By the end of the third century (ninth century A.D.) jurisprudence had reached its classic prime. Leaving out of account some other heads of schools who soon retire from the scene, there are four men in particular to whom it does honour as to its founders and fathers, four men whose disciples represent the main currents which flow side by side through the construction of Islamite law: (1) Abu Hanifa (died 767), the true representative of the ’Irak method; (2) Malik b. Anas (died 795), the most celebrated imam in the prophet’s city of Medina; (3) Mohammed b. Idris al-Shafii, a pupil of the latter (died 820), most famous for his educational work in Egypt, where his sepulchral chapel (in the Karafa at Cairo) is reverenced by the natives as a place of pilgrimage; and (4) Akhmed b. Hanbal (died 855), the pious teacher of Baghdad, the principal champion and valiant apostle of the old conservative views in religion, whose tomb in the Harbiah graveyard at Baghdad has, in the phrase of Guy l’Estrange, the writer of the monograph on the ancient city of the caliphs, “become the object of a devotion savouring of idolatry.”
The views which have been enumerated, borrowed from the method of legal deduction in Roman law, were not employed to the same extent by all schools of jurisprudence. While in that of Abu Hanifa the validity of the opinio goes so far as to accord recognition to the personal inclination of the administrator of the law, other schools were not disposed to give such free scope to the subjective judgment. The principle of istiçhab (præsumptio) was most fully recognised in the school of Shafii; that of regard for the public weal (istiçlah) in that of Malik.
In the erudite world which busied itself with the theoretical exposition of the law there were, however, large bodies of scholars, who took up their parable to proclaim that, generally speaking and on principle, they could not profess to recognise principles of method which depended for their authority on the subjective work of the human reason. They would recognise two things only as the sole basis of legal deduction—Scripture and tradition; that is to say, the Koran and the traditions or positive decisions of the prophet, his companions and their successors, of whom it could be safely assumed that they had acted and given judgment in the spirit of the founder of the faith. Only in cases of extreme necessity, and when these authoritative sources obstinately refused to yield an answer, was it lawful to admit the authority of ra’j (opinio), or more particularly, of kiga (analogy). These latter were “like the vulture, the eating of which was permitted as an exception in time of dearth when other food could by no means be obtained.” Under normal circumstances it was not permissible to reason; the only right course was to abide by the letter of tradition, since nothing outside of that could be set on a par with it. Truth manifests itself not in answer to the question “What is reasonable?” but in answer to “What did the prophet say and how did he act?”
Here we find ourselves face to face with the idea of the sunna which had come down from the Arabs of old (the idea explained at the beginning of this article), in its most rigid form, but with this difference—that the sunna, as now understood, does not look back to a remote antiquity but to a very recent past. The genuine sunnist only feels solid ground beneath his feet when he can base his judgment and conduct on the authentic text, or on well-accredited tradition concerning the words and deeds of the earliest authorities recognised by the Islamite world. Of all the four schools, the Hanoblalite, the one founded by the youngest teacher, was that in which this rigid view found most favour. In modern times it has been brought into prominence as a principle of government by the puritanical state of the Wahabees, the “Tempelstürmer von Hocharabien,” as they are called by Karl von Vincenti in a historical novel in which he describes their proceedings.
It is, however, an easy thing to say, “Tradition and nothing but tradition!” But what if, with the best will in the world, no answer can be wrung from tradition to the most pressing questions of ordinary life? The judge must give judgment; the shepherd of souls must lay down rules for his flock on questions which hourly crop up for decision in a state of life ordered by religious laws in even the most trifling details; and in doubtful cases the mufti must be able to expound the meaning of the divine law with no uncertain voice. What, then, if Scripture and tradition be dumb, and no effort can draw forth the least enlightenment from them? Where all the sources of tradition ran dry, men had to make concessions, whether they would or not, to individual opinion and the right of speculative interpretation. This led to the rise of a school of thought which endeavoured to reconcile the two sharply antagonistic tendencies. It was absolutely necessary to discover a middle course between excessive subjectivism and rigid traditionalism, and to define accurately the juridical spheres of the two conflicting elements. It was necessary to discover rules, in accordance with which speculative methods might be used to supplement tradition in the work of legal deduction, and to set up standards for the right use of traditional data in the correct formulation of the law. This work of reconciliation was done by the founder of the second school on the list, at Shafii.
Moreover there was another point of view from which the systemisation of the use of speculation as a source of law on the one hand and of tradition on the other proved an imperative necessity. If, in the one case, it was requisite to curb the arbitrary exercise of the subjective reason, it was no less necessary to check the rank growth of traditional matter, which, as it increased, hampered more and more the use of authentic tradition. The one-sided partisans of the sunna needed traditional matter for the establishment of such a legal system as they desired to see. Nor was any refutation of their theses, nor any opinion advanced against them, in their eyes worth discussing unless it could appeal to the authority of tradition. As a result, where no traditional matter was to be had, men speedily began to fabricate it. The greater the demand, the busier was invention with the manufacture of apocryphal traditions in support of the respective theses.
For the verification of didactic records, whether sacred or profane, Islam has adopted a singular form, which imparts to Islamite tradition a character altogether peculiar to itself, to which we can find no parallel (at least in such a mature and consistent shape) in any other literature. This is the hadith. The word hadith means simply communication, or narrative. If any such narrative is to be put forth with pretensions to authenticity the actual text must be preceded by what is called the sanad or isnad (literally, ‘support’). This enumerates in correct and unbroken sequence the authorities who have handed the narrative down from mouth to mouth, from the last person responsible for its circulation up to its original author. The examination of this sanad allows free and unbiased criticism the opportunity of judging whether these men on whose authority any particular narrative has been passed from mouth to mouth and from generation to generation, and set down as an actual occurrence, were persons deserving of full credit.
From this point of view an unbroken chain of oral tradition constitutes a surer and more valuable guarantee of authenticity than any written document, whether contemporary or based upon contemporary records. Even if a written document bears all the outward tokens of authenticity, it must be able to show a consistent sanad reaching in uninterrupted sequence from the first author to the last teller of the tale, if its claim is to be admitted. Every narrative and every matter of tradition, without regard to its quantitative or qualitative importance, must be set forth with its “genealogy.” This genealogy is the sanad. In theological matters, more particularly, it is the backbone without which no record can stand upright.
The literature of historic research also avails itself of this form of verification. Readers of the classic work of Muhammed Jarir al-Tabari, the “father of Islamite history” are familiar with this method of historic authentication. Each record takes the form of an appendage to a chain of tradition which reaches back to some direct authority, and to this chain the record is appended in the very words of the first narrator. It sometimes happens that a record of the same event occurs in narratives that are traced back to different authorities, and not merely in different words and with trifling variations. The facts themselves are represented in a totally different fashion, or the narratives of different authorities set them or their accompanying circumstances in a different light. All these divergent narratives are simply placed side by side, in a manner which cannot be compared with the different authorities for the narratives of the Pentateuch; for, unlike the latter, the traditional records of Arab history are not anonymous. On the contrary, they owe their distinctive character to this circumstantial system of authentication and the enumeration by name of the successive vouchers for their truth. Again, they show no trace of an attempt on the part of any editor to reduce conflicting accounts to harmony; they are simply set side by side, instead of being welded together. This circumstance has greatly facilitated the critical study of the periods from which such parallel narratives date. Wellhausen has recently given to the world a masterly study, in which he skilfully discriminates between the various points of view, and the particular bias of each of the authorities for the narrative of the victory at Tabari (Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, VI).