Mohammed Akram Nadwi - Abu Hanifah. His Life, Legal Method & Legacy

his life, legal method and legacy

by

Mohammad Akram Nadwi

Interface Publications Ltd. Kube Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN: 978-1-84774-053-3

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Contents

List of charts; image

Preface

About Ab anfah

Ab anfah Numn ibn Thbit (d. 150 AH) is a towering figure in the early history of Islamic law. He was among the first to employ the recognized methods of legal reasoning in a consistent way, and to gather the legal dicta of his time into an organized corpus. The doctrine (madhhab) that developed in line with his style of reasoning became the most widely practised school of law in the Islamic world. This was due in part to its being favoured by the ruling dynasties of the most extensive, populous and enduring of the Muslim empires the Abbsids, the Ottomans and the Mughals. But in part also it was due to the excellence of the students whom he inspired and trained to carry on his work.

Ab anfah was a genius, supremely proficient alike in analysis of detail and reflection on general principles. He combined his passion for knowledge of the religion (and for organizing that knowledge) with an ability to nurture the same passion in others. He was both a researcher and a teacher, a theoretician and a practitioner of the law. Building on the achievement of his predecessors, he schooled his students in particular thoughts and a way of thinking them so that, over time, his doctrine came to be identified with his name rather than the name of his city (Kufah). However, he could not have commanded the authority that he did if he had not also been exemplary in self-discipline and piety and, as a man, warm as well as virtuous, as familiar to and loved by his neighbours as he was respected and admired by his fellow scholars.

What distinguishes Ab anfah from other geniuses in Islamic history is that his achievement still touches the everyday life of ordinary Muslims. Their faith requires them to conduct their worship and general affairs in accordance with Gods will as framed by the Qurn and the Prophets teaching. But how, in practice, are they to know how to do that? It is through pioneers in Islamic law like Ab anfah that Muslims feel able to answer that question in a way that, because it carries authority, commands voluntary obedience and general acceptance. The alternative to authority is mere assertion, which can command acceptance only so long as it is supported by force of power. Ab anfah is famously one of the prominent warriors for the authority of the law set against the power of the state. He suffered imprisonment and whipping for refusing to serve in the new Abbsid administration, to lend his authority to the decisions of the caliph. Power got its hollow victory in that the caliph, unable to break Ab anfahs will, succeeded in having him poisoned.

In the event, jailing him only added to the popularity on account of which the recently established Abbsid imperial dynasty considered Ab anfah a threat. People demanded to consult him even while he was in prison, and they were too many to be resisted. In later times, when the dynasty was secure and when learned Islamic scholars did accept positions within the state administration and so depended for their livelihoods upon the state, they still felt they had a duty to refuse to lend their authority to the will of the government if, by doing so, they would be contradicting or undermining the law. This dedication to the law, intermittently weakened by necessary and unnecessary compromises, is derived from the pattern of conduct established by Ab anfah and other pioneers in the field. In epoch after epoch in the history of Islam, we find that it is the learned scholars of the law, even though few of them individually were of the same mettle as Ab anfah, who managed, collectively, to preserve the Islamic character of the society in spite of the state, in spite of armed schisms and factions, betrayals and rebellions from within, and invasions from abroad. Not until the period of European colonization which systematically weakened the network of relationships that the system of education in the Islamic world depended on, and as a result of which there was a rapid decline in opportunities for adequate training and subsequent employment not until then, did scholars of the law lose their status and authority in society.

About this book

As Muslim peoples begin to waken from this dark period of their history, and wonder how to express their religion in the modern world, it is particularly important to reflect upon what the authority of the law means. In what does it consist? How can it be recognized? The sources tell us that, not long after his death, people in the Islamic world referred to Ab anfah as al-imm al-aam, meaning the greatest one worthy to be followed. In this essay I try to understand how and why he came to deserve that title. It is especially important to do so at this time, for two reasons:

First, there are increasingly strident calls for reform of Islamic ways of life (coming from non-Muslims, which is to be expected, and also from Muslims themselves). Even if the call for reform is well-meant, often its rationale neither begins nor ends in the Qurn and Sunnah. Rather, the proposed reform is often concerned to face up to modern realities and to adopt norms and values that have appealed to peoples who have no grounding in Islam at all or have rejected it. Accordingly, Qurn or Sunnah even though both are presented by God as His special mercy for human beings are considered as a nuisance, an obstacle, that somehow the reform must talk its way around. Without saying it out loud, proposed reforms of this kind must strongly wish that Qurn and Sunnah did not exist or did not have any hold on the hearts and minds of Muslims. By contrast, Ab anfah and the other great imms of the law got their intellectual energy and inventiveness from, and used it within, the boundaries of Qur