The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence

The origins of Muhammadan jurisprudence

Author	Joseph Schacht
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Published	1950 (Clarendon Press)

The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1950) is the chief and widely influential work of noted British-German orientalist Joseph Schacht on the medieval 'ilm al-ḥadīth, or the science of ḥadīth literature.

As a whole, Origins critiques the methods and standards of ḥadīth verification as they were first articulated by Imām al-Shāfiʻī (d. 820 CE) and subsequently developed by his students in the eighth and ninth centuries CE, an early and centrally important stage in the formation of Islamic jurisprudence. His research builds upon the work of important figures in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century study of Islamic law in Europe, such as Gustav Weil and Ignác Goldziher. In particular, Schacht advocates a skeptical approach to medieval forms of 'isnād criticism, which he views as fabricated and comprising the greater part of Sunni approaches to verifying Prophetic traditions of a legal nature.

Argument and Method

Schacht locates the origins of 'ilm al-ḥadīth in the eight and ninth centuries CE, a moment in the development of Islamic legal reasoning coinciding with the professionalization of the traditionalist (muḥaddith) and jurist (faqīh) classes in the urban centers of the Middle East. According to Schacht the rules and standards of Islamic law are derived from four primary sources: from the Qurʾān, from the ḥadīth comprising the sunna of the Prophet Muḥammad and his Companions, from the consensus or ijmāʿ of the Muslim community and from analogical reasoning or qiyās. The essentials of this fourfold methodology were initially and perhaps most clearly articulated by Imām al-Shāfiʻī, a noted legal scholar of the eighth and ninth centuries CE and founder of an eponymous school of Islamic jurisprudence.

Following the work of Goldziher before him, Schacht argues that it was al-Shāfiʻī who first elevated the sunna and its constituent traditions to great legal prominence. The material importance of the Qurʾān and ḥadīth thereafter enjoyed a status comparable to that of juristic consensus, though for al-Shāfiʻī traditions credibly attributed to the Prophet were to be considered more authoritative than those of his Companions, and indeed could supersede all other sources of legal authority. Moreover, an already-existing legal standard based on such a tradition could be overturned only upon the emergence of a ḥadīth that could be more credibly attributable to the Prophet. Al-Shāfiʻī goes as far as to claim that such well-established traditions invite no debate as to their validity; their truth simply imposes itself upon the human mind, leaving no room for doubt or speculation. Schacht points out, however, that al-Shāfiʻī inconsistently applies this rule in his own work, alleging that in some cases the jurist favored 'aḥādīth transmitted from Companions that openly contradicted those attributable to the Prophet. These traditions usually included those which validated ritual practices that were either universally agreed upon or else independently verifiable (such as daily prayer), and those which disputed the legal positions of al-Shāfiʻī's opponents.

Building on this lattermost point, Schacht contends that far from constructing the standards of a legitimate epistemic enterprise al-Shāfiʻī's science of ḥadīth amounts to little more than an uncritical acceptance of Prophetic traditions which justified his own legal preferences. These same traditions, claims Schacht, could not survive a stronger program of investigation. Although the technical evaluation of traditions would continue to evolve across many generations of Muslim scholars, it seems to have largely proceeded along the lines of the deficient form of ’isnād criticism first articulated here by al-Shāfiʻī. Later in Origins Schacht presents evidence which in his estimation suggests that there was in fact a large scale fabrication of Prophetic ’isnāds in the generation preceding the life of al-Shāfiʻī's own teacher, Mālik ibn ’Anas (d. 795 CE). Even in Mālik's esteemed golden narrative chain there are suspicious gaps and obvious substitutions, sowing significant doubts as to credibility of the relationships he was said to have had with certain key transmitters. For these reasons modern scholars cannot be nearly as optimistic about the historical-analytic value of ḥadīth literature as were their medieval Muslim counterparts.

Critics of Schacht and his Origins

Schacht's views on this matter have recently fallen out of favor with Muslim and non-Muslim scholars of Islam alike. Chief among his critics are M. Muṣṭafā al-Aʻẓamī and Wael Hallaq, the latter of which claims that Schacht mistakenly assumes that medieval Muslims scholars held ḥadīth to be apodictically true. It is more likely the case–and indeed apparent to the careful reader upon inspecting the literature–that at least where matters of law were concerned medieval Muslim scholars judged the majority of ḥadīth as only probabilistically true. It was the epistemic sum of probable traditions, and not the assured truth of any one tradition in particular, upon which they built their legal rulings.

Citations

On Schacht's Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence. Riyadh: King Saud University: 1985.

• Hallaq, Wael B.. “The Authenticity of Prophetic Ḥadîth: A Pseudo-Problem,” In Studia Islamica, No. 89 (1999): 77-84.
• Mālik ibn 'Anas. Muwaṭṭaʾ li-Mālik ibn Anas. Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1996.
• Schacht, Joseph. An Introduction to Islamic Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.
• ––––––––––––– The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.
• al-Shāfiʻī. Ikhtilāf al-ḥadīth.
• –––––––– “Treatise II” in Ikhtilāf 'Alī wa-'Abdullāh bin Ma'sūd. pp. 151–77.
• –––––––– “Treatise III” in Ikhtilāf Mālik wal-Shāfiʻī. pp. 177–249.
• al-Shaybānī. Muwaṭṭaʾ al-Imām Mālik. Beirut: al-Maṭbaʻah al-ʻIlmīyah, 1979.