by John McHugo
These, then, were the two approaches to the way in which Muslims should learn the truths of Islam, which led respectively to Sunnism and Shi’ism; yet they overlapped. They were basically trends or tendencies that took a long while to develop into what we might call ‘sects’, and cannot be completely disentangled even today.6 You did not have to be a follower of the House of Ali to be moved by the martyrdom of Hussein. He was a figure loved and revered by Sunnis as well as Shi‘is. As late as the twelfth century, some Sunni communities took part in the commemorations of his death at Ashura on the 10th of Muharram.7 Yet for Shi‘is there is an extra dimension to Hussein’s story. It marked the loss of the best – perhaps the only – chance to usher in the era of justice and righteousness that required leadership of the Muslim community by a descendant of the Prophet. And this happened because Hussein was betrayed by that community. Yazid, his Umayyad opponent, would be remembered for ever as an archetype of the godless ruler, like Pharaoh in the Qur’an (and the Bible).
In time, Shi‘is would write down the history of the descendants of Ali whom they considered to be the true leaders of the Muslim community. They came to see the twelve imams – Ali, Hasan, Hussein and the leaders of the House of Ali over the following nine generations – as infallible, sinless and divinely inspired. For their part, Sunnis would often tend to see all the Companions of the Prophet, even controversial figures such as Mu‘awiya, as saints. It was historical memory that drove Shi‘is inexorably apart from those we have come to call Sunnis. Ali and Hussein had died violent deaths. Some – or all – of the other imams (except, as will be explained later, the Twelfth) may also have been poisoned. Significantly, however, some of the earlier Shi‘i biographers, such as the great scholar known as al-Sheikh al-Mufid (d. 1022), tend to be sceptical about some of the stories of murder, while those who held contrasting views as to whether they had been murdered cannot be neatly separated into representatives of opposing Sunni and Shi‘i camps. Yet as time passed possibility would harden into sectarian certainty, and the ‘fact’ that the first eleven imams were murdered by their Sunni opponents would become an article of faith: the only acceptable narrative that a Shi‘i biographer could repeat. This was the case by the time of the Iranian Safavids in the sixteenth century.8 Two rival historical narratives had thus taken hold. For Shi‘is, wicked men had hijacked Islam and killed the descendants of the Prophet who had always been intended to lead the community. For Sunnis, the community had been divided and hamstrung by discord spread by the Shi‘is.
We have now reached the point at which we must look at how these two rival trends crystallised into sects.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Split Between Sunnis and Shi‘is
I
It is during a crucial period of two centuries that we can finally see the crystallisation of Sunnism and Shi‘ism as rival sects. This era begins with the Abbasid ‘revolution’ in 749–50 and ends with the caliphs becoming the prisoners, and at times the puppets, of the Buyid dynasty in 945. It is impossible to examine how most Muslims came to see themselves as either Sunnis or Shi‘is without first understanding the political history of this period, as well as the legacy of the first four caliphs and the Umayyads. That is why the first three chapters of this book have set out in some detail the story of the struggles for leadership of the Muslim community from the death of the Prophet onwards. We must now turn to the world of ideas. We will begin by looking at two Arabic words that were frequently used to denote the person who was leading the Muslim community: ‘imam’ and ‘khalifah’, or ‘caliph’. These have entered the English language, but in English the full range of meanings that they each convey has been lost. We will look at ‘imam’ first.
The scholars of the Abbasid age preserved pre-Islamic poetry because it shone light on the language of the Qur’an. This can be aptly demonstrated in a line from the pre-Islamic poet Labid: ‘Belonging to a people whose forefathers laid down for them a Sunna; every tribe has its Sunna and imam.’
Sunna is a word we have already encountered. It means ‘custom’ or ‘practice’. The imam was the source of that custom or practice. As the historian of Islamic law, Norman Calder, put it, ‘an imam was a person whose actions became models of right conduct for later generations: his practice, Sunna, was to be the practice also of the people who followed him’. In Islam, ‘imam’ was used especially in religious contexts. In the Qur’an, the word is used in particular to refer to prophets. It was used subsequently to refer to Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali as individuals. It could also be used to refer to some of the Companions of the Prophet who never became caliph but whose piety made them exemplars for others to follow.
A revealed book could also be described as an imam, and the term was on occasion applied to the Qur’an. The great scholar Ibn Hanbal, who died in 855, referred to his own, vast collection of hadith (sayings attributed to the Prophet) as an imam. Echoing Labid’s line, he said that he had made it ‘an imam to settle any dispute concerning the Sunna of the Prophet’. In the legal matters of the Sharia, ‘imam’ came to carry the sense of ‘an authority’, meaning a jurist whose teachings were followed. At the same time, it continued to be used in purely secular contexts to denote, for instance, a military leader or governor. It thus carried a generic sense of ‘leader’ as well as ‘authority’. There were times when the caliph was referred to as the imam, but the word could also mean no more than the person who led a congregation in prayer.1
While the general sense carried by the word ‘imam’ is therefore clear, it could carry many different meanings depending on the context in which it was used. It was also perfectly possible for a group to endow it with a special meaning that others would not necessarily use.
By contrast, the other word, ‘khalifah’ or ‘caliph’, has an inherent ambiguity. It can mean either ‘successor’ or ‘deputy’. Sometimes the expression khalifat rasul allah, ‘the caliph (or successor) of the prophet of God’ was used. On other occasions, the caliph described himself as Khalifatu’llah, ‘God’s deputy’ (the expression ‘God’s successor’ would be blasphemous and meaningless). ‘Deputy’ and ‘successor’ are two very different concepts, but they both indicate that, whatever authority the office of caliph held, that authority derived from another: from the Prophet, in the case of ‘the caliph of the prophet of God’; and from God Himself in the case of ‘God’s caliph’. Linguistically, this is not the case with ‘imam’, since that word does not of itself denote that the imam’s authority stems from a higher source of authority. While ‘imam’ might denote just a humble prayer leader, the word nevertheless carries the potential – linguistically, that is – to be used for a supreme source of authority to a greater extent than the word caliph.
After he became the leader of the Muslims, Abu Bakr used the title Khalifat Rasul Allah, or ‘the caliph (i.e. successor) of the Prophet of God’. Umar came to be called Amir al-Mu’minin, generally translated into English as ‘the Commander of the Faithful’, although the word amir/emir, ‘commander’ also carries the ideas of ‘prince’ and ‘governor’. This title was generally used to address the caliph throughout the history of the caliphate and later. To this day, it is a title claimed by the king of Morocco. Umar was also referred to as Khalifat Khalifat Rasul Allah, ‘the successor of the successor of the Prophet of God’.2 With Uthman, the first attestations of the use of the title Khalifatullah, ‘God’s deputy’, appear. It was the official title used by all the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs.3 Under the Abbasids, the expression ‘Caliph of the Prophet of God’ reappeared, and both designations were used, sometimes side-by-side. Of course, ‘the Caliph of the Prophet of God’ fitted in nicely with the status the Abbasids promoted for themselves as kinsmen of the Prophet. Its adoption (or re-adoption) did not imply a diminution of the caliph’s status as God’s deputy on earth.
II
We have focused on these two words because the question of the leadership of the Muslim community, and the source of the leader’s authority, was
vitally important for Muslims. It was necessary to be a follower of the caliph (or imam) in order to belong to the community. In other words, it was necessary to accept the caliph as the spiritual – and political – leader in order to gain salvation. He was a stronghold in which the faithful should seek refuge, and a rope to which they should hold fast. He could, for instance, be identified with the cord that is mentioned in Qur’an 3:98:
And hold ye fast by the cord of God, all of you, and break not loose from it; and remember God’s goodness towards you, how that when ye were enemies, He united your hearts, and by his favour ye became brethren.4
Panegyric poets could play with words, sometimes using imagery fresh from the Arabs’ life as nomadic tent dwellers in the desert. The caliphs held religion and community together. They were the ‘tent pegs’5 of Islam that prevented religion and community collapsing to the ground. Without the caliph, neither would survive. The consequence was that anyone who failed to follow the true caliph was courting eternal damnation. Ali and Mu‘awiya may have held the same religious beliefs, but that was not the point. There was one Muslim community, and it had one, true leader. To reject the leader meant putting yourself outside the community and courting eternal damnation.6
The same applied, of course, to the followers of the other distinct sect that appeared in early Islam. These were the Kharijis who, it will be recalled, rejected both Mu‘awiya and Ali as caliph because they saw each as acting for his own selfish ends and not in the path of God. They had their own theology of leadership but, unlike the Sunnis and Shi‘is, they never managed to set up a successful imperial project that spread over a wide area of the Muslim world. Today, the only state where the majority of Muslims are Kharijis is Oman, and the reason for that is that Kharijism took root among the tribes of the inaccessible mountains in the north of that country and has retained their loyalty ever since. The one other place where they survive is in part of Algeria. The history and development of Kharijism lie outside the scope of this book, but it will have been noticed how it provided an option for those who disputed the authority of the caliph – an alternative to seeking a leader from the line of Ali.
It was the caliph’s duty to uphold the Sharia, the precepts and rules that developed into the detailed, God-given law of the community; but the extent to which the early caliphs could interpret, and even decree, the contents of that law by reason of their office is debated by scholars. As the political and religious leader of the Muslim community, the caliph was its defender and guardian. Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali had all been key Companions of the Prophet. Both their office as caliph and their status as Companions gave them the right to be listened to on questions about what the actual practice of the Prophet and the Companions had been. Their own practice was also seen as praiseworthy, and fit for emulation by other Muslims. Right through the Umayyad period, disputes would be brought before the caliph who would give a decision without necessarily referring to a Qur’anic dictum or Prophetic practice. Judges would also write to the caliph asking for his advice on how to decide novel or difficult cases.
The ra’y or ‘considered opinion’ of trustworthy and devout men was originally a source of law, alongside the Qur’an and the practice – the Sunna – of the Prophet. Decisions were inevitably made on the basis of precedents. The caliph himself would seek precedents before giving judgement, although this did not necessarily imply seeking a precedent from the practice of the Prophet himself. A precedent set by an earlier caliph or another revered Companion of the Prophet might be sufficient. Inevitably, the ‘considered opinion’ of a scholar on a particular matter might well be identical to the practice of the Prophet and the practice of other eminent Muslims.7
By the 680s, scholars were beginning to gather material that set out the practice or Sunna of the Prophet. Within a generation or two, this would develop into the specialist and systematic science of ‘hadith’: amassing the sayings attributed to the Prophet and testing their authenticity by examining the trustworthiness of those who had transmitted them. In effect, the scholars codified the memory of the Prophet’s practice in their collections of hadith. As this science of religious learning grew and became more formal, the ‘considered opinion’ that was used to resolve judicial disputes increasingly had to be based on the Prophet’s Sunna, if it was to be accepted as valid.
As the judicial supremacy of the Qur’an and, beneath it, the hadith, became ever more firmly established, the element of personal discretion contained in ‘considered opinion’ steadily retreated. The jurist Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi‘i, who died in 820, established a rigid hierarchy of sources of law in which it had no place. His aim, which he successfully achieved, was to provide a methodology for unifying Islamic law and ending the risk that it would disintegrate into regional variants. At the top of al-Shafi‘i’s hierarchy were the texts: first the Qur’an, and then the hadith. Below them, there were the consensus of the Muslim community (ijma‘) and the use of analogy to reach a decision (qiyas). The consequence was that ‘considered opinion’ gradually disappeared as a source of law in itself. But it would survive in specific judicial tools such as the use of analogy and istihsan, interpretation in the way most conducive to achieving justice and the common good.
Another judicial tool that is also ultimately derived from considered opinion would prove to be of major importance in the history of both Sunnism and Shi‘ism. This was ijtihad, the ability of a devout and trusted scholar to answer a judicial question through his knowledge of the sources of the Sharia. Al-Shafi‘i often uses the words qiyas and ijtihad interchangeably. For him, qiyas/ijtihad is merely the bringing out of the meaning or interpretation of revelation in order to deal with a specific case. It is not a source of law in itself; it is a means to ‘discover’ the contents of that law.8
The scholars might disagree about aspects of the religious law, but a caliph gradually came to find that he needed authority from somewhere in the teachings of these scholars to justify the positions he adopted on questions of the Sharia. Revolts against caliphal authority, whatever the grievance behind them might be, were invariably justified on the grounds that in some way or other the caliph was disregarding the teaching contained in the Qur’an and the practice of the Prophet. This was already the case with the mutineers against the Caliph Uthman.
By the time of the Abbasid revolution, if not before, the religious scholars had become the repository of the community’s memory of what the Prophet had said and done. There was an interesting case in which Caliph Mansour did not dare to use his authority to judge between three scholars who all produced different rulings on the same legal question. This was despite an appeal from the intellectual Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, who suggested he should declare which was correct and forbid jurists to follow the rulings he had rejected. The eminent jurist Malik bin Anas told Mansour that to try to establish a legal ruling by the caliph that overrode the judgement of a local judge would actually be seen as kufr, unbelief.9
The experts on the application of the Sharia, the fuqaha (singular faqih), soon became an important class of officials at the court of any ruler or provincial governor. Their presence at the caliphal court had become well established by the reign of Harun al-Rashid, if not before.10 It was around this time that the different ‘doctrinal legal schools’ 11 of the Sharia began to appear, which the Muslims whom we must now begin to describe as Sunnis recognise as equally valid. Four of these doctrinal law schools or madhhahib (sing. madhhab) survive to this day. Each is named after its founder: Malik bin Anas (d. 795) for the Malikis; Abu Hanifa (d. 767) for the Hanifis; al-Shafi‘i (d. 820) for the Shafi‘is; and Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855) for the Hanbalis.
Each madhhab was more, however, than merely a school that was centred on an individual scholar – however eminent and brilliant he might be. There had already been plenty of figures who were outstanding in their learning, from whom other, typically younger, scholars could learn. But there had been nothing exclusive about the opinions expounded
by these learned men. Students would come to learn what they could from them, and would then often go off to seek what knowledge they could find from other authorities. This explains, for instance, how Malik bin Anas and Abu Hanifa could both sit at the feet of Ja‘far al-Sadiq as well as other scholars. Eventually, they would go on to found their own distinct, doctrinal legal schools.
Wael Hallaq, a scholar of Islamic law, has distinguished four characteristics of the doctrinal legal schools that mark them apart from the purely ‘personal’ schools. First, although they were named after an individual as their founder, that founder was actually only one among a number of scholars (including, probably, some of his own teachers and pupils) whose legal thinking had cohered as a ‘composite school’. Second, the school was concerned as much with legal methodology as with the contents of the substantive law. Third, the schools each had their own boundaries when it came to both substantive law and the methodology of their legal reasoning. Finally, loyalty to the school became a defining feature of membership. It became rare for a scholar (or often for an ordinary Muslim who followed that school) to transfer his loyalty to another school.