Posts Tagged "ash-Shafi’i"
Introduction to Usul al-Fiqh I: Ahl al-Ḥadīth (Traditionists), Ahl al-Raʾy (Rationalists) and al-Imam al-Shafiʿī rahimahuLlahu ta'ala.
الحمد لله الذي أنزل القرآن ووضع الميزان وجعل علم الأصول مصالح الأنام وأساس الأحكام. وصلى الله على سيدنا ومولانا وقرة أعيننا محمد النبي الأمي القرشي وعلى آله وصحبه حاملي لواء الدين القوي . أما بعدقد سأل بعض الزائرين في هذا الموقع أن تكتب لهم نبذة من مقدمة أصول الفقه وهو من أهم الفنون وأشرف علوم الشرع. بدأت بهذه العجالة أن أذكر فيها من أهم المؤلفات التي ألفت في هذا الفن ومصنفيهن. ولا نزاع لمن يعرف بتاريخ علم الأصول أن إمامنا الشافعي القرشي كان أول من كتب فيه ودون وحرر وأصل وهذا من مفاخر مقلدي مذهبه والحمد لله رب العالمين على هذا الفضل العظيم
This is an abridged exceprt from the Book: “Islamic Jurisprudence” by Dr. Taha Jabir al-Alwani.
Writers on Islamic legal history emphasize that the rationalist school of Ahl al-Raʾy was an extension of the school of Sayyidunā ʿUmar and ʿAbdullah ibn Masʿud radiyaLlahu ‘anhuma who, among the Ṣaḥabah, were the most wide-ranging in their use of ra’y (lit. opinion). In turn, ʿAlqamah al-Nakhaʿi (d. 60 or 70 AH), the uncle and teacher of Ibrāhim al-Nakhaʿi, was influenced by them. Ibrāhim then taught Ḥammad ibn Abū Sulaymān (d 120 AH) who, in turn, was the teacher of Abū Hanīfah rahimahumuLlah ta’ala.
The same historians stress that the traditionist school of Ahl al-Ḥadīth was a continuation of the school of those Sahabah whose fear of contradicting the letter of the source texts Nusus made them circumspect to the point where they never went any further than the texts. This was the case, by and large, with ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Umar ibn al Khattab, ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Amr ibn al ‘As, al-Zubayr, and ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Abbas radiyaLlahu ‘anhum.
The school of Ahl al-Raʾy, on the other hand, gained currency in Iraq. The scholars of this group thought that legal interpretations of the Sharīʿah should have a basis in reason, should take into account the best interests of the people, and should be backed by discernable wisdom.
It was in response to a request from Ahl al-Ḥadīth, that al Imam al-Shafiʿī wrote his book, al-Hujjah (The Argument), in Baghdad, in order to refute the arguments which Ahl al-Raʾy brought against him.
Thereafter, al-Imam al-Shafiʿī travelled to Egypt where he found that most of the people adhered strictly and unquestioningly to the opinions of Malik. Consequently, al-Imām al-Shafiʿī began a critical analysis of al-Imām Malik’s legal opinions, and found that in some cases, “…he (Malik) formulates opinions on the basis of a general principle, while ignoring the specific issue; whereas at other times he gives a ruling on a specific issue and ignores the general principle.”
Al-Imam al-Shafiʿī also found that al-Imām Malik’s opinion that the Ijma’ of the people of Madinah could be treated as source-evidence was, in fact, not very strong. He wrote a book entitled Al-Ikhtilaf maʿa Malik “Disagreement with Malik,” in which he dealt with all of the matters mentioned above.
With these matters in mind, then, al-Imam al-Shafiʿī rahimahuLlahu ta’ala came to the conclusion that the undertaking most deserving of attention was the collection of the principles of jurisprudence, the organization of the basic rules for their application, and the development of a source methodology by means of which questions of Fiqh may be decided through proper recourse to valid and relevant forms of evidence. Thus, Fiqh might become the practical application of this methodology, so that a new Fiqh might emerge as an alternative to the two established schools of legal thought.
It was for this reason that al Imam al Shafiʿī wrote the Risalah, and built his Fiqh and legal teachings on the foundations of the principles and methodology he expounded in his book.
Al-Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal said: “Until al-Imam al-Shafiʿī came along, we never thought of things like the general and the specific al-ʿumum wa al-khuṣuṣ”.
The scholars writing on the subject of the history of Usul al-Fiqh are unanimously agreed that the first writer on the subject was al-Imam al-Shafiʿī rahimahuLlahu ta’ala, and that the first book ever written on the subject was the Risalah.
Al-Imām Al-Zarkashi rahimahuLlahu ta’ala (d 794 AH) in his book, al-Bahr al-Muhit, devoted a chapter to this, in which he said:
“Al-Imam al-Shafiʿī was the first to write about Usul al-Fiqh. He wrote the Risalah, Ahkam al-Qur’an (Legal Interpretations of the Qur’an), Ikhtilaf al-Ḥadīth (Conflicting Ḥadīth), Ibtāl al-Istihsan (The Invalidity of Juristic Preference), Jima’ al-’Ilm (The Congruence of Knowledge), and al-Qiyas (Analogical Reasoning), – the book in which he discussed the error of the Mu’tazilah group, and changed his mind about accepting their testimony. Then, other scholars followed him in writing books on al-Usul.”
Al-Imām al-Juwaynī rahimahuLlahu ta’ala, in his commentary on the Risalah, wrote:
“No one before al-Imām al-Shafiʿī wrote books on the subject of al-Usul, or had as much knowledge as he concerning it. It is related that Ibn ʿAbbās mentioned something about the particularization of the general, and that some of the others among the early scholars made pronouncements which suggested they understood these principles. Still, those who came after them said nothing about al-Usul, and they contributed nothing to it. We have seen the books of the Tābiʿūn and the third generation, and have found that none of them wrote books about al-Usul.”
The Trends in Islamic Legal Writing.
The Trends in Islamic Legal Writing.
By Maulana Taha Karan
(1) There is firstly the phenomenon of the mutawwalat, lengthy, comprehensive and detailed works that would typically deal with several angles of fiqh at once: the basic points of the law, the intra-madhhab differences, the inter-madhhab differences, comparative evaluation of these differences, the extraction of qawa’id and dawabit, application of usul, takhrij of ahādith, and other miscellaneous matters. The earliest works in fiqh could be classified in this genre. Imam al-Shafi’i's Kitab al-Umm, most of Imam Muhammad ibn al-Hasan’s six works that form the zahir al-riwayah in the Hanafi madhhab, and the Mudawwanah of the Malikis would be examples.
(2) This first trend was followed by the phenomenon of ikhtisar through which the mukhtasarat, or abridgements, made their appearance. Imam al-Muzani’s Mukhtasar in which he condensed the fiqh of Imam al-Shafi’i is regarded as the prototype amongst mukhtasar works. In it he (successfully) attempted to reduce the entire scope of Imam al-Shafi’i's fiqh into manageable proportions–manageable in the sense that while it covered the entire fiqh spectrum, it did so in a size that allowed students to memorise, and teachers to cover it completely, and thereby train new generations of fuqaha in greater numbers, within a comparatively short period. Such was the success of this mukhtasar that it induced al-Muzani’s nephew, Abu Ja’far al-Tahawi, to author a similar mukhtasar for the Hanafi madhhab. It would also be through the writing of a mukhtasar that Abul Husayn Al-Khiraqi laid the foundations of a systematic madhhab drawn from the fiqh of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal.
(3) The oral teaching of the mukhtasar works naturally entailed more material than the text of the mukhtasar provided.In the case of our madhhab, for example, solutions to problems as yet unsolved would be regularly provided by the fuqaha of the madhhab in the centuries following Imam al-Shafi’i's demise. To distinguish these subsequently contributed views from the opinions of Imam al-Shafi’i himself, we call his opinions the aqwal, and their opinions the wujuh. The ones who contributed the wujuh were fuqaha who themselves possessed the requirements of ijtihad though often in an affiliated sense (mujtahid muntasib), or to a restricted degree (mujtahid muqayyad). On account of their contribution of wujuh to the madhhab they are called the Ashab al-Wujuh. With many of the Ashab al-Wujuh it would happen that their students would document their mentor’s independent contributions to the madhhab. These would then be transmitted to subsequent generations of fuqaha, often in the form of commentaries upon Mukhtasar al-Muzani known as ta’liqat. The phenomenon we see emerging here is that of theshuruh, or commentaries whereby the trend of condensation is reversed into expansion.
The above should give you a broad idea of the expansion-condensation-expansion model along which legal writing proceeded in Islam. This same model replicates itself in the post-wujuh era. Imam al-Ghazali’s 3 abridgements of his teacher Imam al-Haramayn’s Nihayat al-Madhhab, Imam al-Rafi’i's celebrated commentary upon the last of those 3 abridgements, al-Wajiz, Imam al-Nawawi’s condensation of this commentary by al-Rafi’i into Rawdat at-Talibin, of his Muharrar into the Minhaj, and al-Nawawi’s own magnificent commentary upon al-Shirazi’sMuhadhhab are all excellent and prominent examples.
The factors that prompted a shift from expansion to condensation and vice versa were several:
(1) Firstly, the issue of need. Students needed condensed works to facilitate their studies and reduce the amount of time spent in entry level studies. It is not uncommon to find the author of a mukhtasar stating his reason for condensation to be ”to facilitate memorisation and study for the beginner”.
(2) Secondly, comprehensive documentation. Every stage in the development of the madhhab would bring new material; all this new material had to be incorporated into the madhhab. When the era of wujuh drew to a close we see the emergence of comprehensive works in both the Iraqi and Khurasani branches of the madhhab (or tariqahs, as they are called). In the former tariqah there are al-Muhadhdhab and al-Tanbih by Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi, and in the latter tariqah Imam al-Haramayn’s Nihayat al-Matlab, followed by his pupil al-Ghazali’s 3 abridgements al-Basit, al-Wasitand al-Wajiz. Similarly, after the period of recension by al-Rafi’i and al-Nawawi, the peripheral contributions to the madhhab by men such as Ibn al-Rif’ah, his pupil Taqi al-Din al-Subki, al-Bulqini, al-Isnawi, al-Adhra’i and al-Zarkashi were subsumed into the second wave of recension that came in the 10th century, in the form of the commentaries upon the Minhaj by Shaykh al-Islam Zakariyya al-Ansari and his pupils al-Khatib al-Shirbini, Ibn Hajar al-Haytami and Shams al-Din al-Ramli.
(3) Thirdly, style. Language develops constantly, and one of the most pronounced forms of linguistic evolution has to be the refinement and sharpening of legal language. The systematic limpidity of Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi’s Muhadhdhaband the logically integrated arrangement of al-Ghazali’s Wasit and Wajiz give evidence of the maturization of legal style in their age.
(4) Fourthly, personal development. At a somewhat less siginificant level, scholars would sometimes condense the work of an earlier scholar simply for the sake of thoroughly encompassing the contents of the earlier work. Such condensations would be done not for the sake of publishing the work, but rather for the advancement of the condenser’s personal knowledge.
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