, 189–200.   99. See the complaint sent to the shaykh of the Azhar Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 1250/ 1835) by a man from Sudan about Mirghanī and his followers, in Vikør, Sufi and Scholar, 244–45. See also al-Samannūdī, Saʿādat al-dārayn, 2:441. 100. For the four schools and the Ẓāhirīs, see Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā, 3:257–58; al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:248–49. For Ibn ʿArabī, see Futūḥāt, 1:461. However, Ibn ʿArabī stresses that it is preferable to pray in a single mosque. For Ibn Idrīs, see Thomassen and Radtke, Letters, 36.

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ibn ʿarabī’s jurisprudence in the nineteenth century  | 279 101. For the four schools see Ibn Rushd, Bidāya, 1:132; Ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī, 1:346–47. 102. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā, 2:283. 103. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 3:478–79. For Ibn ʿArabī, the ʿulamā billāh are higher than the ʿārifūn billah, for they are the ones who are ‘sent’ by God to guide the Muslims. They are the muḥaddathūn. 104. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 1:413. 105. See Ibn Idrīs, Sharḥ al-ṣudūr, 20–22; idem, al-Nafaḥāt al-kubrā, 9; idem, al-ʿIqd al-nafīs, 265. 106. Hofheinz, ‘Transcending the Madhhab’, 236. 107. Al-Sanūsī, Shifāʾ al-ṣadr, 32–43. For an overview of his arguments, see Vikør, Sufi and Scholar, 223–26, 248, 256, 258. For further reading, see also Vikør, ‘Opening the Mālikī school’. 108. See, for example, Ibn Idrīs, Sharḥ al-ṣudūr, which is a work on the description of prayer. Likewise, his defence of the position that the hands should go down before the knees when descending for sujūd, in Ibn Idrīs, al-ʿIqd al-nafīs, 276–77. 109. For examples of Ibn Idrīs’s ijtihād on several issues not discussed by Ibn ʿArabī, see the list of matters discussed by Ibn Idrīs in his letters to Ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, in Thomassen and Radtke, Letters, 12–13. Of these ten matters, only the last two in the list were discussed by Ibn ʿArabī (holding Friday prayers in more than one mosque and fasting during travel, both of which are discussed in section 6.3.1).

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10 The Teachings and Influence of A ḥ mad ibn Idr ī s

The Teachings of Ibn Idrīs on Ijtihād

N

ow that we have seen the extent of the influence of Ibn ʿArabī on the jurisprudential thought and practice of Ibn Idrīs, we can better understand Ibn Idrīs’s teachings on ijtihād, scholarly authority and the schools of law. While many reform movements in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were influenced by growing European power or secular nationalism, a number of scholars have noted that Ibn Idrīs’s revivalism was influenced by neither. In the words of one scholar, it was the result of an ‘internal dynamic for change’, not a threat from the West,1 and as another noted, unlike modernist Salafism, it did not owe anything to European thought. In fact, both scholars characterised Ibn Idrīs as having completely ignored the West.2 There was of course ample reason for Ibn Idrīs and his students to turn against madhhabism. Ibn Idrīs regularly spoke against the factionalism that resulted from fanatical devotion to the schools of law, whether in Mecca, Medina, or elsewhere. He described the followers of the schools as acting like different factions that accused each other of misguidance.3 In his study on Majdhūb, Albrecht Hofheinz described one incident that happened in Mecca in 1814, which was witnessed by Majdhūb and most likely by his teacher Ibn Idrīs, too.4 Ottoman troops retook Mecca from the house of Saʿūd, and the Ottomans attempted to re-establish their dominance by removing the Shāfiʿī judge and replacing him with a Ḥanafī one. This caused the locals to 280

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teachings and influence of a ḥ mad ibn idrīs  | 281 boycott the official Friday prayers and to petition for removal of the Ḥanafī judge, resulting in a deadlock that lasted for some time.5 Such incidents were but reminders of the divisions that school factionalism sometimes caused. Majdhūb, who had mastered the four schools of jurisprudence, himself wrote a treatise on ‘the need to transcend the divisions of the legal schools and to follow only the example of the Prophet’.6 Madhhab factionalism as well as the influence of Ibn ʿArabī were equally contributing factors in shaping Ibn Idrīs’s stance on ijtihād. Another factor was his desire to emulate the Prophet’s example as perfectly as possible, which was a very important principle of his Sufi path and also the natural outcome of an intense love that he had for the Prophet, as well as an intense desire to be united with him and see him. The path he taught was about complete dedication to the Prophet, to think about him with every glance and every breath. This would have reinforced the desire of Ibn Idrīs to follow the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī who had proclaimed himself to be a perfect heir to the Prophet in all his actions and states and, therefore, the perfect mirror through which to follow the Prophet closely. Ibn Idrīs’s teachings on the subject are stated most clearly in his treatise titled Risālat al-radd ʿalā ahl al-raʾy (Refutation of the Rationalists), by which he meant, much like Ibn ʿArabī’s usage of the term, the schools of jurisprudence.7 One of the main themes of Ibn Idrīs’s treatise is the opposition between the authority of the Qurʾān and sunna on one hand, and the authority of the jurists on the other. Ibn ʿArabī saw the addition of new laws to the revealed law as an assumption of lordship. Ibn Idrīs argued the same: ‘Whoever brings forth a new judgement along with God has brought forth lordship, and anyone who follows his authority in this regard has accepted him as a lord apart from God’.8 In another passage, he held that the statement often used by scholars to present their opinions – ‘we say that’ – is a statement befitting only of God. Even worse are those who create hypothetical questions and then answer them, alternating between the creation of a question, an act of servanthood, and then providing the answer, an act of lordship. ‘His saying, “If I ask” – that is the saying of a servant. As for his saying, “We (would) say. . .” – that is the response of the Lord, because judgement belongs only to God; “Verily, judgement is only for God”’ (Q 12:40)’.9 The role of a scholar according to Ibn Idrīs, then, is only to say: ‘God said’, or ‘God’s Messenger said’.10

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Ibn Idrīs quoted a story used by Shaʿrānī before him in which a poet was singing in the court of an Abbasid ruler when a man told him that Imām Mālik forbade singing. The poet replied: ‘Is Mālik allowed to make matters lawful or unlawful in God’s religion according to his opinion? By God, even the Messenger of God could only make things lawful or unlawful through Divine Revelation!’ This poet, so Ibn Idrīs declared, was ‘more zealous on behalf of God’s religion and His law’ than the jurists.11 Like Ibn ʿArabī, Ibn Idrīs often repeated in his treatise that the original status of acts in the sharīʿa was Divine Pardon (no judgement). The silence of the sharīʿa on any given act was intentional – God’s mercy. As one scholar put it, Ibn Idrīs believed that ‘to attempt to fill a silence deliberately left by God [is] to abrogate one of His mercies’.12 These arguments had been made by Ibn ʿArabī before him, but Ibn Idrīs furnished them with more textual evidence. The Prophet had said that ‘the scholars of my nation are like the Prophets of the Children of Israel’. The earlier Prophets, of course, did not use any opinion or analogy; their only knowledge was Revelation, as God said: ‘Verily, We have sent down the Torah which contains right guidance and light; on the basis of it the Prophets pass judgement’ (Q 5:44). The ‘madhhab of real scholars’, therefore, is Divine Revelation, and they do not add anything to it. The Prophet also said: ‘The scholars are the inheritors of the Prophets’. The Prophet called them inheritors, and inheritors only take their share of what is left for them, and Prophets do not bequeath anything but Divine Revelation. If an inheritor takes something other than what the sharīʿa has apportioned for him from the bequeathed legacy, then he is not an inheritor but a sinful usurper. This tradition, Ibn Idrīs states, should scare any scholar from stating their own opinion, lest they become sinful usurpers of what does not belong to them.13 Ibn Idrīs denied the scholars any authority other than the transmission of the revealed sources and the identification of the relevant text for each problem. He said that individual piety was the key to discovering the answer to every problem in the revealed sources. This brings us to Ibn Idrīs’s view on juristic method. Just like Ibn ʿArabī, Ibn Idrīs believed that there were two ways of doing ijtihād. The optimal ijtihād was an internal spiritual striving, and external ijtihād was to seek the answer in the revealed sources. For Ibn ʿArabī, the aim of internal spiritual striving was to receive divine inspiration during waking

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teachings and influence of a ḥ mad ibn idrīs  | 283 visions of the Prophet, which would provide the answer to one’s question. Ibn Idrīs, as we have seen above, also believed in waking visions of the Prophet as the ultimate source of guidance. However, this was something that he taught his own disciples, but kept outside of his Risālat al-radd, in which he instead focused on piety and God-consciousness (taqwā).14 In Risālat al-radd Ibn Idrīs argued that everything was in the Qurʾān and sunna, and that what distinguished one scholar from another was their ability to find the answer to everything in these sources. Countless are those who have memorised the Qurʾān and a great number of traditions but do not know the answer to a question. When they are given the answer from the Qurʾān or from a tradition that they already know, they are surprised, as if that verse was only revealed at that moment, or that tradition only uttered by the Prophet at that moment. They would say to themselves: ‘How many times did I pass over the answer to this problem and read it, without realising!’ The key to extracting everything from the Qurʾān and sunna is taqwā, and in practical terms this means acting upon one’s knowledge of their religious obligations. ‘Whoever acts upon that which he knows’, the Prophet had said, ‘then God will bequeath to him knowledge of what he does not know’. He who does not act upon what he knows will be veiled from the answers even though they lie in what he has memorised, like a donkey carrying books.15 The Prophet’s cousin Ibn ʿAbbās said: ‘Were I to lose a camel shackle, I would find it again in the Book of God’. Ibn Idrīs wrote: The long and short of it is this: there is no matter that two persons could disagree about, even if it be the weight of a mustard seed, for which God has not placed a judgement in His Book and the sunna of His Prophet [. . .] He who knows this knows it, and he who is ignorant of it is ignorant of it . . .’ God said, ‘If you fear God, He will make for you a distinguishing faculty’ (Q 8:29) and God would never break His promise! Whoever, then, does not find within himself such a faculty has not attained real piety and merely thinks that he is pious.16

If we look in the Futūḥāt, we find that Ibn ʿArabī had said the same before him: Scholars have disagreed about analogy. Some accept it as evidence [. . .] and others do not, and the latter is my position. God said, ‘Fear God and God

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will teach you’ (Q 2:282), and ‘If you fear God, He will make for you a distinguishing faculty’ (Q 8:29).17

Here we must ask: what did Ibn Idrīs mean by the criterion or ability to find the answers in the revealed sources? It seems likely that Ibn Idrīs understood different degrees of piety to lead to different abilities of understanding of the revealed sources, including the supernatural. In his debate with the Wahhābī scholars of ʿAsīr, Ibn Idrīs defended the idea of extracting knowledge from the Qurʾān’s interior (bāṭin), for those who reach pure faith and ‘complete knowledge of God (kamāl al-ʿirfān)’, those who fear God and are therefore taught by God.18 Ibn Idrīs was seen as having excelled over his peers and his students in the ability to extract knowledge from the revealed sources directly, although he gave his students the tools to do so themselves. The Yemeni judge al-ʿĀkish wrote: Among the things I took from him is the knowledge of jurisprudence according to the earliest generations such as the four imāms and the other founders of the schools who extracted it from the ḥadīth and Qurʾānic verses. In that regard he was the greatest wonder, the like of which has never been heard of in the East or West! He was never asked about a novel issue without answering immediately – as if it was obvious – with a clear text from the Book or the sunna, in a way that no one but him could have been guided to. Many would search to see whether anyone else had been guided to that or not, and no one has been found who even came close to this.19

With regard to his teachings on external ijtihād, Ibn Idrīs had guidance for the jurists and the laity. For the jurists, ijtihād was the effort to search for the answer within the revealed texts, no more. For the laity, it was to practise informed following of the scholars (ittibāʿ), rather than blind following (taqlīd), and it meant asking scholars or muftīs for a judgement from the revealed sources only. If the scholar could not provide an answer directly from the revealed sources, but relied on analogical reasoning or other unapproved methods, they were to find another scholar who could.20 This, as we have seen before, had been the exact position of Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Ḥazm before him. It is clear that Risālat al-radd was inspired by the works of Ibn ʿArabī and, to a lesser extent, Shaʿrānī. Like his two predecessors, he too was

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teachings and influence of a ḥ mad ibn idrīs  | 285 highly concerned with the issue of mercy, advocating a position where all the silences in the sharīʿa were the result of Divine Mercy, and with preserving God’s sharīʿa from the additions of men. Both Shaʿrānī and Ibn Idrīs aimed to achieve the same goal that Ibn ʿArabī had intended to achieve. Ultimately, however, Ibn Idrīs chose Ibn ʿArabī’s ideal scenario where the silences of the law were not filled by the scholars of the schools. Shaʿrānī’s final works settled for Ibn ʿArabī’s second-best scenario: if the schools were to make their additions to the law, then their additions should not be binding upon anyone but should be taken as a whole, providing different options for the layperson to choose from, becoming once again a source of mercy. Of course, Shaʿrānī himself quoted Ibn ʿArabī’s Futūḥāt in saying that the mahdī who would emerge at the end of time would do away with the schools and act upon the original and pure sharīʿa. He also claimed that his work Kashf al-ghumma would be used as a reference work in the time of the mahdī. Therefore, the position of Ibn Idrīs was in line with Shaʿrānī’s predictions for the end times. The story about the singer rebuking a jurist for claiming that singing was impermissible which Ibn Idrīs relayed came not from Shaʿrānī’s earlier work Kashf al-ghumma, but from his later work, the Mīzān. Like Ibn ʿArabī before him, Ibn Idrīs cannot be counted among the Traditionist-Jurisprudents because, despite apparently having great knowledge of ḥadīths and their chains of transmission, he did not apply the by-then almost extinct science of hidden ḥadīth faults (ʿilal) to discount ḥadīths in the ijtihād process. Like most Sufis before him, he often used very weak ḥadīths, even those with no known sources. He even often attributed words of Companions and their Followers to the Prophet himself. In Risālat al-radd, Ibn Idrīs even explicitly criticised the science of ḥadīth criticism, claiming that any ḥadīths attributed to the Prophet should be accepted without paying any attention to their chain of transmission or source, the only criterion being that it did not conflict with other, more established teachings in the Qurʾān and ḥadīth literature.21 This would be completely unacceptable to the TraditionistJurisprudents and reinforces the fact that Ibn Idrīs and Ibn ʿArabī fit most perfectly into the early tradition of textualist Sufis who refused to follow the madhhabs, who were allied with, and influenced by, the TraditionistJurisprudents but were not fully part of them.

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The Importance of Mercy Mercy was as central to Ibn Idrīs, as it had been to Ibn ʿArabī. When asked to write an all-comprehensive piece of advice, Ibn Idrīs wrote a treatise on four principles by which a Muslim must live. Of those, one was to be merciful, and the second was to have good character. Behaving with good character toward all of creation was the essence of Islam, wrote Ibn Idrīs. A Muslim must also make his heart an abode of mercy for all Muslims, the big and the small, and to give them the respect and honour that they are due. God will pour down the lights of Divine Mercy on those who are firm and steadfast in holding to this principle and make them taste its sweetness. They will obtain a great portion from the inheritance bequeathed by Muḥammad who was only sent as a source of mercy to all the worlds (referring to Q 21:107).22 One short passage from the lessons of Ibn Idrīs, as recorded by one of his students, gives an insight into Ibn Idrīs’s understanding of the goals of the sharīʿa. This was a commentary on a story told in the Qurʾān, where the Prophet David and his son Solomon both gave different judgements on the same case: ‘And remember David and Solomon, when they gave judgement regarding the field into which sheep strayed by night and grazed. We witnessed their judgement’ (Q 21:78). The litigants, the shepherd who owned the sheep and the farmer who owned the field, came to David. David found that the value of the crops that had been damaged by the sheep was similar to the value of the sheep themselves. He ruled that the shepherd give all his sheep to the farmer in compensation. The two then chanced upon Solomon who asked them about his father’s judgement, and Solomon said: ‘I would have judged differently here’. Solomon judged that the shepherd should temporarily give his sheep to the farmer to benefit from their milk and wool while the shepherd should replant the farmer’s crop and care for his land until it returned to its original state. Then each of the two should return the other’s possession. God said: ‘We made Solomon understand the case [better], though We gave sound judgement and knowledge to both of them’ (Q 21:79). This story is frequently used in books of legal theory, often by scholars arguing that there can only be one correct answer in every case, because the Qurʾān favoured Solomon’s judgement over that of David’s. Ibn Idrīs disagreed. Like Ibn ʿArabī before him, Ibn Idrīs concluded from this verse that God deemed the judgements of both David and Solomon ‘sound judgement

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teachings and influence of a ḥ mad ibn idrīs  | 287 and (correct) knowledge’. In fact, Ibn Idrīs went further to emphasise that David’s judgement was absolutely correct (ʿayn al-ṣawāb). He believed that, while Solomon’s judgement was better than David’s, it did not mean that David’s judgement was incorrect. Prophets can never make wrong judgements, argued Ibn Idrīs, but sometimes they may miss what God wanted them to do. Ibn Idrīs explained why Solomon’s judgement was deemed better by God. He stated that Solomon’s answer was more lenient (akhaff  ) and left both parties content. The farmer was given compensation, but without leaving the shepherd in ruins; the shepherd was tasked with farming the land, from which he could also support and feed himself. When the land returned to its original state, the farmer received his land back, and the shepherd received his sheep back.23 According to Ibn Idrīs, then, David’s judgement was correct because it was exactly what justice demanded: the shepherd had made a mistake and paid compensation for the damages. But Solomon’s judgement was better in the sight of God, because through his wisdom Solomon was able to uphold justice while remaining merciful and lenient with both parties. No one is harmed for the sake of justice, not even the one whose negligence caused harm to another. Here, Ibn Idrīs is once again showing that in many cases there could be more than one correct way of doing things. His teaching is also connected to the ancient Islamic pairing of Divine Justice (ʿadl) and Divine Favour/Grace (faḍl). ‘Forget not to act with grace towards one another’ (Q 2:237), says the Qurʾān. Ibn Idrīs showed that the sharīʿa not only aimed to deliver dry justice, but that the sharīʿa’s justice is part of its function as a source of mercy. The purpose of this Qurʾānic story is to teach that the sharīʿa aims for something even higher than justice: to deliver justice and to be a source of benefit and blessings for all mankind. Ibn Idrīs was not only connected through his masters and their teachings to Ibn ʿArabī, but he also became wholly dedicated to his legacy and advised his disciples to learn Ibn ʿArabī’s works. He defended him in his debates with the Wahhābī scholars of ʿAsīr, and he used Ibn ʿArabī’s arguments in his epistle against the schools. Significantly, Ibn Idrīs’s disciples compared him in particular to Tirmidhī and Ibn ʿArabī, showing that in their minds he was a continuation of the two. Moreover, we have seen his in-depth knowledge of Ibn ʿArabī’s juristic positions and their spiritual significance. We have also

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seen that Ibn Idrīs followed and applied these positions. Ibn Idrīs, who has been counted as the greatest (or one of the greatest) Islamic revivalists in premodern times, was inspired and guided in all his teachings and reforms by the principles and positions of the Akbarī madhhab. Ibn Idrīs is the first major figure of whom we can speak with certainty to have applied and spread the jurisprudential positions of Ibn ʿArabī. The Idrīsī Tradition and Beyond The influence of Ibn Idrīs was far-reaching and is difficult to assess fully. O’Fahey wrote: Ibn Idrīs was a spiritual genius who sat for thirty years at the centre of the Muslim world; he gathered around him like-minded figures, some to become famous, some to remain anonymous. The ramifications of his influence beyond the major students are still largely uncharted. Nor can that influence be neatly described within a pattern of silsila, sanad, shaykhly authority, and the like.24

We will briefly look at some of the lasting influence of Ibn Idrīs’s teachings on ijtihād through his followers and their writings. Al-Sanūsī’s Waking the Sleeper Among Ibn Idrīs’s disciples, the most distinguished in terms of scholarship and ḥadīth mastery was Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Sanūsī. Sanūsī wrote a series of works discussing issues of jurisprudence, especially issues related to prayer. This may be due to the importance that prayer has for Muslims, especially for the school of Ibn Idrīs, which very strongly emphasises the perfection of prayer,25 and also because prayer is a very visible act that distinguishes one school of thought from the others. As Vikør noted, ‘[f ]ollowing one variant rather than another signals adherence to one group or community’.26 Indeed, the members of the Sanūsiyya and the Khatmiyya were both criticised for not conforming to the Mālikī school. Sanūsī wrote an important work against taqlīd, called Īqāẓ al-wasnān fī l-ʿamal bil-ḥadīth wa-l-Qurʾān (Waking the Sleeper to Act Upon the Ḥadīth and Qurʾān). Radtke et al. demonstrated that Sanūsī used Ibn Idrīs’s Risālat al-radd as the basis of his work, noting all the passages of the Īqāẓ ‘which

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teachings and influence of a ḥ mad ibn idrīs  | 289 appear to have been taken over word for word from the Risālat al-radd, and others which present an exact paraphrase of corresponding passages in the Radd’.27 Many of the key passages that form the basis of Sanūsī’s work, then, come from Ibn Idrīs. As for the conclusion, it includes a long citation – five pages in fact – from Ibn ʿArabī’s Futūḥāt.28 The passage that Ibn Idrīs took from Shaʿrānī’s al-Mizān was also copied by Sanūsī, but Sanūsī took other passages directly from al-Mīzān as well,29 making Īqāẓ al-wasnān a work that is most heavily influenced by Ibn ʿArabī both directly and indirectly. Another major source for the Īqāẓ was a similar anti-taqlīd work written by a West African Sufi traditionist from the previous century, Ṣāliḥ al-Fullānī (d. 1803).30 The introduction to Īqāẓ al-wasnān includes a ten-page summary of Ibn Taymiyya’s Rafʿ al-malām ʿan al-aʾimma l-aʿlām. In this work, Ibn Taymiyya showed why the founders of the Sunni schools of law were excused, due to a variety of factors and circumstances, for not acting upon authentic traditions, and how Muslims of later generations did not have the same excuse. One of Sanūsī’s important discussions in this work is his advocacy for partial ijtihād. Quoting a number of prominent jurisprudents from the various schools, including Ghazālī and Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī (d. 684/1285), Sanūsī argued that a scholar may learn the relevant evidence to make up one’s own mind on a particular practice, without having to master all other questions of jurisprudence. In this way, one could possibly follow a madhhab on the issues on which he was not an expert, while slowly building one’s knowledge one issue at a time. This allows a scholar or learned Muslim to diverge from one’s madhhab on some issues if their conviction led them to do so.31 Sanūsī also wrote two treatises defending ten practices in prayer where he and his followers did not follow the Mālikī school, most probably because they were visible practices that other Mālikīs could point to and criticise. In the larger work, al-Masāʾil al-ʿashr, Sanūsī acted as an independent mujtahid, quoting the different ḥadīths on the subject, as well as the opinions of early authorities, and offering a conclusion. Sanūsī still paid much attention to the differences within the Mālikī school and referred to Mālik as ‘the imām’, thus maintaining a nominal allegiance to the Mālikī school. This work was prefaced with a long defence of ijtihād, similar to Īqāẓ al-wasnān. In a smaller work titled Shifāʾ al-ṣadr, Sanūsī dealt with the same ten practices, but focused mostly on the internal differences within the Mālikī school on each issue.

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In doing so, Sanūsī appeared to be a mujtahid within the Mālikī school, and his arguments could have wider appeal within Mālikī lands. He was able to reach the same conclusions as in the other work, without going outside the Mālikī school. In this, Sanūsī was following in the footsteps of many Andalusian Mālikī giants and may have benefitted in particular from the works of Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, as we have previously seen, was averse to taqlīd and often favoured the opinions of Mālik’s Medinan students, the extinct Mālikī school of Baghdad, or even al-Shāfiʿī, over the positions of the mainstream Mālikī school as it developed in North Africa. It appears that Sanūsī was not against following the schools of law as much as he was against giving these schools absolute authority and against the refusal of many scholars to diverge from their schools on any matter.32 It is possible to say that the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Idrīs guided Sanūsī to a revival of the Traditionalist Mālikī approach found in the works of Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr and others. Ibrāhīm Niass (d. 1975), founder of the largest Sufi ṭarīqa in West Africa, the Tijāniyya-Ibrāhīmiyya, in turn relied heavily on Sanūsī’s Īqāẓ al-wasnān and al-Masāʾil al-ʿashr in his own work titled Rafʿ al-malām ʿamman rafaʿa wa-qabaḍa iqtidāʾan bi-sayyid al-anām.33 The way in which the followers of the Tijāniyya-Ibrāhīmiyya prayed had become a major issue of contention between scholars and ṭarīqas in Nigeria in the 1950s and 1960s and had led to the production of several works on the issue. This conflict quickly became politicised, eventually leading to the Argungu riots of 1965.34 Niass’s work defended his departure from Mālikī practice on several acts in the ritual prayer and argued against blind imitation of the schools of law. Furthermore, it is noticeable that Niass’s positions were in complete agreement with those of Sanūsī, Ibn Idrīs and Ibn ʿArabī. Niass was not the first Tijānī shaykh to hold such ideas. Aḥmad al-Tijānī himself had broken with Mālikī practice in reciting the basmala in the Fātiḥa during prayer, basing this practice on a ḥadīth that is strongly linked with the legacy of Ibn ʿArabī.35 The most important Tijānī leader in the nineteenth century, al-Ḥājj ʿUmar ibn Saʿīd al-Fūtī (d. 1864), who established a Tijānī state in Senegambia, discussed the issues of ijtihād and taqlīd in one chapter of his work titled Rimāḥ ḥizb al-raḥīm ʿalā nuḥūr ḥizb al-rajīm (The Spears of the Part of the All-Merciful on the Necks of the Part of the Accursed One). In this work, al-Ḥājj ʿUmar advocated respect for all four madhhabs without blind

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teachings and influence of a ḥ mad ibn idrīs  | 291 adherence to any of them. He stated that the correct position was to follow any of the schools in general, rather than rejecting the tradition of these schools, without holding the positions of the school as absolute. Rather, al-Ḥājj ʿUmar stressed the importance of continuous ijtihād. Al-Ḥājj ʿUmar relied on quotes of Shaʿrānī as his main authority for making this point, quoting at least six of Shaʿrānī’s works. He also quoted Murtaḍa al-Zabīdī from the eighteenth century, who came from the Akbarī tradition of Qushāshī’s circle in Medina.36 In another chapter, Al-Ḥājj ʿUmar quoted the statements of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh from the Ibrīz referred to in the previous chapter, where Dabbāgh stated that a man of spiritual illumination was no longer in need of following a madhhab and would be able to re-establish the entire sharīʿa, should it vanish off the Earth, due to his spiritual insight and his contact with the spirit of the Prophet Muḥammad.37 Idrīsī Communities The Sufi ṭuruq of today that go back to Ibn Idrīs’s students include the Idrīsiyya (also known in Southeast Asia and Somalia as the Aḥmadiyya), the Sanūsiyya, Khatmiyya (also known as the Mirghaniyya), Dandarāwiyya, Rashīdiyya (with its Ṣāliḥiyya sub-branch in Somalia), Majdhūbiyya and Jaʿfariyya, while many others have incorporated his litanies and teachings. The history of the Sanūsiyya is very well known, and the Khatmiyya order remains of major political importance in the Sudan. The Dandarāwiyya commands a great following from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. From Mecca, Ibn Idrīs would send his students as missionaries to Muslim lands to revive the example of the Prophet. He sent Mirghanī as a missionary to the lands of modern-day Eritrea, where his great success aroused the hostility of the local ruler. Ibn Idrīs later sent him to different regions in Egypt and then to the Sudan. Many of Ibn Idrīs’s great disciples built settlements and established independent communities in different parts of the Muslim world.38 One of these was Makkī ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, who established schools and religious centres in Nubia. The master and his disciple exchanged several letters, which were mostly related to specific questions of jurisprudence and law that would have arisen in the daily life of Ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s community.39 Ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz himself was a learned scholar, supervising centres of learning and scholarship, and yet he did not turn to the classic books of jurisprudence

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for answers to his questions, even the smallest ones, instead seeking the authoritative answers of Ibn Idrīs. Among those questions counted those that were crucial to the life of such communities, such as whether a teacher is permitted to listen to the voice of a woman in order to instruct her (yes), and whether more than one mosque can be used for the Friday prayer in a single city, even if one suffices (also yes). Muḥammad al-Majdhūb was also among Ibn Idrīs’s most notable disciples. He belonged to the important Sudanese al-Majdhūb family, which provided several religious leaders. Majdhūb came to Medina and taught in the Prophet’s Mosque for eight years, spending a short time in Mecca with Ibn Idrīs. His most lasting impact, however, was in Suakin, the major African port on the Red Sea, to which he moved in 1829. There he established a zāwiya and attracted a considerable following. Making heavy use of short pamphlets and easy-to-remember poetry as his means of communication, Majdhūb ‘became the most prolific author the Sudan had known up to his time’. His works were written in a simplified manner and largely based on ḥadīth. The practices that he defended included reciting the basmala in the Fātiḥa in prayer, as discussed above.40 Majdhūb also regularly referred to spiritual unveiling and direct communication with the Prophet as evidence of his positions.41 Majdhūb wrote a treatise on transcending the divisions between the schools, the purpose of which, according to his successor, was to show that one should ‘be guided by all schools of jurisprudence and not be intolerant of others, and he rebutted what is wrong in this matter and refuted corrupting innovations’.42 The followers of Sanūsī and Mirghanī were differentiated by their distinctive practices, taken from Ibn Idrīs, which sometimes led to accusations of unorthodoxy, an exchange of fatwās and the production of scholarly writings. Both the Sanūsīs and the Khatmīs (the followers of Mirghanī) were criticised for breaking the fast when travelling short distances in Ramadan, a position they took from Ibn Idrīs (discussed in Chapter 9). Likewise, the Sanūsīs in particular were criticised by the Mālikīs for moving from the Mālikī position of sadl (praying with arms to the side) to qabḍ (praying with the right hand on the left).43 In such ways the students of Ibn Idrīs, knowingly or unknowingly, carried the madhhab of Ibn ʿArabī with them wherever they established new communities. Most interestingly, both sides of the debate used Shaʿrānī’s works to defend their position. Scholars from the Azhar used

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teachings and influence of a ḥ mad ibn idrīs  | 293 al-Mīzān al-kubrā to prove that all schools of law were equally valid and correct and that the opinions of the imāms were divinely inspired.44 At the same time, as we have mentioned, Sanūsī’s anti-taqlīd work Īqāẓ al-wasnān included several passages from the very same work. A late-nineteenth-century Egyptian Sufi named Ibrāhīm al-Samannūdī authored a work against the Wahhābis and another group which he called ‘the imitators of the Ẓāhirīs’. It is clear that these were the followers of Ibn Idrīs. Samannūdī stated that they called themselves al-Aḥmadiyya and al-Muḥammadiyya, and that they were widespread in many regions such as the Ḥijāz, the Sudan, Upper Egypt, India and the Cyrenaica, where they established a strong base, descriptions which perfectly fit the different Idrīsī groups. He described them as shunning the schools, claiming absolute ijtihād and only accepting what is stated in the Qurʾān and sunna.45 The clearest evidence that Samannūdī was referring to the followers of Ibn Idrīs was his reference to the fatwā of Shaykh ʿUllaysh regarding ‘the same group’ and their position on breaking the fast during travel.46 Shaykh Muḥammad ʿUllaysh had written a fatwā on the Sanūsīs in particular.47 Although a number of the claims made by Samannūdī are unreliable, his work does show that the Idrīsīs were seen by their critics as Ẓāhirīs or Ẓāhirīs imitators.48 However, some of the points raised by Sammanūdī against them, such as their belief that women can lead men in prayer, or that anything called ‘travel’ makes the breaking of the fast obligatory, point not to the teachings of Ibn Ḥazm, but to those of Ibn ʿArabī (see Chapter 9). It is very possible that scholars from the Idrīsī tradition, such as Ibn Idrīs himself and Sanūsī, made use of the works of Ibn Ḥazm in much the same way as Ibn ʿArabī did, to defend their positions and not because they were Ẓāhirīs. For example, Ibn Idrīs wrote in Risālat al-radd that Mālik expressed regret on his deathbed for every addition he had made to the sharīʿa. The oldest known source for this story is Ibn Ḥazm.49 In Sanūsī’s discussion of the recitation of the basmala in prayer, his position is very similar to that of Ibn Ḥazm (see Chapter 9). Continued Influence Several important students of Ibn Idrīs and Sanūsī produced works on jurisprudence. Among them was the Egyptian ʿAlī al-Qūsī (d. 1877), a student of

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both figures, who left a considerable body of writings. This scholar held audiences with two successive rulers of Egypt before moving to Asyūṭ where he taught until his death. Qūsī, like his teachers, rejected the idea that the gates of ijtihād were closed and was involved in disputes with scholars of Mecca and Medina on the issue.50 Another figure to be pointed out is Fāliḥ al-Ẓāhirī (d. 1910) – named after his tribe in the Ḥijāz, not the madhhab – who was a very close student of Sanūsī. Ẓāhirī authored works on ḥadīth as well as a work on jurisprudence ‘according to the way of the Ahl al-Ḥadīth’.51 It would be more beneficial to focus on later flowerings of Idrīsī thought, however, rather than the more immediate disciples whose influence may have died out. It is difficult to gauge the extent to which Ibn Idrīs’s teachings on the schools of law or his Akbarī fiqh opinions continued to spread or be implemented. However, it seems that the more dogmatic ideas on uṣūl al-fiqh (the theory) did not last as long as the practice. For example, even though the majority of the extant manuscripts ascribed to Ibn Idrīs were published by his followers in the twentieth century, the Risālat al-radd remained unpublished until Western academics published it. As for other works of Ibn Idrīs that included his views on prayer, they have been published; we will return to them below. As for Sanūsī’s works, I have mentioned that Ibrāhīm Niass made extensive use of them to defend his stance during a time of explosive conflict in Nigeria, but other than that, their use likely remained mostly within Sanūsī circles, and it is unlikely that the Sanūsīs themselves continued to focus on theoretical works such as Īqāẓ al-wasnān. The same seems to have happened with the works of Majdhūb. Majdhūb’s two theoretical works on the principles of jurisprudence and on the need to transcend the schools of jurisprudence are no longer extant. Only the devotional works and small treatises that defended individual points of departure from the local Mālikī practice such as the basmala and qabḍ have survived.52 Hofheinz suggested that this may have been due to a lack of interest in the more ‘dogmatic’ or theoretical content on the part of Majdhūb’s later disciples.53 Similarly, Mark Sedgwick attributed this to a tendency of new religious movements to lose some of their more distinctive features over time, to become less sectarian and to reach a ‘state of uniformity with their socio-cultural environment’.54 However, there is another important external factor, too, which is the Salafī movement which threatened the schools of law and Sufism along with them.

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teachings and influence of a ḥ mad ibn idrīs  | 295 It is most likely that, in the interest of defending the established order, the followers of Ibn Idrīs avoided publishing such tracts as Risālat al-radd, for example. Sedgwick himself had proposed that a later Idrīsī scholar from Damascus defended the schools of law for the same reason, namely because of the Salafī threat.55 With regard to practice, the Sanūsī movement in Libya has preserved the fiqh positions of Sanūsī and Ibn Idrīs until this day, at least in personal matters such as prayer. They are viewed, however, as a new branch of the Mālikī school, the Mālikī-Sanūsīs, who occupy the eastern parts of Libya, as opposed to the Mālikī-Khalīlīs in Tripoli and the western parts of Libya. (Shaykh Khalīl was the author of the most famous text on the approved positions within the Mālikī school).56 This may in part be due to Sanūsī presenting himself as a mujtahid within the Mālikī school rather than as a fully independent mujtahid.57 Often, those who travel from the west of Libya to its eastern parts mistake the Mālikī-Sanūsīs for Salafīs due to the similarities in prayer.58 Such departures from the practice of the mainstream Khalīlīs in the case of the Sanūsīs, for example, are significant because they relate to issues of religious and regional identity. Another significant figure in the later history of the Idrīsiyya is Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī (d. 1979) who was the imām of the Azhar Mosque and one of its most popular teachers.59 Jaʿfarī became a shaykh of the Idrīsī path and ‘more than any other member of the Idrīsī tradition in the twentieth century [he] worked tirelessly to find and publish writings by or on Ibn Idrīs, publishing at least fifteen items’.60 Jaʿfarī affiliated himself with the Mālikī school, and according to ʿAlī Jumuʿa (Grand Mufti of Egypt, 2003–13), he was ‘among the great scholars of the Mālikī school’61 and a mujtahid. However, he followed the example of Ibn Idrīs in prayer;62 hence, he put his right hand over the left and recited the basmala, which were two visible examples of his divergence from mainstream Mālikism. The guidance that he gave his disciples on this issue deserves some attention. Jaʿfarī belonged to two traditions: he was teacher and imām of the Azhar which was pro-madhhab, but also a follower of Ibn Idrīs and Sanūsī who were anti-madhhab. The tension between the two conflicting stances appears in his reaction to the fatwā of the Azharī scholar and Sufi Muḥammad ʿUllaysh (d. 1882), against Sanūsī’s claims to ijtihād. ʿUllaysh, who had

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been the Grand Shaykh of the Azhar, a muftī of the Mālikīs and a shaykh of the Shādhilī Sufi order, received letters describing (not entirely accurately) Sanūsī’s claims to ijtihād, to which ʿUllaysh responded in two fatwās. In those fatwās, ʿUllaysh relied on Shaʿrānī’s Mīzān to defend the correctness of all madhhabs and to justify following them.63 Jaʿfarī never met ʿUllaysh who had died almost thirty years before he was born, but he claimed to have developed a strong direct spiritual connection with him and loved him greatly. Jaʿfarī copied a small treatise by ʿUllaysh that clarified the Ashʿarī creed in very simple language into his largest and most important work, Fatḥ wa fayḍ wa faḍl min Allāh. Jaʿfarī spoke in his introduction to the treatise of how disconcerted he had been about what happened between Sanūsī, his spiritual guide and master, and ʿUllaysh, with whom he had ‘a secret that none knows but God’. He was relieved when a Libyan man from Tripoli told him that he had in his possession a letter that ʿUllaysh had sent to Sanūsī. In it ʿUllaysh explained that Sanūsī’s views had not been presented to him accurately and sought Sanūsī’s forgiveness. Furthermore, another Libyan man from a family of scholars informed Jaʿfarī that ʿUllaysh had later dedicated a treatise to praising Sanūsī’s knowledge and virtue; it was his determination, Jaʿfarī added, to search for it, ‘so that it is printed and all people could read it’.64 Jaʿfarī repeated in several places in his writings that he was Mālikī in jurisprudence. However, an examination of the treatment of jurisprudence in his Friday lessons shows that his positions were not always in line with the Mālikī school. As teacher and orator, Jaʿfarī would be asked many questions in his lessons. Since his audience was mostly Shāfiʿī or Mālikī, his response to the majority of cases would be to simply state the Mālikī and Shāfiʿī positions, although in a great deal of cases he would also add the opinions of other schools. Jaʿfarī would sometimes present only the opinion of a single school, or compare the arguments of two or three schools and then express his preference for one of them, even if it was from a school different from his own.65 On the issue of breaking the fast while travelling, he held that it is recommended to break the fast while travelling, but that fasting would still be accepted, a compromise between the stance of Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Idrīs, on one hand, and that of the Mālikīs, Shāfiʿīs and Ḥanafīs, on the other – a result that was closer to the Ḥanbalī or Awzāʿī opinions (see Chapter 9).

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teachings and influence of a ḥ mad ibn idrīs  | 297 Jaʿfarī never declared himself to be a mujtahid and always referred to himself as a Mālikī, but he clearly was not a pure Mālikī. Also of interest is the introduction that Jaʿfarī gave to a treatise by Ibn Idrīs, which commented on the ḥadīth: ‘Pray as if it is your last prayer’. Ibn Idrīs not only explained the importance of having reverence and concentration in the prayer, but also gave a detailed description of the prayer, taking it as an opportunity to stress the importance of the basmala and other fiqh positions he held on prayer. In his introduction, Jaʿfarī had to give guidance to his disciples who read this work because Ibn Idrīs’s positions would undoubtedly differ from whatever school they followed on many points. He wrote: The noble Aḥmad ibn Idrīs commented on this ḥadīth based on his high spiritual understanding and also his own ijtihād. His ijtihād did not go against (all of ) the four schools, so whoever finds that Ibn Idrīs is in conformity with his school, then (by following him) he is following his school. Whoever finds that Ibn Idrīs’s position goes against his school, we do not require him to leave his school, for every person must imitate the imām of his school. Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Laqqānī said: Mālik and the rest of the imāms and likewise Abū l-Qāsim (al-Junayd) are the guides of this community One must imitate a scholar from amongst them this is what the scholars have said in clear speech. If, therefore, one chooses to imitate his shaykh who is a knower of God most high, then there is nothing wrong with that.66

Jaʿfarī quoted here the classic text on creed by Ibrāhīm al-Laqqānī (d. 1041/1631), which is one of the core texts of the Azhar curriculum and other Sunni institutions of learning. This passage could be read in two ways: Laqqānī intended to say that Muslims should have an imām in jurisprudence whom they imitate, but also an orthodox spiritual guide.67 A literal reading of those lines, however, suggests that having a Sufi guide could replace having an imām in jurisprudence. It is more likely that Jaʿfarī quoted these lines to support taqlīd, although he may have also intended to open a space for the other possible reading: that it was sufficient to follow either a Sufi guide or an

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imām of jurisprudence. While stressing the necessity of following one of the four schools of jurisprudence, Jaʿfarī at the same time allowed his followers to follow the juristic opinions of Ibn Idrīs whenever these opinions differed from their schools. Conclusion Ibn Idrīs’s students, whether aware of the source of their shaykh’s teachings or not, carried with them the Akbarī madhhab (or at least some of its juristic principles and a body of its opinions) to the lands where they preached or built communities. Some of his notable students also wrote tracts on the necessity of acting upon the Qurʾān, the sunna and the consensus of the Companions, as well as the necessity to transcend the schools. Sanūsī quoted not only his master, who had based his own opinions on the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī, but also five pages from Ibn ʿArabī directly. Notes  1. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 5.  2. Sedgwick, Saints and Sons, 12–13; O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 5.  3. ʿĀkish, Munāẓara, 172.   4. Ibn Idrīs left that same year for Upper Egypt, but it is likely that he did so after the incident. On his trips to Upper Egypt and the timing of Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha’s control of Mecca, see O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 53–54.   5. Hofheinz, ‘Transcending the Madhhab’, 247.   6. Hofheinz, ‘Transcending the Madhhab’, 234.   7. Except the Ẓāhirīs, if they are counted as a school and not a methodology.   8. Ibn Idrīs, Risālat al-radd, 54.   9. Ibn Idrīs, Risālat al-radd, 67. 10. Ibn Idrīs, Risālat al-radd, 52. 11. Ibn Idrīs, Risālat al-radd, 59–60; al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, vol. 1, 69. 12. Sedgwick, Saints and Sons, 15; see Ibn Idrīs, Risālat al-radd, 65–66, 77. 13. Ibn Idrīs, Risālat al-radd, 61–62. 14. See Ibn Idrīs’s letter to Makkī ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, for example, in Thomassen and Radtke, Letters, 40. 15. Ibn Idrīs, Risālat al-radd, 49–50. 16. Ibn Idrīs, Risālat al-radd, 49, 55. 17. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:162.

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teachings and influence of a ḥ mad ibn idrīs  | 299 18. ʿĀkish, Munāẓara, 163–64. 19. Al-Jaʿfarī, al‐Muntaqā al‐nafīs, 38; Dajani, Reassurance, 10. 20. Ibn Idrīs, Risālat al-radd, 52. 21. Ibn Idrīs, Risālat al-radd, 54. 22. Ibn Idrīs, al-ʿIqd al-nafīs, 118–19. 23. Ibn Idrīs, al-ʿIqd al-nafīs, 70. 24. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 118–19. 25. On this, see Dajani, Reassurance, 7–9. 26. Vikør, ‘Opening the Mālikī School’, 14. 27. Radtke et al., Exoteric, 2. 28. Vikør, Sufi and Scholar, 223 and 223 n10. See also Vikør, ‘Opening the Mālikī School’, 11–12. 29. See, for example, al-Sanūsī, Īqāẓ al-wasnān, 132–33, and elsewhere. 30. See the following chapter. 31. Al-Sanūsī, Īqāẓ al-wasnān (Dār al-Ṣāliḥ edition), 287–95. 32. See Vikør, ‘Opening the Mālikī School’, 11. 33. Niasse, Rafʿ al-malām, 7–32. Al-Masāʾil al-ʿashr is also known as Bughyat al-maqāṣid. 34. Loimeier, Islamic Reform, 79–83. 35. Dajani, ‘Centrality of Ibn ʿArabī’, 108–9. 36. Radtke, ‘Ijtihād’, 918. 37. Radtke, ‘Ijtihād’, 920. 38. Sedgwick, Saints and Sons, 26. 39. Thomassen and Radtke, Letters, 12. The topics are listed in 12–13. 40. Hofheinz, ‘Transcending the Madhhab’, 238–40. 41. Hofheinz, ‘Transcending the Madhhab’, 242–44. 42. Hofheinz, ‘Transcending the Madhhab’, 234. This work is now lost. 43. See Vikør, Sufi and Scholar, 257. 44. Vikør, Sufi and Scholar, 241–64. 45. Al-Samannūdī, Saʿādat al-dārayn, 2:243–44. 46. Al-Samannūdī, Saʿādat al-dārayn, 2:451. 47. See Vikør, Sufi and Scholar, 250–64. Vikør prefers the spelling ʿIllaysh (Sufi and Scholar, 250, n23). 48. The author of this work is unaware of the origin of this movement and claims that it cannot be traced to any one figure, rather seeing it as a general movement or phenomenon that emerged in the nineteenth century. Because of this, the author counted some antinomian Sufis who also claimed direct contact with the

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Prophet as part of the same movement, even though antinomianism was anathema to the ṭarīqa muḥammadiyya of Ibn Idrīs. 49. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Iḥkām, 6:57. This story of Mālik was told by ʿAbd Allāh ibn Maslama al-Qaʿnabī (d. ca 220/834) to whom Mālik allegedly expressed his regrets on his deathbed. Qaʿnabī, one of the traditionists who transmitted the Muwaṭṭaʾ of Mālik, was also a teacher of Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī. 50. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 171–72. 51. Al-Zirkilī, al-Aʿlām, 6:326. 52. Hofheinz, ‘Internalising Islam’, 320–30. 53. Hofheinz, ‘Internalising Islam’, 321. 54. Sedgwick, Saints and Sons, 2; ‘Upper Egypt’s Regional Identity’, 100. 55. See Sedgwick, Saints and Sons, 111. 56. Khalīl is the author of the famed Mukhtaṣar, being the standard Mālikī textbook representing the most authoritative opinions of the school. The ‘Khalīliyyūn’, being the representatives of mainstream taqlīdī Mālikīs, were the object of derision in Ṣāliḥ al-Fullānī’s work against Taqlīd. See Vikør, ‘Shaykh as Mujtahid’, 356. 57. Vikør, ‘Shaykh as Mujtahid’, 354. 58. Shaykh Aḥmad al-Ṭalḥī al-Sanūsī (personal communication, London, April 2011). 59. On al-Jaʿfarī, see Dajani, Reassurance, 1–70. 60. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 172. 61. Dajani, Reassurance, 38. 62. Dajani, Reassurance, xi–xii. 63. ʿUllaysh, Fatḥ al-ʿalī, 89–107. 64. Al-Jaʿfarī, Fatḥ, 41–42. 65. Al-Jaʿfarī, Dars al-jumuʿa, 1:40–41, 120–21. 66. Al-Jaʿfarī, Sharḥ al-ṣuḍūr, 7–8. 67. The author composed a commentary on his own composition, stating that it was compulsory to follow one of the four imāms (al-Laqqānī, Hidāyat al-murīd, 2:899).

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11 From Ibn ʿArab ī to the Salaf ī s

T

he story of Ibn ʿArabī’s approach to jurisprudence did not end with the Idrīsī tradition. In fact, one of its most fascinating and surprising chapters is its connection with the rise of proto-Salafī thought in late Ottoman Damascus, Iraq and the Ahl-i Hadith movement in India.1

The Hijaz Revival Soon after the passing of Imām Mālik ibn Anas at the close of the eighth century ce and the return of his greatest students to Egypt and elsewhere, the Prophet’s city of Medina lost its place at the heart of Muslim scholarship. It would only regain it an entire millennium later, in the eighteenth century, at a time when the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina appears to have increased significantly in size, and when scholars of all madhhabs began to unite over the study of ḥadīth. At the heart of this revival were a native Medinan Sufi of Palestinian origin, Aḥmad al-Dajānī, better known as Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Qushāshī (d. 1661), and the Egyptian ḥadīth master Muḥammad al-Bābilī (d. 1666), who spent ten years in Medina. Together, they and their students helped create a scholarly network with a focus on ḥadīth study. Today, their names and the names of their students are at the heart of prestigious ḥadīth transmission chains all over the world.2 Levtzion noted:

301

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The intellectual creativity that made the Ḥaramayn the foci for Islamic revivalism was the outcome of the convergence of different traditions of Ḥadīth studies and of different streams of Sufism; from India, North Africa and Egypt. The fusion of Ḥadīth and taṣawwuf [. . .] freed scholars from the fetters of taqlīd.3

Qushāshī has been credited with this ‘merging of the study of taṣawwuf and Ḥadīth in the Ḥaramayn’ that lay at the heart of this movement.4 Qushāshī’s students described his wondrous ability to ground every Sufi teaching in ḥadīth. He demonstrated this, among other places, in his commentary on the Aphorisms (ḥikam) of Ibn ʿAṭāʾillāh al-Iskandarī, in which he tied each aphorism to a ḥadīth. Qushāshī was authorised to transmit more than forty different Sufi paths, but he was primarily a shaykh of the Indian Shaṭṭārī Sufi order which traced its teachings to Muḥammad Ghawth (d. 1562).5 However, Qushāshī’s main influence in Sufism consisted of the writings of Ibn ʿArabī, to which he was completely and singularly dedicated, much like Shaʿrānī before him. Qushāshī was described by contemporaries as ‘the imām of those who propound (Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrine) waḥdat al-wujūd’ and was succeeded in this by his great student Ibrahim Kūrānī, one of the greatest Muslim scholars of the seventeenth century. Qushāshī, Kūrānī and Kūrānī’s student Muḥammad ibn Rasūl al-Barzinjī wrote a number of works defending and explaining Ibn ʿArabī’s metaphysical system. Barzinjī even took Shaʿrānī to task for shying away from two controversial teachings of Ibn ʿArabī and claiming that they had been falsely attributed to him (the most important of those is Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrine that the punishment of Hellfire will eventually come to an end and no one will suffer eternally).6 Kūrānī also wrote a treatise in defence of a controversial point made by Ibn ʿArabī’s forerunner al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī.7 Qushāshī and Kūrānī answered questions and gave fatwās regarding Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings to questioners from faraway lands such as India and Southeast Asia. In fact, Qushāshī and his Javanese disciples are credited with a complete transformation of the Islamic landscape in Southeast Asia, due to the dominant place that Ibn ʿArabī’s metaphysical doctrines came to take in those lands because of them. As Khaled El-Rouayheb stated, . . .

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 303 It is important to emphasise that Kūrānī and Barzinjī were not just Sufi exponents of (Ibn ʿArabī’s) waḥdat al-wujūd, but also eminent members of the ulema class in Medina who taught and wrote works on a range of exoteric sciences: philosophy, rational theology, ḥadīth, and Qurʾān exegesis.8

Qushāshī and his students were very innovative authors. Among their most important contributions were: 1) using Ibn ʿArabī to bridge the gap in theological doctrine between the Ashʿarī and Ḥanbalī schools, thereby also ‘play[ing] an important role in rehabilitating the thought of the Ḥanbalī purists Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350) – long deemed problematic or even outright heretical by the later Ashʿarī tradition’;9 and 2) expounding Qushāshī’s doctrine of the Unity of Divine Attributes (tawḥīd al-ṣifāt). This doctrine is inspired by and based on Ibn ʿArabī’s metaphysical doctrine ‘waḥdat al-wujūd’. However, the doctrine of tawḥīd al-ṣifāt cannot be attributed to Ibn ʿArabī himself; rather, it is of Qushāshī’s own derivation which he believed complemented and completed Ibn ʿArabī’s system. Qushāshī had a dream in which Ibn ʿArabī gave his sister’s hand to him in marriage, which he interpreted to refer to his mastery of this doctrine that is a ‘sister’ to Ibn ʿArabī’s waḥdat al-wujūd. Qushāshī and Kūrānī used this doctrine regarding how God’s power manifests in the world to defend the notion that human beings can make their own choices and have the power to act without this necessitating a limitation on God’s own power (which is why the Ashʿarīs had rejected any form of free will). The dominant doctrine among Ashʿarīs was completely predestinarian, giving no agency or free choice to humans, but the great Ashʿarī master Juwaynī had broken away from this view at the end of his life; in his Nizāmiyya, he defended human agency, a view closer to the Māturīdī theological school. Qushāshī and Kūrānī dedicated several works to the passionate and lengthy defence of Juwaynī’s position that humans do have agency and that their power does have an effect. Their argument hinges completely on the acceptance of Ibn ʿArabī’s metaphysical doctrine and Qushāshī’s derivative doctrine of tawḥīd al-ṣifāt.10 This may simply be a coincidence, but the city of Basra where Sufism first started to form was strongly associated with belief in free will, and many of the early Sufis from the school of ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Zayd were known to uphold that belief.11 Qushāshī and his students, then, used Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrines to

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free themselves from the taqlīd of particular theological schools and to take particular positions from each of the Traditionalist, Ashʿarī and Māturīdī schools; they thus used Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrines to create brilliant new solutions to very old theological problems. In terms of jurisprudence, Qushāshī and Kūrānī are not known to have adopted a strong pro-ijtihād anti-taqlīd stance or to have explicitly referred to Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings. Kūrānī was Shāfiʿī, and Qushāshī had been Mālikī, but the latter stated that he became Shāfiʿī simply out of love for his Sufi shaykh and father-in-law who was Shāfiʿī; Qushāshī gave fatwās according to both madhhabs.12 Qushāshī’s shaykh (in the Indian Shaṭṭārī path) was the Egyptian Aḥmad al-Shinnāwī (d. 1619), whose grandfather was one of Shaʿrānī’s closest and most beloved teachers. Qushāshī’s circle therefore would have had a strong emotional attachment to Shaʿrānī due to their shaykh’s connection to him, which went beyond their shared dedication to Ibn ʿArabī. Qushāshī’s Moroccan student ʿAyyāshī, a Mālikī scholar and travel-writer, felt the need to defend Qushāshī’s change of madhhab to his Mālikī readers back home by appealing to Shaʿrānī’s al-Mīzān al-kubrā and its doctrine of the inward unity of the different madhhabs.13 However, the immense influence of Ibn ʿArabī (and to a lesser extent Shaʿrānī) on these figures is undoubtedly one of the reasons for their emphasis on the primacy of ḥadīth study, and it was through this circle’s contribution to the revival of ḥadīth study in the Hijaz – and perhaps also through the Akbarī legacy they left there – that they helped pave the way for a strong revivalist anti-taqlīd tradition in the Hijaz. At the same time as Qushāshī’s circle was bringing Ibn Taymiyya’s teachings back into circulation in the Hijaz, the Ottoman reformer Kadızade Mehmed Efendi (d. 1635), who was born around the same time as Qushāshī, was reviving Ibn Taymiyya’s teachings at the heart of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul. Kadızade and his followers, the Kadızadelis, were mainly opposed to popular Sufi-innovated practices such as dancing or jumping in dhikr gatherings and, more gravely (pun intended), visiting the graves of saints to seek their assistance. They often quoted Ibn Taymiyya in their criticism of the latter practice. The influence of this movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reached Egypt, Syria and the Hijaz, and interconnected with the leading figures of Qushāshī’s circle.14

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 305 Two of the most prominent figures to emerge from the Hijazi ḥadīth network were Sufi revivalists: the Indian Shah Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī (d. 1762) and the West African Ṣāliḥ al-Fullānī (d. 1803). Fullānī was born in the modern-day Republic of Guinea in West Africa and travelled widely before settling in Medina. He never got to meet Qushāshī or Kūrānī but had managed to obtain written authorisations from them before their death. However, he did learn in Cairo from another great figure to emerge from that network, the Indian ḥadīth master Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1791) who moved to Cairo where he revived ḥadīth science and transmission and taught ḥadīth in a way the locals found astounding. Fullānī settled in Medina where he lived the rest of his life and connected with more scholars who traced their lineage back to Qushāshī’s circle. In Medina, Fullānī met ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Sammān, founder of the Sammānī ṭarīqa, and took from him the talqīn of the dhikr (the transmission of a dhikr formula by way of repeating it after the master), as well as more scholarly authorisations back to Kūrānī.15 Another Sufi influence on Fullānī worth mentioning is Ibn Abī Jamra’s commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī, which we encountered in the chapter on Shaʿrānī’s Mīzān (Chapter 8). Fullānī mentioned receiving an authorisation in Ibn Abī Jamra’s commentary by reading the entire four-volume work to his teacher word by word.16 Fullānī composed Rousing the Determination of those who Are Not Blind to Follow in the Way [of God’s Messenger] (Īqāẓ himam uli l-abṣār li l-iqtidāʾ bi sayyid al-muhājirīn wa-l-anṣār), an anti-taqlīd work that benefitted greatly from Ibn al-Qayyim’s writings. This work had lasting influence on anti-taqlīd revivalist movements both in the Hijaz and abroad. Sanūsī’s anti-taqlīd work Īqāẓ al-wasnān was largely based on Fullānī’s Īqāẓ;17 the Indian Ahl-i Hadith movement also published it and were strongly influenced by it;18 and one of its founders, Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khan, praised the author as a full mujtahid.19 Another major influence on the Ahl-i Hadith movement was the Indian Shah Walī-Allāh. Shah Walī-Allāh and the Indian Ahl-i Hadith Movement Shah Walī-Allāh (d. 1762) was an Indian Sufi head of the Naqshbandī order who travelled East and lived in Medina where he studied with scholars from Qushāshī’s network of students and chose Kūrānī’s son Muḥammad Abū l-Tahir al-Kūrānī as his main teacher in ḥadīth, before returning to India.

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This is a key reason why Kūrānī Jr, his father and Qushāshī regularly feature in the ḥadīth transmission chains of the Indian subcontinent. Walī-Allāh took from his teachers in Medina the central importance of ḥadīth study, the importance of ijtihād and the love for Ibn ʿArabī. Walī-Allāh was well-versed in Ibn ʿArabī’s metaphysical doctrines, the influence of which is apparent in his works. He defended Ibn ʿArabī’s waḥdat al-wujūd from the criticism of his Indian Naqshbandī predecessor Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1034/1624) who had claimed that Ibn ʿArabī’s understanding was faulty and advocated his idea of waḥdat al-shuhūd instead. Walī-Allāh accepted Sirhindī’s presentation of waḥdat al-shuhūd as superior to the way in which Ibn ʿArabī’s followers presented their understanding of waḥdat al-wujūd, but he argued that Sirhindī’s understanding had been part of Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrine to begin with. Both understandings represented two correct perspectives within the same metaphysical system that Ibn ʿArabī had expounded, and Sirhindī was mistaken to present his viewpoint as the only truth. Yet, Sirhindī’s mistake in doing so was an intellectual one, not an error in his spiritual experience; therefore, Walī-Allāh, unlike some of his predecessors from Qushāshī’s circle, was not disputing Sirhindī’s status as a great knower of God.20 Despite defending Ibn ʿArabī’s waḥdat al-wujūd, this aspect of Ibn ʿArabī’s teaching was not as important to Walī-Allāh as it was to Qushāshī and Kūrānī before him. Walī-Allāh levelled criticism against many of those who preoccupied themselves with Ibn ʿArabī’s metaphysical teachings (he certainly did not have his own teachers in mind, however). He described a dream that he had had while in the Hijaz, in which he saw how many people who did not subscribe to Ibn ʿArabī’s views and instead focused on worship and God’s remembrance were far better off spiritually than many of those who delved into Ibn ʿArabī’s metaphysical doctrines at the expense of the hard work of worship and remembrance.21 More central to Walī-Allāh’s thought was Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings on the ‘Imaginal Realm’, which Walī-Allāh introduced, among other places, at the beginning of his most celebrated work titled Ḥujjat Allāh al-bālighah (The Conclusive Proof from God).22 The Conclusive Proof continued the tradition of Tirmidhī and Ibn ʿArabī before him in explaining the wisdom behind the teachings of the sharīʿa, what Walī-Allāh called ‘the science of the secrets of the religion (ʿilm asrār al-dīn)’. He wrote:

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 307 The primary among the entirety of all of the religious sciences, in my opinion, the highest in rank, and the greatest in value, is the science of the inner meanings of religion. This science investigates the wisdom and rationale behind the rulings and the secrets of the properties and the fine points of actions. Of all the branches of knowledge, this, by God, is worthiest of the precious time of qualified scholars [. . .] since only through it can a human being gain true insight into what was sanctioned by the divine law.23

Walī-Allāh wrote two important works on the madhhabs and the issue of ijtihād: al-Inṣāf, a work explaining why the imāms differed, and ʿIqd al-jīd, on the rules of ijtihād and taqlīd. In this latter work, Walī-Allāh emphasised the need for ijtihād and quoted – via Shaʿrānī – many early authorities against adherence to a single madhhab. He concluded by saying: [Shaʿrānī] then continued to provide quotations from a great number of the scholars of the madhhabs, that they used to implement and give fatwās according to all madhhabs without strict adherence to a single madhhab, from the time of the madhhab founders until his own time. The amount of narrations he provided and their content show that this had been the way of the scholars from the early days until the late, so much so that it has the status of what is agreed upon, and it has therefore become the ‘way of the Muslims’ [referring to Q 4:115] which one cannot go against.24

In other words, Walī-Allāh countered the argument by the proponents of taqlīd that they represented the majority, saying that the constant way of the Muslims since the earliest times had been to not adhere to a single madhhab, even when one was affiliated to one. The main point repeated throughout the work was the importance of following the evidence and not being bound to a single madhhab. However, unlike Ibn ʿArabī and many other revivalists from this tradition, such as Fullānī, Walī-Allāh maintained that there was great benefit in remaining within the boundaries of the four madhhabs and not following opinions from outside all four.25 In Fuyūḍ al-Ḥaramayn, a work on some of the spiritual visions and experiences that he had while living in Mecca and Medina, Walī-Allāh attributes his stance to a spiritual encounter with the Prophet, in which the Prophet gave him three instructions that went

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against his natural inclinations. One of those was to not go outside the four madhhabs and to attempt to reconcile between them as much as possible. Walī-Allāh explained that there was a secret behind this instruction that need not be shared, but he had to follow it despite his very nature being wholly averse to taqlīd.26 Walī-Allāh wrote of a dream in which he peered into the Prophet’s spirit in an attempt to gauge which madhhab the Prophet inclined to the most so he could follow it. He saw that the Prophet believed all madhhabs to be functionally equal from the perspective that the very point of the sharīʿa’s teachings was to reform human beings’ character and behaviour, and all four madhhabs covered all the main basics of the sharīʿa that achieved that goal.27 This did not mean to him, however, that all the teachings of the madhhabs were equally correct. Walī-Allāh described in the same work a vision in which the Prophet taught him a method through which to reform the Ḥanafī madhhab which was dominant in his homeland and to bring it in line with the sunna. This method was to study the opinions of Abū Ḥanīfa and his two greatest students on every topic and choose from them the one most in line with the ḥadīth. Then, on matters which they had not discussed, the gaps were to be filled by the positions of Ḥanafī jurists who were also ḥadīth experts (not necessarily by the main authorities of the school). In this way, the madhhab would be reformed from within and remain purely Ḥanafī, but it would be brought closer to the recorded sunna.28 In effect, Walī-Allāh followed in Shaʿrānī’s footsteps in defending the overall authority of the four madhhabs as guides to the outer boundaries of the sharīʿa and in showing respect to them all. At the same time, Walī-Allāh went further than Shaʿrānī by rejecting voluntary total adherence to a single madhhab, advocating that one should follow the evidence wherever it led. Yet, unlike Ibn ʿArabī, followers of the Idrīsī tradition and Fullānī, WalīAllāh believed that it was not in the public interest to go beyond the four madhhabs (and take positions from the Ẓāhirīs, for example). Walī-Allāh returned to India where he taught in his father’s Raḥīmiyya Madrasa, where his sons, nephews and grandsons taught after him. WalīAllāh’s son Shah ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Dihlawī followed in his father’s footsteps in ḥadīth specialisation and ḥadīth-based ijtihād, and the Raḥīmiyya Madrasa became distinct in its juristic approach from the other Indian madrasas that

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 309 taught the Ḥanafī madhhab (or the Shāfiʿī in Kerala). One of the scholars who emerged from this tradition was Nadhīr Ḥusayn Dihlawī (d. 1902), a student first of Shah ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and then the latter’s son and successor Shaykh Muḥammad Isḥāq (d. 1846). When Muḥammad Isḥāq left for the Hijaz, Ḥusayn saw himself as the successor to the legacy of Walī-Allāh’s family and continued the tradition of the Raḥīmiyya Madrasa. The madrasa itself was closed down by the British after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 against the rule of the British East India Company. At this point, the legacy of Shah Walī-Allāh split into different inheritors and schools. Some, like the Brelvī movement, focused on his Sufi legacy. Others, like the founders of Dar ul-ʿUloom Deoband, inherited his focus on ḥadīth study, but they did so within a strictly Ḥanafī framework. It was Nadhīr Ḥusayn who carried on the Walī-Allāh family’s emphasis on ḥadīth-based ijtihād and their criticism of complete taqlīd. Nadhīr Ḥusayn and two other graduates of the Raḥīmiyya Madrasa, Nawwab Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khan (d. 1890) and Muḥammad Ḥusain Batalvī (d. 1920), founded the Jamaat Ahl-i Hadith, a revivalist organisation calling against taqlīd and in favour of following only the Qurʾān and sunna. Among the strongest known sources of influence on their thought are Shawkānī, Fullānī and Shah Walī-Allāh himself,29 all of whom led them to the writings of Ibn Taymiyya and his student Ibn al-Qayyim. The Ahl-i Hadith movement began to adopt many of Ibn Taymiyya’s arguments not only against taqlīd, but also against many Sufi practices, and it took on many of his fiqh positions. However, the early founders appear to have differed on matters of Sufism and theology. Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khan’s fatwās show a hostile attitude to Ibn ʿArabī and most Sufi practices. Much like Ibn Ḥazm, he also rejected the notion of there being a mercy in differences of opinion and showed a strong Taymiyyan literalist theological orientation.30 This appears to be mostly the influence of Shawkānī (whose late reversal of attitude toward Ibn ʿArabī and other Sufis came after his major works had already been written and probably escaped most of his followers or did not change their attitudes). Khan, whose wife was the ruler of the Indian state of Bophal – a female Muslim monarch – took Shawkānī’s writings from the Yemeni traditionist Ḥusayn ibn Muḥsin al-Anṣārī who moved to Bophal to teach ḥadīth and Shawkānī’s works. Khan wrote

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commentaries on works of Shawkānī and copied from his writings extensively in his own, referring to him in his writings as ‘our shaykh’.31 Nadhīr Ḥusayn, the other main founder of the Ahl-i Hadith, was also very close to Ḥusayn Anṣārī; they shared many students among them, but he remained very traditional when it came to Sufism. Martin Riexinger noted: Nadhīr Ḥusayn Dihlawī (1805–1902) – known as shaykh al-kull because almost all leading Ahl-i Hadith scholars of the 19th and early 20th century had been his students – did not advocate the literal interpretation of the Koranic statements on God’s attributes. Furthermore he was favourably inclined towards Sufism. He demanded that his disciples offer him an oath of allegiance (bayʿa) and he praised Ibn ʿArabī, claiming that the unity of being (waḥdat al-wujūd) understood as unity of divine manifestations (waḥdat al-shuhūd) was totally in accordance with the doctrines of the ahl al-sunna.32

One of the greatest works produced by the Ahl-i Hadith movement is ʿAwn al-maʿbūd, the best-known Arabic-language commentary on Sunan Abū Dāwūd today. It gives us further insight into the early founding figures and their attitude to the Akbarī school. The work was mainly the effort and initiative of Muḥammad Shams al-Ḥaqq ʿAẓīmābādī (d. 1905), a student of both Nadhīr Ḥusayn and Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khan. However, the author was assisted by his brother Sharaf al-Ḥaqq ʿAẓīmābādī and, more importantly, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Mubārakfūrī, author of Tuḥfat al-aḥwadhī, the best-known Arabic-language commentary on Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī (also known as Sunan al-Tirmidhī) today.33 Together, then, ʿAẓīmābādī and Mubārakfūrī wrote the two most widely read works to emerge from this movement. A (weak) ḥadīth in Sunan Abū Dāwūd states that God will send at the turn of every century those who will ‘renew’ the religion for the Muslim community (the language is not clear on whether that is the beginning or end of each century, and whether there could be multiple renewers for each century, or only one). There has been a long tradition – especially among Shāfiʿī scholars – of creating lists of the most likely renewers for each century. Many of the names we have come across in this book made it to Suyūṭī’s list: al-Shāfiʿī (second century), Ghazālī (fifth century), Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd (seventh century) and Suyūṭī himself (ninth century). What is of great interest for

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 311 us here is the authors’ suggestions for the following centuries after Suyūṭī. They listed Kūrānī, ‘seal of the muḥaqqiqīn (those who have the ability to investigate the truth of every matter and are able to come to a conclusion on it) and the backbone for later ḥadīth transmitters’ (eleventh century), Ṣāliḥ al-Fullānī and Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (twelfth century), and their own teachers Nadhīr Ḥusayn, Nawwab Ṣiddīq Khan and Ḥusayn ibn Muḥsin al-Anṣārī (thirteenth century). Here we have these anti-madhhab, independent mujtahid, ḥadīth-purist scholars elevating Kūrānī to the position of the greatest single scholar of his century and the reviver of Islam in his age. They would not have praised him as the ‘seal of the verifiers’, if they had not been well acquainted with his biography and writings, and one certainly cannot find a biography of Kūrānī that does not mention his complete dedication to Ibn ʿArabī and his being the imām of all those who believe in waḥdat al-wujūd. Neither can one easily find any written works of Kūrānī that are free of Ibn ʿArabī’s strong and obvious influence.34 Even in Kūrānī’s thabat (a list of the books one was authorised to teach and their chains of transmission), Kūrānī could not stop himself from digressing into a long defence of Ibn ʿArabī’s mystical interpretation of a ḥadīth against Ibn Ḥajar’s critique.35 ʿAẓīmābādī and company, then, saw their teachers as a continuation of the legacy of Qushāshī and Kūrānī’s revivalist tradition in the Hijaz, which was carried on in the next century by the likes of Shah Walī-Allāh, Ṣāliḥ al-Fullānī and Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, as well as in the following century by the founders of his movement. (Walī-Allāh most likely did not make the list because scholars were keen to choose scholars who flourished around the turn of each century, as per the description in the ḥadīth, and Walī-Allāh died too far from the end of the twelfth century ah, as he died in 1176 ah. Zabīdī [d. 1205 ah] and Fullānī [d. 1218 ah], although less influential, would have been teaching at the turn of the century). The Ahl-i Hadith movement adopted more and more of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought over time, until most of its scholars adopted a literalist interpretation of God’s attributes. Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khan most likely had a large role in this.36 The group eventually became virtually indistinguishable from the Wahhābībacked global Salafī movement, with its complete hostility to Sufism. A similar pattern took place in Iraq and Syria.

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The Iraqi and Moroccan Revivalists In Baghdad, the prominent Ālūsī family were among the best-known and influential reformists of the nineteenth century. Abū l-Thanāʾ Maḥmūd al-Ālūsī (d. 1854) was a great Iraqi scholar and author of Rūḥ al-maʿānī, a very influential commentary on the Qurʾān. Ālūsī is one of the first Arab figures to be associated with the term ‘Salafī’ and counted among the reformers who paved the way for the rise of the global Salafī movement. Ālūsī did use the term salafī in his writings, not in reference to a specific movement, but rather in its classical usage as a description of the Traditionalist Ḥanbalī theological approach. In fact, he denied that the ‘ignorant’ and extremist Wahhābī movement could be counted as ‘true’ salafīs in creed.37 Ālūsī was Shāfiʿī in madhhab, but he was appointed as the main muftī of the Ḥanafī madhhab in Baghdad; he remained Shāfiʿī in his personal practice, but in some cases preferred the Ḥanafī positions. Ālūsī was a member of the Naqshbandī Sufi order and was strongly influenced by the writings of Ibn ʿArabī and his later interpreters, such as Kūrānī.38 He ‘relied heavily on Kūrānī’s works in his own treatment of a range of theological issues’ such as waḥdat al-wujūd and human agency in his al-Ajwiba al-ʿIrāqiyya ʿalā al-asʾila al-Īrāniyya. There are also more than two dozen references to Kūrānī in his highly influential Qurʾān commentary.39 Ālūsī quoted Ibn ʿArabī in his Qurʾān commentary at least 662 times, referring to him every time as ‘the Greatest Shaykh (al-shaykh al-akbar), may God sanctify his secret’.40 Ālūsī’s son Nuʿmān Khayr al-Dīn (d. 1899) wrote a book in defence of Ibn Taymiyya, discussing the later scholars who praised him, including Kūrānī’s defence of Ibn Taymiyya from the charge of anthropomorphism. In this work he wrote: ‘I am among those who think well of the Greatest Master Muḥyī al-Dīn and do not consider myself from among his denouncers, although I am among those who forbid reading his books in which his expressions, if understood literally, contradict the Law (with regard to correct theological beliefs)’.41 Unlike his father who quoted Ibn ʿArabī profusely, Nuʿmān respected Ibn ʿArabī but feared that his metaphysical teachings could be easily misunderstood to blur the line between Creator and Creation; he preferred the writings of Ibn Taymiyya instead, praising him for his independent ḥadīthbased ijtihād.42. Nuʿmān did quote Ibn ʿArabī in this work, in particular his complaint that the scholars of the madhhabs restricted God’s mercy by

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 313 forbidding what God had permitted and by restricting the multiplicity of practices that God had allowed in the sharīʿa. Nuʿmān sent this work to Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān who had it printed for him in India at his own expense.43 This was the beginning of Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s sponsorship and publishing of several of the Ālūsī family’s works because of the reformist similarities they shared in creed and jurisprudence. Two years after completing his defence of Ibn Taymiyya in 1880, Nuʿmān al-Ālūsī spent a few weeks in Damascus where he shared ideas with the emerging reformist movement there. This latter movement, however, did not depend on the Iraqi or Indian reform movements for access to Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas.44 They were in the best city in the world to find Ibn Taymiyya’s manuscripts; once again, it was the thought of Ibn ʿArabī which led them to Ibn Taymiyya. The Damascene reformers, who will be discussed below, were even more directly and primarily influenced by Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings than the Iraqi or Indian reform movements. Nuʿmān’s nephew Maḥmūd Shukrī al-Ālūsī (d. 1924) carried on the legacy of reform that was initiated by his grandfather after whom he was named, but he was strongly influenced by the rising tides of rationalism, on one hand, and Wahhābism, on the other. These two movements, even though they appear at odds with one another, were closer in spirit than meets the eye, and they were united in their enmity to Sufism and pluralism. Maḥmūd Shukrī al-Ālūsī, like his Egyptian peer Rashīd Riḍa, became a defender of the Wahhabī movement, even writing a tract in praise of the movement under the misleading title Tārīkh Najd (History of Najd). In Morocco, the sharifian Kattānī family produced a great number of Sufi shaykhs who were also ḥadīth masters, jurisprudential reformers and political activists. Among those was Abū l-Fayḍ Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Kabīr al-Kattānī (d. 1909), founder of the Kattānī Sufi order, scholar and anticolonial political activist. Kattānī died at the young age of thirty-seven, one month after the Moroccan Sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥafīz had him lashed 500 times for his anti-colonial political activities. Kattānī quoted ‘the Greatest Master’ and Shaʿrānī in many, if not most, of his works and held several of Ibn ʿArabī’s reformist positions. Kattānī not only decried taqlīd and claimed the rank of mujtahid, but some of his ‘inspired aphorisms (ḥikam)’ mirror statements of Ibn ʿArabī that distinguished between the ‘original prophecy’ or sunna of the Prophet and the ‘derivative prophecy’ or ‘sunna’ of later scholars. For

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example, ‘a most excellent servant of God you would be, if you worshipped Him through nothing beyond the pure unadulterated sunna (without any additions)’, and ‘a most excellent servant of God you would be if you did not go beyond the original sunnas (al-sunan al-aṣliyya) and the path (sharīʿa) laid by the Prophet himself (al-sharʿ al-nabawī)’.45 Kattānī, like Ibn ʿArabī, Shaʿrānī and Suyūṭī, explained that the perfection and completeness of Muḥammad is reflected in the breadth and latitude (wusʿ) of his sharīʿa, which was made to accommodate every capacity or disposition (qābiliyya). This, he taught, could only be experienced and understood fully by those who engaged with the ḥadīth literature (and not just the books of fiqh).46 Kattānī called for a revival of ijtihād and wrote treatises defending practices in prayer that went against the Mālikī praxis of his lands, such as putting one hand over the other while standing (qabḍ), raising the arms when transitioning during prayer (rafʿ al-yadayn) and reciting the basmala as part of the Fātiḥa.47 Kattānī was a great admirer of Shawkānī’s Nayl al-awṭār, the latter’s famous commentary on the aḥādīth al-aḥkām collection of Ibn Taymiyya’s grandfather, as well as Ālūsī’s Qurʾān commentary Rūḥ al-maʿānī. He said that, after reading Rūḥ al-maʿānī, he could not help but give Ālūsī the title of ‘(Greatest) Scholar of the East and West’ and that any expert on the genre of Qurʾān commentaries would agree with that title if they were to read that work. He continued that, had Ālūsī declared himself a fully independent mujtahid, Kattānī would not hesitate to agree. Kattānī’s son and successor Muḥammad al-Bāqir al-Kattānī (d. 1964) continued his father’s legacy. He wrote how his father’s praise of Ālūsī and Shawkānī revealed the lofty place he had in his heart for these two scholars and others like them who displayed immense depth and rare breadth of knowledge, who were able to do ijtihād and extract God’s rulings from the Book of God and the sunna of His Messenger, and ‘who used to declare an all-out war against partisanship to the schools of jurisprudence (al-taʿaṣṣub al-madhhabī)’.48 According to a contemporary member of the family who edits and publishes the works of the family’s great masters, it is part of the teachings of the Kattānī Sufi order to have a strong belief in the greatness and superiority of Ibn ʿArabī.49 The approach of Kattānī was carried on not only by his descendants, but also by other members of the same Kattānī family. One great scion of the Kattānī family was Muḥammad al-Muntaṣir-billāh al-Kattānī (d. 1998),

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 315 another great Sufi, scholar and political activist. The Medina-born Muntaṣirbillāh became a polymath with particular interest in ḥadīth sciences and jurisprudence, and in 1955 he moved to Damascus where he became a teacher at Damascus University and a Mālikī muftī. Muntaṣir-billāh considered himself an independent mujtahid who did not follow any particular madhhab, although he had a particular dedication to the life and teachings of Ibn Ḥazm and the Ẓāhirīs. In Damascus, Muntaṣir-billāh published Muʿjam fiqh Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī, a two-volume encyclopaedia of Ibn Ḥazm’s fiqh positions (published by Damascus University), followed by Muʿjam fiqh al-salaf, a nine-volume encyclopaedia of the fiqh positions of the earliest generations of Islam, in particular the Companions, Followers and Prophet’s descendants (which would be published by Umm al-Qurā University, Mecca). Muntaṣirbillāh mentioned the need of modern Muslim states to benefit from such early opinions as one motivation behind his work.50 This project was continued by Muntaṣir-billāh’s Syrian student Muḥammad Rawwās Qalʿajī (d. 2014), who published several individual encyclopaedias of the fiqh positions of different Companions, Followers and imāms of extinct madhhabs. The influence of the Kattānī approach could also be seen in the great Moroccan traditionist ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ al-Fāsī (d. 1963), a student of Muntaṣir-billāh’s grandfather Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Kattānī. Fāsī was a ḥadīth expert who greatly admired and defended the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī, Qushāshī and Kūrānī, but followed the theological doctrines of Ibn Taymiyya against the Ashʿarīs, and he was highly critical of the Sufis of his age.51 The Damascene Salafiyya One of the greatest commentators on Ibn ʿArabī in the Arabic language is the famed Algerian anti-colonial freedom-fighter ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī (d. 1855). Jazāʾirī was fully dedicated to Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings and requested to be buried beside him (which he was, until the Algerian government disinterred him and reburied him in Algeria after Independence, as the country’s great national hero). Jazāʾirī wrote a commentary on selections from Ibn ʿArabī, titled al-Mawāqif. He also funded a comparison between the extant print of Ibn ʿArabī’s Futūḥāt and the original manuscript preserved in Konya. He taught the Futūḥāt, along with other works of Ibn ʿArabī and his own Mawāqif, to a circle of students in Damascus.52 From this circle

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emerged the first scholars that rejected taqlīd of the schools and stressed the importance of only following judgements upon investigation of their evidence in the revealed sources.53 His direct students, and their own students, became the leading reformists of Damascus in the pre-modern era. Jazāʾirī purchased and renovated the by-then derelict Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya, historically the most prestigious ḥadīth madrasa in Damascus, where the likes of Abū Shāma, Nawawī and Mizzī had taught. The Dār al-Ḥadīth had fallen into disuse and a section of it had become a wine storehouse for a Christian wine-seller. After renovating it, Jazāʾirī inaugurated the opening of the Dār al-Ḥadīth with a lesson on ḥadīth, then left other scholars to continue the regular teaching there.54 Following in his footsteps was his student Salīm al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 1890). ʿAṭṭār studied Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings under Jazāʾirī and even taught one of Ibn ʿArabī’s books toward the end of his life. He also began teaching Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī in Damascus in what at that time was a ground-breaking way. ʿAṭṭār would explain each ḥadīth from the point of view of Sufism and jurisprudence and provide the arguments of each madhhab for every problem discussed. Jurists of the different schools attended his lessons, where they were encouraged to debate the evidence and come to a conclusion as to the most correct ruling. One contemporary boasted that this was the first time such teaching took place in Arab countries, bringing great honour to Damascus. As Itzhak Weismann noted, . . . Though an exaggeration, this assertion underlines the reformist thrust inherent in ʿAṭṭār’s instruction. Its two pillars were the combination of the sciences of ḥadīth and Sufism, and the weakening of the authority of taqlīd by seeking proofs for the rulings of the law schools in the Qurʾān and the sunna. ʿAṭṭār’s teaching thus reflected the reform that ʿAbd al-Qādir (al-Jazāʾirī) suggested through Sufi theosophy from the viewpoint of the science of ḥadīth.55

Another close associate of Jazāʾirī was Muḥammad al-Shaṭṭī (d. 1890) who preceded the above-mentioned al-Muntaṣir-billāh al-Kattānī in dedicating his life to studying and reviving the fiqh of the early mujtahids and extinct madhhabs.56 He also preceded him in pointing out the need of modern Muslim states to benefit from the rich heritage of fiqh opinions from

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 317 early authorities. They were, of course, correct. For example, many modern Muslim states resorted to the fatwās of Ibn Shubruma, a great scholar among the Followers but forgotten today, against the marriage of minors.57 Jazāʾirī’s students and their own students became the leading reformists of Damascus and the founding fathers of the early Damascene Salafiyya movement, a Sufi Salafī revival movement. The most important of Jazāʾirī’s students was ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Bīṭār, who was perhaps his closest student and who was nicknamed ‘[Jazāʾirī’s] second in his own lifetime’. Bīṭār was the founder of the reform school that would become the Salafiyya of Damascus, and Rashīd Riḍā described him as ‘the reviver of the way of the early Muslims (salaf   ) in Syria’.58 Beside leading the call for ijtihād and the rejection of taqlīd in Syria, Bīṭār may have also influenced Muḥammad ʿAbduh to abandon Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī’s (d. 1897) philosophical views and political activism and to turn toward the writings of Ibn Taymiyya and a fiqh-focused reform.59 The second-most important figure to emerge from this circle was Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī (d. 1914), a disciple of Muḥammad al-Khānī who was Bīṭār’s closest companion among Jazāʾirī’s students. Qāsimī became the mouthpiece of the emerging Salafī movement in Damascus and its greatest author. Qāsimī was also one of the first figures – if not the first – to use the term ‘salafī’ to refer to a type of jurisprudential approach, not to a theological doctrine as it had always been exclusively used.60 Like Bīṭār and other members of this circle, Qāsimī popularised the works of Ibn Taymiyya. This circle, which emerged from Jazāʾirī’s lessons on Ibn ʿArabī, revived the name of Ibn Taymiyya who, in fact, was Ibn ʿArabī’s greatest critic! Having lived in Damascus, Ibn Taymiyya’s manuscripts had been lying dormant in Damascus’s manuscript collections, and this group worked hard at discovering and publishing these works. It is fascinating that, in his early works, Qāsimī added the titles of ‘Naqshbandī’, ‘Ashʿarī’ and ‘Shāfiʿī’ to his name, signalling his pride in the respective Sufi order, theological school and madhhab that he followed. In his later works, Qāsimī only signed with his plain name, reflecting the loss of his attachment to all three. Yet, Qāsimī’s dedication to Ibn Taymiyya never diminished his respect for Ibn ʿArabī. In fact, one could argue that Ibn ʿArabī remained the main driving force behind his reforms. Qāsimī’s lifelong dedication to Sufism in general – and Ibn ʿArabī in particular – was apparent.

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He wrote abridgements of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī’s Qūt al-qulūb and Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ. In his own Qurʾān commentary, Qāsimī regularly quoted major figures from Ibn ʿArabī’s school of metaphysics, such as Qāshānī and Makhdoom Ali Mahimi. In his celebrated work on ḥadīth science, Qawāʿid al-taḥdīth, Qāsimī quoted Shaʿrānī’s al-Mīzān al-kubrā throughout this work, including some anti-taqlīd passages, and he also incorporated a few lengthy antitaqlīd passages from Ibn ʿArabī. He also quoted a mystical explanation by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh (discussed in Chapter 9) on the difference between ḥadīth and ḥadīth qudsī. When young members of the emerging Damascene Salafī movement which he had helped create denounced Ibn ʿArabī, Qāsimī did not hesitate to write in Ibn ʿArabī’s defence and to criticise Ibn Taymiyya for calling Ibn ʿArabī a heretic.61 Most importantly, Qāsimī published a collection of essays on uṣūl al-fiqh in which he included Ibn Ḥazm’s chapter on his own legal principles in the introduction to his Muḥallā, as well as Chapter 88 of the Futūḥāt, the one dedicated to the exposition of Ibn ʿArabī’s own legal principles.62 In other words, Qāsimī wanted to introduce Ibn ʿArabī’s madhhab to the world! Another highly significant fact is that this inner circle of Salafi reformists, led by Bīṭār, Qāsimī and Jazāʾirī’s brother Aḥmad al-Jazāʾirī, decided to have regular meetings in which they read and studied texts together; they chose Shaʿrānī’s Kashf al-ghumma as their first text. Scholars who were opposed to these reforms persuaded the governor of Damascus in the year 1986 to interrogate this group: ‘They were accused of regarding themselves as mujtahids, meeting to read Ḥadīth, and demanding proofs for the rulings of the jurists’! The governor’s muftī advisor wanted the group banished from Damascus, but the present judge intervened to save them. This became known as the ‘mujtahidūn incident’.63 It may sound shocking to hear that this circle which was dedicated to Ibn ʿArabī would wish to revive the works of Ibn ʿArabī’s detractor Ibn Taymiyya. However, both figures were, in fact, very close to each other in jurisprudence: both represented an allegiance to the ḥadīth over the schools. Ibn Taymiyya himself admitted in a letter to have benefitted greatly from studying more than five of Ibn ʿArabī’s works, and that he only began denouncing him after reading his most difficult and most controversial work Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam.64 In his compilation of Ibn ʿArabī’s fiqh positions, Maḥmūd Ghurāb has noted

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 319 that Ibn Taymiyya agreed with Ibn ʿArabī on certain positions that were unique to the two of them; he believed that Ibn Taymiyya must have adopted these positions due to the influence of Ibn ʿArabī.65 Ibn Taymiyya’s fiqh positions, in fact, agreed to an astonishing degree with those of Ibn ʿArabī. In his biography of Ibn Taymiyya, Jon Hoover also noted that Ibn Taymiyya’s understanding of the sharīʿa as a whole appears to have been inspired by his study of Ibn ʿArabī’s writings before he turned against him.66 Ibn Taymiyya’s writings also had a number of advantages over those of Ibn ʿArabī, which would make them appealing and useful to Ibn ʿArabī’s admirers. Ibn Taymiyya’s corpus of fiqh writings was far greater than that of Ibn ʿArabī, and his arguments were far more detailed, whereas Ibn ʿArabī gave more space to the mystical underpinnings of each fiqh position than to legal arguments. Ibn Taymiyya was a master ḥadīth critic and did not need to rely on the judgement of others, as did Ibn ʿArabī, and ḥadīth is the basic source material of the fiqh. Ibn Taymiyya’s combined expertise in both the ḥadīth sciences and the fiqh corpus of Sunni Islam could not be rivalled by Ibn ʿArabī, or possibly by anyone else for many centuries before and after him. Many scholars who are not loyal Taymiyyans (followers of Ibn Taymiyya) and who may disagree with Ibn Taymiyya in other fields, such as theology or Sufism, have held him in the highest esteem as a jurist. For instance, one could point to the Egyptian jurist Muḥammad Abū Zahra (d. 1974) who dedicated a book to examining the juristic thought of each of the four imāms, books that became bestsellers throughout the Muslim world and have been translated into several languages. Abū Zahra followed these books with a similar work on Ibn Taymiyya. While he was definitely not a Taymiyyan and criticised Ibn Taymiyya’s theological stance, Abū Zahra referred to Ibn Taymiyya as the ‘the Philosopher of the Jurists (faylasūf al-fuqahāʾ)’ and on several occasions came close to suggesting that Ibn Taymiyya just might be greater than all four imāms and any other jurist who ever lived!67 Finally, Ibn ʿArabī’s simplistic rejection of extensions to the law, which he took from Ibn Ḥazm, left much to be desired. These problems were amply demonstrated by well-known positions that Ibn Ḥazm was forced to adopt, which were rightly ridiculed by the followers of the other schools. Sometimes it was obvious and common sense that the instructions in the Qurʾān and ḥadīth were simply providing examples and were to serve as

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basis of extension. According to the Ẓāhirī school, wheat and barley farmers would have to pay the zakāt tax, but not fruit farmers, factory owners, or real estate tycoons, even if they had far greater fortunes. To give another example, the Prophet wanted to shut the door of usury, hence he prohibited the exchange of ‘gold for gold, silver for silver, wheat for wheat, barley for barley, dates for dates, or salt for salt, except for the same quantity and quality for the same quantity and quality’. Rice was not mentioned, for example, because it simply was not eaten on the Arabian Peninsula during the Prophet’s lifetime. Shaʿrānī attempted to defend Ibn ʿArabī’s rejection of qiyās by saying that perhaps the Prophet never intended to prohibit the similar exchange of rice for rice, and that everything he did not mention was left out, so as to show mercy to the Muslims.68 This sort of argument is, of course, highly problematic and cannot convince anyone but a blind follower. It is impossible that an exchange of barley for barley would be usurious, but not an identical exchange of rice for rice. Ibn Taymiyya, however, approved of such an extension and explained that taking these items mentioned by the Prophet as examples for other goods does not constitute qiyās.69 Ibn Taymiyya was also the master of ijtihād by the inductive method of marshalling many verses from the Qurʾān and ḥadīths to make overarching rules about the sharīʿa, which would guide him in his extensions to new cases. This method of inductive inference was similar to the method practised by Traditionalists such as Mālik, Ibn Ḥanbal and al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī and which was seen as a type of argument based on a more holistic understanding of the revealed sources, rather than what Tirmidhī had critiqued as the narrow-sighted deductive method of qiyās championed by the Ḥanafīs. Ultimately, the powerful oil-funded and Wahhābī-inspired global Salafī movement absorbed the Damascus Salafiyya movement, as it also absorbed the Ahl-i Hadith movement of India and many Modernist Salafīs of Morocco and Egypt. And just as had happened with the Ahl-i Hadith movement in India, the Sufi connection eventually faded away from the Damascus Salafiyya, as the younger recruits were influenced more by the global Wahhābīfunded Salafī movement than by the Sufi founding figures of the Damascene Salafiyya.70

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 321 Maḥmūd Khaṭṭāb al-Subkī’s al-Jamʿiyya al-Sharʿiyya Another powerful revivalist movement came out of Egypt. The al-Jamʿiyya al-Sharʿiyya (in full, The Sharīʿa-Based Organisation for the Cooperation of those Who Act Upon the Qurʾān and the Sunna) was founded by Maḥmūd Khaṭṭāb al-Subkī (d. 1993). Subkī came from a small village in the Munūfiyya Province in Egypt and was an unlettered, uneducated, young man who helped on his father’s farm. At the age of twenty-two, his master in the Khalwatī Sufi path allowed him to enter the forty-day seclusion (khalwa) for which this order is known, and after emerging from this seclusion his master judged him to have achieved sainthood and made him a khalīfa (authorised successor as a Sufi shaykh). When visiting the Azhar Mosque in Cairo, the young shaykh had a strong desire to remain there and acquire religious learning. Within exactly a one-year period, he went from not being able to read or write to becoming a teacher of jurisprudence, Mālikī fiqh and ḥadīth at the Azhar Mosque. ‘I do not believe that such a thing has ever happened to any person before me’, wrote Subkī.71 This remarkable feat was only possible, his students say, because he was already a Knower of God, which made his heart ready for knowledge to fall into place with his spiritual insight and divine assistance. He eventually received the Azhar’s ʿĀlimiyya degree at the age of thirty-nine. Due to the great popularity of his lessons, Subkī established a mosque near his home where he taught instead. There, he taught the ḥadīth collections of Abū Dāwūd and Nasāʾī, which he used as a basis for teaching comparative fiqh, discussing the evidence for each of the four madhhabs. Subkī dedicated his life to reforming Sufism and denouncing Sufi practices that he classified as ‘harmful innovations’, calling for a Sufism strictly in line with the Qurʾān and sunna. Among his works is a mawlid, a genre of rhyming prose about the birth of the Prophet Muḥammad, which Sufis read every year at the annual celebration of the Prophet’s date of birth. In his mawlid he affirmed the usual Sufi belief in the primordial light of the Prophet and his being a Prophet before Adam was even created. Unlike traditional mawlid works, however, more than half of the work is devoted to calls for following the Qurʾān and sunna and attacks on the authority of Sufi shaykhs who innovate practices from outside these two sources (including ones that usually took place in such mawlid readings), and it also warns against other harmful practices such as smoking. He continued to function as a Sufi shaykh

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and had a number of disciples on the Sufi path, but his calls for reform attracted people from outside Sufi circles as well. He eventually founded his organisation with the aim of utilising the talents of his broad group of followers and gave it a strong focus on charitable work. Subkī used to attribute the criticisms that he levelled against harmful practices in society, in general, and in Sufism, in particular, to the well-known work al-Madhkhal by Ibn al-Ḥājj al-Mālikī (d. 737/1336). Ibn al-Ḥājj was a Moroccan Mālikī jurist who moved to Cairo where he became a disciple of the Sufi shaykh Ibn Abī Jamra (see Chapter 8). His work was inspired by the teachings of this Sufi master and documented many of his teachings and even dream visions, but it is most of all known for documenting and criticising the wrong practices that the author perceived in Egyptian society: from harmful innovations in worship, over wrong Sufi or cultural practices, to the different ways in which merchants cheated in the marketplace. Therefore, Subkī claimed to be a faithful follower, ‘letter by letter’, of a great traditional Sufi Mālikī reformer, and not a Salafī.72 Subkī does not appear to have had an anti-taqlīd or anti-madhhab message beside a constant refrain about returning to the Qurʾān and sunna. He did write a work in Mālikī fiqh, but in his later works he appears to act as an independent mujtahid and no longer adhered to a madhhab. This is apparent in his commentary on Sunan Abū Dāwūd for which he used ʿAẓīmābādī’s ʿAwn al-maʿbūd as the basis. Subkī’s final work al-Dīn al-khāliṣ also discussed matters of jurisprudence from a comparative fiqh point of view, often concluding with what he thought was the strongest position, and he relied heavily on Shawkānī for jurisprudence and on Ibn al-Ḥājj in warning against wrong practice. It is noteworthy that this work also quoted a number of Sufis when discussing the etiquette and conditions of wearing the Sufi cloak, especially Shaʿrānī who is referred to as both ‘my master’ and ‘al-qutb’ (literally, pole or axis), a Sufi term referring to the spiritual rank of the greatest saint at any given time.73 This shows that he fully remained a believer in Sufi hierarchies of sainthood and related concepts. Subkī also differed from many of the other revivalists of the time in his full dedication to the Ashʿarī school. Toward the end of his life, he authored a strong refutation of the emerging Salafī movement in Cairo, titled Itḥāf al-kāʾināt, where he argued that the real salaf (early Muslims) did not interpret God’s attributes in a literal anthropomorphic way.74

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 323 Subkī’s movement appears to have been overtaken by Salafī recruits faster than any of the other movements mentioned above. His function as a Sufi shaykh remained very limited, and his treatise on the Sufi path, which had been published twice in his own lifetime, quickly went out of circulation after his death.75 Although Subkī had mentioned in his commentary on Sunan Abū Dāwūd that the Prophet did not set any specific number for the Ramadan tarāwīḥ night-prayers, his followers caused much division over this issue after his death, accusing the majority of Sunnis of innovation for praying twenty rakʿās in tarāwīḥ.76 Subkī’s work against the Salafī creed does not appear to have had much influence on his followers either.77 The Idrīsī Shaykh Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī (see Chapter 10) attended Subkī’s lessons in the Azhar Mosque as a young student at the Azhar, and he had to deal with the divisions and debates caused by the Jamʿiyya Sharʿiyya when he became a teacher at the Azhar Mosque himself. He paints a picture of Subkī as a pious man who, however, was either unable or unwilling to stop the excesses of his own students. Subkī’s followers, even in his lifetime, claimed that prayer in any mosque that did not belong to them and was not led by one of their own followers was invalid. Jaʿfarī relates that one of Subkī’s followers from Aswan came with a group and asked the shaykh for permission to build a mosque there, as ‘all the people’s prayers there [in Aswan] are invalid’. Subkī was leaning back and gestured with his hand, as if to say: ‘Go ahead and build one, who is stopping you?’ At this point, one of Subkī’s followers from Cairo added that all the Muslims who pray in normal mosques will burn in hell. Jaʿfarī challenged this man and then called out to the shaykh. The shaykh – ‘and he was of those who could read what is in people’s hearts’ – sat up straight and said: ‘Yes?’ Jaʿfarī said: ‘What is the ruling on prayer in the mosques of the Muslims?’ Subkī said: ‘It is valid’. Jaʿfarī said: ‘Do we pray behind them if the time for prayer comes?’ Subkī said: ‘Yes’.78 This story seems to show that, despite Subkī’s lifelong attack on what he perceived as harmful Sufi practices, he was hesitant or unwilling to correct the errors of his own followers. Subkī was succeeded by his son, during whose time the Salafī infiltration of the movement increased dramatically, and then by his grandson. After that, leadership went to other scholars from the movement. The movement later adopted many stances against those of the founder, such as their rejection of mawlid celebrations, and adopted Salafī

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positions against certain traditional Sunni and Sufi beliefs, such as tawassul, but their leadership remains inclined to the Ashʿarī theological doctrine and is opposed to Ibn Taymiyya’s theological beliefs. This has earned their leadership the description of ‘Ashʿarī Salafīs’, but the same cannot be said about many of their followers.79 Aside from some doctrinal issues, then, and the organisation’s charitable work, the movement now appears mostly indistinguishable from Salafīs in both creed and jurisprudence. The success of the global Salafī movement and its attacks on the madhhabs as well as the Sufis has led the victims of these attacks to harden their lines. As a sort of ‘equal and opposite reaction’, a movement calling themselves the ‘Traditionalists’ came to be. This Neo-Traditionalism is not to be confused with the Traditionalists – the champions of ḥadīth traditions – whom we have studied throughout his work. They rather claim to be the defenders of ‘Traditional Islam’ – that is, Islam as it was practised before the rise of modern reform and movements. They see the ideas of modernists and Salafīs as new heresies, and themselves as the conservative upholders of classical orthodox Sunni Islam. This results in the problem that they are defending the Late Sunni Tradition which emerged around the end of the seventh and the beginning of the eighth century of Islam, a tradition of taqlīd of the four madhhabs that would have been foreign to the original Traditionalist pro-ḥadīth movement which had led to the formation of Sunni orthodoxy. Many of these thinkers seem wilfully unaware of the existence in medieval Islamic societies of those whom we have highlighted in this work, who did not subscribe to the Late Sunni combination of taqlīd of the four madhhabs, adoption of an Ashʿarī or Māturīdī theology and initiation into a Sufi order. Between the opposing claims of the Neo-Traditionalists and the Salafīs, the existence of the long tradition of anti-taqlīd Sufis has been forgotten. Many of the key champions of the Neo-Traditionalist movement are Western converts to Islam who have been influenced by the Perennialist School which also calls itself the ‘Traditionalist School’. This school, which held that all major world religions lead to the same mystical truths, emerged among a group of twentieth-century thinkers, a number of whom were Western converts to Islam. They were, as Mark Sedgwick named the book he wrote about them, Against the Modern World. Their writings do not show the historical awareness of how cultures and religious orthodoxy change over time, and

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 325 that what appears to us now as ‘old’ or ‘original’ may have appeared as ‘new’ and ‘different’ to earlier peoples. In their rejection of every challenge to ‘tradition’, especially reform movements (including the European Renaissance), they have used mystical concepts borrowed from the Sufis to defend the teachings of pre-modern religious scholars, again assuming that pre-modern meant ‘original’ and therefore ultimately divinely inspired. They used mystical Sufi concepts to argue that there was ‘spiritual truth/reality’ behind such things as the sexist and misogynistic teachings of medieval Muslims scholars (much of which came into the world of Islam via the Abbasid-era translations of Aristotle and other Ancient Greek thinkers) and even the Hindu caste system. Saʿdiyya Shaikh critiqued the writings of prominent Traditionalist Perennialist authors on gender in her book Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ʿArabī, Gender and Sexuality.80 She noted their ‘idealisation and uncritical reification’ of medieval fiqh, ‘with no clear acknowledgement of its historicity, of the dominance of male experience and power in its formulation, or of its sexist contemporary applications’.81 Shaikh proposed that Ibn ʿArabī’s mystical teachings and insights on gender should act as a guide to assessing the fiqh positions of the scholars to determine whether they ‘reflect the best possible contemporary understandings of essential religious and spiritual prerogatives’ – in other words, to provide ‘a central spiritual basis for resistance to the central patriarchal tenet that the male body is entitled to claim social and ontological superiority’.82 Ultimately, the approach she champions contains within it the same danger as the one she finds in the writings of the Traditionalist School. One can always use mystical jargon taken from one Sufi or another to defend any fiqh position, claiming that this position reflects a deeper mystical truth. Furthermore, no Sufi’s mystical experience would be accepted by Sunni scholars as an authoritative source of fiqh rulings, let alone someone as controversial today as Ibn ʿArabī. The great value in Shaikh’s work is that it shows how mystics such as Ibn ʿArabī challenged certain sexist interpretations of the Qurʾān and ḥadīth and were able to present other valid interpretations. However, the merit of these interpretations would have to be evaluated according to the accepted tools of legal and linguistics interpretation, not by appeal to the supposed mystical knowledge of the author. After all, from a Muslim point of view, the veracity of Ibn ʿArabī’s sainthood is only known to God. He may have

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been a genuine saint who experienced God’s mercy first-hand and wished to emphasise the merciful nature of the sharīʿa, or he may have just been ‘someone with a big imagination’, as his younger contemporary Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd tactfully put it. It is the legal principles championed by Ibn ʿArabī, which could be judged on their own merit, that could be used to re-evaluate previous scholars’ fiqh positions, not his mystical teachings. Yet, a small number of modern Sunni scholars reacted to the anti-pluralist stance of the Salafīs by turning to the wealth of newly published works from the Sunni tradition to find arguments for pluralism among the early Muslims. Some of them appear to have rediscovered, seemingly independently of the Sufi figures discussed in this work, the early teachings of many Followers and Traditionist-Jurisprudents on the flexibility and latitude (saʿa) in the sharīʿa. Among them are the Syrian Ḥanafī traditionist Muḥammad ʿAwwāma (b. 1940) in his work Adab al-ikhtilāf (Ethics of Disagreement) and the modernday Saudi Traditionist-Jurisprudent and ex-Salafī Ḥātim al-ʿAwnī (b. 1965) in his work Ikhtilāf al-muftīn (The Existence of Differences Among Muftīs). ʿAwnī even advocated the principle of giving preponderance to ease over hardship as a final resolution to conflicting evidence, the principle advocated or possibly even first proposed by Ibn ʿArabī (see Chapter 5).83 A similar approach can be found in the lectures of another modern Traditionist-Jurisprudent, the Oxford-based Indian scholar Dr Akram Nadwi (b. 1963). Although the latter, in the tradition of Ibn Taymiyya, is a vocal critic of most Sufi beliefs and practices, there is a great deal of overlap between his teachings on Islamic law and those propounded by the Sufis studied here. Nadwi even advocated an alternative to qiyās seemingly identical to that used by Tirmidhī (and the early Mālikīs), except that he appears to have taken his inspiration not from them, but from Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, the student and successor of Ibn Taymiyya.84 The teachings of this scholar who is a critic of Sufi practices and beliefs perhaps more closely resemble those of the Sufi ‘School of Mercy’ we have seen in this book, not just outwardly but also in spirit, than those of any Sufi living today. His fellow Traditionist-Jurisprudent ʿAwnī arguably comes a close second. This does not mean that these modern scholars were not at least indirectly influenced by the teachings of these Sufi predecessors, but it does remind us that the teachings of the ‘School of Mercy’ are not intrinsically linked to Sufism. It is simply that it was a number of prominent Sufis

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 327 and mystics who for many centuries carried the baton of these mercy-driven principles to future generations. Notes   1. I refer to these movements as proto-Salafī because, as Henri Lauzière argued, Salafism as a concept or identity only emerged in the 1920s, and we may be anachronistically projecting a later concept onto people who did not yet conceive of it (Lauzière, Making of Salafism, 27–49).   2. For a study of the major figures of this network, see Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism.   3. Levtzion, ‘Sharīʿa-Oriented Sufi Turuq’, 378.   4. Levtzion, ‘Sharīʿa-Oriented Sufi Turuq’, 378.  5. Muḥammad Ghawth studied Yoga and incorporated Yogic practices such as breath control into Sufi meditation (dhikr) practices (see El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 250; Ernst, ‘Sufism and Yoga’, 9–13). Qushāshī found a ḥadīth to support breath control during dhikr (making no reference to Yoga). This ḥadīth is of a rare type called pattern-chain ḥadīths (musalsalāt), which usually need to be transmitted in person so that a certain action during the transmission is repeated at every link of the chain, thus creating the pattern. The particular ḥadīth that Qushāshī used was a musalsal ḥadīth that had been popularised by Ibn ʿArabī, sometimes referred to as ‘the ḥadīth about the Fātiḥa that comes down via Ibn ʿArabī’. For a discussion of the role that Ibn ʿArabī played in popularising this ḥadīth and the role that Qushāshī played in defending its authenticity, see Dajani, ‘Centrality of Ibn ʿArabī’, 91–97. For Qushāshī’s usage of the ḥadīth as support for the practice of breath control, see ibid, 108.   6. The other being that God accepted Pharoah’s last-minute testimony of faith. See El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 251–52, 345.   7. Al-Kūrānī and Guillaume, ‘al-Lumʿat al-sanīya’, 291–303.  8. El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 252.  9. El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 271. On this topic see ibid, 272–311. 10. See El-Rouayheb, 294–305; one of Kūrānī’s works is reproduced in al-ʿAyyāshī, al-Riḥla, 1:511–26. 11. See al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 9:408. The ḥadīth critic ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī famously said: ‘If I were to abandon the narrations of the Basrans on account of their belief in free will and the Kufans for that belief that they hold (Shīʿī leanings), the ḥadīth books would be empty’. 12. Al-ʿAyyāshī, al-Riḥla, 1:497–98.

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13. Al-ʿAyyāshī, al-Riḥla, 1:490–93. 14. Currie, ‘Kadizadeli Ottoman Scholarship’, 268–82. 15. Al-Kattānī, Fihris al-fahāris, 2:904. 16. Al-Fullānī, Qaṭf al-thamar, 129. 17. See the previous chapter. 18. Chanfi, West African Ulama, 92–96. 19. Al-Kattānī, Fihris al-fahāris, 2:904. 20. See Dallal, Islam Without Europe, 102–3. This was in contrast to Qushāshī, Kūrānī and Barzinjī whose love for Ibn ʿArabī led them to denounce Sirhindī as a false Sufi. Barzinjī considered Sirhindī an unbeliever and authored ten works on what he perceived to be his heresies. 21. Al-Dihlawī, Fuyūḍ al-Ḥaramayn, 6–8. 22. Al-Dihlawī, Ḥujjat Allāh, 1: 27–31. On this, see Naeem, ‘The Imaginal World’. 23. Dallal, Islam Without Europe, 260–61. 24. Al-Dihlawī, ʿIqd al-jīd, 81. 25. Al-Dihlawī, ʿIqd al-jīd, 43. 26. Al-Dihlawī, Fuyūḍ al-Ḥaramayn, 84. 27. Al-Dihlawī, Fuyūḍ al-Ḥaramayn, 38. 28. Al-Dihlawī, Fuyūḍ al-Ḥaramayn, 59–60. 29. Chanfi, West African Ulama, 92–96. 30. Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Dalīl al-ṭālib ‘alā arjaḥ al-maṭālib. 31. For example, he wrote al-Rawḍa l-nadiyya, a commentary on Shawkānī’s fiqh text al-Durar al-bahiyya. 32. Riexinger, ‘Ibn Taymiyya’s Worldview’, 501. 33. On the joint authorship of this work, see al-Hilālī, al-Daʿwa ila Allāh, 136–37. 34. I once came across a complaint on a Salafī internet forum that Kūrānī somehow found a way to bring Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrine of the Immutable Entities (al-aʿyān al-thābita), which lies at the core of waḥdat al-wujūd, into any discussion, no matter the field of science. 35. Kūrānī, al-Amam, 115–18. Strangely, Ibrahim Nafi, in an apparent attempt to ‘rescue’ Kūrānī from Ibn ʿArabī’s legacy, quoted only Ibn Ḥajar’s one-paragraph critique at the beginning, somehow managing to not see Kūrānī’s three-page rebuttal of Ibn Ḥajar (in his defence he was working from manuscript plates and may have rushed to conclusions). Nafi’s aim was to show that the great reformer Kūrānī was subtly planting the seeds of the rise of ‘true’ Salafism in the Hijaz, a Salafism not inspired by Ibn ʿArabī’s legacy which had so dominated the scene in Islam’s two holiest cities. See Nafi, ‘Tasawwuf and Reform’, 322. For an investigation of how Kūrānī’s ‘Salafism’ and his appreciation for Ibn Taymiyya

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 329 was completely in line with, and inspired by, his devotion to Ibn ʿArabī, see ElRouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 272–312. 36. Riexinger, ‘Ibn Taymiyya’s Worldview’, 501. 37. Lauziére, Making of Salafism, 15–21. 38. I would like to thank my friend Sazan Meran for introducing me to the works of her ancestor, the Kurdish shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ‘Khāliṣ’ al-Ṭālibānī (d. ca 1860/1), a prominent leader and reviver of the Ṭālibānī branch of the Qādirī Sufi order in Kurdistan. Ṭālibānī authored a great number of poems in Farsi and Turkish, many showing a strong focus on waḥdat al-wujūd. His only Arabic poem is the eulogy that he wrote upon visiting the grave of his lifelong friend Ālūsī. See al-Ṭālibānī, al-Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṭālibānī, 211. 39. El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 310. 40. According to search results for ‘al-shaykh al-akbar’ in Rūḥ al-maʿānī, using alMaktaba al-shāmila on . The Qurʾān has somewhere in the range of 6,200 to 6,400 verses (different canonical readings have different divisions for the verses, and some count the basmala at the beginning of each chapter, while others do not). This means that Ibn ʿArabī is mentioned on average once for every ten verses, which is a surprisingly high number. 41. al-Ālūsī, Jalāʾ al-ʿaynayn fī muḥākamat al-aḥmadayn, as quoted in Weismann, ‘Genealogies of Fundamentalism’, 274, with some alterations to the translation. 42. al-Ālūsī, Jalāʾ al-ʿaynayn fī muḥākamat al-aḥmadayn, as quoted in Weismann, ‘Genealogies of Fundamentalism’, 274. 43. El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 310. 44. Weismann, ‘Between Ṣūfī Reformism and Modernist Rationalism’, 209. 45. Al-Kattānī, Khatm Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 189 n2. 46. Al-Kattānī, Khatm Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 341. 47. Al-Kattānī, Khatm Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 189, 360 n1. 48. Al-Kattānī, Khatm Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 69–70 n1, quoting Muḥammad al-Bāqir’s biography of his father, Ashraf al-amānī fī tarjamat sayyidī Muḥammad al-Kattānī. 49. Ḥamza al-Kattānī (ed.) in al-Kattānī, Khatm Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 327 n1. 50. See the editor’s introduction to al-Kattānī, Muʿjam fiqh Ibn Ḥazm, 1:xli. 51. Dajani, ‘Centrality of Ibn ʿArabī’, 102. 52. There is no known transfer of ideas between Ibn Idrīs and Jazāʾirī, but both figures are connected. When Jazāʾīrī was nineteen years old, his father took him to visit Sanūsī in his zāwiya in Mecca. Sanūsī reportedly took a special interest in Jazāʾirī and saw in him the signs of a promising future (see Vikør, Sufi and Scholar, 125–26). Upon arriving in Damascus where he would dedicate the rest of his life to teaching Ibn ʿArabī’s writings, Jazāiʾrī became a disciple of

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Muḥammad ibn Masʿūd al-Fāsī (d. 1872), founder of the Shādhilī-Fāsī ṭarīqa. Al-Fāsī, in turn, was the deputy of Muḥammad al-Madanī (d. 1847), founder of the Shādhilī-Madanī ṭarīqa. Al-Madanī’s main shaykh was al-ʿArabī al-Darqāwī of the Shādhiliyya, but he also took the path from Ibn Idrīs ‘for the blessing’ because he, in his own words, ‘found him firmly rooted in following the Sunna’ (O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 71; Weismann, Taste of Modernity, 197). 53. For an example of Jazāʾirī himself applying the judgements of Ibn ʿArabī, see his two-hundred-eighty-first mawqif (al-Jazāʾirī, al-Mawāqif, 2:83–87), in which he discussed adding a sajda of sahw after the completion of every ritual prayer. Jazāʾirī wrote that the first Sufi master to institute this practice for other Sufis was the ‘fard’ al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, and that many followed him. He then quoted Ibn ʿArabī’s discussion of this act in his Futūḥāt where he also stated that it was the ‘madhhab of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī’, followed by Shaʿrānī’s narration in Kashf al-ghumma, that stated this was the practice of Ibn ʿAbbās. 54. Weismann, Taste of Modernity, 203. 55. Weismann, Taste of Modernity, 216. 56. Weismann, Taste of Modernity, 212. 57. Brown, ‘Reaching into the Obscure Past’, 101–35. 58. Weismann, ‘Ṣūfī Reformism’, 211. 59. Weismann, ‘Ṣūfī Reformism’, 211. 60. Lauzière, Making of Salafism, 34–36 61. Weismann, ‘Ṣūfī Reformism, 220. 62. Weismann, ‘Ṣūfī Reformism’, 220, n46. 63. Weismann, Taste of Modernity, 276; Hudson, ‘Reading al-Shaʿrānī’, 65–66. 64. Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā shaykh al-islām, 2:464–65. 65. Al-Ghurāb, al-Fiqh, 345 f2. 66. Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya, 57. 67. Abū Zahra, Ibn Taymiyya, 416, 25–26, 352. 68. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:24. 69. Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ al-fatāwā, 2:158–62. 70. Henri Lauzière provides an in-depth look at the workings of such shifts, with a case-study of Taqī al-Dīn Hilālī’s ‘conversion’ from the Modernist Salafism of Rashīd Riḍā to the Wahhabi Salafism of Saudi Arabia (Lauzière, Making of Salafism). For a full treatment of the Damascus Salafiyya, see Weismann, ‘Ṣūfī Reformism’, 206–37; Taste of Modernity, 156–316. 71. See the biography by Muḥammad Khālid Thābit in Madāris al-ḥubb, 298. Thābit’s father, Khālid Muḥammad Khālid, is the author of the best-selling Men Around the Messenger (Rijāl ḥawl al-Rasūl); he was a disciple of Subkī on the Sufi path.

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from ibn ʿarabī to the salafīs  | 331 72. As quoted by al-Ghumārī, Al-Jawāb al-mufīd, 38. Ghumārī is very hostile toward Subkī, but his claims about him should be taken with great caution, as he was known for his wild exaggerations and claims about other scholars. Here, he quotes Subkī’s own claim to follow the Madkhal ‘letter by letter’ and then accuses him of abandoning it and becoming an anti-Sufi Wahhābī. 73. Al-Subkī, al-Dīn al-khālis, 6:283–84. 74. See the introduction to al-Subkī, al-Maqāmāt al-ʿaliyya, 12. 75. Al-Jaʿfarī, Dars al-jumuʿa, 2:191. 76. Al-Jaʿfarī, Dars al-jumuʿa, 2:191. 77. Al-Jaʿfarī, Dars al-jumuʿa, 2:191. 78. Al-Jaʿfarī, Dars al-jumuʿa, 1:140–41. 79. Shalāṭa, al-Ḥāla al-Salafiyya al-muʿāṣira fī Miṣr, 227–30. Tawassul is to use an intermediary as means to attain God’s favour (for example, ‘I ask You for the sake of the Prophet to give me such-and-such’). In the early centuries, it was supported by Traditionalists such as Ibn Ḥanbal and rejected by Rationalists such as Abū Ḥanīfa and the Muʿtazilites. After great compromise between the two camps and the emergence of the semi-Rationalist four madhhabs, the practice was almost universally accepted. However, Ibn Taymiyya was the first late scholar known to reject it (and he could find no one among the earlier scholars who agreed with him but Abū Ḥanīfa). His position is now followed by Salafīs almost universally, who associate this practice with Sufism. Therefore, the situation now is the reverse of how it was in the ninth century: it is the Traditionalists who opposite it now, and the semi-Rationalists who practise it. 80. Shaikh, Sufi Narratives of Intimacy, 201–28. 81. Shaikh, Sufi Narratives of Intimacy, 214. 82. Shaikh, ‘Islamic Law, Sufism and Gender’, 107. 83. Al-ʿAwnī, Ikhtilāf al-muftīn, 288. 84. From lectures given by Dr Nadwi at Al-Salam Institute, UK. Nadwi even advocated an alternative to qiyās seemingly identical to that used by al-Tirmidhī (and the early Mālikīs), except that he appears to have taken his inspiration not from them, but from Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, the student and successor of Ibn Taymiyya. Many of Nadwi’s teachings have been described by journalist and author Carla Power in her wonderful memoir of her friendship and discussions with the shaykh, titled If the Oceans were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran.

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Conclusion The Spirit of the Law – Competing Visions

I

slamic legal reform and revival in the nineteenth century was dominated by the influence of Ibn ʿArabī. Aḥmad ibn Idrīs and Sanūsī in the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt and modern-day Libya, Abū l-Thanāʾ al-Ālūsī in Iraq, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī in Syria, Nadhīr Ḥusayn in India and Abū l-Fayḍ al-Kattānī in Morocco were all seemingly independent giants calling for a revival of ijtihād based on a return of focus to the Qurʾān and sunna rather than the fiqh textbooks of the four madhhabs. They were all strongly influenced, to varying degrees of course, by Ibn ʿArabī. Qushāshī and Kūrānī appear to have planted the seeds of this reform in Medina in the seventeenth century with their attachment to the Sufi and theological teachings of Ibn ʿArabī, their willingness to use these teachings to break away from taqlīd and their revivification of ḥadīth study. These teachings were married to a conservative call for ijtihād in jurisprudence by Shāh Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī in eighteenth-century India and blossomed into a more comprehensive and complete revival of Ibn ʿArabī’s call for a return to the Qurʾān and sunna with the nineteenth-century figures mentioned above. The only major nineteenth-century figure whose calls to ijtihād did not have a direct link to Ibn ʿArabī was Shawkānī, who only at the end of his life renounced his earlier denunciations of Ibn ʿArabī and became a believer in his sanctity. We have seen how Ibn ʿArabī falls into the category of the Traditionalist movement which also included the majority of early Sufis and the Ẓāhirīs. 332

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conclusion  | 333 We have also discussed how Ibn ʿArabī incorporated into his own ‘Akbarī madhhab’ many of the major legal principles adopted by the Textualists (ahl al-ẓāhir) in general, and the Ẓāhirī legal tradition founded by Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī in particular, but with crucial differences in application and perspective. Furthermore, we have seen how many revivalist movements, such as the Late-Ottoman proto-Salafī reformers of Iraq and Damascus, as well as the Ahl-i Hadith movement in India, started out firmly within the Akbarī tradition before slowly transforming and being absorbed by the modern global Salafī movement. One might ask: are the revivalist trends inspired by Ibn ʿArabī partly responsible for the success of the modern Salafī movement? And what are the implications or consequences of the change in these movements, in terms of jurisprudence (and not, for example, in terms of theological outlook or shifting attitudes to Sufism)? We might benefit by drawing comparisons to the Idrīsī Tradition. Aḥmad ibn Idrīs was first and foremost a Sufi shaykh whose students’ primary allegiance to him was that of disciples to their spiritual master. Most of the branches of the Idrīsī ṭarīqa and those independent paths that also branched out of it, such as the Khatmiyya, eventually abandoned the founder’s antitaqlīd stance and were happy to adopt the madhhabs of their local lands. This was partly, as we have seen, because of the rising threat of the Wahhābī and global Salafī movements which forced the traditional Sunnis to a defensive entrenchment of the Late Sunni Tradition with its emphasis on madhhab adherence. The Sufis naturally wanted to belong to the Late Sunni Tradition which had come to embrace Sufism, not to the new movements that were hostile to the Sufis. The Sanūsī ṭarīqa seemed the most likely group to retain Ibn Idrīs’s teachings, but the ṭarīqa’s involvement in anti-colonial wars depleted the ṭarīqa’s men, especially with their attempt, at the Ottoman sultan’s request, to take on the British Army in Egypt, which decimated their ranks. Sanūsī leadership remained in Libya, where Sanūsī’s grandson Idrīs became the first king of the new Libyan republic, but he was overthrown by Gaddafi who banned the Sanūsī ṭarīqa and their literature. The only traces left of their scholarly heritage are some minor differences in prayer between the Mālikīs in Eastern Libya, in the former Sanūsī heartlands, and the Mālikīs in Western Libya, who are fully in line with the mainstream Mālikī positions. If the Sanūsī movement had continued to flourish, we do not know how

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long they may have preserved their intellectual independence. As one scholar noted, ‘the inroads of colonialism put an end to a process of reform and renewal’ at the hands of a number of Sufi movements such as the Sanūsīs ‘and derailed Muslim societies from a trajectory of socio-moral reconstruction’.1 The case of the Ahl-i Hadith, the Ālūsīs and the Syrian Salafīs was different. These movements may have been founded by Sufis, but their allegiance and identity were not tied to any particular Sufi person – it was a rather intellectual commitment to renewal and to the Qurʾān and sunna. In the Syrian case, Jazāʾirī transmitted the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī to his students, but none of his greatest students gave allegiance to Jazāʾirī as a Sufi shaykh – most of them already had attachments to their own shaykhs, and some (such as Khānī) were themselves shaykhs of Sufi orders. Khānī’s disciple Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī had withdrawn himself from Khānī’s Naqshbandī ṭarīqa, retaining only his intellectual allegiance to Akbarī thought, but with no worldly allegiance to a particular Sufi ṭarīqa. These men, like the founders of the Ahl-i Hadith, united over an intellectual cause, attracting recruits from outside their circles who did not share their Sufi views. With the growing influence of the Wahhābī-backed global Salafī movement, subsequent generations adopted wholesale the Wahhābī vision and the thought of Ibn Taymiyya, unlike the founding fathers who, raised with an Akbarī mindset, were able to benefit from Ibn Taymiyya’s jurisprudential thought while disagreeing with him on much else. A similar gradual generational shift happened with the Iraqi Ālūsī family: from Maḥmūd al-Ālūsī, the Ibn ʿArabī-inspired antiWahhābī initiator of revival and ijtihād, to his son Nuʿmān who defended Ibn ʿArabī but preferred Ibn Taymiyya, and finally to the grandson Maḥmūd Shukrī, who became a proponent of the Wahhābīs. We do not know of any instances of particular individuals from the Syrian proto-Salafīs or the Ahl-i Hadith who ‘switched sides’ themselves, although we do have such instances from the Egyptian and Moroccan Modernist ‘Salafī’ schools of Muḥammad ʿAbduh and ʿAllāl al-Fāsī, respectively, who did ‘switch sides’ to the Wahhābī-Salafī school.2 The Wahhābī movement had the wealth, power and, at one point, the prestige to receive the backing of the Modernist Salafīs, such as Rashīd Riḍā, despite Riḍā’s discomfort with much of their thought. This wealth, power and prestige helped this movement infiltrate, influence and transform the Ahl-i Hadith and Syrian Salafī

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conclusion  | 335 movement to a vision wholly at odds in its doctrinal roots with that of their founders. We do not know what would have happened if the Wahhābī movement had never existed. Would those Sufi reform movements have eventually transformed on their own? One could certainly imagine that possibility, because maintaining love and admiration for both Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Taymiyya at the same time is certainly a tough juggling act that requires a confidently independent mind, a strong intellect and very charitable interpretations of many passages in Ibn ʿArabī’s writings. The eighth/fourteenth-century Ẓāhirī Sufi Aḥmad al-Qaṣṣār (d. 800/1397) noted this: ‘People have deprived themselves, out of fanaticism, from the great benefit to be found in the teachings of three: Abū Muḥammad Ibn Ḥazm, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī the Sufi, and Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya’.3 It was rare for a person to benefit from all of these figures at the same time. Given the quick rise of the global Salafī movement, we can be certain that this movement would have quickly made its way to India and Syria with or without local reformist groups there. In other words, we cannot say that these groups played a part in the success of the Salafī movement as much as we can say that they were its victims. But were there consequences to the fate of these movements in terms of jurisprudence? First of all, it is necessary to stress that the global Salafī movement was not uniform. Some elements, like the Saudi-backed Wahhābī establishment, saw themselves as an Ahl al-Ḥadīth movement working mostly within the Ḥanbalī madhhab. The founder of Wahhābīsm himself was a Ḥanbalī and did not concern himself much with jurisprudential discussions but was mostly concerned with theological reform. In that, the Wahhābīs were following in the footsteps of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, who saw themselves as revivers of Ibn Ḥanbal’s original way, the Ahl al- Ḥadīth way before the Ḥanbalī madhhab crystallised and compromised on its positions by drawing closer to the other schools.4 The Saudi Wahhābīs often disagreed with the established Ḥanbalī position, but more often than not they were following Ibn Taymiyya’s own position which they deemed as Ḥanbalī, too. Both Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim had been influenced to some extent by Ibn Ḥazm, but not to a very large degree.5 Other Salafī movements did not ground themselves in the Ḥanbalī madhhab at all, following the footsteps of Shawkānī, despite the great influence that Ibn Taymiyya had on their thought; examples

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are the Ahl-i Hadith, as well as Maḥmūd Khaṭṭāb al-Subkī’s al-Jamʿiyya al-sharʿiyya. Shawkānī had described himself as an independent ẓāhirī, not in any way affiliated to the Ẓāhirī legal tradition of Dāwūd and Ibn Ḥazm, although with much to owe to the latter’s writings. Similarly, we have the figure of Naṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī, one of the greatest independent Salafī figures, who described his legal methodology as ‘ẓāhirī’ as well (without clarifying whether this is a Ẓāhirī with an upper-case Z, like Ibn Ḥazm, or a ẓāhirī with a lower-case-z, like Shawkānī). All of these differences are significant. The Wahhābī movement, as a madhhab-based movement, maintained more respect for disagreement on juristic issues, which meant more respect for the other madhhabs, than did the more independent Salafīs. Fatwās from Saudi-influenced establishments often respectfully presented the positions of the different schools and their evidence, before making an argument over the strongest case. Most independent Salafīs appear to have been inspired by the Ẓāhirī legal tradition’s anti-pluralist stance – the Ẓāhirīs are of the opinion that disagreement is not mercy for the ummah, but a blight upon it. In this respect many are very hostile to any practices of other madhhabs, leading to much conflict between the Ahl-i Hadith and the Ḥanafīs in India, the Sharīʿa Association and the madhhab followers in Egypt and elsewhere (including many a Western university campus), hostility aroused by simple differences in outward practice (which can function as group markers). Both the Independent Salafīs and the Wahhābīs often reject legal prohibitions made by the four madhhabs based on weak ḥadīths. By removing these weak ḥadīths from the equation, these jurists preserve the original licitness that is assumed for all things not specifically forbidden by the law. This means that, in many cases, Wahhābī and Salafī positions give more freedom to people than the madhhabs. To give an example, Salafī and Wahhābī fatwās have allowed women to attend the mosque during their menses because Traditionist-Jurisprudents such as Bukhārī and Ẓāhirīs such as Ibn Ḥazm did not accept the ḥadīth banning them from doing so, whereas the four madhhabs, with their admission of weak ḥadīths, have forbidden menstruating women from entering the mosque. However, the latitude provided by the Ẓāhirī method has been reduced significantly by modern-day Salafīs because of the change in ḥadīth methodology. For the early ḥadīth critics, such as Bukhārī and company, examining

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conclusion  | 337 a ḥadīth’s chain of transmission was only the very first step. Once a chain appeared to be authentic, the next step was to compare this chain to all different versions to see if there was a discrepancy, because a ḥadīth might appear perfect only because of a narrator’s mistake. They would cross-reference the text with all different narrations of the same ḥadīth to see where a discrepancy may have happened. Scholars of the later centuries did not authenticate ḥadīth in the same way: they usually stopped at the very first step of analysing the individual ḥadīth’s chain. Albānī and most modern Salafīs did the same. This latter group also were lax in authenticating weak ḥadīths if they had multiple chains, elevating them as a whole to the level of authenticity, whereas earlier scholars were far more suspicious. More recent scholarship has been shedding light on this difference in the methodology between the earlier ḥadīth critics and the later methodology adopted by the Late Sunni Tradition and the madhhab scholars.6 For example, the major authors of ḥadīth books (Bukhārī, Muslim, Nasaʾī, Abū Dāwūd, Tirmidhī and Ibn Mājah) did not have chapters or sections on musical instruments in their collections, because nothing on the subject matched their criteria of authenticity. The only exception was Abū Dāwūd who narrated one ḥadīth that the Prophet closed his ears when he heard someone playing a flute as the only possibly authentic ḥadīth on the subject. Abū Dāwūd – one of the founding figures of the original Ahl al-Ḥadīth movement – then proceeded to classify the ḥadīth as ‘munkar’, indicating that the chain appeared authentic only because of a hidden fault and that the content was wrong. In his commentary, ʿAẓīmābādī – one of the founding figures of the nineteenth-century Indian Ahl-i Hadith movement – understood the word munkar according to the late works of ḥadīth terminology written by the likes of Ibn Ḥajar, not according to the usage of ninth-century ḥadīth critics such as Abū Dāwūd.7 He therefore did not understand why Abu Dāwūd denied the authenticity of the ḥadīth in question and concluded that it was authentic.8 Similarly, Bukhārī had quoted a ḥadīth that implied the illicitness of musical instruments but made its chain muʿallaq, Bukhārī’s way of saying that a ḥadīth did not meet his criteria for authenticity and that he was only quoting it for a different purpose.9 Bukhārī only quoted this ḥadīth in the Chapter on Drinks because the ḥadīth’s content on drinks was deemed more reliable

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than the content on instruments, which has come in a variety of wordings. If he thought this ḥadīth could be used against musical instruments, he would have made a new section on musical instruments and repeated it there, as was his method throughout the work. In fact, the ḥadīth was considered so weak that it cannot be found in any other canonical ḥadīth collection, except the notoriously unreliable Sunan Ibn Mājah (also in the Chapter on Drinks), and even there the wording was different and no longer implied that instruments were forbidden.10 Albānī, however, following Ibn Ḥajar, declared Bukhārī’s ḥadīth authentic (against Bukhārī’s own classification!). This difference in the rigour of ḥadīth authentication between earlier and later scholars is why Ẓāhirī ḥadīth experts such as Ibn Ḥazm and Ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī rejected the existence of any authentic ḥadīth about musical instruments and appealed to the principle of original licitness to declare music permissible in Islam.11 Later laxity in ḥadīth authentication allowed modern-day Salafīs such as Albānī to accept a great number of ḥadīths that the Traditionist-Jurisprudents and the Ẓāhirīs rejected, thus limiting the effectiveness of the textualist/Ẓāhirī principle of original licitness (and joining the four madhhabs who had also forbidden musical instruments based on their acceptance of weak ḥadīths and their reliance on late ḥadīth critics).12 These are some useful examples highlighting several major differences that appear between the Akbarī revivalists and the Salafīs in all their variations. The Akbarī school was concerned to preserve the doctrine of ‘original licitness’ and to allow human beings the freedom to act normally except where a rigorously authenticated ḥadīth (or an explicit verse of the Qurʾān) made prohibitions. This principle is also operative with other textualists such as the Salafīs, but less effective because standards of ḥadīth authentication today have slipped from those of the early Traditionist-Jurisprudents. Furthermore, the Wahhābīs, as neo-Ḥanbalīs, were more accepting of the use of qiyās which further led to the increase of obligations and reduction in freedoms which Ibn ʿArabī and the Ẓāhirīs opposed. Arguably, however, the more important difference between the Akbarī school and the Salafīs is their attitude to disagreement. Ibn ʿArabī rejected certain legal principles such as qiyās, while accepting their use by the other madhhabs at the same time. He held that God accepted from mujtahids the result of their ijtihād – whether it be in the positive law or the legal principles

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conclusion  | 339 behind them. The Salafīs looked for ‘the truth’ in one answer and in putting an end to dissenting voices, whereas the school of Ibn ʿArabī conceived of a flexible and accommodating sharīʿa that provided people with different ways to fulfil God’s instructions. The Akbarīs agreed with the scholars of the four madhhabs, not with the Salafīs, that ‘differences among the Muslim community are a mercy’, but they criticised the madhhab scholars for limiting this mercy when they insisted on full adherence to a different school. At the heart of the Akbarī way lay two crucial elements: 1) the firm belief that the sharīʿa was a source of mercy for creation, and 2) that this underlying mercy meant that there was a wisdom to be discovered behind the sharīʿa’s instructions – a wisdom that, properly understood, would allow one to implement the sharīʿa in the most correct way. Many Muslims today have uncritically accepted the vision of the sharīʿa and the body of positive law bequeathed to them by their pre-modern predecessors, without a historical awareness of how and when this tradition emerged and what competing visions existed. Tradition, as Jonathan Brown wrote, is ‘an essential but double-edged sword’: the scholars preserve and carry the tradition from one generation to the next, enabling later generations to access and understand the original texts, but at the same time their assumptions of value, community and culture subtly shape and sculpt this tradition.13 Neo-Traditionalist religious thinkers and philosophers, then, mixing the divinely revealed and the human, attempt to find a deeper justification for the body of inherited teachings. Following in the footsteps of the Perennialists, they use Sufi concepts and terminology to explain what they view as the sharīʿa, but this is, in fact, the understanding of the Late Sunni Tradition. They say, for example, that the sharīʿa is a manifestation of God’s attributes of majesty (jalāl), often complemented by the spiritual path (ṭarīqa), which reflects God’s attributes of beauty (jamāl). This pairing of the sharīʿa with elements of divine majesty and rigour is simply an assumption, notes Saʿdiyya Shaikh. ‘Dominant discourses regarding Sharīʿa’, she writes, ‘[. . .] are generally defined in terms of unmitigated harshness rather than interpreted in ways that marry justice to mercy’.14 The sharīʿa/ṭarīqa binary is an ahistorical anachronism, however. The early Muslims did not have a concept of a ‘ṭarīqa’ different from the sharīʿa. Rather, the sharīʿa itself was the path, as its very name implies. From Ibn

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ʿArabī’s perspective, then, there is the sharīʿa and the ḥaqīqa (reality), two sides of the same coin; as he said, the sharīʿa itself is the ḥaqīqa and no different from it. The ḥaqīqa is rooted in God’s Names and attributes, and God’s attributes of majesty and beauty are not in equal balance. On the contrary, God has made it clear on the tongue of His Prophet that His mercy precedes, is more powerful than and overcomes His wrath.15 ‘My mercy embraces everything’ (Q 7:156) says God, and that means all of reality, all of existence. From Ibn ʿArabī’s point of view, then, the sharīʿa should express God’s gentleness and mercy. As Chittick explained Ibn ʿArabī’s argument, . . . The Qurʾān says, ‘There is no fault in the blind, there is no fault in the lame, and there is no fault in the sick’ (Q 48:17). This is normally taken to mean that the Shariah makes allowances for human weakness and handicaps. But the Sharia is God’s law, and, as God’s law, it expresses the nature of wujūd [i.e. existence itself ]. It follows that a deeper meaning of this verse is that God is gentle and kind to all those who are weak and disabled. But weakness and disability are the attribute of the whole universe, which is other than the Real, the Strong, and the Powerful.16

Ibn ʿArabī applied a verse of the sharīʿa to an understanding of how God will deal with His creation, because he saw the sharīʿa as a reflection of God’s nature who is the All-Merciful, the Most Merciful. Muslims today see the sharīʿa as an expression of God’s justice, but Aḥmad ibn Idrīs argued from the story of David and Solomon in the Qurʾān that God does not want the sharīʿa to only serve justice. Justice is the minimum that the sharīʿa should achieve, but those granted true wisdom – God-given understanding – like Solomon will arrive at what God really wants from the sharīʿa: to achieve justice in a gentle way so that God’s favour, bounty and grace encompass all and benefit all. Today, many, if not most, see the sharīʿa as a difficult burden and test. This is how Ibn Ḥazm had said the sharīʿa’s instructions are to be understood: nothing but a test. If the sharīʿa were a test, then one would expect a test to be difficult. Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī insisted that it is life on this Earth that is the test, and that the sharīʿa was sent as a mercy, as the source of assistance and salvation – it is therefore easy. Shah Walī-Allāh added that the teachings of the sharīʿa only appear as an obligation –, that is, a burden – for

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conclusion  | 341 those who believe in them on the level of ‘faith’. As for those who believe in them based on direct knowledge and insight into their function and the wisdom behind them, the teachings of the sharīʿa are no longer experienced as demands ‘from above’, but as the demands of one’s very nature, like hunger or thirst – they see the teachings of the sharīʿa as something indispensable to them, as is food or drink. They see clearly that the sharīʿa is for their own good – its instructions are something they need, not something they simply need to do.17 Does the sharīʿa accept diversity or demand uniformity? Is it all-pervasive or limited? How much scope does it give for freedom of behaviour? Is it rigid or flexible? Difficult or easy? Severe or gentle? Harsh or merciful? The Sufis always emphasised that the human heart and spirit should be the main focus of a Muslim’s concern, and that the sharīʿa’s guidance on the outward was primarily for the sake of its influence on the inward. When we see the superficial similarities between mystics such as Tirmidhī, Ibn ʿArabī or Ibn Idrīs and other textualist and anti-taqlīd figures such as the Ẓāhirīs or modern-day Salafīs, we must remember to take a page from the book of the former camp. We cannot stop at the outward similarities in their legal methodologies but must look beneath their interpretive frameworks to their different underlying understandings of the sharīʿa. Each competing understanding gives a different vision of the spirit of the sharīʿa and of the heart of Islam. We must also remember that the juristic positions that these Sufis put forward were not unique to them. Most of the ideas that they propounded were already in existence in the first centuries of Islam. Although many of these Sufis connected their positions to Sufi concepts, their teachings need not be tied to these concepts and could be claimed and applied even by those who do not believe in Sufism. These Sufis were simply reviving valuable ideas that were popular among the earliest Muslims and offering them for future generations. Notes   1. Levtzion, ‘Role of Sharīʿa-Oriented Turuq’, 377.   2. Henri Lauzière provides an in-depth look at the workings of such shifts, with a case-study of Taqī al-Dīn Hilālī’s ‘conversion’ from the Modernist Salafism of Rashīd Riḍā to the Wahhābī Salafism of Saudi Arabia (Lauzière, Making of Salafism).

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  3. As quoted by the historian Maqrīzī in Durar al-ʿuqūd, who himself was a student of Aḥmad al-Qaṣṣār and a fellow Ẓāhirī (see al-Buḥṣalī, Ṭabaqāt ahl al-ẓāhir, 194). The contemporary Salafī author of Tabaqāt ahl al-ẓāhir did not see the irony in his angry objection that there is no benefit to be found in any of Ibn ʿArabī’s words!   4. On Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim’s engagement with the Ḥanbalī tradition, see Melchert, ‘Relation of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim’, 156–61.   5. Holtzman, ‘Elements’, 601–44.   6. See Al-Malibārī, Naẓarāt, 32–52, 103–250; Melchert, ‘Albānī and Traditional Hadith Criticism’, 33–51.   7. On the change in definition of ‘munkar’ and how this led to laxity in ḥadīth acceptance, see al-Malibārī, Naẓarāt, 32, 200–10. According to ʿAẓīmābādī’s understanding, as per the late works of muṣṭalaḥ al-ḥadīth, a ḥadīth was munkar if it appeared to be authentic but contradicted the narrations of even more authentic chains. Abū Dāwūd would have classified this tradition as munkar because it was not one of the known traditions that the Medinan scholar Nāfiʿ transmitted. If none of Nāfiʿ’s close students (such as Mālik) narrated this ḥadīth, and one man from a different city was the only person who claimed to have heard it from him, that would have been enough to cast doubt on the tradition as a mistake. Munkar here would have meant ‘not known to be one of the transmissions of a certain scholar’.  8. The ḥadīth had a secondary chain which Abu Dāwūd stated was ‘even more munkar’ than the first’. This secondary chain had faults in chain, too, according to early ḥadīth giants such as Mizzī, but ʿAẓīmābādī did not accept this criticism and concluded that both chains were authentic. Al-ʿAẓīmābādī, ʿAwn al-maʿbūd, 11:300–10.   9. On this, see Ibn Ḥajar, Taghlīq al-taʿlīq, 2:8. 10. See Brown, ‘The Canonization of Ibn Mājah’, 169–81. 11. Ibn Ḥazm, ‘Risāla fi l-ghināʾ al-mulhī’, 417–39; Ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī, Kitāb al-samāʿ. 12. One Saudi Wahhābī scholar did, however, break rank and declared that there was nothing authentic against music, as did Ḥātim al-ʿAwnī. 13. Brown, Misquoting Muhammad, 167. 14. Shaikh, Sufi Narratives of Intimacy, 213. 15. ‘My mercy overcomes my wrath’ and ‘My mercy precedes my wrath’ are two wordings of the same well-known ḥadīth qudsī in the canonical literature. 16. Chittick, Ibn ʿArabī, 131. 17. Shah Walī-Allāh, Fuyūḍ al-Ḥaramayn, 30.

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Appendix The Classical Juristic Debate on Whether Every Mujtahid Was Correct

I

n their discussions on ijtihād, Ibn ʿArabī, Suyūṭī and Shaʿrānī proposed that, in many cases, there could be more than one correct way to do something at the same time. During these discussions, these authors invoked the doctrine that ‘every mujtahid is correct’ in support of their arguments. It was natural, then, for researchers to believe that these scholars counted among those who subscribed to this doctrine. It is necessary first to understand the nature of this doctrine in order to see that these scholars did not all subscribe to it. The confusion begins with the very way in which the question is framed in works of legal theory. The question is framed as: ‘Is every mujtahid correct or is there only one correct mujtahid?’ To understand the doctrine of those who say that ‘Yes, every mujtahid is correct’, it would be better to reframe the question they are asking. The question that is really being asked is the following: ‘With regard to matters on which there is no crystal-clear answer in the Revealed Sources, and where there is room for disagreement, is there or is there not a right answer?’ In other words, is truth objective or subjective? Those who held that ‘every mujtahid is correct’ were actually claiming that there is no such thing as a ‘right answer’. This, of course, presupposes a qualified mujtahid who reaches an answer that is supported by the relevant evidence, not an answer that is at odds with the evidence. Perhaps that is the reason why the question has been framed in relation to the mujtahid (is every mujtahid correct?) and not in relation to the answer (is there a right answer?). 343

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Al-Ghazālī and Infallibilism The majority of scholars held that there is a correct answer in the sight of God. There could be only one valid result of ijtihād (one judgement) for each case, and all other judgements must be wrong. They held that we cannot be certain of this correct answer, however, and therefore the different positions must be respected, as long as they were reached by qualified scholars who did their utmost in search of the truth. They also held that God, being the only one who knew which answer was ultimately correct, would reward all the mujtahids for their efforts. This was based on the following ḥadīth: ‘When a judge exercises ijtihād and gives a right judgement, he will have two rewards, but if he errs in his judgement, he will still have earned one reward’.1 This majority are called the Fallibilists (mukhaṭṭiʾah): those who ascribe error to some mujtahids. There was a minority group, however, known as the Infallibilists (muṣawwibah), who held the doctrine of ṭaṣwīb, Infallibilism, which means that every mujtahid is correct. This doctrine should not be confused with the Twelver Shīʿī doctrine of the Infallibility (ʿiṣma) of the Twelve Imāms, which is based on a Fallibilist outlook that error is possible but holds that a line of inspired imāms would always be inspired with the correct answer. The doctrine of Infallibilism was held by some of the greatest representatives of the Ashʿarī theological school. The first great theologian confirmed to have held the position of Infallibilism was Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013), a Mālikī jurist and one of the great founding figures of the Ashʿarī school, along with its eponymous founder. Bāqillānī incorrectly attributed this position to al-Ashʿarī and to Imām al-Shāfiʿī before him. This, however, is based on a misunderstanding of al-Shāfiʿī’s words.2 Bāqillānī’s position was repeated and supported at first by the great ‘Imām of the Two Sacred Sanctuaries’, al-Juwaynī (d. 478/1085). In al-Talkhīs, Juwaynī defended Bāqillānī’s position by summarising and commenting on his predecessor’s al-Taqrīb wa-l-irshād. However, in a later stage of his life, Juwaynī abandoned the camp of the Infallibilists and supported the majority position in his work al-Burhān.3 Juwaynī’s greatest student was Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, but Ghazālī followed the opposite intellectual trajectory. As a young scholar studying at the Niẓāmiyya under Juwaynī in the latter’s second phase, Ghazālī began his career supporting the Fallibilist position and relying on the arguments in Juwaynī’s later works. However, toward the very end of his life,

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appendix  | 345 Ghazālī wrote his greatest work of jurisprudence, al-Mustaṣfā, in which he took up the position of Bāqillānī and the young Juwaynī and defended it at length, becoming the greatest representative of the school of Infallibilism. A central argument by the Infallibilists posits that, if there was one correct answer related to any given act, God would have to give a clear, conclusive and objective means to discovering this one answer before tasking people with finding it. Otherwise, God would be tasking people with reaching an answer that cannot be reached with certainty and where error was a possibility. Those who err fail to fulfil the task that God gave them (which is to find the correct answer); therefore, they would fall into sin. Since there is no clear and objective way to reach a conclusive truth, God’s command therefore cannot be to find the correct answer, but rather to apply one’s effort to finding a solution. The Infallibilists hence stated that God’s command is not to reach a particular answer; rather, it is to do ijtihād – that is, to engage in the search process. One who has exercised ijtihād fully has obeyed God and therefore cannot be a sinner. They said: ‘If we were tasked with finding the truth, we would not have been forgiven for failing to find it’. They argued that the existence of a correct answer was directly linked to the epistemological problem of whether the evidence was conclusive or not. Therefore, there may even be cases in which there was, in fact, one correct answer for the Companions of the Prophet because they all understood what the Prophet intended in his teaching; yet, once their generation came to an end and people were left without a certain way of understanding what the Prophet had actually intended, there was no longer a correct answer in God’s sight for subsequent generations. As for the opposing camp, they did not have a problem separating what God commanded His servants to do from what He expected of them. God could therefore command His servants to search for His judgement on a particular issue, knowing that they did not have a conclusive way to reach it. As long as they tried their best to reach it, He would accept it from them and reward them for their effort. This did not mean that they were not tasked with finding the answer – they were, but God, out of His mercy and wisdom, treated them as having discharged their duties for having tried. There would not be any blame on them for failing to find the answer, and they were not failing to obey God by not finding it.4

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Ghazālī used the following example to prove his point that truth was subjective. It relates to the distribution of the great amount of wealth that was coming into the treasury during the Caliphate of Abū Bakr. Abū Bakr’s advisor ʿUmar suggested that the early converts to Islam who fought and struggled alongside the Prophet should receive a greater share than those who converted later, after the triumph of Islam. He held that this was to reward those who had made greater sacrifices and give them their due. As for Abū Bakr, he argued that, whatever people had done, they had done for the sake of God, not for monetary reward, and that the scales of the afterlife should not be equated with the scales of the material world. In this world, people should be treated equally, as those who strive for the sake of God expect to get their reward in the hereafter. Abū Bakr distributed the wealth equally among all people. However, when ʿUmar succeeded him as caliph, he made the annual payment higher for the early Muslims and for the wives and family of the Prophet. The third caliph, ʿUthmān, continued ʿUmar’s policy, but the fourth caliph, ʿAlī, reverted to Abū Bakr’s egalitarian distribution. Ghazālī argued that, in this case of how to apportion the yearly payments, there was no clear guidance from God, which meant that there was no right answer. Both Abū Bakr and ʿUmar knew of each other’s arguments but did not find them convincing and did not see anything conclusive on the matter. Rather, Abū Bakr leaned towards giving out equal shares because of his stronger attachment to the afterlife and lesser concern with the material world, whereas ʿUmar leaned towards the other position because of his natural political acumen and his concern with the interests of the public. Those who had Abū Bakr’s disposition – like ʿAlī – would incline to his solution, whereas those who were closer in disposition to ʿUmar – like ʿUthmān – would agree with him more. Therefore, we cannot say that there was a correct answer chosen by God on this matter, as argued Ghazālī. Each position was equally valid in God’s sight.5 Ghazālī insisted that, had there been a correct answer, God would have placed clear undeniable evidence that led to it. Anything less than clear and undeniable evidence cannot be called evidence, but a subjective marker that may appeal to one person but not to another. There is no difference between the subjectivity of different considerations (maṣāliḥ), like those that guided the decisions of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, and the subjectivity of beauty. For

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appendix  | 347 example, Mark might think that dark skin is more beautiful than light skin, while Richard might not. If someone were to ask whether dark skin was more beautiful or not in the sight of God, the answer would be that it is neither more beautiful nor less beautiful in the sight of God. Rather, in God’s knowledge, dark skin is more beautiful according to Mark, but not according to Richard. God likewise knows that one type of distribution is better in Abū Bakr’s sight and the other is better in ʿUmar’s sight. Before Abū Bakr began looking into this matter, there was no correct answer for him or for anyone else. After Abū Bakr thought it out and reached the understanding that equal distribution was better, this became the right answer in the sight of God for him. Likewise, after ʿUmar thought about it and reached the understanding that merit-based distribution is better, this became the right answer in the sight of God for him.6 The Mustaṣfā met with great reception. It spread quickly across Muslim lands and was to become one of the most important works on jurisprudence. However, Ghazālī received a powerful critique for his argument for Infallibilism, which forced him to write an addendum to that chapter. Ghazālī’s unnamed critic wrote that there were ten types of situations that required ijtihād and that the example above only represented one type. They are as follows:   1) Uncertainty regarding the scope of a general expression in the text   2) Ambiguity in the meaning of a text   3) The implied meaning of a text   4) Taking the position of a Companion as evidence when it goes against what would be reached by analogical reasoning   5) Seeking that which is best for the interests of the people   6) Categorising cases   7) Extracting the cause of a legal judgement (takhrīj al-manāṭ)   8) Isolating the cause of a legal judgement (tanqīḥ al-manāṭ)   9) Specifying the cause of a legal judgement (taʿyīn al-manāṭ) 10) Ascertaining the existence of the cause in a secondary case (taḥqīq al-manāṭ fi l-farʿ) The critic gave examples of each to show that, in every instance, only one position could be right, and the others must be wrong. Ghazālī had to admit

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that there were cases in which there could only be one answer, such as type 3), 4) and 10). However, he stated that this was not necessarily so in all scenarios, such as 1), 2), 5), 6) and 7), and he attempted to defend his position in those examples.7 Despite this challenge, which even the greatest representative of Infallibilism was unable to fully overcome, the Infallibilist position was still defended by some later scholars. These included Ghazālī’s Andalusian student Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 543/1148),8 Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 925/1210) and al-Ṣafī al-Hindī (d. 715/1315). This position, therefore, lived a long life through the support of a limited number of some of Sunni Islam’s greatest intellectual heavyweights. Yet, it remained a minority opinion discussed in books of legal theory, without much readership or influence. Ghazālī’s revision and reduction of the scope of the Infallibilist position is highly significant, although its significance may not have been appreciated within the uṣūlī tradition itself. What Ghazālī was forced to do, based on the practical examples he was challenged with, was to break out of the theoretical yes/no mould in which the question was always framed. It was no longer an option of either ‘every mujtahid is correct’ (there is a right or wrong answer) or ‘only one mujtahid is correct’ (there is no right answer). Ghazālī was forced to create a third space in which some questions had a correct answer, while others did not have a specific correct answer. Ibn ʿArabī, Suyūṭī and Shaʿrānī Ibn ʿArabī believed that there was ultimately one correct answer in the sight of God. However, since God Himself allowed ijtihad, as the tradition states, then that meant that He gave His stamp of approval (iqrār) to its results. Therefore, the end result of one’s ijtihād is correct either because it happens to reach God’s particular judgement on the matter, or because God has approved it as correct for the mujtahid who reached it, despite it missing what God actually designated as the correct answer.9 This is why, so Ibn ʿArabī adds, ‘the scholars have said that every mujtahid is correct’. This position is unique to Ibn ʿArabī.10 As we can see, Ibn ʿArabī invoked the principle that ‘every mujtahid is correct’ to support his views, but he gave it a unique interpretation that is not at all how it was intended by those who upheld it. Ibn ʿArabī’s understanding still assumes that there is ultimately just one correct answer. In his chapter on his own principles of ijtihad – in other

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appendix  | 349 words, his own madhhab – Ibn ʿArabī explicitly affirmed that he belonged to the Fallibilist camp, but repeated his own unique doctrine on why those who reach the wrong answer are still correct, albeit in a different way.11 The case with Suyūṭī is more complicated. In his treatise Jazīl al-mawāhib fī ikhtilāf al-madhāhib, Suyūṭī explained the differences between the schools of law as arising from the in-built flexibility of the sharīʿa. As we have seen in Part 2, Suyūṭī concluded that Muḥammad’s sharīʿa contained within it the sharīʿās of the previous Prophets and allows the Muslim a choice in how to discharge a great number of duties. The purpose of this choice is to avoid placing Muslims in difficulty and constriction, so that the sharīʿa could accommodate all people at all times. This led Suyūṭī to conclude with support for the Infallibilist position. He held that his insight into the flexible nature of the sharīʿa gave support to the Infallibilist position that there is no correct answer in the sight of God and that God’s ruling in each case is predicated on the result reached by every mujtahid. This is a surprising link that Suyūṭī made between his view of the sharīʿa’s flexibility and the Infallibilist doctrine, as these two beliefs are not necessarily linked, as he made it out to be.12 The idea of in-built flexibility is related to what jurisprudents call a wājib mukhayyar: an obligation in which the Muslim has a choice of actions, any of which fulfils the obligation and discharges the Muslim from the duty. It is also related to what jurisprudents refer to as differences arising from the multiplicity of ways in which the Prophet did things (ikhtilāf al-tanawwuʿ). These well-known scenarios in jurisprudence are still grounded in a Fallibilist worldview and assume that one is still limited in their action within the approved choices and may not go beyond them. It is therefore surprising to see Suyūṭī jump to the Infallibilist position because of this, which is based on entirely different premises. Shaʿrānī authored a work in ūṣūl al-fiqh, titled Minhāj al-wuṣūl ilā maqāṣid ʿilm al-uṣūl. This work is, in fact, a summary of al-Badr al-ṭāliʿ fī ḥall alfāẓ Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ by Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī (d. 864/1459). In this work, Shaʿrānī wrote: ‘The correct answer, in agreement with the majority position, is that in a question in which there is no definitive proof, only one person can be correct, and that God has made a judgement on this issue even before the mujtahids made effort (ijtihād) to find it’.13 This book’s editor wrote in two footnotes that Shaʿrānī changed his position on this matter in his later work

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al-Mīzān al-kubrā.14 Shaʿrānī stated in al-Mīzān that he who sees how the positions of the different imāms are all extracted from the sharīʿa will come to know with certainty that ‘every mujtahid is correct’ and will renounce his earlier position that ‘only one mujtahid can be correct on any issue’.15 However, a reading of Shaʿrānī’s defence of his claims shows that none of his arguments have any relation to those of Ghazālī and the other Infallibilists. Shaʿrānī’s arguments are simply based on the idea that the sharīʿa contains within it a flexibility to accommodate people of different abilities and circumstances. His arguments are far removed from those of the Infallibilist camp – he does not use any of them – and are in no way based on the same assumptions.16 It is strange that he would link his theory to this doctrine, unless he was simply copying Suyūṭī in doing so, as he clearly copied many passages from Suyūṭī’s Jazīl al-mawāhib in the Mīzān.17 In other words, while Shaʿrānī claimed in al-Mīzān al-kubrā and other works that ‘every mujtahid is correct’, it is not clear that he fully subscribed to the Infallibilist doctrine. It may be that Shaʿrānī carelessly copied Suyūṭī in invoking this doctrine in support of their view of the flexibility of the sharīʿa. It is also possible that Shaʿrānī – and possibly also Suyūṭī before him – fell for the unfortunate tendency among many scholars to invoke as many arguments as possible that appear at a superficial level to buttress their beliefs. It may well be that Shaʿrānī really did change his position and that he really did become an Infallibilist at a later stage in his life, but it is important to stress here that the premise behind his theory of the Scale (the Mīzān), as well as his – and Suyūṭī’s – conception of the sharīʿa’s in-built flexibility, are not at all built upon the subjectivist premises of the Infallibilist doctrine. The association between Infallibilism and this conception of the sharīʿa is not in any way a necessary or even a logical conclusion. Suyūṭī and Shaʿrānī’s conceptions of the sharīʿa – as with Tirmidhī, Walī-Allāh and Ibn Idrīs – are more at home within the Fallibilist worldview, seeing as they start with the assumption that the sharīʿa contains within it a finite number of correct answers, whereas the Infallibilist doctrine assumes that the truth is completely subjective and that every answer is correct. Notes  1. Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-iʿtiṣām bi l-kitāb wa l-Sunna, bāb ajr al-ḥākim idhā ijtahada fa aṣāba aw akhṭaʾa.

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appendix  | 351   2. See al-Shāfiʿī, al-Risāla, 497–98; al-Raysūnī, Naẓariyyat al-taqrīb wa-l-taghlīb, 207–9.   3. Cf. al-Juwaynī, al-Talkhīṣ, 3:355, and the comments of the editors of the work in 1:66 with al-Juwaynī, al-Burhān, 2:1320–24.  4. Al-Ghazālī, al-Muṣtaṣfā, 2:496–501. For more on Infallibilism and its arguments, see Abou El-Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name, 148–49; Zysow, ‘Ḥanafī’, 239–47; Economy of Certainty, 262–78; Kamali, Principles, 486–89. Abou ElFadl used a work by the younger Juwaynī, and therefore presented him as the main spokesperson for this position. This is not accurate, as I have stated above, because Juwaynī later switched to the opposite camp. It would have been more accurate to present those ideas as those of Bāqillānī, as they were in fact mainly his and the young Juwaynī was merely following in Bāqillānī’s footsteps. I have chosen to present the ideas as those of Ghazālī, as he defended this position more than any of his predecessors and surpassed them in fame and influence as well.  5. Al-Ghazālī, al-Muṣtaṣfā, 2:499–500.  6. Al-Ghazālī, al-Muṣtaṣfā, 2:520.   7. This addendum is not found in all printed editions of the Mustaṣfā. I have seen it in the edition by al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya (Beirut, 2009) and in the Dār al-Ḥadīth edition (Cairo, 2011), which I am using here (2:525–49). It is not present in the edition by Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah (Beirut, 1993).   8. Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Maḥṣūl, 152–53.  9. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:165; 3:400. 10. See Chapter 5. 11. Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2:165. 12. Al-Suyūṭī, Jazīl al-mawāhib, 35–39. 13. Al-Shaʿrānī, Minhāj al-wuṣūl, 568. 14. Yūsuf Riḍwān al-Kūd (ed.) in Shaʿrānī, Minhāj al-wuṣūl, 567 n1, 568 n2. 15. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:8–9. 16. Al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:33–42. 17. Cf. al-Shaʿrānī, al-Mīzān al-kubrā, 1:49–53; al-Suyūṭī, Jazīl al-mawāhib, 41–58. The ordering of the passages in both works is not the same.

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INDEX

Note:  f  indicates a figure taʿawwudh, 236 al-Thawrī, Sufyān, 206 see also Ḥanafī school Abū Ḥātim al-ʿAṭṭār, 39, 56, 57 Abū Nuʿaym, 59 Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ, 59 Abū Saʿīd ibn Abī l-Khayr, 55 Abū Thawr, 31, 56, 270 Abū ʿUbayda, 194 Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sharīṭī (al-Shurayṭī), 53–4 Abū Yūsuf, 83–4, 144, 192 Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb al-Manṣūr, Caliph, 108 Abū Zahra, Muḥammad, 319 actions categorisation, 13 status of, 136–7 adab (propriety), 218 Adab al-ikhtilāf (Ethics of Disagreement) (ʿAwwāma, Muḥammad), 326 afrād (Solitary Ones), 206, 207 afterlife, 48, 109–10, 346 ʿafw (pardon), 138 Against the Modern World (Sedgwick, Mark), 324 agency, 303 aḥādīth al-aḥkām genre, 110, 118, 178, 181 aḥādīth qudsiyya genre, 118 al-Ahdal, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Sulaymān, 258 Ahl al-Ḥadīth movement, 55, 102, 111, 305–11, 334–6 Ibn Taymiyya, 193

a contrario arguments, 32; see also mafhūm al-mukhālafa a fortiori reasoning, 146 Abadān, 45, 51 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī, 17 abdāl (substitutes; God’s elect), 49–51 ablutions, 40, 42, 223, 225, 226, 263–4 genitals, touching, 225–6, 233–4, 244–5 Abraham Prophet, 44–5 abrogation, 189, 197–8, 202 versus leeway, 223–6 Abū Bakr, Caliph, 3, 11, 194, 346, 347 Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī al-Mālikī, 107 Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, 26, 337 Sunan Abū Dāwūd, 26, 310, 322, 323 Abū Ḥanīfa, 3, 16, 17, 59, 109 donkey meat, 234 fasting, 82 forgetfulness, 82, 83 al-Ḥarīrī, Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad, 109 horse meat, 234 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 207 intoxicants, 28 al-Nakhaʿī, Ibrāhīm, 16, 188 prayer beginning, 205 qiyās, 20, 22 rank, 207 raʾy, 22 takbīr, 83–4 tawassul, 48

372

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index  | 373 Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī, Shah, 305–9 see also Traditionalists ahl al-raʾy see Rationalists ʿĀʾisha, 92, 162n, 189, 235 al-Ajwiba al-ʿIrāqiyya ʿalā al-asʾila al-Īrāniyya (al-Ālūsī, Abū l-Thanāʾ Maḥmūd), 312 al-Ajwiba al-marḍiyya (The Satisfying Answers on Behalf of the Imāms of Jurists and the Sufis) al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 172 Akbarī madhhab, 123, 156, 157–9, 333 disagreement, 338–9 Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad, 265–73 mercy, 339 original licitness, 338 see also Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn al-ʿĀkish, 284 al-Albānī, Naṣir al-Dīn, 336 ʿAlī, Caliph, 194, 226, 346 Allāhu akbar (God is greater), 204–5 Almohad dynasty, 101, 106, 107–8 Almoravid dynasty, 104–5, 106 alphabet, 232–3 al-Ālūsī, Abū l-Thanāʾ Maḥmūd, 312, 314, 332, 334 al-Ajwiba al-ʿIrāqiyya ʿalā al-asʾila al-Īrāniyya, 312 Rūḥ al-maʿānī, 312, 314 al-Ālūsī, Maḥmūd Shukrī, 313, 334 Tārīkh Najd (History of Najd), 313 al-Ālūsī, Nuʿmān Khayr al-Dīn, 312–13, 334 analogy, 80, 82, 146 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 147–9, 283–4 see also qiyās Andalusia, 47 intellectual environment in, 101–12 animals lowering head to drink water, 40–1 Anṣārī, ʿAbdullāh, 49 Dhamm al-kalām wa ahlih (The Condemnation of Scholastic Rationalism and its Practitioners), 175 al-Anṣārī, Ḥusayn ibn Muḥsin, 309–10, 311 al-Anṣārī, Zakariyyā, 218–19 al-ʿĀqiba fī dhikr al-mawt (al-Ishbīlī, ʿAbd alḤaqq), 110 Arabic alphabet, 232–3 Asad ibn al-Furāt, 95n Ashʿarī theology, 38n, 49 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 303 predestination, 303 ʿAsīr, 258 al-ʿAṭṭār, Salīm, 316 awliyāʾ (spiritual elect), 49, 51–2

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al-Awliyāʾ (Ibn Abī al-Dunyā), 51–2 Awliyāʾ, Niẓām al-Dīn, 168, 169 ʿAwn ibn ʿAbdullāh, 190 ʿAwn al-maʿbūd (ʿAẓīmābādī, Muḥammad Shams al-Ḥaqq and al-Mubārakfūrī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān), 310, 322 al-ʿAwnī, Ḥātim, 326 Ikhtilāf al-muftīn (The Existence of Differences Among Muftīs), 326 awtād (class of saint), 51 ʿAwwāma, Muḥammad Adab al-ikhtilāf (Ethics of Disagreement), 326 Awzāʿī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, 16, 17 breaking the fast when travelling, 268 Consensus, 19 Traditionalists, 22 ʿayn al-sharīʿa (source of the sharīʿa), 227, 228, 229f–33 al-Azdī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 109 ʿAẓīmābādī, Muḥammad Shams al-Ḥaqq, 310, 337 ʿAwn al-maʿbūd, 310, 322 al-Bābilī, Muḥammad, 301 al-Badr al-munīr (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 176–7 al-Badr al-ṭāliʿ fī ḥall alfāẓ Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ (Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī), 349 al-Baghdādī, al-Junayd, 39 al-Baghdādī, al-Khaṭīb, 3, 31 al-Baḥr al-mawrūd (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd alWahhāb), 179, 238–9 Baqī ibn Makhlad, 102 al-Bāqillānī, Abū Bakr, 344 al-Taqrīb wa-l-irshād, 344 al-Bāqir, Muḥammad, 53 al-Barr (the Beneficent; the Doer of Good), 264 al-Barzinjī, Muḥammad ibn Rasūl, 302–3 basmala (bism Allāh al-raḥmān al-raḥīm), recitation of the, 271–3, 290 Basra, 303 al-Baṣrī, al-Ḥasan, 43–4, 52, 78 al-Bayḍāwī, 45 al-Bayhaqī, 3 al-Bazzār, Abū Bakr, 26–8 beauty, 346–7 Bidāyat al-mujtahid wa nihāyat al-muqtaṣid (Ibn Rushd), 107 al-Bīṭār, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, 260, 317 al-Bīṭār, Bahāʾ al-Dīn, 260 black child case, 85 bleeding, 205

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374  |  sufis and breath control, 327n Brown, Jonathan, 20, 224, 339 budalāʾ see abdāl al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, 3, 72–3, 75 fiqh, 225 ḥadīths, 337–8 ijtihād, 84 Kitāb al-iʿtiṣām bi-l-kitāb wa-l-sunna, 28 qiyās, 28, 73, 133 Ṣaḥīh al-Bukhārī (al-Jāmiʿ al-musnad al-ṣaḥīḥ) see Ṣaḥīh al-Bukhārī Traditionist-Jurisprudents, 26, 29 Bulūgh al-Marām (Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī), 259 al-Burhān (al-Juwaynī), 344 al-Būṣīrī al-Kawākib al-durriyya fī madḥi khayr al-bariyya (al-Burda al-Būṣīriyya), 201 al-Buwayṭī, 57 categorisation actions, 13 valid/invalid, 13 certainty, 131–2 charity, 81 children, 208 choice, 196–9, 202–4, 223–4; see also leeway Christianity, 202 Classical Period, 167 commandments, 34, 77, 135, 140, 194 Companions, the, 11–13, 14–15, 187, 188 consensus of, 147 fatwā, 166n genitals, touching, 225, 226 Ibn Abī Jamra, 195 prayer, 135, 221–2 al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn, 203 al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm, 194 Traditionist-Jurisprudents, 28 Ẓāhirīs, 33 Consensus, doctrine of, 19–20, 22 constriction, 219 Cornell, Vincent, 103–4 al-Dabbāgh, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, 237, 255, 256, 291 al-Dajānī, Aḥmad see al-Qushāshī, Ṣafī al-Dīn Damascene Salafiyya, 315–20 al-Dandarāwī, Muḥammad, 260 Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya madrasa, 316 al-Dārimī, ʿAbdullāh, 26–8 Sunan al-Dārimī, 27–8, 133 David, Prophet, 144 ḍawābiṭ fiqhiyya (minor/restricted legal precepts), 85, 86

7744_Dajani.indd 374

sharīʿa

al-Dawr al-aʿlā (Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn), 201 Dāwūd ibn Khalaf al-Ẓāhirī, 31, 32, 53–4, 56 divine judgment, 138 ijtihād, 145 khabar al-wāḥid, 131 Kitāb al-khabar al-mūjib lil-ʿilm (A Treatise on the Traditions that Provide Certain Knowledge), 131 Kitāb al-khabar al-wāḥid, 131 permissible acts, 138 Revelation, 138 see also Ẓāhirī school Dāwūdi school, 56, 133; see also Ẓāhirī school dead, the grave visiting, 198 worship on behalf of, 81–2, 84, 85 derivative prophecy, 150, 227, 313–14 Dhamm al-kalām wa ahlih (The Condemnation of Scholastic Rationalism and its Practitioners) (Anṣārī, ʿAbdullāh), 175 Dhamm al-raʾy (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 175, 241 Dhu l-Nūn, 57 al-Dihlawī, Shah Walī-Allāh, 224–5, 229, 311, 332 Ahl-i Hadith Movement, 305–11 Fuyūḍ al-Ḥaramayn, 307–8 Ḥujjat Allāh al-bālighah (The Conclusive Proof from God), 306–7 al-Inṣāf, 307 ʿIqd al-jīd, 307 sharīʿa as a test, 340–1 al-Dīn al-khāliṣ (al-Subkī, Maḥmūd Khaṭṭāb), 322 direct knowledge, 55–6 divergence, 188–96, 233–7 flexibility of choice, 196–9, 202–8, 214, 223–4, 234–6 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 206–8, 242 Scale, the, 213–22, 224 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 213–18, 238, 242, 243 Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī, Shah, 224–5 Divine Favour/Grace, 287 divine instruction, 139–40 divine judgement, 136–43; see also judgement divine justice, 48, 187, 340 divine knowledge, 52 Divine Pardon, 138, 141–3 divine prescription, 134 divorce, 88–9 donkey meat, 234, 235

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index  | 375 dreams, 52, 109–10 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 115–16, 117, 121 al-Qushāshī, Ṣafī al-Dīn, 303 al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī, 255 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 173, 174, 241 al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm, 116 Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī, Shah, 306, 308 al-Durar al-manthūra (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd alWahhāb), 179 earth, 263–4 ease principle, 136–40, 151, 154–6, 157, 180, 195–6; see also leeway Eastern Sufis, 114 Egypt, 239–40, 321, 333 expansion, 219 extension (to the law), 137 etymology, 39–42, 87, 90 Fallibilists, 344, 349, 350 faqīh (one possessed of deep understanding), 13–14 Farqad al-Sabakhī, 61n al-Fāsī, ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ, 315 fāsiq (transgressor), 155 fasting, 82–3, 135, 196–7, 235–6 breaking the fast when travelling, 268, 292, 293, 296 choice, 202–3 in the second half of Shaʿbān, 267–8 nullifying, 174 Fatḥ al-Bārī (Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī), 222 Fatḥ wa fayḍ wa faḍl min Allāh (al-Jaʿfarī, Ṣāliḥ), 296 fatwā, 166n feet washing, 223 Fihrist (al-Nadīm, Ibn), 25 fiqh (positive law; deep understanding), 13, 43–7 al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, 225 comparative, 242–3 Ibn Taymiyya, 319 Shaikh, Saʿdiyya, 325 al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm, 79, 89 Traditionist-Jurisprudents, 28–9 see also divergence flexibility of choice, 196–9, 202–8, 214, 223–4, 234–6, 349–50; see also leeway Followers, the, 13, 14–15, 188 ḥadīths, 17 pluralism, 187 food, 234, 235 footwear, praying in, 267

7744_Dajani.indd 375

forgetfulness, 82–3, 113 free will, 303, 338 al-Fullānī, Ṣāliḥ, 289, 305, 311 Rousing the Determination of those who Are Not Blind to Follow in the Way [of God’s Messenger] (Īqāẓ himam uli l-abṣār li l-iqtidāʾ bi sayyid al-muhājirīn wa-l-anṣār), 305 al-Furūq wa manʿ al-tarāduf (al-Tirmidhī, alḤakīm), 76–7, 113 Fuṣūs al-ḥikam (Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn), 144, 258, 259, 260, 318 al-Futūḥāt al-Madaniyya al-Hajrasiyya (Hajrasī’s Medinan Openings) (al-Hajrasī, Muḥammad), 260 al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya (The Meccan Revelations) (Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn), 100, 113, 150, 157–8, 198, 200, 207–8 analogy, 283–4 Arabic alphabet, 232–3 breaking the fast when travelling, 268 al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, 107 comparative fiqh, 242–3 al-Hajrasī, Muḥammad, 260 Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad, 258, 259, 262–73 al-Jazāʾirī, ʿAbd al-Qādir, 315 praying in footwear, 267 Pre-Maghrib Supererogatory Prayer, 266 al-Qāsimī, Jamāl al-Dīn, 318 al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī, 289 Seal of Muḥammadan Sainthood, 259 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 172, 173, 175, 176, 179, 230–1, 243–4, 285 al-Shawkānī, Muḥammad, 258 Station of Proximity, 206–7 supplication for the multiplication of the rewards of good deeds, 261 Fuyūḍ al-Ḥaramayn (Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī, Shah), 307–8 genitals, touching, 225–6, 233–4, 244–5 al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid, 105, 310 criticism, 347–8 Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 106, 114, 318 Infallibilism, 344–8 al-Mustaṣfā, 2, 345, 347 al-Ghumārī, Aḥmad, 331n God anthropomorphic expressions of, 48–9, 172 al-Barr, 264 commandments, 34, 77, 135, 140 connection with, 263 debts owed to, 81–2

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376  |  sufis and God (cont.) Divine Favour/Grace, 287 divine instruction, 139–40 divine judgement, 136–43 divine justice, 48, 187, 340 divine knowledge, 52 Divine Pardon, 138, 141–3 divine prescription, 134 favour, 91 friendship with, 49 guidance, 91 hardships, removing, 92 ijtihād, 143–4, 149 mercy, 340 Messengers of, 119–20, 176–7 Names of, 230, 232, 233 prohibition, 34, 77 purification, 45–6 revealed differently, 220 views of, 48 governors, 12 grape vine metaphor, 80 grave visiting, 198 Great Rationalist-Traditionalist Synthesis, 29–30 Ghulām Khalīl, 57 ḥadīth (divine address), 52–3 ḥadīth scholars, 3 ḥadīths (individual narrations conveying the words and actions of the Prophet Muḥammad and his Companions), 13, 15–16, 48 aḥādīth al-aḥkām, genre, 110 Ahl al-Ḥadīth movement, 55 authentication, 18, 53, 336–8 Awliyāʾ, Niẓām al-Dīn, 168 al-Bābilī, Muḥammad, 301 contradictions, 180 Ḥanafī school, 168 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 115–21, 135–6, 150, 176 Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad, 22, 23–4, 26 Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad, 285 khabar al-wāḥid, 130–2 munkar, 337 musalsal, 327n mutawātir, 131 al-Qushāshī, Ṣafī al-Dīn, 301–2 Rationalists versus Traditionalists, 22–3 al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad ibn Idrīs, 22–4 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 180, 181 versus sunna, 15–19, 188–9

7744_Dajani.indd 376

sharīʿa

taṣawwuf, merging with, 302 transmission, 18, 53, 118–20, 285, 327n, 337–8 al-Zarrādī, Fakhr al-Dīn, 169 see also Traditionist-Jurisprudents ḥajj pilgrimage, 81–2, 90–1, 92, 141–2 ḥijāb, 139–40 ways of performing, 202 al-Ḥājj ʿUmar ibn Saʿīd al-Fūtī, 290–1 Rimāḥ ḥizb al-raḥīm ʿalā nuḥūr ḥizb al-rajīm (The Spears of the Part of the All-Merciful on the Necks of the Part of the Accursed One), 290–1 al-Ḥajj wa asrāruh (al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 90 al-Hajrasī, Muḥammad, 260 al-Futūḥāt al-Madaniyya al-Hajrasiyya (Hajrasī’s Medinan Openings), 260 al-Jawhar al-nafīs fī ṣalawāt Ibn Idrīs, 260 al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, 52, 59 Mustadrak, 52 al-Ḥakīm al-Samarqandī, Abū l-Qāsim Isḥāq ibn Muḥammad, 74–5, 76 Ḥakīmī school, 75 al-Ḥallāj, 57 Ḥāmid ibn al-ʿAbbās, 57 al- Ḥumaydī, Abū ʿAbd-Allāh, 108 Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī dhikr ṣūfiyyat al-ʿIrāq, 108 Ḥanafī school, 3, 19, 20, 21, 25, 30, 89 basmala, recitation of, 271 breaking the fast when travelling, 268 call to prayer, 191–2, 193 descending into sujūd, 270 gaps of silence left by the imām in the prayer, 269 genitals, touching, 225–6, 233–4, 244–5 Great Rationalist-Traditionalist Synthesis, 29–30 ḥadīths, 168 ḥajj pilgrimage, 81 holding the Friday Prayer in more than one mosque in the same city, 271 intoxicants, 86–8 karāmāt (miracles), 48 legal devices, 58 marriage, 88–9 Ottoman Egypt, 239–41 Pre-Maghrib Supererogatory Prayer, 265 prostration of recitation, 269 qiyās, 22, 32, 86–8 qunūt supplication, 270 Qurʾān, reciting during prayer, 204

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index  | 377 raʾy, 22, 23, 111, 173–4 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 240–1 sunna, 188–9 Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī, Shah, 308 witr prayer, 269 women imāms leading in prayer, 270 women’s testimony, 32 see also Abū Ḥanīfa Ḥanbalī school, 24, 89, 173 basmala, recitation of, 271 breaking the fast when travelling, 268 call to prayer, 193 descending into sujūd, 270 gaps of silence left by the imām in the prayer, 269 genitals, touching, 225, 226 Great Rationalist-Traditionalist Synthesis, 29–30 holding the Friday Prayer in more than one mosque in the same city, 271 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 303 internal variation, 193 Mālik, 24 marriage, 88 pluralism, 154 Pre-Maghrib Supererogatory Prayer, 265 prostration of recitation, 269 qunūt supplication, 270 revelation, 47 social protest movement, 57 taqlīd, 29–30 tawassul, 48 Wahhābism, 335 witr prayer, 269 women imāms leading in prayer, 270–1 see also Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad hand-raising during prayer, 116–17 ḥaqīqa (reality), 340 hardships, removing, 90, 91–2, 136; see also ease principle al-Ḥarīrī, Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad, 109 ḥijāb (head covering), 139–40 Hijaz revival, 301–5 ḥikma (wisdom), 71–8, 90; see also wisdom Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ (Abū Nuʿaym), 59 horse meat, 234 Ḥujjat Allāh al-bālighah (The Conclusive Proof from God) (Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī, Shah), 306–7 al-Hujwīrī, 59 Kashf al-Maḥjūb, 59 ḥukm (legal judgement), 72 al-Ḥumaydī, ʿAbdullāh, 26

7744_Dajani.indd 377

Iblīs (Satan), 31–2, 60–1, 83 taʿawwudh (formula of seeking refuge from Satan), 236 Ibn ʿAbbās, 14, 106, 187 donkey meat, 235 fasting, 203 obligation, 142 Ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Makkī, 291–2 Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr al-Mālikī, 3, 107, 290 al-Istidhkār, 107 music and singing, 112 Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, ʿIzz al-Dīn (Sultan of the Scholars), 115, 153, 154 taqlīd, 167 Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, 56, 133 Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, 51 al-Awliyāʾ, 51–2 dreams, 52 Ibn Abī Hurayra, 154 Ibn Abī Jamra, 195, 222, 305 Ibn Abī Shayba, Abū Bakr, 26–8 Muṣannaf, 102 Ibn Abī Zayd Risāla, 259 Ibn Aḥmad, Ruwaym, 155 Ibn al-Aʿrābī, Abū Saʿīd, 57 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 100–1, 112, 332–3 abrogation, 198, 223 acts, 138 aḥādīth qudsiyya, 118 analogy, 147–9, 283–4 basmala, recitation of, 272 contrary texts of equal strength, 135–6 al-Dawr al-aʿlā, 201 descending into sujūd, 270 disagreement, 338–9 divine dudgement, 138, 141, 142, 143 dreams, 115–16, 117, 121 ease principle, 136, 138–9, 151, 155–7, 180 Eastern mystics and Sufi influence, 112–15 extensions of the law, 319–20 feet washing, 223 flexibility of choice, 196–7, 206–8, 223, 224 followers, 158, 169–70 Fuṣūs al-ḥikam, 144, 258, 259, 260, 318 al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya (The Meccan Revelations) see al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya gaps of silence left by the imām in the prayer, 269 genitals, touching, 226 ḥadīths, 115–21, 135–6, 150, 176 ḥajj pilgrimage, 139

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378  |  sufis and Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn (cont.) hand-raising during prayer, 116–17 ḥaqīqa, 340 ḥijāb, 139 holding the Friday Prayer in more than one mosque in the same city, 271 Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, ʿIzz al-Dīn, 115 Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī, 120–3, 319 Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad, 253, 258–62, 265, 273, 281, 284–5, 287–8 Ibn Taymiyya, 318–19 iʿitbār, 105 ijtihād, 119, 143–52, 343, 348–9 influence, 302–6, 311, 312, 313–16, 332 al-Ishbīlī, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, 120–1 istiḥsān, 150 al-Jazāʾirī, ʿAbd al-Qādir, 315–16 khabar al-wāḥid, 130–2, 135, 156 Kitāb al-mubashshirāt, 116 life of, 101 al-Maḥajja l-bayḍāʾ fī l-aḥkām al-sharʿiyya, 118 mercy, 152, 155–6, 157, 180, 340 Messengers, 119–20 al-Miṣbāḥ fī al-jamʿ bayn al-ṣiḥāḥ, 118 muḥāsaba, 261 as mujtahid, 123, 129–36 mujtahids, 143, 144–5, 149–50, 153, 343, 348–9 mysticism, traditions and Traditionalism, 115–20 nubuwwa aṣliyya, 150, 227 nubuwwa firʿiyya, 150, 227 permissibility, 138–9 pluralism, 150–4, 155–6, 157 prayer leadership, 208 Prophet’s supplication, 262 prostration of recitation, 269 al-Qāsimī, Jamāl al-Dīn, 317–18 al-Qaṣṣār, Aḥmad, 335 qiyās, 133, 141, 142, 143, 320, 339 qunūt supplication, 270 Qurʾān, 135, 136 religious vows, 148 Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 118 Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 118 sainthood, 325–6 Shaikh, Saʿdiyya, 325 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 171–7, 180–1, 241–4 spiritual enlightenment, 237 Station of Proximity, 206–7

7744_Dajani.indd 378

sharīʿa

studies, 101, 108–11, 115–23 Sunan al-Tirmidhī, 118 supererogatory practices, 261 taqlīd, 220 taʿawwudh, 269 al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm, 112–14 waḥdat al-wujūd, 302, 303, 306 witr prayer, 269 women imāms leading in prayer, 270 Ẓāhirīsm, 122, 129–36, 147, 156, 157, 158 see also Akbarī madhhab Ibn al-ʿArīf, 105–6 Ibn ʿAṭāʾ, 57 Ibn Barrajān, 105–6 Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd, 115, 310 taqlīd, 167 Ibn Diḥya al-Kalbī, Abū l-Khaṭṭāb, 108 Ibn al-Fāriḍ al-Tāʾiyya, 258 Ibn Ghassān, Aḥmad, 57 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, 222 Bulūgh al-Marām, 259 Fatḥ al-Bārī, 222 Kūrānī, Ibrahim, 311 Ibn al-Ḥājj al-Mālikī, 322 al-Madhkhal, 322 Ibn al-Ḥajjāj, Muslim, 26–8 Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad, 22, 58 abdāl, 50–1 basmala, recitation of, 273 donkey meat, 234 ease principle, 154–5 fāsiq, 155 fasting in the second half of Shaʿbān, 268 al-Ḥarīrī, Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad, 109 horse meat, 234 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 207 leeway, 192 Musnad, 49 pious acts, 48 pluralism, 155 in prison, 57 pro-ḥadīth movement, 23–4 prohibition, 218 qiyās, 24–5, 27, 132–3 rank, 207 revelation, 47 ṣiddīqūn, 51 Traditionalists, 192–3 Traditionist-Jurisprudents, 25–6, 28, 29 see also Ḥanbalī school

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index  | 379 Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī, 3, 31, 32, 108, 120–12 basmala, recitation of, 272 contrary texts of equal strength, 135–6 extensions of the law, 319 fasting in the second half of Shaʿbān, 268 Ibṭāl al-qiyās (Refutation of Qiyās), 122 al-Iḥkām fī uṣūl al-aḥkām, 134 judgement, 137 khabar al-wāḥid, 131, 135 al-Muḥallā bil-āthār (The (Book) Adorned with Narrations), 115, 122, 173, 318 al-Mujallā, 115 permissibility, 157 al-Qaṣṣār, Aḥmad, 335 qunūt supplication, 270 Qurʾān, 135, 137 women imāms leading in prayer, 271 Ẓāhirīsm, 131, 132, 133–5 Ibn Ḥibbān al-Bustī, 26–8 Ibn Ḥumayd, ʿAbd, 197 Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad, 225, 226, 234, 236–7, 253–4, 332, 333 basmala, recitation of, 272–3 breaking the fast when travelling, 268 critics of, 293 descending into sujūd, 270 education of, 254–6 fasting, 235, 267–8 followers of, 291–8 gaps of silence left by the imām in the prayer, 269 ḥadīths, 285 holding the Friday Prayer in more than one mosque in the same city, 271 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 258–62, 265, 273, 281, 284–5, 287–8 Ibn Ḥazm, 293 Idrīsī Communities, 291–3 ijtihād, 265 ijtihād teachings, 280–8 importance of, 254 influence of, 288–98 al-Jazāʾirī, ʿAbd al-Qādir, 329n judgement of David and Solomon, 286–7, 340 madhhabism, 280–1 mercy, 285, 286–8 missionaries, 291–2 muḥāsaba, 261 ‘Opening of the Litanies’, 261 prayer, 297 praying in footwear, 267 Pre-Maghrib Supererogatory Prayer, 266–7

7744_Dajani.indd 379

Prophet’s supplication, 262 prostration of recitation, 269 qunūt supplication, 270 revealed sources, 283–4 Risālat al-radd ʿalā ahl al-raʾy (Refutation of the Rationalists), 281–3, 284, 288–9, 293, 294, 295 Rūḥ al-sunna (The Spirit of the Sunna), 266, 269 ṣalawāt, 260 Seal of Muḥammadan Sainthood, 259 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 284–5 study of the jurisprudential sections of the Futūḥāt, 262–73 supererogatory practices, 261 supplication for the multiplication of the rewards of good deeds, 261 taʿawwudh, 269 ṭarīqa muḥammadiyya, 262 as teacher, 257–8, 259 witr prayer, 269 women imāms leading in prayer, 271 Ibn al-ʿImād, 122–3 Shadharāt al-dhahab, 122 Ibn Isḥāq, Ismāʿīl, 57 Ibn Jabal, Muʿādh, 145, 194 Ibn al-Jawzī, 47 Ibn Khafīf al-Shīrāzī, 57 Ibn Khallikān, 108 Ibn Khuzayma, 26 Ibn Mahdī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, 67n Ibn Mājah, 26–8 Sunan Ibn Mājah, 338 Ibn Makhlad, Baqī, 26 Ibn Masʿūd, 14, 16, 194, 226 Ibn Maymūn al-Fāsī, ʿAlī, 44 Ibn Munawwar, 55, 60 Ibn al-Mundhir, 193 Ibn Munīr, ʿAbdullāh, 50 Ibn Muṣarrif, Talḥa, 190 Ibn Qasī, 106 Ibn al-Qāsim, 36n, 107, 111 hand-raising during prayer, 117 leeway, 191 Ibn Qays al-Mulāʾī, ʿAmr, 71 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, 47, 335 women’s testimony, 33 Ibn Rāhawayh, Isḥāq, 26, 29, 50 Ibn Rushd, 107 Bidāyat al-mujtahid wa nihāyat al-muqtaṣid, 107 Ibn Shuʿayb al-Nasāʾī, Aḥmad, 26–8 Ibn Sīrīn, 52

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380  |  sufis and Ibn Sūda, 255 Ibn Taymiyya, 24, 30, 47, 193, 334 Abū Zahra, Muḥammad, 319 al-Ālūsī, Nuʿmān Khayr al-Dīn, 312–13 fiqh writings, 319 genitals, touching, 226 Hijaz revival, 303, 304 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 318–19 ijtihād, 320 al-Qāsimī, Jamāl al-Dīn, 317 al-Qaṣṣār, Aḥmad, 335 qiyās, 87 Rafʿ al-malām ʿan al-aʾimma l-aʿlām, 289 usury, 320 Wahhābism, 335 walāya, 49 women’s testimony, 33 Ibn ʿUmar, 188 prostration of recitation, 269 Ibn Zayd, ʿAbd al-Wāḥid, 45 Ibn Zayd, Ḥammād, 67n Ibn Zayd, Jābir, 72 al-Ibrīz (al-Lamaṭī, Aḥmad ibn al-Mubārak), 256, 291 Ibṭāl al-qiyās (Refutation of Qiyās) (Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī), 122 Idrīsī Communities, 291–3, 333 al-Iḥkām fī uṣūl al-aḥkām (Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī), 134 iḥsān (spiritual excellence), 218 Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (al-Ghazālī), 106, 114, 318 iʿitbār (to learn from), 105 ijtihād (exertion of effort), 6, 72, 149, 167, 344 al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, 73 al-Ghazālī, 347–8 al-Ḥājj ʿUmar ibn Saʿīd al-Fūtī, 290–1 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 119, 143–52, 343 Ibn Jabal, Muʿādh, 145 Ibn Taymiyya, 320 Infallibilism, 345 al-Kattānī, Abū l-Fayḍ Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Kabīr, 314 legal precepts, 84–9 Mamluk regime, 167–8 revival, 332 science of legal theory, 12–15 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 343 situations requiring, 347–8 al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn, 343 al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm, 76–7, 78–89 Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī, Shah, 307

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sharīʿa

Ikhtilāf al-muftīn (The Existence of Differences Among Muftīs) (Ḥātim al-ʿAwnī), 326 ʿIlal al-sharīʿa (al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 70 illegitimacy, 89 imāms belief in, 237–8 gaps of silence left in prayer, 269 hierarchy of, 206–7 mujtahid imāms, 206–7 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 220, 227–38 women imāms leading in prayer, 270–1 imperative phrases, 34 India, 308–9 Infallibilism, 144, 165n, 344–50 Infallibility, 344 inheritance, 21, 84 injunctions, choice of, 202 al-Inṣāf (Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī, Shah), 307 inspired knowledge, 52–3 intent, 21–2 intoxicants, 28, 86–8, 198 invalid/valid categorisations, 13 Īqāẓ al-wasnān fī l-ʿamal bil-ḥadīth wa-l-Qurʾān (Waking the Sleeper to Act Upon the Ḥadīth and Qurʾān) (al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī), 288–9, 293, 294, 305 ʿIqd al-jīd (Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī, Shah), 307 Iraqi revivalists, 312–13 Irshād al-ṭalibīn (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 175 al-Ishbīlī, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, 110–11, 120–1 al-ʿĀqiba fī dhikr al-mawt, 110 Kitāb al-aḥkām al-sharʿiyya, 110, 111 al-Istidhkār (Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr al-Mālikī), 107 istiḥsān (seeking the best), 20, 21 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 150 al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad ibn Idrīs, 22 Itḥāf al-kāʾināt (al-Subkī, Maḥmūd Khaṭṭāb), 322 Ithbāt al-ʿilal (al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 194 al-Jaʿfarī, Ṣāliḥ, 295–8, 323 Fatḥ wa fayḍ wa faḍl min Allāh, 296 Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ (Subkī, Tāj al-Dīn), 175 Jamaat Ahl-i Hadith, 309 Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī (Sunan al-Tirmidhī) (alTirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 310 al-Jamʿiyya al-Sharʿiyya (The Sharīʿa-Based Organisation for the Cooperation of those Who Act Upon the Qurʾān and the Sunna), 321–7, 336 al-Jawhar al-nafīs fī ṣalawāt Ibn Idrīs (al-Hajrasī, Muḥammad), 260

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index  | 381 al-Jazāʾirī, ʿAbd al-Qādir, 315–17, 332, 334 al-Mawāqif, 315 Jazīl al-mawāhib fī ikhtilāf al-madhāhib (al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn), 201–2, 349, 350 Judaism, 202 judgement, 72, 73, 136–43 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 143–50 al-Junayd al-Baghdādī, 56 jurisprudence, schools of (madhhabs), 14, 15, 29–30, 46; see also schools of law jurisprudents, 14 justice, 48, 168, 187, 286–7, 340 al-Juwaynī, 303 al-Burhān, 344 Nizāmiyya, 303 al-Talkhīs, 344 Kadızade Mehmed Efendi, 304 al-Kalābādhī, Abū Bakr abdāl, 50 al-Taʿarruf li-madhhab ahl al-taṣawwuf, 58 al-Karābīsī, al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, 160n Karamustafa, Ahmet, 49 Sufism: The Formative Period, 49 Kashf al-ghumma ʿan jamīʿ al-umma (The Removal of the Fog from the Whole Community) (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd alWahhāb), 173, 175–6, 177–82, 227, 237, 243–4, 285 Damascene Salafiyya, 318 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 241, 243–4 al-Mīzān (the Scale), 213 Kashf al-Maḥjūb (al-Hujwīrī), 59 al-Kattānī, Abū l-Fayḍ Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Kabīr, 313–14, 332 al-Kattānī, Muḥammad al-Bāqir, 314 al-Kattānī, Muḥammad al-Muntaṣir-billāh, 314–15 Muʿjam fiqh Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī, 315 Muʿjam fiqh al-salaf, 315 al-Kawākib al-durriyya fī madḥi khayr al-bariyya (al-Burda al-Būṣīriyya), (al-Būṣīrī), 201 Kennedy, Hugh, 104–5, 106 khabar al-wāḥid (non-mutawātir report), 130–2, 135, 156 al-Khaḍir, 215 khamr (wine), 86, 87, 88 Khan, Ṣiddīq Ḥasan, 309–10, 311, 313 al-Khargūshī, 52, 58 al-Kharrāz, Abū Saʿīd, 52 Kitāb al-kashf wa-l-bayān, 52 Khatm al-awliyāʾ (al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 70, 72, 113

7744_Dajani.indd 381

al-Kibrīt al-aḥmar (The Red Sulphur that Clarifies the Teachings of the Shaykh al-Akbar) (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 171, 173 killing by mistake, 196 Kitāb al-aḥkām al-sharʿiyya (al-Ishbīlī, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq), 110, 111 Kitāb al-ḥajj (al-Mājashūn), 191 Kitāb al-ḥajj wa asrāruh (al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 75–6 Kitāb al-iḥtiyāṭāt (al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 113 Kitāb al-ikhtilāf (The Book on the Different Positions/Disagreements), 192 Kitāb ithbāt al-ʿilal (al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 77 Kitāb al-iʿtiṣām bi-l-kitāb wa-l-sunna (al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl), 28 Kitāb al-kashf wa-l-bayān (al-Kharrāz, Abū Saʿīd), 52 Kitāb al-khabar al-mūjib lil-ʿilm (A Treatise on the Traditions that Provide Certain Knowledge) (Dāwūd ibn Khalaf al-Ẓāhirī), 131 Kitāb al-khabar al-wāḥid (Dāwūd ibn Khalaf al-Ẓāhirī), 131 Kitāb al-lumaʿ (al-Sarrāj, Abū Naṣr), 58 Kitāb al-manhiyyāt (al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 76 Kitāb al-mubashshirāt (Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn), 116 Kitāb al-saʿa (The Book of Leeway), 192 Kitāb al-ṣalātu wa maqāṣiduhā (al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 75 Kitāb al-umm (al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad ibn Idrīs), 218 Kufa, 14, 15, 16, 18, 187 Kūrānī, Ibrahim, 302–4, 311, 312, 332 laity, the, 238–9 al-Lamaṭī, Aḥmad ibn al-Mubārak, 256 al-Ibrīz, 256, 291 al-Laqqānī, Ibrāhīm, 297 al-Laqqānī, Shams al-Dīn, 240 Laṭāʾif al-minan (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 243 Late Sunni Tradition, 168, 246, 324, 333, 337, 339 law, extension to, 137 law is mercy, 90–3 Lawāqiḥ al-anwār (The Fecundating Lights) (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 171 al-Layth ibn Saʿd, 40, 191 leadership, 208 leeway, 188, 189–92, 196, 203, 214 versus abrogation, 223–6 legal devices, 88–9

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382  |  sufis and legal maxims (al-qawāʿid al-fiqhiyya), 175 legal precepts, 84–9 legal schools see schools of law legal theory, 1–6 divergence, 188 science of, 11–15 leniency, 214, 218, 234; see also Scale, the lenient ruling (takhfīf/rukhṣa), 180 lepers, 222 Libya, 295, 333 licitness, 137, 157, 338 life, 41 loans, 21, 32–3 Lucas, Scott C., 3 madhhabs (schools of jurisprudence), 14, 15, 29–30, 46, 169 conflict, 336 criticism of, 114–15 four madhhabs, 29–30, 46, 167, 191 ḥadīths, 180, 181 al-Jaʿfarī, Ṣāliḥ, 295 leeway, 191 Ottoman Egypt, 239, 240–1 pluralism, 150–6, 177–8 ritual ablutions, 244–6 rivalry, 177–8 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 227–37, 240–2, 307 talfīq, 244–6 Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī, Shah, 307–8 al-Zarrādī, Fakhr al-Dīn, 169 see also schools of law and under individual school names al-Madhkhal (Ibn al-Ḥājj al-Mālikī), 322 mafhūm (implied or inferred meaning), 37m, 134 mafhūm al-mukhālafa (negatively implied meaning), 23, 32 al-Maḥajja l-bayḍāʾ fī l-aḥkām al-sharʿiyya (Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn), 118 al-Maḥallī, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Badr al-ṭāliʿ fī ḥall alfāẓ Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ, 349 al-Mahdāwī, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, 109 al-Mājashūn Kitāb al-ḥajj, 191 al-Majdhūb, Muḥammad, 272, 280–1, 292, 294 al-Makkī, Abū Ṭālib, 59, 112 Qūt al-qulūb, 59, 114, 318 Mālik ibn Anas, 17, 18, 44, 51, 84, 116, 117 al-taʿlīl bi l-qāʿida, 20–1 call to prayer, 192, 193 Consensus, 19

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sharīʿa

donkey meat, 234, 235 hand-raising during prayer, 117 horse meat, 234 ijtihād, 84 leeway, 191 Medinan praxis, 24 Muwaṭṭāʾ, 84, 102, 173, 259 pig meat, 235 regret, 293 sadd al-dharāʾiʿ, 21 taʿawwudh, 236 thigh covering, 225 see also Māliki school Māliki school, 25, 29, 89, 116–17, 173 Andalusia, 101–2, 103, 104–5, 106–7, 111 basmala, recitation of, 271, 272 breaking the fast when travelling, 268 descending into sujūd, 270 gaps of silence left by the imām in the prayer, 269 genitals, touching, 225, 226 Great Rationalist-Traditionalist Synthesis, 29–30 hand-raising during prayer, 116–17 holding the Friday Prayer in more than one mosque in the same city, 271 al-Jaʿfarī, Ṣāliḥ, 295–7 Mālikī-Khalīlīs, 295 Mālikī-Sanūsīs, 295 marriage, 89 music and singing, 112 prayer position, 292 Pre-Maghrib Supererogatory Prayer, 265 prostration of recitation, 269 qunūt supplication, 270 Rationalists, 107 raʾy, 111 al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī, 289–90 sunna, 188–9 taʿawwudh, 269 Traditionalists, 107 traditions, 116 witr prayer, 269 women imāms leading in prayer, 270 see also Mālik ibn Anas Mamluk regime, 167–8 al-Manhiyyāt (al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 118 al-Manṣūr, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb, Caliph, 108 manṭūq (that which a vocable indicates at the point of expression), 37n marriage, 21, 88–9 tax, 239–40 al-Marrūdhī, Abū Bakr, 57

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index  | 383 Maʿrūf al-Karkhī, 50 al-Marwazī, Muḥammad ibn Naṣr, 26 al-Masāʾil al-ʿashr (al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī), 289 al-Mawāqif (al-Jazāʾirī, ʿAbd al-Qādir), 315 Mecca, 14, 15, 187, 280–1 Medina, 14, 15, 17, 18, 187, 301 men behaviour, 139 mercy, 90–3, 141–3, 155–6, 326–7, 339 God, 340 Ibn Abī Jamra, 196 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 152, 157, 180 Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad, 285, 286–8 see also ease principle Messengers of God, 119–20, 176–7, 197 ranking of, 214–15 military expeditions, 12 Minhāj al-wuṣūl ilā maqāṣid ʿilm al-uṣūl (alShaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 175, 349–50 al-Mirghanī, Muḥammad ʿUthmān, 257, 259–60, 291 followers of, 292 al-Miṣbāḥ fī al-jamʿ bayn al-ṣiḥāḥ (Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn), 118 al-Mīzān (the Scale), 213–22, 224 al-Mīzān al-khaḍiriyya (The Scale of al-Khaḍir) (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 213 al-Mīzān al-kubrā (The Large Book of the Scale) (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 175, 176, 213–14, 217, 237–44, 293 Abū Ḥanīfa, 241 ʿayn al-sharīʿa, 230–1 ʿAyyāshī, 304 fisherman’s net illustration, 228, 230f Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad, 289 imāms, 220, 227 mujtahids, 350 al-Qāsimī, Jamāl al-Dīn, 318 al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī, 289 singing, 282, 285 stringency/leniency, 180 ʿUllaysh, Muḥammad, 296 al-Mīzān al-Shaʿrāniyya (Al-Shaʿrānī’s Scale) (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 213–14 see also al-Mīzān al-kubrā al-Mīzān al-ṣughra (The Smaller Book of the Scale) (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 213, 228 Moroccan revivalists, 313–15 al-Mubārakfūrī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, 310 ʿAwn al-maʿbūd, 310 Tuḥfat al-aḥwadhī, 310

7744_Dajani.indd 383

muḥaddath (inspired saint), 120 muḥaddathūn (those who are spoken to), 53 muḥaddith (traditionist), 120 al-Muḥallā bil-āthār (The (Book) Adorned with Narrations) (Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī), 115, 122, 173, 318 Muḥammad, Prophet, 11, 197 abrogation, 198 al-Būṣīrī, 201 contradictory statements, 180 fasting, 267 functions of, 45 guidance of, 11–12 hardships, removing, 92 Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad, 265 ijtihād, 143 Qurʾān, 78 Subkī, Tāj al-Dīn, 199–200, 202 supplication, 262 al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn, 202, 203 muḥāsaba (to take oneself to account for one’s actions at the end of each day), 261 al-Muḥāsibī, al-Ḥārith, 160n al-Mujallā (Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī), 115 Muʿjam fiqh Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī (al-Kattānī, Muḥammad al-Muntaṣir-billāh), 315 Muʿjam fiqh al-salaf (al-Kattānī, Muḥammad al-Muntaṣir-billāh), 315 mujtahid imāms, 206–7 mujtahid muṭlaq muntasib (fully independent and capable mujtahid with an affiliation to one of the schools), 129 mujtahids (original authority), 5, 82, 123, 129, 143–5, 344 ‘every mujtahid is correct’, 343–50 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 143, 144–5, 149–50, 153, 343, 348–9 Prophets, 149 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 179–80, 343, 349 al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn, 343, 349 mujtahidūn incident, 318 Mūlāy Muḥammad, Sultan, 255 munkar, 337 muqmaḥūn (unable to lower head to drink water), 41 murder, 202 musalsal ḥadīths, 327n Muṣannaf (Ibn Abī Shayba, Abū Bakr), 102 mushākala (analogy), 80, 82 music, 112, 155, 337–8; see also samāʿ Musnad (Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad), 49

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384  |  sufis and Mustadrak (al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī), 52 al-Mustaṣfā (al-Ghazālī), 2, 345, 347 muʿtabirūn, school of, 47 mutawātir (transmitted in such a way as to remove the possibility of fabrication), 131 Muʿtazilī school, 3 afterlife, 48 God, view of, 48 karāmāt (miracles), 48 al-Muwāfaqāt (The Concordances) (al-Shāṭibī, Abū Isḥāq), 111, 112 Muwaṭṭāʾ (Mālik ibn Anas), 84, 102, 173, 259 al-Muzani, 3 mysticism, 6, 40, 43, 46–7 Andalusia, 104, 105 definition, 39 divine knowledge, 52 Eastern, 112–15 inspired knowledge, 53 purification of the heart, 45, 46–7 schools, and the, 53–61 Traditionalists, affinity with, 47–9, 54–61 see also spirituality Nadhīr Ḥusayn Dihlawī, 309, 310, 311, 332 al-Nadīm, Ibn Fihrist, 25 Nadwi, Akram, 326 Nafi, Ibrahim, 328n al-Nakhaʿī, Ibrāhīm, 16, 188 al-Nakhshabī, Abū Turāb, 69 Names of God, 230, 232, 233 al-Nasāʾī Sunan al-Nasāʾī, 64n Nawādir al-uṣūl (al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 68, 75, 113, 118, 261 al-Nawawī, Sharaf al-Dīn, 153–4 Nayl al-awṭār (al-Shawkānī, Muḥammad), 181, 314 Neo-Traditionalism, 324–5, 339 Niass, Ibrāhīm, 290, 294 Raf ʿ al-malām ʿamman rafaʿa wa-qabaḍa iqtidāʾan bi-sayyid al-anām, 290 Nigeria, 290 Nizāmiyya (Juwaynī), 303 nubuwwa aṣliyya (original prophecy), 150, 227, 313–14 nubuwwa firʿiyya (derivative prophecy), 150, 227, 313–14 nujūm (stars; objects that rise from a place), 194, 195 Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī dhikr ṣūfiyyat al-ʿIrāq (al-Ḥumaydī, Abū ʿAbd-Allāh), 108

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sharīʿa

obligation, 42–3, 141–2, 148–9 abrogation, 197–8 Oertman, Paul, 32 O’Fahey, Rex S., 253–4, 258, 288 On the Two Types: The Rationalists and the Traditionalists (al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 70 original licitness, 137, 338 original prophecy, 150, 227, 313–14 Ottoman Empire, 239–40, 280–1 pardon, 138, 142, 143 Perennialist School, 324–5 permissability, 137–9, 157 pre-sharīʿa, 137 pig meat, 235 pilgrimage, 81–2, 90–1, 92, 141–2 ḥijāb, 139–40 ways of performing, 202 pious acts, 48 pluralism, 4, 150–6, 157, 177–8, 187, 191, 326 Post-Classical Period, 167 Post-Classical Tradition, 168 prayer, 221 Allāhu akbar (God is greater), 204–5 beginning, 204–5 call to, 192–3 descending into sujūd, 270 gaps of silence left by the imām, 269 genitals, touching, 225–6, 233–4 glancing upward during, 135 hand-raising, 116–17 holding the Friday Prayer in more than one mosque in the same city, 271 Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad, 297 invalidation, 135 al-Kattānī, Abū l-Fayḍ Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Kabīr, 314 leadership, 208 praying in footwear, 267 Pre-Maghrib Supererogatory Prayer, 265–7 prostration, 41 qunūt supplication, 270 Qurʾān, reciting during, 204 recitation of the basmala, 271–3, 290 saints, 221–2 ṣalāt, 42 al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī, 288, 289–90, 292 speech during, 82, 83 al-Subkī, Maḥmūd Khaṭṭāb, 323 taʿawwudh, 236, 269 takbīr, 83–4

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index  | 385 thigh covering, 225 Tijāniyya-Ibrāhīmiyya, 290 timing, 11–12 witr prayer, 269 women imāms leading, 270–1 Pre-Maghrib Supererogatory Prayer, 265–7 Presences of the Divine Names, 230, 232 prioritisation, 44–5 probability, 131–2 prohibition, 21–2, 33–4, 42–3, 77, 135 abrogation, 197–8 contrary texts of equal strength, 135–6 hitting parents, 146 pre-sharīʿa, 137 al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm, 218 prophecy, 150, 227, 313–14 Prophets, the, 149, 197, 198 al-Būṣīrī, 201 judgement, 286–7 Revelation, 282 Subkī, Tāj al-Dīn, 199–200 al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn, 203 propriety (adab), 218–20 prostration of recitation, 269 punishment, 202 purification, 44–5, 46–7, 196 bleeding, 205 genitals, touching, 225–6, 233–4 see also ritual purity Qalʿajī, Muḥammad Rawwās, 315 qamaḥa (animal raising head, refusing to drink), 41 al-Qaʿnabī, ʿAbdullāh ibn Maslama, 51 al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad, 190 al-Qāsimī, Jamāl al-Dīn, 317–18, 334 Qawāʿid al-taḥdīth, 318 al-Qaṣṣār, Aḥmad, 335 qawāʿid fiqhiyya (major/general legal precepts), 85, 86 Qawāʿid al-taḥdīth (al-Qāsimī, Jamāl al-Dīn), 318 al-Qawl al-mubīn fi-l-radd ʿan al-shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn (The Clear Speech in Defence of Shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn) (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 171 qiyās (analogical reasoning), 20, 22 al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, 27, 28, 73 Iblīs (Satan), 60 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 133, 141, 142, 143, 320 Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad, 24–5, 27

7744_Dajani.indd 385

Ibn Taymiyya, 87 intoxicants, 28, 86–7 rejection of, 27–8, 31, 59, 73 al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm, 79–80 al-Qūnawī, Ṣadr al-Dīn, 158 qunūt supplication, 270 Qurʾān, 13, 33, 90, 106 al-Bayḍāwī, 45 choice, 202 David, Prophet, 144 hardships, removing, 90, 92, 136 hidden guidance, 141 hitting parents, 146 judgement of David and Solomon, 286–7, 340 judgements, 137 literal understanding of, 92 mercy, 90 number of verses, 224 prioritisation, 44–5 reciting during prayer, 204 Solomon, Prophet, 144 water, 41 wisdom, 77–8, 93 worship, 42 Ẓāhirīs, 34 al-Qushāshī, Ṣafī al-Dīn, 256, 259, 301–5, 332 al-Qushayrī al-Risāla, 54, 112, 114, 207 al-Qūsī, ʿAlī, 293–4 Qūt al-qulūb (al-Makkī, Abū Ṭālib), 59, 114, 318 Qutayba ibn Saʿīd al-Thaqafī al-Balkhī, 69, 71 Raf ʿ al-malām ʿamman rafaʿa wa-qabaḍa iqtidāʾan bi-sayyid al-anām (Niass, Ibrāhīm), 290 Raf ʿ al-malām ʿan al-aʾimma l-aʿlām (Ibn Taymiyya), 289 Raḥīmiyya Madrasa, 308–9 al-Rashīd, Ibrāhīm, 257, 259 Rationalists (ahl al-raʾy), 22, 23, 25, 313 God, view of, 48 Great Rationalist-Traditionalist Synthesis, 29–30 Māliki school, 107 raʾy, 22, 78, 79 tawassul, 48 al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm, 70–1 raʾy, 22, 23, 94n, 78–9 al-Shāṭibī, Abū Isḥāq, 11 see also Ḥanafī school religious vows, 148 renewers, 310–11 revealed sources, 283–4 Revelation, 47, 137, 138, 282

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386  |  sufis and reward, 346, 347 Riḍā, Rashīd, 181 Riexinger, Martin, 310 Rimāḥ ḥizb al-raḥīm ʿalā nuḥūr ḥizb al-rajīm (The Spears of the Part of the All-Merciful on the Necks of the Part of the Accursed One) (al-Ḥājj ʿUmar ibn Saʿīd al-Fūtī), 290–1 Risāla (Ibn Abī Zayd), 259 al-Risāla (al-Qushayrī), 54, 112, 114, 207 al-Risala (al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad ibn Idrīs), 218 Risālat al-radd ʿalā ahl al-raʾy (Refutation of the Rationalists) (Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad), 281–3, 284, 288–9, 293, 294, 295 ritual ablutions, 40, 42, 223, 225, 226, 263–4 genitals, touching, 225–6, 233–4, 244–5 ritual purity, 244–5 bleeding, 205 genitals, touching, 225–6, 233–4, 244–5 prostration of recitation, 269 see also purification rock, 263–4 Rousing the Determination of those who Are Not Blind to Follow in the Way [of God’s Messenger] (Īqāẓ himam uli l-abṣār li l-iqtidāʾ bi sayyid al-muhājirīn wa-l-anṣār) (al-Fullānī, Ṣāliḥ), 305 al-Ruʿaynī, Shurayḥ, 120 Rūḥ al-maʿānī (al-Ālūsī, Abū l-Thanāʾ Maḥmūd), 312, 314 Rūḥ al-sunna (The Spirit of the Sunna) (Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad), 266, 269 Ruwaym ibn Aḥmad, 56, 72 saʿa (leeway), 188, 189–92, 196, 203, 214 versus abrogation, 223–6 al-Sabīʿī, Abū Isḥāq, 190 Saʿd ibn Muʿādh, 221 sadd al-dharāʾiʿ (blocking the means), 21 al-Ṣādiq, Jaʿfar, 53, 60, 97n Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn), 118 Ṣaḥīh al-Bukhārī (al-Jāmiʿ al-musnad al-ṣaḥīḥ) (alBukhārī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl), 72, 84, 225 al-ʿAṭṭār, Salīm, 316 Ibn Abī Jamra, 222, 305 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, 222 Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad, 259 Ibn Sūda, 255 intoxicants, 87 al-Qaʿnabī, ʿAbdullāh ibn Maslama, 51 qiyās, 27, 28, 73 Walī-Allāh, Shah, 225

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sharīʿa

Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn), 118 sainthood, 49–53, 113, 194 prayer, 221–2 ranks, 233 science of the saints, 233 Seal of Muḥammadan Sainthood, 259 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 233 spiritual attainment, levels of, 220–1 Salafī movement, 294–5, 301, 320, 323–4, 333–9 al-Ālūsī, Abū l-Thanāʾ Maḥmūd, 312 Damascene Salafiyya, 315–20 ṣalāt (ritual prayer), 42 al-Ṣalātu wa-maqāṣiduhā (al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm), 221 Sālimiyya, the, 58 Sallām ibn Abī Muṭīʿ, 218 samāʿ (Sufi dhikr sessions with musical instruments), 168–9 al-Samannūdī, Ibrāhīm, 293 al-Ṣanʿānī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, 26–8 al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī, 255, 257, 259, 332 basmala, recitation of, 272 followers of, 292–3, 295, 333–4 Ibn Ḥazm, 293 Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad, 288–90 influence, 294 Īqāẓ al-wasnān fī l-ʿamal bil-ḥadīth wa-lQurʾān (Waking the Sleeper to Act Upon the Ḥadīth and Qurʾān), 288–9, 293, 294, 305 al-Masāʾil al-ʿashr, 289 Niass, Ibrāhīm, 290, 294 prayer, 288 Shifāʾ al-ṣadr, 289–90 ʿUllaysh, Muḥammad, 295–6 al-Sarrāj, Abū Naṣr, 58 Kitāb al-lumaʿ, 58 Satan, 31–2, 60–1, 83 Ṣawāṭiʿ al-anwār al-qudsiyya (The Shining Pure Lights from the Beginnings of the Chapters of the Futūḥāt al-makkiyya) (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 171 al-Ṣāwī, Aḥmad, 257 Scale, the (al-Mīzān), 213–22, 224 schools of law, 4, 11–38 belief in, 237–8 certainty/probability, 131 competition, 54 equality of, 229f four madhhabs, 29–30, 46, 167, 191 Great Rationalist-Traditionalist Synthesis, 29–30 ḥadīth versus sunna, 15–19

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index  | 387 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 241–3 ijtihād, 12–15 judges, 239–40 mystics, 53–61 al-Nadīm, Ibn, 25 Ottoman Egypt, 239–40 pluralism, 150–6 Rationalists versus Traditionalists, 19–25 regional, 14–15 rifts, 238, 281 ritual ablutions, 244–6 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 237–42 talfīq, 244–6 Traditionist-Jurisprudents, 25–9 Ẓāhirī, 25, 30–5 Zysow, Aron, 131–2 see also divergence; madhhabs; and under individual school names Seal of Muḥammadan Sainthood, 259 Sedgwick, Mark, 294, 295 Against the Modern World, 324 sexual intercourse, 82, 83 al-Shaʿbī, 188 Shadharāt al-dhahab (Ibn al-ʿImād), 122 al-Shādhilī, ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Mughayzil, 213 al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad ibn Idrīs, 3, 17–18, 21, 23, 310 call to prayer, 193 Consensus, 22 donkey meat, 234 fasting, 174 horse meat, 234 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 207 istiḥsān, 22 Kitāb al-umm, 218 mafhūm al-mukhālafa, 23 prayer beginning, 205 pro-ḥadīth movement, 22–4 qiyās, 23, 31–2 rank, 207, 227 al-Risala, 218 sainthood, 51 taʿawwudh, 236 Traditionalists, 22 verses, 44 women’s testimony, 32–3 see also Shāfiʿī school, 23 Shāfiʿī school, 23, 25, 89, 173 Andalusia, 103–4 basmala, recitation of, 271 breaking the fast when travelling, 268 descending into sujūd, 270

7744_Dajani.indd 387

gaps of silence left by the imām in the prayer, 269 genitals, touching, 225, 226 Great Rationalist-Traditionalist Synthesis, 29–30 holding the Friday Prayer in more than one mosque in the same city, 271 marriage, 88–9 pluralism, 154 Pre-Maghrib Supererogatory Prayer, 265–6 prostration of recitation, 269 qiyās, 32 qunūt supplication, 270 raʾy, 174 ritual ablutions, 244, 245 taqlīd, 29–30 witr prayer, 269 women imāms leading in prayer, 270 see also al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad ibn Idrīs Shaikh, Saʿdiyya, 325, 339 Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ʿArabī, Gender and Sexuality, 325 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 170–1, 213, 237–42 ablutions, 276n abrogation, 223–4 aḥādīth al-aḥkām work, 178–9 al-Ajwiba al-marḍiyya (The Satisfying Answers on Behalf of the Imāms of Jurists and the Sufis), 172 ʿayn al-sharīʿa (source of the sharīʿa), 227, 228, 229f–33 al-Badr al-munīr, 176–7 al-Baḥr al-mawrūd, 179, 238–9 contradictions, 180–1 Dhamm al-raʾy, 175, 241 al-Durar al-manthūra, 179 disagreement with, 234–5 flexibility of choice, 214, 224, 234, 236 food, 234 genitals, touching, 226, 233–4 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 171–7, 180–1, 241–4 Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī, 173 ijtihād, 343 Irshād al-ṭalibīn, 175 Kashf al-ghumma ʿan jamīʿ al-umma (The Removal of the Fog from the Whole Community) see Kashf al-ghumma ʿan jamīʿ al-umma al-Kibrīt al-aḥmar (The Red Sulphur that Clarifies the Teachings of the Shaykh al-Akbar), 171, 173 laity, the, 238–9 Laṭāʾif al-minan, 243

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388  |  sufis and al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (cont.) Lawāqiḥ al-anwār (The Fecundating Lights), 171 madhhabs, 227–37, 240–2, 307 Mālik ibn Anas, 173, 174 Minhāj al-wuṣūl ilā maqāṣid ʿilm al-uṣūl, 175, 349–50 al-Mīzān al-khaḍiriyya (The Scale of alKhaḍir), 213 al-Mīzān al-kubrā (The Large Book of the Scale) see al-Mīzān al-kubrā al-Mīzān al-Shaʿrāniyya (Al-Shaʿrānī’s Scale), 213–14 al-Mīzān al-ṣughra (The Smaller Book of the Scale), 213, 228 mujtahids, 179–80, 343, 349 Names of God, 230, 232 al-Qawl al-mubīn fi-l-radd ʿan al-shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn (The Clear Speech in Defence of Shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn), 171 Ṣawāṭiʿ al-anwār al-qudsiyya (The Shining Pure Lights from the Beginnings of the Chapters of the Futūḥāt al-makkiyya), 171 Scale, the, 213–22, 224 spiritual attainment, levels of, 220–1 Tanbīh al-aghbiyāʾ ʿalā qaṭratin min baḥr ʿulūm al-awliyāʾ (Alerting the Dim-witted to a Drop from the Ocean of the Knowledge of the Saints), 172 taʿawwudh, 236 traditions, 176–7 usury, 320 works of jurisprudence, 172–6 al-Yawāqīt wa-l-jawāhir fī bayān ʿaqāʾid alakābir (The Rubies and Jewels that Clarify the Beliefs of the Great Saints), 171 zāwiya (Sufi centre), 170, 181 al-shāriʿ (Lawgiver), 41–2 sharīʿa, 339–41 ʿayn al-sharīʿa (source of the sharīʿa), 227, 228, 229f–33 as a burden/test, 340–1 etymology, 40–1, 90 as law, 42–3 spirituality, 41 tree of, 231f see also divergence sharīʿa/ṭarīqa binary, 339–40 al-Shāṭibī, Abū Isḥāq, 111 music and singing, 112 al-Muwāfaqāt (The Concordances), 111, 112 al-Shaṭṭī, Muḥammad, 316–17

7744_Dajani.indd 388

sharīʿa

al-Shawkānī, Muḥammad, 257–8, 309–10, 332, 336 Nayl al-awṭār, 181, 314 al-Shaybānī, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan, 17 Shifāʾ al-ṣadr (al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī), 289–90 shirʿa (divinely created path), 41 shuf ʿa (pre-emption), 89 al-Ṣiddīq, Abū Bakr, 51 ṣiddīqūn (rank), 51 al-Sijistānī, Abū Dāwūd, 26, 337 Sunan Abū Dāwūd, 26, 310, 322, 323 singing, 111–12, 155, 282, 285 Sirhindī, Aḥmad, 306 Solitary Ones (afrād), 206, 207 Solomon, Prophet, 144 Spain, 47, 101–12 spiritual attainment, levels of, 220–1 spiritual enlightenment, 237 spiritual states (aḥwāl), 219 spiritual stations (maqāmāt), 219, 232, 259 spiritual training, 45–6 spirituality, 41, 43 worship, 42 see also mysticism Station of Proximity, 206–7 stringency, 214, 218, 234; see also Scale, the stringent ruling (tashdīd/ʿazīma), 180 subjectivity, 345, 346–7 al-Subkī, Maḥmūd Khaṭṭāb, 321–7, 336 al-Dīn al-khāliṣ, 322 Itḥāf al-kāʾināt, 322 Subkī, Tāj al-Dīn, 199–201 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 200–1 Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ, 175 al-Taʿẓīm wa-l-minna fī qawlihī taʿālā latuʾminunna bihī wa tanṣurannah, 199 submission, 41 ṣūfī (wool-wearer), 39 Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ʿArabī, Gender and Sexuality (Shaikh, Saʿdiyya), 325 Sufis of Baghdad, 39–40, 46, 55, 56 Traditionalists, 57 Sufis of the Mosque (of Basra), 39, 40, 46, 55, 56 Traditionalists, 57 Sufism, etymology, 39 Sufism: The Formative Period (Karamustafa, Ahmet), 49 al-Suhrawardī, Abū al-Najīb, 55 al-Suhrawardī, ʿUmar, 55, 60 sujūd, descending into, 270

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index  | 389 Sunan Abū Dāwūd (al-Sijistānī, Abū Dāwūd), 26, 310, 322, 323 Sunan al-Dārimī (al-Dārimī, ʿAbdullāh), 27, 133 Sunan Ibn Mājah, 338 Sunan al-Nasāʾī (al-Nasāʾī), 64n Sunan al-Tirmidhi (Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī alDīn), 118 Sunbāṭī, Fakhr al-Dīn, 240 sunna (way and example of the Prophet Muḥammad which is to be emulated), 15, 104, 148–9, 169 ʿAwn ibn ʿAbdullāh, 190 choice, 202 versus ḥadīth, 15–19, 188–9 al-Kattānī, Abū l-Fayḍ Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Kabīr, 313–14 Sunni Islam, 46, 324, 326, 333 supererogatory practices, 261 supplication for the multiplication of the rewards of good deeds, 261 al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn, 201–3, 310 ijtihād, 343 Jazīl al-mawāhib fī ikhtilāf al-madhāhib, 201–2, 349, 350 mujtahids, 343, 349 Tanbiʾat al-ghabī fī tabriʾat Ibn al-ʿArabī (Alerting the Dim-Witted Concerning Ibn ʿArabī’s Vindication), 201 Syria, 334 Damascene Salafiyya, 315–20 al-Taʿarruf li-madhhab ahl al-taṣawwuf (alKalābādhī, Abū Bakr), 58 taʿawwudh (formula of seeking refuge from Satan), 236, 269 al-Ṭabarī, 72, 193, 270 Ṭabarī school, 25, 270 Tacit Consensus, 19–20 al-Tāʾiyya (Ibn al-Fāriḍ), 258 takbīr, (‘Allah is greater’ phrase), 83–4 talfīq (combining elements of different doctrines to create a new doctrine), 244–6 al-Ṭālibānī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ‘Khāliṣ’, 329n al-taʿlīl bi l-qāʿida (general rules inferred from countless rulings), 20–1 al-Talkhīs (al-Juwaynī), 344 Tanbiʾat al-ghabī fī tabriʾat Ibn al-ʿArabī (Alerting the Dim-Witted Concerning Ibn ʿArabī’s Vindication) (al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl alDīn), 201 Tanbīh al-aghbiyāʾ ʿalā qaṭratin min baḥr ʿulūm al-awliyāʾ (Alerting the Dim-witted to a

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Drop from the Ocean of the Knowledge of the Saints) (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb), 172 taqlīd (imitation of and trust in the doctrines of the founding imām), 29–30, 133, 167–8, 324 Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, ʿIzz al-Dīn, 167 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 220 Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd, 167 Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī, Shah, 307–8 al-Taqrīb wa-l-irshād (al-Bāqillānī, Abū Bakr), 344 Tārīkh Najd (History of Najd) (al-Ālūsī, Maḥmūd Shukrī), 313 ṭarīqa (spiritual path), 55, 145, 290, 333, 334, 339 ṭarīqa/sharīʿa binary, 339–40 ṭarīqa muḥammadiyya (path of Muḥammad), 262 tarjīʿ (repetition of faith statements), 192–3 taṣawwuf (mysticism in Islam), 39, 44 ḥadīth, merging with, 302 tawassul (use an intermediary as means to attain God’s favour), 48, 331n tawḥīd al-ṣifāt (Unity of Divine Attributes), 303 tawsiʿa (to give leeway), 189; see also leeway taxation, 239–40, 320 tayammum (lightly touching the earth), 92, 196, 262–4 al-Tāzī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, 255–6 al-Taʿẓīm wa-l-minna fī qawlihī taʿālā la-tuʾminunna bihī wa tanṣurannah (Subkī, Tāj al-Dīn), 199 texts, contrary texts of equal strength, 135–6 textualism, 34 al-Thawrī, Sufyān, 17, 190–1, 206, 245 theological doctrine, 2–3 thigh covering, 225 al-Tijānī, Aḥmad, 290 Tijāniyya-Ibrāhīmiyya, 290 al-Tirmidhī, Abū ʿĪsā, 26–8 al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm, 46, 47, 60–1, 68–70 abdāl, 50, 52 Arabic alphabet, 232 divergence of knowledge, 193–6 dreams, 116 fasting, 82–3, 195–6 fiqh, 79, 89 flexibility of choice, 197, 204–6 forgetfulness, 82–3, 113 al-Furūq wa manʿ al-tarāduf, 76–7, 113 grape vine metaphor, 80 ḥajj pilgrimage, 81–2, 90–1, 92 al-Ḥajj wa asrāruh, 90 hardships, removing, 91–2 ḥikma (wisdom), 71–8, 93 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 112–14, 200

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390  |  sufis and al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm (cont.) Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad, 260 ijtihād, 76–7, 78–89 ijtihād and legal precepts, 84–9 intoxicants, 87 Ithbāt al-ʿilal, 194 Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī (Sunan al-Tirmidhī), 310 jurisprudence, 70–1 Khatm al-awliyāʾ, 70, 77, 113 Kitāb al-ḥajj wa asrāruh, 75–6 Kitāb al-iḥtiyāṭāt, 113 Kitāb ithbāt al-ʿilal, 77 Kitāb al-manhiyyāt, 76 Kitāb al-ṣalātu wa maqāṣiduhā, 75 al-Manhiyyāt, 118 mercy, 93 mushākala, 80, 82 Names of God, 232 Nawādir al-uṣūl, 68, 75, 113, 118, 261 nujūm (stars; objects that rise from a place), 194 On the Two Types: The Rationalists and the Traditionalists, 70 pious acts, 48 prayer beginning, 205 prohibition, 218 qiyās, 79–80, 89, 133 Qurʾān, reciting during prayer, 204 raʾy, 79 al-Ṣalātu wa-maqāṣiduhā, 221–2 sharīʿa as a test, 340 shuf ʿa, 89 spiritual attainment, levels of, 221–2 takbīr, 83–4 teachings of, 105 tree metaphor, 80 witr prayer, 269 works, 113 ʿIlal al-sharīʿa, 70 tradition, 339 Traditional Islam, 324 traditionalist (ḥadīth transmitter), 23 Traditionist-Jurisprudents school, 25–9, 30, 34, 35, 49, 55, 60 basmala, recitation of, 273 breaking the fast when travelling, 268 fasting in the second half of Shaʿbān, 268 intoxicants, 87–8 lack of awareness of, 130 permissibility, 157 qiyās, 87–8, 132 Traditionalist School, 324–5

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sharīʿa

Traditionalists (ahl al-ḥadīth), 22–5 divine knowledge, 52 God, view of, 48 Great Rationalist-Traditionalist Synthesis, 29–30 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 115 Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad, 192–3 Māliki school, 107 mysticism, affinity with, 47–9, 54–61 raʾy, 79 sainthood, 49–53 al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm, 70–1 see also Ahl al-ḥadīth movement; NeoTraditionalism traditions, 116–18 tree metaphor, 80 Tuḥfat al-aḥwadhī (al-Mubārakfūrī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān), 310 al-Tustarī, Sahl ibn ʿAbdullāh, 45, 58 ʿUllaysh, Muḥammad, 236–7, 293, 295–6 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (ʿUmar II), Caliph, 190, 191 ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, Caliph, 11, 12, 194, 221–2, 346, 347 Umm Ayman, 11 Unity of Divine Attributes (tawḥīd al-ṣifāt), 303 uṣūl (sources/foundations; principles), 14 uṣūl al-fiqh (sources/principles of jurisprudence), 2–6, 13–14, 129 usury, 21, 320 ʿUthmān, Caliph, 194, 346 valid/invalid categorisations, 13 veridical dream, 52 vows, 148 waḥdat al-wujūd (unity of divine manifestations), 260, 302, 303, 306 Wahhābī scholars of ʿAsīr, 258, 288 Wahhābi movement, 313, 334–6, 338 wājib mukhayyar (obligation with options), 349 Wakīʿ, 44 walāya (proximity to God; sainthood), 49 walī (friendship; guardian), 119 Walī-Allāh al-Dihlawī, Shah, 224–5, 229, 311, 332 Ahl-i Hadith Movement, 305–11 Fuyūḍ al-Ḥaramayn, 307–8 Ḥujjat Allāh al-bālighah (The Conclusive Proof from God ), 306–7 al-Inṣāf, 307 ʿIqd al-jīd, 307 sharīʿa as a test, 340–1

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index  | 391 waqt (the moment), 219–20 al-Warrāq al-Ḥakīm, Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar Abū Bakr, 74 water, 40–1, 263–4 animals lowering head to drink, 40–1 wealth, 346, 347 Weiss, Bernard G., 42 wet cupping, 53–4 wisdom (ḥikma), 71–8, 90, 93, 105 witr prayer, 269 women, 140 ḥijāb, 139–40 menstruating, 336 testimony of, 32–3 wool, 39 worship, 42, 220–1 wuḍūʾ (ritual ablutions), 42, 225, 226 Yaḥyā ibn Muʿādh al-Rāzī, 57–8 Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī, 101–2 Yaḥyā al-Jallāʾ, 69 al-Yawāqīt wa-l-jawāhir fī bayān ʿaqāʾid al-akābir (The Rubies and Jewels that Clarify the Beliefs of the Great Saints) (al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd alWahhāb), 171 Yemen, 258 Yoga, 327n al-Zabīdī, Murtaḍā, 291, 305, 311 ẓāhir (outward/exterior; literal), 31 al-Ẓāhirī, Fāliḥ, 294 Ẓāhirī school, 25, 30–5, 56, 89, 336 Andalusia, 102–3, 108, 120 breaking the fast when travelling, 268

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certainty, 131–2 descending into sujūd, 270 divine judgment., 136–41 ease principle, 157 gaps of silence left by the imām in the prayer, 269 genitals, touching, 225, 226 ḥadīths, 338 holding the Friday Prayer in more than one mosque in the same city, 271 ijtihād, 145 khabar al-wāḥid, 131, 132, 156 leeway, 191 methodology, 156, 158 music and singing, 112 Pre-Maghrib Supererogatory Prayer, 265–6 principles of jurisprudence, 132–6 prostration of recitation, 269 qiyās, 88, 132–3, 164n al-Shawkānī, Muḥammad, 257 taxation, 320 taʿawwudh, 269 witr prayer, 269 see also Dāwūd ibn Khalaf al-Ẓāhirī; Dāwūdī school zakāt (obligatory charity; growth and purification), 42 al-Zamakhsharī, 99n al-Zarkashī, 85–6 al-Zarrādī, Fakhr al-Dīn, 169 zāwiya (Sufi centre), 170, 181 al-Zuhrī, 188 Zysow, Aron, 130–2

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