by John McHugo
This was a new and defining development. In Hallaq’s words, an ‘axis of authority had been constructed in the name of the school’s eponymous founder around which the entire methodology of law’12 revolved. The founder was now referred to as the school’s imam, and was the mujtahid – that is, the practitioner of ijtihad– by whose teachings it was defined. He was seen as the teacher who had grappled with the content of revelation, and gained an absolute knowledge of it. This was what had enabled him to articulate the law that he gleaned from the holy texts. He was ‘the absolute and independent mujtahid’.13
Al-Shafi‘i, who is often described as the most systematic of these scholars, closed the debate over the caliph’s role in debating the Sharia: in legal matters, the caliph’s task was to enforce the law, nothing more.14 Like all other Muslim jurists, al-Shafi‘i gave precedence to the Qur’an as the supreme source of law. Beyond this, priority was given to the Sunna, or practice, of the Prophet as preserved – and therefore as interpreted – by the hadith scholars. The ultimate arbiter for discerning the Sharia was ijma, the consensus of the community. In practice, this meant the consensus of the hadith scholars.15 Any question of the caliph’s ability to define the Sharia was ended, while the paramountcy of the class of religious scholars to decide on such questions was confirmed. They would define what we have come to know as Sunni Islam. This meant that they would also set its boundaries. They would decree who was and who was not a Muslim, would lay down rules to set out the relationship between Muslims and members of other religions such as Christians and Jews, and would decide which forms of Islam should be considered deviant and had to be opposed.
Most significant, perhaps, was the fact that the whole process of the development of the class of scholars and of the doctrinal law schools took place without any involvement from the caliphs. If they tried to steer or even influence the direction in which the Sharia developed, they failed. But although the scholars and the rulers now had different functions, the relationship between them inevitably meant that they were intertwined. By approving a particular doctrinal law school, or appointing scholars to positions at court or to positions as judges, rulers gained themselves legitimacy with the broad mass of Muslims who were their subjects, who followed particular doctrinal law schools, and from whose ranks the scholars emerged. The scholars thus provided the ruler with a shade under which to shield himself. Simultaneously, they became dependent on the ruler because of the offices, privileges and salaries they were granted. The relationship was symbiotic.
III
At more or less the same time as the class of religious scholars was emerging into full prominence and codifying the hadith, the tools of Greek logic were becoming available in Arabic and being used in theological debate. This was encouraged by the Caliph Ma‘moun, who enjoyed such discussions. In 827, he used his authority to proclaim that the Qur’an had been created by God, and that this should be an article of faith for all Muslims. He even went to the extent of setting up a procedure known as the Mihna (a word which means ‘test’ but is usually translated in this context as ‘inquisition’) to examine religious scholars, and check that they subscribed to this belief.
On a theological level, this was a debate similar to that which took place in Christianity over Christ’s nature (was Christ human or divine, or both at the same time?). After much discernment, this led Christians to the doctrine of the Trinity. For both religions, God is the fount of all existence. He is beyond existence itself, since nothing that exists can be said to have any reality save to the extent that it is ultimately granted by God. For Muslims, it was only to be expected that this conundrum would lead, sooner or later, to discussion of the nature of the Qur’an. Was the sacred text created by God, or had it existed from all eternity as an eternal manifestation of God’s attribute of speech? If the latter was the case, it posed another theological problem. Speech is a human attribute. In what way can God be said to ‘speak’? In fact, one of the reasons that Ma‘moun himself gave for promulgating the doctrine was that he had been troubled by the fact that those who argued that the Qur’an was uncreated were bringing into Islam a doctrine that was analogous to that which the Christians taught about ‘Jesus, son of Mary’.16
It was with the new intellectual tools of Greek logic and dialectics that Ma‘moun enunciated and promulgated his belief in the created-ness of the Qur’an. Yet this belief was rejected on principle by many religious scholars, who repeatedly endured torture and imprisonment for sticking to their beliefs. They took the view that, as Ahmad ibn Hanbal put it, a Muslim should believe ‘without asking how’ (bi-la kayfah). This meant that reliance on the text of the Qur’an and the hadith should be the prime tools – ultimately the only tools – used for discerning the beliefs Muslims should hold. As we have seen with the emergence of the doctrinal law schools, this was already accepted to be the case with regard to questions of the practice of the Sharia. It followed that analogy and other logical tools should be used as sparingly as possible, and always subject to the greatest possible caution.
Behind the controversy, there lurked a struggle for power. Some modern scholars see Ma‘moun’s action as a deliberate attempt to assert the power of the caliph over that of the religious scholars to decree what were the contents of the faith. It is interesting that he began to refer to himself as the imam as well as the caliph. By imam, he meant the source of authority in the teaching of religion. The title ‘the Imam’ was also applied to him by at least some of those who agreed with the position he had taken and, inevitably, by court sycophants.17 But the hadith scholars emerged victorious from the tussle, and the use of the title by the caliph was discontinued for the time being. Although Ma‘moun’s successors, Mu‘tasim and Wathiq, continued the Mihna, they did so in a half-hearted manner. It was finally discontinued in the 840s by Mutawakkil, who reversed the official position. The caliph now upheld the doctrine of the uncreated-ness of the Qur’an, and enjoined all Muslims to do the same.
Mutawakkil was subsequently assassinated by Turkish soldiers worried about their privileges and pay. It is unnecessary to look further than the decline in the caliphate’s revenues as the cause for this, but it is possible that this also marks a decline in the caliph’s status. The hallmark of Islam was living according to the Sharia. As this was now seen to be defined and interpreted by scholars, and not by the caliph, it meant that a warrior who was full of zeal to serve Islam no longer needed to enlist in the caliph’s army. He could equally well serve in the army of one of the provincial courts. Many of these were now independent of Baghdad for all practical purposes. Yet by doing this, he could still be confident that he was serving Islam. In the words of Tayeb El-Hibri, a specialist in classical Arabic historiography and literature, the caliph himself was no longer ‘the anchor of religious and political authority’. In fact, ‘the roads of Islamic legitimacy had diversified’.18
True Islam was to be found wherever a Muslim ruler kept a court with a staff of religious scholars who could inform him of the contents of the Sharia as contained in the Qur’an and hadith, and interpret it for him. The caliph in Baghdad might still be the source of legitimacy. Prayers would be offered for him all over the Muslim world in congregational mosques every Friday, and his name would appear on coins. He was a potent symbol of the truth and might of Islam. Offering a form of ceremonial allegiance to him was a good way for a Muslim ruler to cement his own legitimacy. But the caliph’s political power – and his spiritual authority to define the faith – had drained away.
By the mid-ninth century, if not well before, the Islam of the Abbasids was a religion in which a class of religious scholars defined the faith and how it should be lived. They already enunciated the contents of the Sharia, which might be said to be the embodiment and practice of that faith. This was what became known as Sunnism. In time, the caliph would adopt the title of Imam alongside that of Caliph, and would be referred to as the Imam by Sunnis. This seems to have occurred over the course of the tenth and first half
of the eleventh centuries. The timing suggests that it was very probably a defensive measure against the Shi‘i movements that came close to swamping the Abbasid Caliphate as the tenth century wore on.19
As an idea, Sunnism evolved gradually, but it would outlive the Abbasid Caliphate. The Sunnis were the people of the sunnah [the practice of the Prophet] and the jama‘ah [the community]. Their starting point was that all Muslims should live together in peace and unity. This meant accepting whatever had happened in the past, rather than letting old disputes flare up and create discord. In particular, it meant accepting that each of Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali had, in turn, been the legitimate caliph. These caliphs became known collectively as the four rashidun, those who had been rightly guided, or those who followed the right way. Later caliphs, too, should be accepted – as should other Muslim rulers, provided that they did not go against the fundamental rules of Islam. There was (and is) no central teaching authority in Sunni Islam. Sunnis discern the precepts and practice of Islam from the religious scholars. Needless to say, these scholars often disagree among themselves. That was already the case at the time the doctrinal law schools emerged in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, and is still so today.
IV
We must now turn to the Shi‘is. For them the word ‘imam’ was used to describe the divinely inspired descendant of the Prophet who was the rightful leader of the Muslim community and the embodiment of religious learning. A consequence of this was that, in theory but not in practice, in Shi‘ism the class of religious scholars could never have the same status that they acquired in Sunni Islam. In time, however, practice and theory would become hard to disentangle.
The word shi‘ah, from which ‘Shi‘i’ comes, just means ‘party’ or ‘faction’.20 As early as the run-up to the Battle of Siffin there were references to Ali’s shi‘ah, but it is difficult to tell whether at that time this meant anything more than ‘Ali’s faction’, referring to those who supported him. It was only gradually that the expression crystallised to become the term used for a sect whose members held beliefs and had practices that were distinct from those of other Muslims. After all, in the period after the murder of Uthman there are also references to the shi‘ah of Uthman. These indicate no more than the faction that sought justice for the murdered caliph.21
The story of what happened at Ghadir Khumm, which was told in Chapter Two, can be interpreted to suggest that the Prophet had intended Ali to follow him as leader of the community after his death. There are other incidents from Muhammad’s life that might suggest that he saw Ali as pre-eminent among his followers, and imply that he chose him as his successor. It was Ali (and Ali alone) who helped the Prophet cleanse the Ka‘ba of pagan idols, and it was to Ali that he gave his famous sword Dhu’l-Fiqar at the Battle of Uhud. As we have seen, there is also plentiful evidence that Ali always thought he should have become the leader of the community when Muhammad died, and that he held back from asserting this right only for the best of all possible motives: the peace and wellbeing of the community.
Ali’s son Hasan claimed the right to succeed his father. He stood down in favour of Mu‘awiya for the same reason that had led Ali to wait so patiently during the reigns of Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman: peace and harmony in the community. Hasan’s younger brother Hussein asserted his claim to leadership of the community only after Mu‘awiya’s death. The tragic and poignant killing of Hussein left many Muslims with a deep yearning for the just rule of a truly righteous imam from the Prophet’s family, the ahl al-bait or ‘People of the House’. Even if such an imam was not the political ruler of the community, they still saw him as the sole authoritative source of spiritual guidance whom Muslims should follow. The First Imam had been Ali. On his death the role was taken over by Hasan, and then by Hussein. But on whom did this role devolve after Hussein’s death?
Some believed it fell on the shoulders of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah, the half brother of Hasan and Hussein who was Ali’s only surviving son after Hussein was killed. Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah himself made no attempt to raise a revolt against the Umayyads, and lived a blameless and virtuous life in Medina, which was now a political backwater. In his life we can thus see a continuation of the quietism, or calm acceptance of things as they are, that had characterised the conduct of Ali during the period of rule by Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman, and which had then been continued by Hasan and, indeed, by Hussein up to the death of Mu‘awiya. But, as we have seen, after the death of Hussein some of those who had followed the cause of Ali and then his sons turned to violence and calls for vengeance. This was the case not just during the Umayyad period, but also during the era of the Abbasids. Even if the Abbasids were genuinely from the family of the Prophet, that does not mean that all Muslims accepted their legitimacy. As we have seen, movements arose that would turn to a direct descendant of Fatima and Ali (or, to be more precise, to somebody who claimed to be one) and answer the call to take up arms against the caliph.
Such movements were both spiritual and political at the same time, and could broadly be characterised as aiming to overthrow a godless order and usher in an era of justice and righteousness. They took inspiration from the martyrdom of Hussein, whose ambition had been to do just that. The first insurrection occurred almost immediately after his death. This was the revolt of ‘the Penitents’ from Kufa, who were consumed by guilt for their failure to go to Hussein’s aid on that fateful day of Karbala. This was swiftly followed by the revolt launched by Mukhtar al-Thaqafi, who proclaimed Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah as the imam and also as the Mahdi – a new title that meant ‘the one who is divinely guided’. The word ‘mahdi’ carried messianic overtones, and implied that the Mahdi would restore Islam to what it was meant to be, establish justice on earth, and free the oppressed from tyranny. Mukhtar’s revolt is significant because it seems to have been the first that managed to rally to its cause many of the new, non-Arab converts who felt excluded by Umayyad rule. When Mukhtar took Kufa, he executed anyone he captured who had taken part in the massacre of Hussein’s party at Karbala.
Although his revolt was crushed within a couple of years, the movement that it had created survived. It became known as the Kaysaniyya, after Abu Amr Kaysan, who had commanded Mukhtar’s guard. The Kaysaniyya condemned Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman as usurpers of the position that was always intended for Ali. When Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah died in 700, many members of the movement believed that he was still alive but had withdrawn from the world into a state of ghayba, a word that means absence, concealment or invisibility.22 The rather quaint word ‘occultation’ has become the standard English translation for ghayba in the sense that it is used in Shi‘i theology, and we will therefore adopt it in this book.
The continuing presence of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah in this world, even though in a state of occultation, meant that he could have no successors, and that he would reappear at some point as the Mahdi in the last days, in order to usher in an era of justice before the Day of Resurrection. On the other hand, some members of the movement denied that Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah was in occultation, and accepted his son, Abu Hashim, as his successor. When Abu Hashim himself died in 716, the majority of this group believed that he had specified Muhammad bin al-Abbas as the next imam. This was the same Muhammad bin al-Abbas who would become the first Abbasid caliph. Abu Hashim’s followers became one of the major religious groups – perhaps the major religious group – that rallied to the cause of ‘the Accepted One from the Family of Muhammad’ against the Umayyads. Nothing shows more clearly how the trends that became Sunnism and Shi‘ism had not congealed irrevocably at this time.
Then there were others who did not see Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah as the imam, but believed that the imamate followed the direct bloodline of Ali and Fatima. This passed through Hussein to his son Ali, who was known as Ali Zayn al-Abidin, ‘Ali the adornment of the believers’, because of his deep piety. According to this group, the imamate then passed to his grandson Muhammad al-Baqir, who died in 732.
After Muhammad al-Baqir’s own death, it passed to his son Ja‘far al-Sadiq, who lived through the Abbasid revolution until 765. These three imams maintained the now well-established tradition of quietism, something that set them apart from the Penitents and Mukhtar al-Thaqafi. But there was also one significant member of the family of Ali who did not follow this tradition. Zayd, a younger half-brother of Muhammad al-Baqir, attempted to start a revolt against the Umayyads in Kufa in 740. The city did not rise to support him, and he and his followers were soon killed by government troops. This rebellion may have been futile and short-lived, but it led to a new, distinct Shi‘i movement known as Zaydism, which survives to this day. Together with other smaller Shi‘i sects, it is discussed in Chapter Five.
Ja‘far al-Sadiq became the rallying point for all those who believed in rule by a descendant of Ali and Fatima but who did not support Zayd’s revolt. When Abu Muslim’s victorious army took Kufa, Abu Salama, who had originally sent Abu Muslim to raise the flag of rebellion in Khorasan, invited Ja‘far al-Sadiq to become the new caliph, ‘the Accepted One from the House of Muhammad’. Yet, as we have seen, Ja‘far declined. He continued to live quietly in Medina and took no part in the Abbasid revolution or the revolt of Muhammad the Pure Soul. He kept aloof from politics, and is acknowledged as a great religious scholar who was a towering figure in the intellectual development of Islam. There is much about his career that suggests that the currents which we now think of as Sunnism and Shi‘ism had not yet entirely formed. He was a major scholar of hadith, and much of his work would be accepted by both Sunnis and Shi‘is. He is sometimes seen as having set up his own doctrinal law school of Sharia, or madhhab, like his younger contemporaries the scholars Abu Hanifa and Malik bin Anas, who founded the Maliki and Hanafi doctrinal law schools of Sunni Islam. They each revered Ja‘far al-Sadiq, who taught them both.