Study the life and legacy of one of the greatest pioneers in the history of Islamic law
Abu Hanifah Nu'man ibn Thabit was one of the greatest pioneers in the history of Islamic Law, particularly in legal reasoning. The Hanafi Legal School that he founded has become the most widely followed among the world's Muslims. Based on primary sources, this study of the life and legacy of Abu Hanifah also surveys the evolution of Hanafi legal reasoning ( fiqh ) in different regions of the Islamic world and assesses its historical distinctiveness.
"Based on primary sources, this study...surveys the evolution of Hanafi legal reasoning (fiqh) in the Islamic world and assesses its historical distinctiveness."- Islamic Horizons
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Introduction: background to the first development of the law
By the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd (170–189), that is, within six generations of its beginning, the rule of Islam extended from the western coast of north Africa, through much of Central Asia, to the Indus, with established commercial relations going further, through the Russian landmass into Scandinavia, and by sea and land routes into China. This vast
Abbāsid dominion (Islamic Spain was not part of it) was economically and culturally vigorous, joining within its jurisdiction the peoples of the east and west, peoples of diverse cultural background and attainment, and of diverse ethnic, linguistic, religious and confessional identity. How could what had begun so locally in the Arabian peninsula emerge so soon and then endure so long as a distinctive civilization?
The question is at least partially answered in the fact that Hārūn al-Rashīd felt the need to create the legal–administrative post of Chief Judge to oversee the functioning of the laws throughout the whole realm. The post was made for Abū Yūsuf, one of the two most famous of Abū Ḥanīfah’s many famous students. What identified the Islamic world as such, and gave coherence and staying-power to its social order, was its law. Abū Ḥanīfah’s achievement can be expressed briefly as his success in drawing out, more systematically and consistently than anyone before him, what was universal in the injunctions of the Qur
ān and Sunnah. He achieved this without alteration of the known particular laws or subversion of the fundamental principles and temperament of Islam. Rather, as some admirers said, Muslims should pray for Abū Ḥanīfah precisely because the Sunnah, the way of the Prophet, was preserved through him.
The law as evolved in the generation of Abū Ḥanīfah did not enter into Islam from outside – as, in later times, Greek philosophy or various strands of Christian or Jewish or Indian mysticism entered it, then making themselves at home within the Islamic milieu, appropriating the idiom and rites native to that milieu. The law grew, from its anchorage in Qur
ān and Sunnah as understood by particular individuals, into a universality sufficient to make the Islamic milieu capable, on the one hand, of receiving and accepting on its terms already formed traditions like that of Greek philosophy or, on the other hand, of rejecting them outright as it rejected the prestigious, longenduring traditions of Roman law.
It is right to mention Abū Ḥanīfah as one of the pioneers of the law but he did not, obviously, initiate the process of its foundation. Rather, he realized and directed its potential. To understand what Abū Ḥanīfah contributed to the law, we need to understand how it was evolving up to his time. That is the aim of this chapter. I set out briefly the unique importance of its laws in the religion and social order of Islam; the emergence of scholars as a distinct class; how they accumulated and shared knowledge; how legal and moral authority centred on particular individuals in particular places; how the law was applied and administered, and relations between the state and judges and jurists. Finally, I clarify the meaning of the paired terms ‘Qur
ān and Sunnah’, and the implications for expertise in the study of ḥadīths and the derivation of laws.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LAW IN ISLAM
In the Muslim perspective, the one certain source of human knowledge about the will of God is His revelation of the Qur
ān. The Qur
ān affirms that other revelation preceded it, and that no other revelation with the authority of law will follow. From the first affirmation was derived the broadly inclusive, assimilative temperament of Islamic civilization in its great period – the behaviour of Muslims in general was not unbalanced by the superiority or inferiority of the other peoples and cultures they met. Those concerned with the evolution of the law had to busy themselves with defining a legal space within Islamic jurisdiction for non-Muslims living under Islamic rule (permanently, or temporarily as commercial or diplomatic travellers), and for local rules and customs (particularly in relation to contracts), which might or might not be conformable with Islamic law. But we will not be dealing directly with this issue. Our main concern here relates to the second affirmation – that no revelation with the authority of law will follow the Qur
ān. We do not need to dispute the truthfulness of reports of dreams and/or other experiences of communication from angels or prophets. We can allow that it may be so. Certainly, instances of such communication – as distinct from revelations to men designated as messengers and prophets to their people – are recorded in the Qur
ān (a famous one is familiar in the Christian tradition as the Annunciation). Nevertheless, it is an axiom of Islamic faith that no communications of this sort, true or otherwise, can have the authority of law. Given that, and given also that the Qur
ān plainly does not legislate for every situation, foreseeable or unforeseeable, how is the law to grow outside of the Qur
ān, and in doing so, what authority does it have?
One might suppose that the ending of divine revelation implied some new opening for human reason – that, at least on matters on which the Qur
ān was silent, the people could freely exercise their minds, individually or collectively, and legislate for themselves on the basis of their own ‘best judgement and experience’ at the time, implicitly allowing the same freedom to subsequent generations. But that is not what the early Muslims did. Had they embraced such freedom it would undoubtedly have led to eventual ‘reinterpretation’ of even those Qur
ānic verses whose legal meaning is clear, so as to alter that meaning and fit it to the ‘best judgement’ and ‘best moral taste’ of different times and places. The ending of divine revelation meant, in principle and practice, that no one henceforth could claim divine authority for any amendment or adaptation of the law; they had to argue their case on the basis of a known (and limited) body of texts and practice. On this basis, reason was exercised in public, its authority or persuasiveness accrued in public and it could be publicly challenged. For the overwhelming majority of Muslims, the source of authority was not ‘occult’, it could not be inherited from association with the Prophet or anyone else; it was acquired and transmitted only through the labour of learning and teaching, reflecting and reasoning.
That said, it is worth emphasizing that this ‘public reason’ was fundamentally different from what the phrase means in the modern Western tradition. In the latter, reason enjoys more or less complete autonomy; it is constrained, if at all, by the will or mood at the time of the people for the regulation of whose affairs the law is being reasoned. As the will or mood of the people alters so do such fundamentals as who is legally a person and who is not, what is a crime and what is not. In the Islamic tradition on the other hand, while the process of reasoning is not different, reasoning is firmly rooted in the Qur
ān and Sunnah, and cannot cut itself off from those roots – it can only branch off from them.
Many Muslims were very impressed by Abū Ḥanīfah’s reasoning, but not all: indeed, even his own students disagreed with him. This can only have been so if praise or blame, acceptance or rejection of his arguments, occurred against the background of some shared sense of what was Islamic and what was not. It is a matter of record that the first Muslims disagreed amon...
Table of contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Preface
1 Introduction: background to the first development of the law
